A Cat in the Brain

Dir: Lucio Fulci

1990

***

A Cat in the Brain is far from being horror maestro Lucio Fulci’s greatest film but there are elements of it that I love. A Cat in the Brain, or Nightmare Concert as it is also known, is somewhere between Le Theatre du Grand-Guignol and Federico Fellini’s 8 ½. Grand Guignol has influenced all of the very best horror films, particularly the Giallos, slashers and Expoitations of the 1970s. Its Jacobean theatre, a show of graphic and amoral entertainment but updated with a psychological twist, one that questions the audience for actually watching it. Fulci goes one further with A Cat in the Brain and questions the audience through questioning himself. Is he a maniac for making some of the goriest and most deprived films ever made or is he a theatrical genius? Maybe only the audience can decide but then what of the audience? Why do people watch such films? You can only determine Fulci’s motives if you watch his films, but why would you do so in the first place? It’s an interesting thought. The film is a meta-film, as Fulci plays himself. He has become haunted by his own films and they have become blurred with his real life. He visits a psychiatrist who suggests he needs to break down the barrier, the boundary between what he films and what is real. The film then sees Fulci work on two new projects while he remembers many gory scenes from his previous films. Now his fans didn’t like this as much because it was seen as a cheap and lazy way of making a ‘greatest hits’ movie, and of course they are right, however, I would argue that there was far more to it. This something of a swansong from the director who only made a couple of further films before he died. The cult classics Sodoma’s Ghost, Touch of Death, Bloody Psycho, Massacre, The Murder Secret, Hansel and Gretal and The Beyond are all revisited but Fulci’s script was still 49 pages long. Rather disturbingly – and adding weight to the overall idea, it contained no dialogue, only descriptions of bodily mutilations and sound effects that would complement them on screen. It is a cheap shot using so much old footage but I quite enjoyed the compilation of clips. There is plenty of new footage and watching Fulci play himself adds another level of terror to his films for sure. Wes Craven used a similar formula for his New Nightmare, although that was a little more obvious in that it questioned whether a character was real or not, and not whether he was mentally disturbed – or at least not to the same level. If you dislike gory films then this is obviously not a great film for you and I have to admit I did find it a little too much for my tastes. The idea is fascinating but the brutal violence is nauseating and far too relentless. To each their own though and if classic Grand Guignol is your thing then this is the film for you and I have to say it is nice to see this style of film made in 1990. A lot of the classic 70s/80s Italian horrors were copied badly, so I’ve only seen them on poor quality tapes. This film looks like it could have come from the 70s (the earliest footage featured is from 1988) but is crystal clear, which is very satisfying. The argument continues between fans, one side says masterpiece, the other says cheap greatest hits, but I wonder, why can’t it be both?