CAT IN THE BRAIN (1990) Blu-ray
Director: Lucio Fulci
88 Films

Lucio Fulci cast himself as a director with a CAT IN THE BRAIN on Blu-ray from 88 Films.

When the gory set-pieces in his latest production start provoking hallucinations in his waking life, director Lucio Fulci consults hypnotherapist Egon Schwartz (David L. Thompson, MILLIONS). Schwartz studies Fulci's entire oeuvre from videotape to original scripts and notes, but not with the intention of helping the director; instead, he endeavors to create a monster out of Fulci, hypnotizing him into believing him responsible for a series of murders committed by himself with his wealthy wife Katya (Malisa Longo, CAULDRON OF DEATH) as the final victim.

That's really all there is to the plot of CAT IN THE BRAIN as it is composed of about fifty-percent of gory stock footage from his latter day productions TOUCH OF DEATH – scenes of Brett Halsey's ladykiller bludgeoning, dismembering, and eating his victims comprising Fulci's film-within-a-film – SODOMA'S GHOST as a hallucination of a Nazi orgy Fulci experiences while being interviewed by a German television crew – as well as the gory straight-to-video productions to which he leant his name as "presenter" including Mario Bianchi's THE MURDER SECRET for the hallucinated murder of the family of the inspector friend (Jeoffrey Kennedy) Fulci confides in, BLOODY PSYCHO for hallucinated murders committed by a rotting zombie in a wheelchair, HANSEL AND GRETEL for test footage of an eye-gouging effect by Giuseppe Ferranti (NIGHTMARE CITY) that dissatisfies Fulci, MASSACRE for the gory murders committed by Schwartz who dons the killer's idiotic disguise in new reverse angles. The self-reflexive aspect of the film is more amusing than genuinely enlightening, seeming more opportunistic as a ways of getting more exposure for films unreleaseable abroad (the Fulci productions only becoming available stateside during the DVD age, unauthorized in the case of SODOMA'S GHOST, and THE MURDER SECRET the only other one to have been dubbed into English). The only seeming insight into Fulci may be his pondering "Sadism, Nazism… is there any point anymore?" which may be a reflection on how Fulci felt about the project SODOMA'S GHOST itself in its aftermath or even during the shooting of that film. At most, it may embody his own feelings of disappointment about the flagging Italian film industry during the period and its treatment of the genre with which he was still associated – and perhaps which producers felt he was only still viable with – with the reduced exportability of low budget dubbed horror films even for home video in other territories. The 16mm photography of Alessandro Grossi (VOICE FROM BEYOND) is quick and dirty while Fabio Frizzi augments his own low-key score with tracks from THE BEYOND. DEMONS' Paola Cozzo – who would also appear in Fulci's DEMONIA – plays Schwartz's secretary who is hoping that Fulci is looking for a fresh face.

Gaining word of mouth through the bootleg circuit, CAT IN THE BRAIN went undistributed in the United States upon release until it was picked up by Grindhouse Releasing's Box Office Spectaculars and released on laserdisc in 1998 followed by a deluxe 2-disc set from Grindhouse in 2009. Raro Video, who released the film on DVD in Italy, originally announced an American Blu-ray release before Grindhouse stepped up and showed that they had the US rights in perpetuity, and they would release a stacked two-disc Blu-ray/soundtrack CD edition in 2016. 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen Blu-ray is derived from the same HD master given a higher bitrate encode (Grindhouse encoded the film and trailers on a BD25 with the extras relegated to a second Blu-ray disc). The colors are rich but the 16mm-lensed film will always look ugly because of the cheapness with which it was made and the recycling of footage from the other films which also looked rather unattractive (seemingly be design with TOUCH OF DEATH and through budgetary limitations for the others), with the intercutting of new footage to make it seem as though characters from CAT were interacting with those of the other flicks more apparent than in SD in the shifts of grain, color, and lighting. The English and Italian tracks are included in LPCM 2.0 mono with optional English subtitles. The alternate Italian audio track on the Box Office laserdisc went silent for the final scene which was not included originally in the Italian version, but the Italian track here reveals that the audio was indeed dubbed and mixed for this sequence. The opening credits are in English while the end credits are in Italian and, strangely, list Fulci's character name as "Fulvio".

While 88 Films ported over some of the major extras for their inaugural Vault Series edition of I DRINK YOUR BLOOD, they have produced new extras for CAT IN THE BRAIN. “Brain Food: Analysing Late Day Fulci” (46:04) features screenwriter Antonio Tentori, film critic Kim Newman, Dark Side magazine editor Allan Bryce, academic Mikel J. Koven – author of "La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film and Film" – and supplement producer Calum Waddel looking at the later works of Fulci from AENIGMA onwards – including DEMONIA, ZOMBI 3, TOUCH O DEATH, SODOMA'S GHOST, and VOICE FROM BEYOND (leaving out his "House of Doom" TV productions SWEET HOUSE OF HORRORS and THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS) – admitting that the films have entertainment value but cannot help but disappoint. Waddel and Newman note that while CAT IN THE BRAIN has been seen as a precursor to WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE, it was more than likely his spin on Truffaut's DAY FOR NIGHT while Koven suggests it is a loose remake of Fellini's 8 1/2. Waddel sees Fulci as having always been a jobbing director, not an auteur, and does not have a high opinion of CAT IN THE BRAIN although he also reiterates that the circumstances of the Italian film industry should be taken into consideration when viewing it. In “Frizzi 2 Fulci North American Tour 2015: Hollywood” (7:35), Frizzi and his band perform themes from the film live onstage. The disc also includes the film's trailer (1:58) which is the Box Office Spectaculars one with which we are all familiar. The disc is packaged with a reversible sleeve and a 4-page liner notes leaflet titled “Fulci’s Feline Fear” by Calum Waddell in which he notes that Fulci when interviewed at the 1996 Fangoria convention did indeed suggest that Craven indeed may have been inspired by CAT IN THE BRAIN. (Eric Cotenas)

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