Un gatto nel cervello

Plot synopsis:
Dr. Lucio Fulci (more or less playing himself) is a former medical doctor-turned director of gory horror films. He wraps up shooting for the day on his latest film 'Touch of Death' with Brett Halsey playing the human monster/cannibal of women. Fulci leaves the Cincettia Studios for a local restaurant down the street. The young friendly waiter recognizes him and suggests his typical meal: a fillet of steak, or steak tarter. Fulci cannot look at the sample plates of meat without having flashbacks to the cannibalistic scene hed been filming earlier. Shaken, he leaves the restaurant without ordering a meal. The following day, while checking an effects shot from another movie, Fulci irritably snaps at a technician to get a plate of animal eyeballs out of his sight.Returning home to his fancy row house in an old suburb of Rome, the troubled director tries to sleep, but the noise of a handyman's chainsaw outside keeps him awake with recollections of his own recently shot chainsaw mayhem. In a rage, Fulci storms outside and smashes a hachet into cans of paint belonging to the handyman. The spilled red paint reminds Fulci of the acid/blood scene in 'The Beyond'. Fulci walks a few yards from his home and discovers that one of his neighbors in a psychiatricst. Meanwhile, Professor Egon Swharz (David L. Thompson) is arguing with his wife Katya (Melissa Lang). Their bitter routine row is interrupted by the intercom buzzing where his secretary Nurse Lilly (Judy Morrow) informing him of this latest walk-in. Professor Swharz walks in and accepts Fulci into his books for a session. After walking out of the reception area, Nurse Lilly immediately phones a friend saying "guess who just walked in as a patient!" Swhartz discusses Fulcis recent problems and suggests that he's "breaking down the barrier, the boundary between what you film and whats real."The next day at Cinecitta, Fulci's producer Filippo (Shilett Angel) tells him that the pace has to be stepped up on filming. Fulci is revealed to making two films at the same time: 'The Touch of Death', and 'Ghosts of Sodom'. Robert Egon, the young actor playing the Nazi seducer in the later film, approaches Fulci in a corridor to discuss his role. "Your presence should make a deadly impression", says Fulci. "You are after all a symbol of death. And you've also the whole horror of the Nazis. Get me?" Fulci talks the actors through the seduction scene in 'Ghost of Sodom'. When the filming is done, Fulci staggers out into a corridor muttering, "Sadism, Nazism; is there any point any more?"No sooner has Fulci left the set when his producer steers him into a studio suite for an interview with a Munich news crew. The sight of the tall, blond, German lady reporter's long legs triggers a vision of sexual abandon in Nazi Germany (from the film 'Ghosts of Sodom') When Fulci recovers from his vision, he finds himself outside again with his producer saying, "Lucio, you must stop! Stop, in the name of God!" Filippo informs the confused director that he has just run amuck, smashed the TV crews camera and tried to rip the interviewer's clothes off.Professor Swharz calls Fulci for another consultation after he had watched all of his films. He suggests using hypnosis. Once Fulci is under, the Professor's true colors are revealed to us. He switches on a buzzer device and describes a mad scheme: "You'll do everything I tell you when you hear this sound. Your mind will make you live scenes you think are real. You will slowly be possessed by madness. You'll think youve committed terrible crimes." Swharz also intends to transmit his thoughts to Fulci, although how is never quite explained. After the session is over, Fulci leaves unable to remember anything. Swharz then embarks on a killing spree, starting with the murder of a local prostitute that evening. Fulci arrives on the scene after the police show up and thinks he committed the murder. Rushing away, his car breaks down en route to a film location shoot. When he arrives at a cemetery where a nighttime Gothic scene is to be filmed, he finds that his assistant director, and Filippo his producer, have started filming without him.Back home the following morning, Fulci tries to relax, but with each simple action, he is plagued by memories and visions of screen violence from his movies. Fleeing his house, he goes for a drive. But Swharz follows him and commits three more murders, first a couple in a remote boathouse, and the groundskeeper who witnesses him. Fulci arrives on the scene forcing Swharz to hide, and again Fulci