My thoughts on this film are pretty mixed. I love and respect Lucio Fulci's brand of "sickie" films that are notorious for their blatant depictions of misogyny and/or zombie conjuring, and after seeing some of his earlier stuff like "Lizard in a Woman's Skin" after the later gore classics like "City of the Living Dead" and "New York Ripper", it's hard not to appreciate his diversity as a film-maker. This one isn't a blood soaked sick-fest like the film's mentioned above, though it IS well made, intelligent, and contains a few memorable scenes... In other words, the cinematic quality is THERE.
The plot is pretty rapid and a bit to confusing to accurately explain in-depth, but the gist of it is: a woman is having dreams of her sexy, party-animal neighbor that usually entail the two of them engaged in some heavy lesbian petting with other strange psychedelic, nightmarish imagery popping up. One night she dreams of killing the neighbor who is coincidentally discovered murdered the next day. Fingers point to everyone - the distraught woman, her husband, her father, and a pair of junked out hippies are all possible suspects.
Certainly, the movie is legendary for it's infamous "dog scene" in which a couple of dogs are found eviscerated with their exposed hearts still beating. Word has it, the effects were convincing enough to incite legal action against Fulci and the special effects artist for possible "animal cruelty". As far as "gore", that's really the only noteworthy scene. Still, the flick is a well constructed murder mystery, though I can't say I was 100% "into" this one. I found most of it pretty hard to follow and the performances bland and forgettable. Not a BAD giallo (it is really not possible for me to hate ANY of Lucio Fulci's body of work) but just don't expect anything all that... demented. I guess I just prefer the outrageousness of his later films.
My thoughts on this film are pretty mixed. I love and respect Lucio Fulci's brand of "sickie" films that are notorious for their blatant depictions of misogyny and/or zombie conjuring, and after seeing some of his earlier stuff like "Lizard in a Woman's Skin" after the later gore classics like "City of the Living Dead" and "New York Ripper", it's hard not to appreciate his diversity as a film-maker. This one isn't a blood soaked sick-fest like the film's mentioned above, though it IS well made, intelligent, and contains a few memorable scenes... In other words, the cinematic quality is THERE.
