A Cat in the Brain (1990)

Thankfully, there are now quite a few uncut releases of 'A Cat In The Brain' on DVD. Not surprisingly this film suffered a great deal from the censors back in the days; just watch it for yourself and you'll get the picture. So I re-watched an uncut version recently, and boy, this still is such a 'fun' film. Whatever Mr. Fulci's intentions were at the time - must have been more than one, that's for sure - I'm still strongly convinced (more than ever, actually) that 'A Cat In The Brain' was partly intended to be a comedy. The movie is virtually plot less, or instead of a plot, it basically has only plot holes (think the size of Nebraska) tied together with hints at a plot. There's a hint at a murder mystery here, about a deranged murderer killing random people, though it's merely reduced to a background story. And as you all have probably read by now, it stars Fulci playing himself. It's also one of Fulci's most incoherent films. It also is quite ridiculous. And it all feels like it was meant to be this way. Literally stuffed with gore footage (both new and some lifted from his previous films), it's undoubtedly Fulci's most insane movie. Good stuff!

Lucio Fulci had a master craftsman hands doing what he did, which was making thrillers and horror movies. I mention both of those since, as he says on an interview on the DVD in a gruff and old-man manner, there is a difference. This would most likely lean towards horror, and a kind of self-knowing horror. In the same interview he says that most American horror filmmakers of the 70's and 80's and on into the 90's ripped off the Great Italian Masters (as he says, i.e. Argento and Bava), but with this film he might be even more on the money. It's knowing of what makes a horror film and how an audience responds, but it also plays with how a filmmaker looks on at the horrors around him. Scream would play around with the idea of a horror audience's expectations, but Fulci isn't just into playing. He's take a hammer and smashes any conventions to the ground and splatters it. Dr. Fulci is in on the joke, and on the horror on display.He plays himself too, which helps and makes things more absurd than they would be with another actor. He's been making his latest horror film, loaded with sadism and Naziism (we don't see much of the Naziism except for one pivotal sequence he imagines as being directed with a Nazi orgy). He seeks psychotherapy to deal with these visions of graphic murder around him, which get egged on by just visual associations (a vision of raw steak, a chainsaw). But as it turns out his psychotherapist has some other ideas of his own, and in hypnosis he takes over where the director is just visualizing. It's not a thriller because, basically, we know who the 'killer' is the moment he says it on screen, looking every bit like an Italian Christopher Lee.There's blood, lots of it, and dismembered heads, and dismembered hands, and throat sliced and eyes gouged out (at one point Fulci looks at his footage and says "Not real enough" over some eye test footage), and some dismembered other bits. It's hard to say where it might rank among the goriest of the gory Fulci films, but it's up there. But what makes it work better than it might from other circumstances is that Fulci, by proxy playing "himself", gets to say 'Hey, look at what we do here?' Fulci in the same interview on the DVD expounds on how much he despises psychotherapy, and it's here too that he gets to have a lot of fun. It even looks like they were having fun making it, getting to fool around much as 'Dr. Fulci' get fooled on himself. Hell, there's a shower stabbing scene to boot!Sure, it's still crude like a lot of Fulci's movies, but there's a kind of demented artistry at work as well. Fulci is serious about what he does, and what he does is delivery mountains of violence, but always in a kind of fantastical way. And there's always a sense of humor here, some of it very morbid. If you can tap into it, it's really one of Fulci's most entertaining films.

This movie was made around the time that Lucio Fulci was starting to lose his touch. Before, his movies were not only gore-filled, but they had a story, great writing, and great camera shots that were very beautiful for something any other Italian director (besides Dario Argento) could not produce. Near his death, his movies seems very poor, and somewhat distasteful. The only two movies I could watch of his were Aenigma (1987), and The House of Clocks (1989). Though, Un gatto nel cervello (The Cat in The Brain) is a very entertaining movie that Fulci produced near his death. One of the main reasons, is that Fulci actually stars in it... AS HIMSELF! The plot line is basically Fulci has been driven insane by his movies or whatever, and he starts imagining scenes from his movies being played out in real life. What this means, is that there is a lot of stock footage with in the movie, mainly from Touch of Death and Sodama's Ghost, two recent movies Fulci had produced before. I liked how the scenes were integrated into the movie, though you could tell that the footage was stock somewhat if you've actually seen the movies. Anyway's the movie is entertaining, though the gore kind of does lose the touch of any other Fulci gore epic before. Though the thing that surprises me, is that Fabio Frizzi (composer of some Fulci films such as Zombie, The Gates of Hell, and The Beyond) is actually the composer of this movie's music. You can actually tell by the bass line, sort of. I wish I could find a soundtrack for this movie, if there is one.

What do you do with all the material that does not make the final edit of a film? You might keep it aside in case a director's cut or extended version is released one day. You might sell some it as stock footage to be used in a part of another film. You might just bin it. Or you might collect it, accumulating more and more from each film you make and then use it to make another film, disregarding coherence or any sense. Throw a very primitive skeleton of a narrative into it and line up a number opportunities (nay, excuses) to slot in your celluloid cast-offs. Excuse the abjectly nonsensical nature of the plot by framing it all in the mind of a horror film director and you've got yourself an awful film. This can all be done with just a few days shooting. And idiots like me will waste two hours of their life watching it. And then come on here and try to warn others away. The whole chain of events is one big waste of time.