Cat In The Brain

Cat In The Brain (1990)

Dir. Lucio Fulci

Written by Lucio Fulci, Giovanni Simonelli, Antonio Tentori

Starring Lucio Fulci, recycled footage of other actors from older movies

           CAT IN THE BRAIN is an unusual movie.

Well, sort of. By which I mean, it’s definitely unusual. It’s only sort of a movie.

Let me be more clear: what CAT IN THE BRAIN is, is the “story” (in the loosest possible sense) of an aged Italian horror director named Lucio Fulci (Lucio Fulci, ZOMBI 2, HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, THE BEYOND, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE NEW YORK RIPPER, DOOR INTO SILENCE, CAT IN THE BRAIN), who spends his days directing gorey horror films, and his nights haunted by gruesome images of murder and violence which make him grimace a lot. His psychologist, (David L. Thompson, THE GODFATHER PART II [“party guest, uncredited”]) is worried about him, and reasonably so, as his patient reflects, “I feel like I’m going crazy… as if my brain’s being eaten by a cat.” That comparison seems independently demented enough to justify Fulci’s concern, but he needn’t be worried, or at least not about his own mental state. It seems that it’s actually the shrink who’s insane, and is cleverly committing murders in such a way that Fulci’s grand guignol visions seem to implicate him. Now the director not only suspects he’s losing his marbles, but that he may be a murderer. Which doesn’t help his already unsettled state of mind, and means he can hardly do anything without experiencing intense visions of context-free clips from various gorey movies he previously directed or produced.

            ...Wait, what? He’s haunted by… clips of his old movies? And most of this film is about him walking around grimacing and then seeing one? Uh, yeah. Therein lies the “only sort of a movie” problem. On the surface, this is actually a fun meta concept, right? Fulci, the famed horror director, is now cast into one of his movies, and has to deal with being a horror movie character at the mercy of… Fulci, the famed horror director! It offers the 63-year old (who sold his first script at 26 and directed his first film at 32) a chance to reflect on his own work and the way it has infiltrated his subconscious over the years (like a cat eating his brain, I guess? I think a lot of us can relate to that). “Lucio Fulci’s 8 ½!” raves the internet. Yeah, sure, if 8 ½ had been composed mostly of recycled footage from old films with a meta wraparound story probably shot in two weekends to serve as filler.

Look, you can’t fault the gore, which is plentiful, or the nudity, which is equally plentiful* -- and even though nearly every bit of genre payoff here is recycled, the clips are not from anything I’m so familiar with that they’re distractingly recognizable (they’re mostly late Fulci, and sometimes films that he produced but didn’t direct).** But at the same time… even if you’ve never seen this stuff before, there’s no getting around the fact that this is a clip show episode. The film stock constantly changes and the new footage is just barely making any effort to match the old (and sometimes none at all!), so it’s never less than blindly obvious what kind of trickery the movie is up to. It tries to duck the obvious mismatches by presenting the inserts as “visions” Fulci is experiencing, not literal events, but that just means that sometimes Fulci will just be standing around somewhere, and suddenly look at the camera, and it will cut to noticeably poorer film of some woman we’ve never seen before, and will never see again, in some weird set which is nowhere else in the movie, being drowned by a monster hand belonging to something we’ll never see. And when that’s done, he’ll kind of wince, and go back to doing whatever he was doing before, and it will never be mentioned again. That’s not just a cost-saving technique they threw in a few times to save some cash, mind you -- it pretty much describes the entire movie.

The genre goods are technically there --you’re never more than a few minutes from another bloodbath-- but the impact isn’t. It’s just so completely free of context or meaning that it’s hard to get too into it. That’s rich coming from a Fulci fan, of course -- his movies are infamous for being free-associative, nonsensical strings of over-the-top stepieces -- but this is good evidence that even a tiny bit of narrative context goes a long way. Even at his most narratively hazy, you at least knew there was a character in danger. It’s hard to get too invested in a movie which is just an old man’s scary dreams with nothing whatsoever at stake. Especially when it’s just so unapologetically lazy! It even has the gall to not just recycle scenes from other movies, but to then replay those scenes multiple times within this movie, in some cases as many as three or four times! It’s just a damned insult to pad a movie which is already so low effort. Especially since they’re all from movies which were only a year or two old at the time!

I mean, I dunno. It’s kinda charming to see Fulci play himself, and the framing story --with the suggestive elements that all these years of horror may not have been psychologically great for him, but his REAL problem is that a shrink is trying to gaslight him-- is worth mulling over a little. What does watching horror do to us? Should we be worried, or is our fear of damaging ourselves causing us to overlook the cultural scolds (psychiatrists) who we should really be worried about? The ending, where it seems like maybe all this finally HAS caused Fulci to snap, only to be revealed as one more meta joke, only pushes the point further.