thinks he committed the murders. Getting back into his car for a drive down a long country road, Fulci hallucinates about running over a tramp (from the movie 'Touch of Death'). After returning home, the exhausted auteur phones the police station to speak to his friend Inspector Gabrielli (Jeoffrey Kennedy) intending to make a "confession." But he learns that Gabrielli is on vacation.After another visit to the nasty Professor Swharz is of little help to cure him of his waking nightmares, Fulci decides to drive over to Inspector Gabrielli's house in the hope of speaking to him. Swharz follows him there with the buzzer device. Fulci lets himself into his friend's house, and immediately suffers from visions of Gabrielle's family being stabbed, chainsawed, and decapitated. Fulci staggers outside to be greeted by the returning policeman, who reassures the flaky director that his family are safely on holiday in Sardinia. When Fulci expresses his visions to Gabrielli and that he may have killed some people, the cheerful police detective responds, "If you're trying to create a sensation like you do in your films, this time you've goofed."Meanwhile, Professor Swharz can stand no more of his wife's bland contempt for him and his practice. So, the insane psychiatrist strangles her to death by ripping out a wire from his wife's piano and nearly decapitates her with it. Swharz then heads out again to tail Fulci, who under the influence of hynosis again, suffers through one more blast of violent imagery and faints in the middle of a field. He comes round the next morning to discover a cat digging up the loosely buried remains of another Swharz victim. As Fulci scrapes soil from the dead features, Inspector Gabrielli appears behind him. Before Fulci can protest his innocence, Gabrielli informs him that Swharz has been shot dead by his men who were tailing Fulci which he ordered after their conversation the previous day, who caught the mad psychiatrist in the act.Several months later. Fulci and the beautiful Nurse Lilly sail on his sailboat, 'Preversion' (named from his first thriller movie). Fulci looks furtively around and follows the young woman into the cabin-quarters. Suddenly, the sound of a chainsaw revs up, followed by her terrified screams. Fulci emerges from the cabin a minute later with a basket of her body parts and attaches the severed fingers onto fishing hooks which he casually casts into the water. Is Fulci really a mad killer after all? No, of course not. It's the last shot of his newest film, 'Nightmare Concert', captured by a film crew sailing alongside. Bidding goodbye to his colleagues, Fulci happily sails out of the harbor with his very-much alive leading lady.

Tags: violence

Review:
In a stroke of daring even Fellini and Michael Powell never tried in their self-reflexive classics, Fulci plays himself--or rather, a particularly tormented and increasingly unhinged version of himself, driven mad by the combination of guilt and bloodlust triggered by making hyperviolent horror movies.
"Cat In The Brain" is a series of extremely violent sequences knitted together by a plot that feels more like an overview, describing director Lucio Fulci's most notorious years of film-making.
Such sequences shortly after climax are rejected by the reality in the film, as they are revealed to be actually scenes inside a movie that Fulci's character is directing.
I don't know what it is exactly, but the film is happily sitting on my shelf, with no thought of ever leaving me...Fulci has crafted one of the most ridiculous, bizzare, cheez-infested and well unique movies I've ever seen.
"Cat in the Brain" is a must for bad movie lovers everywhere...Yes I'll definitely say it's not a "good" film, but I guarantee certain scenes will stick in your mind forever!
Fulci spends most of his time looking puzzled and shocked, just as i am sure you, the viewer, will be.It has plenty of gore in it as you would expect and will be most peoples reason for acquiring this movie.
Lucio Fulci has the lead in this film where he plays a director of horror flicks who suffers from depression and neurosis as an effect of his own movies.
He decides to see a psychiatrist who only makes matters worse when he convinces Fulci that he is killing people.Fulci used gore scenes from several pictures around the same time.
Certainly, the idea of a horror movie director haunted by the nightmares he has created was still interesting and novel at that time, but I really cannot figure out what kind of movie Fulci wanted to make: A comedy or a serious horror movie/thriller?
