Cortechba Overrated

Twilightfa Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Michael_Elliott A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971) *** 1/2 (out of 4) The mentally unstable Carol Hammond (Florinda Bolkan) lives a rather good life considering her father and husband are both quite rich. Carol is seeing a therapist because of feverish sexual dreams that she has been having about her more sexually liberated neighbor Julia (Anita Strindberg). One day Carol has a dream of where she brutally murders Julia and sure enough a few days later the police find her body. Was it all a dream or did Carol have something to do with it? A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN comes from director Lucio Fulci and if you're only familiar with his horror films then I think you're going to be in for quite a shock. Look, I really enjoy Fulci's films including some of the ones that he made in the later days of his career but at the same time there's no question that they were all "B" movies that depended on gore and a little style.This giallo is amazingly beautiful to look at and the style that the director captured here is something that I would think was the greatest of his career. The film starts off with a very acid-inspired sequence where the visuals and camera shots just leap off the screen at you. There's a lesbian scene between the women that is captured from about three different points of view and the way it's all edited together is something really great to look at.The film also benefits from a terrific score by Ennio Morricone, which perfectly captures the spirit and mood of the picture. The cinematography is exceptionally good as well. The performances are also another major plus with Bolkan easily stealing the picture as she gets across the mental breakdown of this woman. Her scenes of the sexual pleasure is also performed quite well. Jean Sorel, Stanley Baker and the rest of the cast are impressive as well.If you're expecting a lot of gore and non-stop violence then you certainly won't find it here. Whereas some of the director's later pictures had more gore than story or style, this one here is all about the story, the mental state of the lead character and all sorts of style. A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN is certainly one of the best looking giallos that you're ever going to see.

Bezenby The first five minutes of this film will determine whether or not this film is for you. The always solid Florinda Balkan walks down a carriage on a train filled with old people, that quickly turns into a corridor filled with naked hippies, which in turn becomes a wind blown crimson bed in limbo, where she meets Anita Strinberg for a bit of Sapphic love, in reverse. This turns out to be one of Balkan's dreams, which she relates to her psychiatrist. Balkan is stuck in a stuffy relationship with her lawyer husband (who works for her lawyer father), and Strinberg is the free living neighbour who has drugged fuelled orgies most nights next door. After dreaming she's being chased by a giant swan with a fanny for a stomach, Balkan dreams she stabs Strinberg to death with a paper knife. So when Strinberg is found dead the same way, Balkan's sense of reality is thrown into doubt. Did she really kill her neighbour or is someone trying to pin the murder on her? Perhaps her husband, who's having an affair with a yet unknown woman? And who are the two hippies who seemingly have arrived in the flesh from Balkan's dreams? Only Stanley Baker of Zulu fame can figure things out…Lizard is yet another brilliant vision from a misunderstood director. This time round, Fulci plays around with visuals (split screen, psychedelics) and reality itself to create a giallo where everyone's got some sort of secret. For a Fulci film, there's only two actual murders, but still plenty of the red stuff, including a vision of Ely Galliani holding her own intestines, and a bewildering vision of whining dogs split open at the torso. "Trippy" would be a good description of this film, quite literally in places, and there's plenty of set pieces, like Balkan being stalked around an empty church by a knife wielding biker, the dream sequences, and Baker's habit of whistling a creepy tune all the time. Those expecting the demented gore and surrealism of the late seventies/early eighties Fulci will be let down, but the building blocks are there for sure. Whereas those films (The Beyond, City of the Living Dead) are classics in their own right, Lizard in a Woman's Skin is much more cerebral and one of the highlights of the giallo genre (who's highlights for me at least seem to be the more atypical examples of the genre). Hippies sure are annoying though, or at least those that turn up in European films.

lastliberal O goody, Anita Strindberg (Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, Women in Cellblock 7, The Eroticist) is back as a wild partier next door to Carol (Florinda Bolkan). Carol keeps dreaming of being ravished by her neighbor.However she wants to be ravished, she is torn and kills her in the next dream. She is, of course, a suspect when her neighbor turns up dead the next day.Nice touch with the bats in the belfry. If Carol wasn't crazy before, she certainly would be after that scene.As is usual in Giallo, there is always a twist at the end when elaborate plans are revealed and mistakes found.Great Fulci thriller.

HumanoidOfFlesh A troubled rich woman Carol Hammond played by Florinda Bolkan is suffering from a series of bizarre sexual dreams where she indulges in lesbian activities with her neighbor Julia Durer(Anita Strindberg).Unfortunately one morning after another perverse sex dream culminating in a gory knifing of Julia,Carol is shocked to find that Julia was murdered in her apartment the stormy night before.When all evidence points to Carol being the culprit she must not only investigate the crime but determine what is dream and what is reality."Lizard in a Woman's Skin" is perhaps the most bizarre and puzzling Fulci's giallo.The cinematography by Luigi Kuvellier is splendid with some gorgeous visuals and the dream scenes are appropriately psychedelic.The eviscerated dogs sequence still shocks unprepared viewers drawn into the murder mystery aspect of the film.8 out of 10.