A Lizard in a Woman's Skin

Carol is the daughter of a well known politician in London and is struggling psychologically. She tells her therapist about a recurring dream in which she stabs her upstairs neighbour. The next morning the woman is found dead and the murder matches the dream exactly. The police arrest her. Carol cannot remember what she did. The subject is not the murder but dream and evidence becoming confused. The entire logic rests on that uncertainty, and even when the solution arrives a residue is left behind. The form is among the most experimental in seventies Italian thrillers: colour filters, mirror games, distorting lenses, and wholly abstract sequences in the dream passages. Ennio Morricone's score keeps the narrative deliberately uneasy. The production ended up in court. One scene shows vivisected dogs, and the effects were so convincing that the producers were prosecuted in Italy for cruelty to animals. Carlo Rambaldi, who made them, had to bring the puppets into court and demonstrate their construction, and the case was dropped. Lucio Fulci directs. Florinda Bolkan plays Carol and Stanley Baker the inspector. Who it is for: viewers who like giallo and formal experiment. Who it is not for: anyone expecting realistic investigation; the narrative deliberately mixes dream with fact and some connections never close.