Lizard in a Woman's Skin

Scarecrow-88

Lucio Fulci's "Schizoid" pulls you in so many directions you know you are watch a filmmaker at his finest point of his career. While I feel other later films were shoddily plotted and illogically unbalanced, this film is right on the mark in every moment. It takes a unique premise using dream logic, the mind's subconscious, blackmail, adultery, lesbianism, and a murder of a hippie socialite and Fulci weaves a web of unpredictability any giallo or horror fan would dream of.

The film opens with a dream from Carol Hammond(Florinda Bolkan)concerning her delirious trip through an orgy of naked people standing trying to flee but finding herself in the arms of a woman(the always luscious Anita Strindberg). As she tells this to her psychoanalyst, Carol seems to be ridding herself of buried desires in an attempt to "free" herself from the bondage of depravity. But, one such dream shows Carol murdering the woman and it turns out that this occurrence actually happens to the very next door neighbor for whom she speaks of. Soon Carol is the main suspect when the police and detectives find her fingerprints all over the weapon used(..not to mention, her fur was by the dead woman's bed). Little elements emerge, however, that might save Carol such as these notes she took moments after her awakening from the dreams. Another development shows that her husband Frank(Jean Sorel)had access to her notes, understood a point of entrance into the dead woman's pad, could place certain things in the dead woman's room that belong to Carol, and had a motive for seeing his wife put away for murder..he was having a two year passionate love affair with another woman. Another major development has two possible witnesses at the scene of the crime, one of whom actually chases Carol twice in attempt to kill her with a knife(in one inspired sequence, Carol raises the ire of a nest of bats in an organ loft as she hid from the one chasing her). Is or is not Carol the killer..that is the main question at the heart of this marvelously deranged, colorful, and thoughtfully designed giallo.

I'm a big fan of the use of dream logic and what lies within the human mind as it pertains to a murder mystery. Loving Hitchcock's "Spellbound" about an amnesiac trying to unlock key memories that will answer a puzzling mystery, Fulci uses the same general idea regarding dream logic but moving it in a bizarre, lurid direction.

This great movie yields one surprise after another as so many possibilities seem to unfold from what felt like a forgone conclusion. Thanks to Fulci and his collaborators, this film will shock you right up until the end.

In my opinion, Fulci's finest film.

score 10/10

Scarecrow-88 23 September 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1481932/