But while all that could be interesting, I must concede that it’s mostly not, in actual practice. Fulci doesn’t have a ton of dialogue, and what little there is only glancingly offers even a hint of self-reflection. One of the most tantalizing things the film offers is seeing a fictionalized Fulci behind the scenes shooting a film-within-a-film, a scenario which should offer both a window into his artistic process and a chance for him to comment directly on his own work. But they mostly don’t even bother to actually recreate that, instead just recycling old footage with some new inserts of him, in close up, intensely “directing.” Let that sink in; they have a camera, they have a set, and they’re still too cheap or lazy to hire a few actors to play “actors” in a fictional Fulci film so we could get a sense of what the actual behind-the-scenes work looks like. The film just isn’t interested.

To my way of thinking, that’s not just a missed opportunity; that’s a crippling flaw. Among the, ahem, several noteworthy ways in which CAT IN THE BRAIN is different than 8½, the most important is probably that 8 ½ isn’t just a meta exercise; it’s an introspective and probing self-portrait of Fellini, professionally and personally. CAT IN THE BRAIN obstinately resists introspection, even when it seems intrinsically integral to the plot (how does a movie which finds the main character visiting a psychiatrist manage to be so fucking opaque about his thoughts and feelings?!). We just don’t really learn much about Fulci the artist, or Fulci the man, through any of this. So while it’s a fun idea, and Fulci himself is a reasonably captivating protagonist, it feels pretty empty. It’s a promisingly meta scenario, but with disappointingly little interest in actually saying anything about the artist or the genre or the profession that it’s supposedly a meta take on. It’s a clever way to save money while still technically making a new film, but it’s never more than that. The best clip show in the world is still just a clip show, and it’s just not gonna scratch that itch for the real thing.

*Female nudity only, of course. This is an Italian film, did you even have to ask?

**Wikipedia lists SODOMA’S GHOST, TOUCH OF DEATH, BLOODY PSYCHO, MASSACRE, THE MURDER STREET, and music from THE BEYOND, and I don’t know enough to dispute that.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2017 CHECKLIST!

The Discreet Charm of the Killing Spree

TAGLINE	Italics
TITLE ACCURACY	They say the title aloud as if it makes sense, or is something that anyone other than Fulci would be able to understand or relate to.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	No
SEQUEL?	No
REMAKE?	No, more of a recycle
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	Italy
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Gaslighting, slasher
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Fulci
NUDITY?	Tons
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	You know what, I actually don’t think so. Amazing in any Italian movie, and doubly amazing in one with so many kill scenes and topless chicks.
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	Cat puppets eat brains over the credits, and a cat eventually uncovers a buried corpse, but that’s more helpful than harmful.
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	Not really, unless you wanna speculate about what some of the clips meant in the original context
POSSESSION?	No, although sort of some hypnotic mind-control or something
CREEPY DOLLS?	One murder occurs in a room with a bunch of creepy dolls, though they don’t do anything
EVIL CULT?	None
MADNESS?	Yes
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	No
VOYEURISM?	Definitely, especially Fulci intensely watching and “directing” clips from a Nazi orgy scene
MORAL OF THE STORY	Even a Fulci movie needs to be a little closer to a story than a sizzle reel.

Nights of Cabiria

Nights of Cabiria (1957)

Dir. Frederico Fellini

Starring Guilietta Masina, Francois Perier, Franca Marzi, Amedeo Nazzari

Kids, I got something to tell you. Something you’re not going to like. I’m not proud of it, but I can’t deny who I am. I know you hold me in high esteem, and if you wish to avoid having your illusions shattered and watching as your heroes crumble before your eyes, I suggest you turn back now and never think of this again. But here goes. I don’t really like the films of Frederico Fellini.

I’m sorry.

I mean, it’s a little complicated. I obviously recognize his mastery of the craft, and I applaud his bold commitment to his own unique vision. But I can never really get all that invested in the content, especially his later films, which are richly articulated examinations into the subconscious of an individual who is worried about a lot of stuff that just doesn’t mean much to me. It’s a personal thing. Fellini is just so fixated on his hang ups about sex, relationships, and religion, and it all seems a little needless to me. I got plenty of my own issues, but those three things I feel like I got a good handle on. I feel like I could clear up his problems pretty easily just by pointing out that A) There is no God, B) Sex is awesome and you should have as much of it as you can as long as you don’t hurt anyone, and C) Just be yourself and try to have fun with the people in your life.

