Fine Giallo

Prof-Hieronymos-Grost

Carol Hammond(Florinda Balkan)lives in London and is the daughter of a very important Lawyer(Leo Genn), she is haunted by some very strange psychedelic dreams about her noisy and party loving neighbour, Julia Durer (Anita Strindberg),these dreams always contain drug fuelled sexual depravity ,and while she is seeing her Psychiatrist, she tells him of her latest dream in which she has Lesbian sex and then brutally murders Durer. Carol is reassured by her shrink that this is all quite normal, but when Durer is found murdered in exactly the same way as she described, Carol soon becomes the No1 suspect for Inspector Corvin(Stanley Baker),and when her fingerprints are found on the murder weapon and her fur coat found beside the body….well its cased closed?...or is it?....is Carol going mad or is she being set up?...Soon after being released on Police bail, Carol is hunted by some drugged up Hippies that she saw in her dream and soon people begin to die. Lizard is full of red herrings and endless plot possibilities, that adds to the mystery, its trippy psychedelic dream sequences fully capture the feel of the swinging sixties,add to that some gore as only Fulci can do and you have a fine Giallo….incidentally one particular gory scene involving dogs caused controversy at the time and Fulci had to prove in court on four occasions that the effects were fake. Lizard boasts an excellent cast, that also includes Jean Sorel as Carols husband but the film is Balkan's whose portrayal of a disturbed woman is excellent. Another Morricone score adds to the quality of the film….all in all a very interesting Giallo entry, that is very stylized and mystery driven.

score 8/10

Prof-Hieronymos-Grost 28 November 2005

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1226161/