The story takes place in London and concerns Carol Hammond (Florinda Bolkan), an uptight lawyer's wife who is having erotic and violent fantasies that involve her bohemian neighbor, Julia Durer (Anita Strindberg). Julia likes to throw raucous parties that attract all kinds of drug-using hippy degenerates (and the fact that Fulci hated hippies in real life definitely shows, with most of the hippies here acting like Charles Manson wannabees). All the crazy action in the neighboring apartment seems to be getting under Carol's skin and seeping deep into her unconsciousness. One nightmare has Carol being groped by nude people and then getting into some hot girl-on-girl action with Julia. This may not seem like a nightmare scenario to you or I, but to Carol it's a serious source of anxiety. Her therapist chalks it up to an attempt by her subconscious to shed its sexual repressions and encourages her to write down all the details of any other dreams she may have so that they can be better analyzed. In Carol's next dream she stabs and kills Julia with a letter-opener, leaving a big, bloody mess. The therapist actually interprets this as a good thing, but when Scotland Yard finds the real Julia stabbed to death with Carol's letter-opener, with Carol's fur-coat at the scene of the crime, and with the details of Carol's dream matching the method of the murder, their analysis is less positive. But Carol's father believes in her innocence and he discovers that Carol's husband may have motives for framing her. Plus, all those acid-crazed hippies keep turning up and making things interesting.
Although there are plenty of twists and turns to keep the plot moving along, the story is secondary to the many and stunning visuals that punctuate the film. The dream sequences are truly inspired (and in some cases directly inspired by Francis Bacon), interesting locations are used to full effect (Royal Albert Hall, London Central Law Courts, Alexander's Palace, Woburn Abbey), thoughtful compositions energize the proceedings, Ennio Morricone provides an original score, and the special effects by Eugenio Ascani and Carlo Rambaldi were so convincing that Fulci was even taken to court for a gruesome scene that some felt showed real dogs being eviscerated. In the dvd extras Rambaldi, who later gained fame working on E.T. (1982), points out that they were supposed to be coyotes and shows how the gag worked. But here's the rub: viewers who only watch the film as presented on the first disk, the American cut, titled Schizoid and dubbed into English, will enjoy a 1.85:1 widescreen presentation culled from two different prints with great color, but they will be left scratching their heads in regards to this evisceration scene that Rambaldi is talking about. That is because that scene, as well as a bloody goose scene, some extended nudity, and graphic murdering stabs constitute two or three minutes worth of material that can only be seen on the uncut version that is in Italian with English subtitles, provided on disk two, but only available in 1.33:1 in pan-and-scan from more faded source material.
Viewers who only anticipate watching Lizard in a Woman's Skin once will thus have to make a hard choice, but at least they have a choice. Also included on the second dvd: a photo gallery, theatrical trailer, radio spots, a mini press book, and a 33 minute featurette titled Shedding the Skin. Latter gives a context for Italian murder mysteries and interviews some of the actors. In one amusing aside Bolkan talks about the "horrible impression" Fulci made on her at first, and the memorable hippy, Hubert, also gets his say. Hubert was played by Mike Kennedy (aka: Michael Kogel) who presumably had some first-hand knowledge of the whole hippy scene as the lead-singer of the sixties band Los Bravos, known for their song "Black is Black."
For more information about Lizard in a Woman's Skin, visit Shriek Show at Media Blasters. To order Lizard in a Woman's Skin, go to TCM Shopping.
by Pablo Kjolseth