There, see? Issues resolved. Now you can make a film as gorgeous as 8 ½ about something which is actually interesting, like a coven of lesbian vampires fighting a robot. Maybe in space. Although Italy would be ok, too, I don’t think I’ve seen one of those set in Italy (I bet one exists, though.)

Anyway, Fellini’s films are always a visual treat, but as they get more abstract later in his career there’s not a lot of narrative of character center to hold onto and if you don’t really get into his central themes they’re a bit of a commotion about nothing.

So, having flippantly dismissed the acknowledged masterpieces of one of cinema’s towering geniuses, I have to say that I sort of loved NIGHTS OF CABIRIA, which may be the first Fellini film I’ve seen which combines his surreal eye with the warmth of character from his neorealist period. It’s pretty much an amazing, mesmerizing, heartbreaking, sumptuous, overwhelming, immersive, inspiring cinematic experience which might or might not remind me or someone else why they fell in love with cinema in the first place.

NIGHTS OF CABIRIA is the story the titular Cabiria (Guilietta Masina, who by a remarkable coincidence is also married to Fellini) who works as a prostitute in one of Rome’s seedier districts. Actually its hardly a story, in the conventional sense – more like a series of vignettes as we follow Cabiria through her encounters with various people in her life (though interestingly, none of them are clients). Some encounters are comic, some are heartbreaking, some banal, and not all even entirely revolve around Cabiria. Fellini takes advantage of the freedom his anti-narrative allows by allowing his focus to drift a little, and is rewarded with rich visual haikus full of earthy detail. It’s not just that his compositions are effortlessly gorgeous; it’s that they carefully mine each image and face for hints of its soul. At this moment in career, with one foot in neorealism and the other in surrealism, Fellini manages to be both penetrating and poetic, carefully allowing the truths to reveal themselves but not yet smothering the world with his own personality. Even without its central character, Fellini’s keen eye creates a deeply felt portrait of a time and place.

With its central character, though, it’s a classic. Guilietta Masina, who starred in several other Fellini films early in his career (notably LA STRADA and THE WHITE SHIEK, where she has a brief appearance as Cabiria) creates one of cinema’s most unique and complex female characters, bar none. Her Cabiria is a raging maelstrom of contradictions: she’s both naïve and world-weary, tragic but inspiring, brave but terrified, sexual but timid, clever but foolhardy. She’s been hurt a lot, and struggles to keep herself closed off enough to protect herself even as she can’t quite give up hope that things could somehow be different. There’s a winning cheerfulness to the character, but there’s a profound sadness dancing just beneath the surface. She seems frustratingly naïve and even abrasive sometimes, but then there’s a certain careful tentativeness to her which suggests that maybe it’s a survival mechanism. But she’s more than complex. Rarely does a character seem so exhilaratingly alive on screen, so deeply and thrillingly engaged with the world. When she thinks no one is looking, she does this little dance which –aside from being beyond adorable – speaks more than dialogue ever could to the infectious enthusiasm which makes the character so endearing even in the face of her flaws and tragedies.

And she’s funny. Really, really funny. Her body language and expressions are hilarious and sometimes fairly broad, but they make perfect sense for the character. If she has a comparable cinematic peer, it can only be Chaplin’s tramp character, another perfect embodiment of comedy and pathos expressed with a similar physicality. It’s almost a shame NIGHTS OF CABIRIA has more than comedy on its mind, because there’s a comedic genius in the performance which I think gets undervalued in the face of the film’s more tragic themes. (Actually I just looked her up and apparently she’s “often” called the “female Chaplin,” so I guess I’m not the only one who thinks so. Damn, I was kinda feeling proud of that one.)

Anyway, going into more detail about the film and its events doesn’t seem all that necessary. It’s not exactly a film that has a lot of stuff to discuss; it’s a film to experience, and one which has an uncommonly deep connection to the human condition, even if it doesn’t have a lot of big right-brained ideas to write essays about. Fellini’s mastery of his craft speaks for itself, but it’s Masina who really makes this one a classic with their fiercely funny portrayal. That’s a pretty potent combination of director and actor right there, and the results are really something special. No offense to Martin Lawrence and Michael Bay intended.

I’m thinking that I may have underestimated this Fellini guy. He just may have what it takes after all, he might be one of those talents to watch that they talk about, I don’t know, we’ll have to see. Bring on JULIET OF THE SPIRITS!

PS: I should also point out that another important person here was Dino De Laurentiis, who put his own money up for this film after no one else would finance a film about prostitutes. As a major fan of his work and his granddaughter, I would like to say that a career that includes Fellini, EVIL DEAD, David Lynch, BARBERELLA, David Cronenberg, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, Igmar Bergman, and the whale-centric JAWS rip-off ORCA is a career worth honoring with excessive drinking.