Moreover, Fulci has problems in patching everything together: The Mercedes model he drives in "Nightmare concert" is different from the one Halsey drove in "When Alice ...", so that the scenes do not fit exactly.When he says "what am I doing" while watching a Nazi orgy he has filmed, this refers probably to the extremely low budget efforts which Fulci has delivered in his last period of activity.Well, the movie has only few interesting scenes.
Beware, this ending has been altered by the producers, so that the wrong ending might appear in some versions.After all, I still had enough fun watching the movie, largely because Fulci played the lead, so that I voted it 6/10 for this, the idea, and some of the more interesting scenes..
Fulci has become known to horror fans everywhere as 'the godfather of gore', and for good reason, as he has provided us with some of the nastiest and most gruesome films ever to grace the silver screen; from the eyeball violence in films like 'Zombi 2', to a man been hacked to death with chains in 'The Beyond', all the way to the full on gore fest known as 'The New York Ripper'; if you want gore (and let's face it, who doesn't), Fulci is your man.
The amount of gore is massively over the top a lot of the time, which gives the film something of a 'spoof' feel, but Cat in the Brain is obviously a tongue in cheek film anyway.It would be hard to make a film about yourself and not come across as being a bit of a big head, and Fulci does indeed come across as a bit of a big head in this movie.
He is a master, without a big budget, he was able to make awesome horror movies, with good gore effects.In A cat in the brain, Fulci plays himself, Fulci is "tormented" by visions of his own horror creations.
He tries to get help from a psychiatrist, but the psychiatrist is making the things worse....he "hypnotizes" Fulci, in order to make him do brutal murders in real life !There is a lot of stock footage, especially for the gore scenes, but it's well edited into the movie.I have to say that Fulci made a good work, with a low budget, even if it uses stock footage it's still a good film.Fulci Lives !.
And while "Cat in the Brain" falls in with the era of Fulci's decline as a filmmaker, it is a shocking, darkly hilarious headtrip that, while a clearly inferior work (the framing, effects, and acting are below par), proves an interesting, open-ended meditation on pop psychology and film's ability to desensitize.
In a deliciously tongue-in-cheek touch, Fulci plays himself: a director in the midst of filming yet another violent horror flick who comes down with perverse/murderous hallucinations; after visiting a shrink who puts him under hypnosis, his dreams and reality begin to intersect, to the point where the viewer cannot discern the two.
Literally stuffed with gore footage (both new and some lifted from his previous films), it's undoubtedly Fulci's most insane movie.
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.
Movies from these lost years became very sought after and talked about among horror fans.Of these films, Cat In The Brain is probably one of the most hyped of all due to the legions of Lucio Fulci fans and the fact that it was not only directed by but also starred their idol, Fulci himself.Though not quite Fulci's best, it's still better than most of his later efforts.
Okay, so it's not a totally original conceit, but the notion of a horror film director feeling constrained by audience expectation such that he can no longer make movies in any other genre is one worth exploring.
Whether or not Fulci really felt the way his character - a film director by the name of, you've guessed it, Lucio Fulci - feels is debatable; after all, horror made him famous, and, presumably, rich.
And coming from the director of New York Ripper, any protest he might be making does seem rather disingenuous.I also like the notion of a film within a film within a film; playing around with the audience's viewpoint, and emphasising the voyeuristic nature of the whole filmmaking process.Whatever else, Cat in the Brain is worth seeing just for the scene in which Fulci molests a woman during one of his funny turns.
I don't think that this is a serious horror film.Instead it is a parody of every other film Fulci has made.The main character is no dramatic at all,he is amusing!!The gore elements are completely out of sense,making them hillarious.To fully understand that this is a comedy just watch the ending.Don't compare this to the "serious" Fulci films.On a serious note Fulci looks like a really nice guy,and it is sad that he died after a few months.We'll always remember him!!.
