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Beginning with a shot of Fulci (playing himself) writing a script, we hear his thoughts going round in circles about stabbings, strangulation, chainsaws, throat slitting and the like. We then catch a shot of what is supposed to be his brain, being torn apart by cats (an alternative title for the film is “The Cat in the Brain”), although it looks more like they’re eating a large floor full of intestines.

Repulsed by this opening image, it gets far worse in the next five minutes. We’re greeted by the shot of a naked woman on a slab with a chunk of flesh missing from her leg; the camera goes up the stairs to a man cooking a steak. Putting two and two together I don’t think he was eating Sirloin! The man then eats the steak, goes downstairs where he proceeds to cut up the woman (legs, arms and head in graphic close up) with a chainsaw, put it through a mincing machine and feed it to his pet pigs.

By this time I was about ready to throw up and it had only been on for 5 minutes (I have to admit that I believe the opening sequence was a huge influence on the awful “Hannibal”) The basic plot premise is that Fulci plays a horror movie director called Lucio Fulci who is renowned for making gory horror flicks, but he’s having trouble separating fact from fiction and begins hallucinating. He goes to a psychiatrist (who also doesn’t seem to in for a single meal) who uses Fulci’s psychosis to make him carry out a series of real-life murders.

An interesting idea that precedes “Scream” and its ilk by a full 5 years, unfortunately it’s horribly crap. There seems to be a lot that is lost in translation, the best line is when the psychiatrist asks Fulci “So your psychosis first manifested itself through a fear of hamburgers and gardeners” (!?!) Needless to say I’ll have to watch the rest of the film but I have the feeling I could in for one of the most surreal experiences of my life.

"Beware the moon and stay on the path..."