Hoping to clear her husband of a murder charge, a woman investigates the
violent premonition she experienced.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Lucio Fulci
Starring: Jennifer O'Neill, Gianni Garko, Marc Porel, Ida Galli
Italian exploitation filmmakers were known for cashing in on the latest
trends in Hollywood. Lucio Fulci's 1977 thriller
The Psychic (released in Italy under the wonderful title
'Murder to the Tune of Seven Black Notes') is one of the rare cases where
Italy was actually ahead of the curve. A year later Hollywood would
deliver a glut of movies concerning psychic powers with the likes of
The Eyes of Laura Mars, The Medusa Touch and The Fury.
Of those three movies, The Psychic skews closest to
Laura Mars. Like that film, The Psychic concerns a glamorous lady
who experiences a premonition of a killing. As detailed in a gruesome
prologue, as a child Virginia (Jennifer O'Neill) experienced a
vision of her mother's suicide. Fulci stages the death in a rehash of the
climax of his best film, 1972's
Don't Torture a Duckling, with Virginia's mother hitting every rock on her plummet down a cliff
side.
Virginia continues to be plagued by odd visions through her life, but with
the help of a therapist, Luca (Marc Porel), has learned to live
with her unwanted "gift." One day, while driving through the most poorly
lit tunnel in Europe, Virginia is struck by a vision of the killing of an
elderly woman by a man with a beard and a limp. The killer appears to wall
up his victim in a room with a distinctive red lamp.
While her husband Francesco (Gianni Garko) is away on business,
Virginia decides to begin the task of renovating his childhood home. When
she enters one particular room she discovers it resembles the very same
room she saw in her vision. Compelled to knock down the wall, Virginia
discovers a skeleton. But rather than the older woman she saw killed, the
police claim the corpse is that of a 25-year-old model. With her hubby
arrested for the young woman's murder, Virginia sets out to clear his
name, but her investigation leads her to believe that her vision may be of
an event that has yet to occur.
His largely forgotten comedies aside, The Psychic is
arguably Fulci's most mainstream movie. Aside from the gory prologue, it's
largely free of bloodletting. For roughly its first half it's a rather
routine procedural thriller, as Virginia interrogates various characters
and pieces together clues. It's halfway through, when Virginia puts two
and two together and realises she's seen a vision of her own destiny, that
Fulci's movie makes you lean forward in your seat.
Along with editor Ornella Micheli, Fulci brilliantly assembles a
metaphysical thriller in which time appears to fold in on itself. It's
something of a Giallo
Tenet, but far more comprehensible than Christopher Nolan's head-scratcher.
Here, Fulci appears as obsessed with the ideas of time and destiny as
Nolan famously is. A woman's watch with a distinctive alarm chime straight
out of a spaghetti western becomes a key prop in the narrative, playing
into its Edgar Allen Poe influenced finale (The Psychic is a
better version of Poe's 'The Black Cat' than Fulci's actual adaptation of
that story).
O'Neill was coming off Luchino Visconti's The Innocent when
Fulci cast her as his protagonist. With her expressive eyes you can see
why Italian filmmakers would be enamoured of her. Like the best horror
heroines, O'Neill combines fragility with strength, and if you're going to
constantly crash zoom into a pair of eyes, there aren't many better. Once
the curtain has been pulled and the movie shows its hand, there's a real
sense of dread throughout. O'Neill's Virginia seems to walk headlong into
trouble, unable to escape her destiny.
The structure of the back half of the movie suggests a feeling of running
along a threadmill that's sliding your fate towards you. Fulci and Micheli
do a superb job of hardwiring the necessary elements of Virginia's
premonition into our heads. When we see those elements pop up later in
real time it creates a chilling sense that our heroine can't escape her
fate.
With a moody score by Fulci regular Fabio Frizzi and some beautiful
framing by Fulci's go-to cameraman Sergio Slavati, The Psychic makes for a dreamlike sensory experience. But unlike many
Italian genre movies of the period, The Psychic is a rarity
in boasting a plot that actually makes sense and is easy to keep track of.
For this reason it's an ideal starting point for anyone unfamiliar with
the joys of Giallo.
The Psychic is on Shudder UK now.