"Un Gatto nel Cervello"/"Cat in the Brain" is one of the goriest horror movies ever made.There is a lot of blood and gore,including chainsaw butchery,bloody stabbings and numerous decapitations.The film is also interesting as "self parody" of Fulci,but the gore and violence is the key element in it.Some of the gore FX were taken from own Fulci's movies "Quando Alice Ruppe lo Specchio" and "I Fantasmi di Sodoma"(both 1988),plus gore FX taken from Fulci-supervised "The Snake House" aka "Bloody Psycho" by Leandro Lucchetti,"Massacre" by Andrea Bianchi,"Non Avere Paura Della Zia Marta" by Mario Bianchi,"Non Si Sevizia i Bambini" by Giovanni Simonelli and "Luna di Sangue" aka "Fuga dalla Morte" by Enzo Milioni(all 1989).The scene where Brett Halsey beats the woman's face to pulp is from "Quando Alice Ruppe lo Specchio",a film Fulci had made for Italian TV in 1988.The chainsawing of the female corpse at the beginning is taken from the same film,as is the head in the microwave and the guy that gets driven over and over again.Highly recommended,especially if you like extreme cinema!.
Hell, there's a shower stabbing scene to boot!Sure, it's still crude like a lot of Fulci's movies, but there's a kind of demented artistry at work as well.
The acting and script are totally dire, and many of the gore scenes that have been transplanted from other films (bizarrely, some not even made by Fulci) often make no sense within themselves, let alone within the context of the whole movie.
This idea prefigured Wes Craven's New Nightmare by years, but sadly the growing health problems Fulci was suffering from are clearly evident in the resulting movie.The movie is pieced together with footage from some of his previous works and the new material looks like it was shot in and around the area where Fulci lived, so he did not have to travel far.It is sad to see such a legendary talent slowly eroded, but Cat in the Brain, along with the awful Voices from Beyond show the inexorable decline in Fulci's work.Remember him for Zombi 2, Don't Torture A Duckling and The Beyond, rather than this sorry affair..
Dr. Lucio Fulci (Lucio Fulci) is a director of gory horror movies who is starting to feel the effect of having filmed too many bloody scenes.
If you've seen Fulci's Touch of Death and Ghost's of Sodom, or Mario Bianchi's the Murder Secret, then you've already seen the best bits of Cat In The Brain before.After much bloodletting, the film wraps itself up rather quickly, leaving the viewer feeling bewildered and somewhat cheated.
A Cat in the Brain (1990) ** (out of 4)After years of filming ultra-violent scenes for horror films, director Lucio Fulci begins to think that it's impacting his mental state.
He begins to see a shrink who decides to act out his own violent fantasies by mutilating women and trying to make the director think that he's the one committing the crimes.A CAT IN THE BRAIN came at the very end of the Italian horror craze and people are either going to see it as a cult masterpiece or an incredibly awful hack job.
However, at the same time, there's no question that they were working with very little to no money and you can't help but see it as a hack job since the majority of the footage here comes from other movies.Footage from Fulci's TOUCH OF DEATH gets the most scenes here but we also get clips from his THE GHOSTS OF SODOM.
Either way, it's really not as creative as it could have been and just gives the film a very cheap look and feel.Some have argued that this here was Fulci's 8 1/2 but that's a bit of a stretch as I'd argue that the main reason for this film is that the movies this borrowed from didn't get that good of a release so they took the best moments, threw them in this film and sold the fact that Fulci was playing himself.
It obviously worked as those films have been forgotten while A CAT IN THE BRAIN continues to gain a cult audience.The story is pretty much a mess and not all of the new scenes fit well with the stock footage.
There's a lot of gore in the picture and that there will be the main draw but again, why give this film the credit for that when the best gore shots are from other movies?This latest viewing of A CAT IN THE BRAIN was the first time I had watched it while also having watched all of the films that footage was lifted from.
A splatter film director (Lucio Fulci) is having difficulty distinguishing between real life and the violent movies he makes.
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).
On one hand it has a really interesting premise in that Fulci is essentially playing himself, on set while directing his gory movies, so it's a movie-in-a-movie type plot like WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE (only this came first) that has the opportunity to explore the link between the violence in horror films and the violence in real life (and if movies have any effect), and what prolonged exposure to gory violence might do to a man!
