ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

Ensofter Overrated and overhyped

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

gavin6942 A splatter film director (Lucio Fulci) is having difficulty distinguishing between real life and the violent movies he makes. He consults a psychiatrist, but this does not help matters... it makes them worse! Lucio Fulci directing and also starring as himself, having a fear of hamburger and gardeners. Not surprising after his visions of nasty cannibal dismemberment, with a woman who is unbelievably meaty, and some Nazi sex crimes...The film starts with possibly the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life -- the titular cat chewing its way through a field of bloody, smashed brains. The cat hardly looks real, but this is as repulsive as it gets...Jim Harper hates this film, calling it "Fulci's worst film" and "one of the worst horror films ever made." This is "a total failure", being "slapdash" and "badly shot". Oddly, Harper says Fulci himself considered it "one of his better films and a personal triumph." While I agree that it is not Fulci's best work, I have a hard time being as harsh as Harper is -- the gore alone makes this film interesting for Fulci fans, in my opinion.Indeed, Fulci has called it "extraordinary", though even an apologist like Luca Palmerini calls the movie "confusing" and "mediocre" (hardly an improvement from Harper's denouncement). Me? I did not like it, but find it hard to believe it is his worst... I recently watched "Conquest" and it was pretty bad.If someone wanted to, they could draw parallels between this film and Fritz Lang's "M" (with the whistling) or Clive Barker's "Nightbreed" (with the murderous psychiatrist), but those connections might be too complimentary for this movie.

ultra_tippergore If you are a Lucio Fulci fan you will love this movie, like i did because I'm a die hard Fulci fan. This movie predates Wes Creven Final nightmare, the plot of the director making the movie and movie inside the movie is very similar, and this one was made first. Fulci plays himself, shooting a new horror movie (its Quando Alice Ruppe lo specchio according to the footage we see) and going mad, losing his head with all the violence and blood. The biggest part of the movie consist in previous movies footage (bassically blood and gore) but the movie is great even if you realize that all the gore is taken from previous Fulci directed or produced movies.

Lotica This movie was made around the time that Lucio Fulci was starting to lose his touch. Before, his movies were not only gore-filled, but they had a story, great writing, and great camera shots that were very beautiful for something any other Italian director (besides Dario Argento) could not produce. Near his death, his movies seems very poor, and somewhat distasteful. The only two movies I could watch of his were Aenigma (1987), and The House of Clocks (1989). Though, Un gatto nel cervello (The Cat in The Brain) is a very entertaining movie that Fulci produced near his death. One of the main reasons, is that Fulci actually stars in it... AS HIMSELF! The plot line is basically Fulci has been driven insane by his movies or whatever, and he starts imagining scenes from his movies being played out in real life. What this means, is that there is a lot of stock footage with in the movie, mainly from Touch of Death and Sodama's Ghost, two recent movies Fulci had produced before. I liked how the scenes were integrated into the movie, though you could tell that the footage was stock somewhat if you've actually seen the movies. Anyway's the movie is entertaining, though the gore kind of does lose the touch of any other Fulci gore epic before. Though the thing that surprises me, is that Fabio Frizzi (composer of some Fulci films such as Zombie, The Gates of Hell, and The Beyond) is actually the composer of this movie's music. You can actually tell by the bass line, sort of. I wish I could find a soundtrack for this movie, if there is one.

Scarecrow-88 I couldn't help but relish the entire premise of CAT IN THE BRAIN because it dutifully explains a director's steadily going mad, seeing people murdered from past movies he has made. Even mundane activities such as cooking a meal in the microwave or running a faucet of water yield some horrific butchery from a film in the past. Director Fulci playing himself, is directing GHOSTS OF SODOM(?)and can not seem to deprive his mental well being from constant murder. He seeks help from a psychiatrist who, instead, uses Fulci's work as a method to execute a series of innocent people, hypnotizing the director into thinking that perhaps he's responsible.This is obviously a film playfully poking fun at Fulci's image, while exploring the themes of how such a profession, which produces so much death and destruction, rarely untamed, could mold and shape a legacy. The film features pretty much a wrap-around story surrounding non-stop graphic violence with every possible way to kill a woman expressed in grisly detail. This has a shower murder Hitchcock never could direct, or probably want to. The film's savagery compliments the mental state of Fulci's Fulci(..I know)during the running time. Reality and cinematic fiction have fused and Fulci can find no escape. The ending(..explaining the old cliché:"It's only a movie")couldn't work any better than it does here. Fulci's boat says Perversion(..excellent touch)and he sails off..I can only wish this was his final film because that's a perfect close if there ever was one. David L Thompson is the deranged psychiatrist planning to kill his adulterous wife. Jeoffrey Kennedy is a cop Fulci fears had a family murdered by the fiend.The ultra-violence in the film features plenty of unique ways to take a head off such as the door to a chest, a scythe, a chainsaw, and hatchet. The most brutal violence derives from nasty chainsaw activity as a dead body is hacked to pieces(..how a gardener's chainsaw work on a log fits beautifully in one nightmarish hallucination sequence)..the most shocking use of a chainsaw is when a little boy gets decapitated! The opening scene with the puppet cat tearing away, feasting on Fulci's brain, is a howler. The scenes which are spliced within the film, featuring a horrified Fulci looking on, are obvious, but I couldn't help but enjoy this anyway.