A Cat in the Brain (1990)

Original title

Un gatto nel cervello

Directed by

Lucio Fulci

Genre

horror film, slasher film

Country

Italy

Runtime

1h 27m

Rated

R

Rating

5.7 of 10 from 158 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A horror movie director is tormented by violent fantasies from making his films. He sees a therapist who turns out to be a serial killer using hypnosis to control him.

metaself-referentialbleakunsettlingfast-pacedgorypsychedelichumorous

What happens

Cat in the Brain (Italian: Un gatto nel cervello (I volti del terrore), lit. 'A Cat in the Brain (The Faces of Terror)') is a 1990 Italian horror film written and directed by Lucio Fulci. Fulci stars as a fictionalized version of himself, a tortured horror filmmaker who is driven by the violent visions that he experiences both behind the camera and off the set. Feeling like he's losing his grip on reality and disturbed by murderous fantasies, Fulci consults a psychotherapist, who is secretly a serial killer and using hypnosis, exploiting the director's vulnerabilities to his own murderous ends. A Cat in the Brain has been called the horror film equivalent of Federico Fellini's 8½, using cynical, Grand Guignol humour. Juxtaposing gory horror clips from several of his own past horror films which he had worked on, Fulci shot a wrap-around segment featuring his own plot and used Vincenzo Tomassi's film editing to create the storyline – a personal insight into the effects of horror filmmaking on the psyche. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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