As well as this, it's a study of Fulci's supposed psychological state so gets a bit confusing as you can well imagine.On the other hand, the movie is simply an excuse to string together a series of incredibly gory set-pieces from previous Fulci films and others, and then to "insert" Fulci's character into these scenes as if he is witnessing the murders first hand.
The effect is an interesting, if muddled one, marred by some extreme technical faults (skies and backgrounds are different colours in film segments) which are par for the course for no-budget productions like this.Fulci himself takes the leading role of the confused director, making this a must-see movie for his die-hard fans.
The hilarious highlight in my mind is when Fulci repeatedly runs some poor fool who got in the path of his car - classic stuff, and for some reason extremely funny.Gore hounds certainly get their money's worth with this movie, even if the majority (but not all...) of the effects and sequences are taken from previous films (thus Brett Halsey is billed in the cast as "the Monster" even though he never actually acted in this film - hmm, wonder how he feels about that?).
Throw in a crazy subplot about a real killer in Rome trying to frame Fulci and you should end up like me - confused and disoriented, yet entertained.Sure, this isn't up there with Fulci's best, but I get the impression he was trying to have a little fun with his image and career and although it's a bit of cheap ploy to insert gore scenes from other movies, at least they're quality gore scenes and fun to watch.
cat in the brain, suffers from what many of fulci's films do, you don't always know whats going on, the editing can be frantic, but like most of fulci's horror work, the good out weighs the bad.
the movie is great for fulci fan's as the director plays a exaggerated version of him self, who sees only violence and murder in front of him, and starts to lose his grip on whats real and whats fantasy, the movie has some of the most outlandish scenes I've ever seen in a horror movie, but they work to the movies advantage and create a atmosphere of unease that remains all the way to the end, and the gore is just epic, there is so much blood and guts here, from chainsaw murders to decapitations, and yes we all know they are mostly from older movies that fulci worked on, it doesn't matter and it all adds to this piece of extreme yet, hauntingly brilliant cinema.
it's not one of fulci's more widely loved films, but i think its one of his best, and is a classic horror movie.
Some funny moments and lines happens from time to time, like one where Fulci says "making gore movies is kind of a sickness" Ending is very good considering that Fulci (and most of the Italian horror masters) is know for making ending with no sense or many plot holes.
Lucio Fulci plays himself, a famous director of horror flicks who is haunted by nightmarish visions, partly because the brutal violence of his films is starting to get to him, and partly because his mad psychiatrist hypnotizes him into believing that he committed a series of bloody murders (for which the doctor is actually responsible).
I'm bored." If we're to believe this meta-biographical film, my impression is not far off.Fulci plays himself, a man haunted by the ever-worsening gore that his movies use.
He has, quite literally, a cat in the brain, eating away at the soft tissue, that we see while he's trying to finish writing a script.Finishing his latest film, Touch of Death,Fulci tries to eat a meal, but even the fillets and steak tartare he's offered remind him of the gore he's just directed.
Lilly instantly knows who the director is and Swhartz is interested to break down the barriers between film and reality.Back at work, Fulci is struggling to complete both Touch of Death and Ghosts of Sodom (Sodoma's Ghost) at the same time.
"I think I'm going mad, as if my brains being eaten by a cat." Very gory splatter film, I liked it..
Un Gatto nel Cervello, or Nightmare Concert as it's more commonly know amongst English speaking audiences, starts as horror film director Lucio Fulci (played by the man himself Lucio Fulci) goes to lunch after filming a very gory & violent scene, however he orders steak & has a horrible vision relating to cannibalism.
The acting in this is terrible including Fulci.Un Gatto nel Cervello is a top film if your a gore-hound like me, however if your looking for something with a little bit more substance or indeed any substance then this ones not for you.
"A Cat in the Brain" is an incredibly enjoyable gore and sleaze-filled romp.**SPOILERS**Working on his newest movie, director Lucio Fulci, (Lucio Fulci) begins to feel like his career as a horror-only film-maker has caught up with him, as he begins to witness horrible hallucinations that remind him of what he has shot throughout his career.
Lucio Fulci is an infamous Italian Horror director, well known for staging extremely violent gore scenes.