A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971)

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin is a 1971 giallo written and directed by Lucio Fulci although its giallo status has to be qualified. We’ll get to that later.

It’s an Italian-Spanish-French-British co-production (although the extent of British financial involvement in the project is debatable) which accounts for the casting which is very multi-national even by the standards of European genre movies of that time. It’s set in London with some location shooting done there although the studio shooting was done it Italy.

This movie hits the ground running. We get a crazy WTF opening sequence on a train and a crazy WTF sequence with two women and a fur coat. Then we get a woman talking to her psychoanalyst. We get the half-naked blonde woman but now she’s the crazy woman’s next-door neighbour. And a hippie freak-out party with lots of naked chicks. Way to go Lucio. We’re already totally fascinated. Who is this dark-haired woman? Is she crazy? Is she drugged-out? We don’t know but we want to find out.

The possibly crazy woman is Carol Hammond (Florinda Bolkan). She is married to successful lawyer Frank Hammond (Jean Sorel). Her father is one of England’s most eminent barristers, Edmond Brighton (Leo Genn). Carol has a stepdaughter, Joan Hammond (Ely Galleani).

The young woman in the adjoining flat is not at all respectable and Carol strongly disapproves of her. We will later found out that this woman is Julia Durer (Anita Strindberg).

Carol doesn’t really seem to be crazy but she suffers from insomnia and has disturbing dreams. She does all sorts of naughty things in these dreams, such as having sex with a stunning blonde woman. In the dreams she also takes a knife to the blonde.

Her psychiatrist is very Freudian (Freudian psychoanalysis was still a big thing in 1971) and he isn’t worried. Everything is under control. Carol is just working out her inner conflicts in the dreams. In fact the dreams are a sign that she is making good progress.

Then a murder takes place. It’s puzzling at first until the police forensics guys turn up a vital clue that narrows the range of possible suspects drastically. Then a further clue makes the case cut-and-dried. The evidence is overwhelming.

Inspector Corvin (Stanley Baker) should be delighted but he isn’t. He’s a good copper and his copper’s nose tells him this case just doesn’t smell right. He is convinced that something very important has been overlooked.

After this the plot twists kick in and there are plenty of them. The possibility of a second murder seems quite real. Someone certainly seems to have murder in mind.

What makes this movie extra special is that it’s a psychiatry murder thriller and I just love psychiatry murder thrillers. We get lots of psychobabble and half-baked Freudianism. Bliss. There are some obvious nods to Hitchcock’s Spellbound with cool dream sequences. There’s a fair bit of Hitchcock influence at work here. In fact lots of Hitchcock influence.

Fulci offers us some gore (and it's full-bore gore), but not too much. He does offer some effective visual set-pieces with some wonderfully executed nicely scary paranoid chase sequences. And we get a really good scene with bats.

Fulci is trying to keep us in a state of uncertainty about Carol and Florinda Bolkan’s very effective performance keeps us very uncertain indeed. Jean Sorel is good, as always. Leo Genn is excellent. This was not a particularly demanding role for Stanley Baker but Baker is always watchable.

While Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace may have been the first giallo it was Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage in 1970 that pretty much defined the 1970s giallo. Prior to Argento, at the tail end of the 1960s, there had however been quite a few movies that could be called proto-giallos or phase 1 giallos. These included Romolo Guerrieri’s The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968), Fulci’s own One on Top of the Other (AKA Perversion Story, 1969), and several Umberto Lenzi movies including So Sweet, So Perverse (1969). These movies lacked a lot of what we think of as the classic giallo trademarks (serial killers, black-gloved killers, extreme visual excess). They were essentially stylish erotic thrillers almost invariably set against a backdrop of 1960s jet set decadence. I personal love these proto-giallos.

I would regard A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (which was made in 1970 although released in 1971) as belonging to this proto-giallo sub-genre. There are no serial killers and in fact only two murders. There’s a very strong atmosphere of decadence, interestingly blended with counter-culture stuff. The events of the movie are precipitated by a collision between the world of the very rich and the world of the hippies, both decadent worlds but decadent in different ways.

There’s also an element that is found in most of the late 60s proto-giallos - the possibility (but not the certainty) that one or more key characters might be mad.

Don’t think too much about the plot of this movie. And don’t expect a gore-fest. There is some shocking gore but it’s very brief. Just enjoy the atmosphere and the visuals and let Lucio Fulci play with your head for a while. I rate this as top-tier Fulci. Highly recommended.

Mondo Macabro’s Blu-Ray looks great and is packed with desirable extras.