"From the annals of the abnormal there is no more erotic a nightmare than the strange story of Lizard in a Woman Skin". Thus went the opening lines for the US trailer for this under seen, under rated and highly regarded classic.

Lizard in a Woman’s Skin was first released in Italy on the 17th February 1971 – having been made between the South of England, mainly in and around London, and some interiors shot in Rome during November/December 1970. Scripted by Lucio Fulci and Roberto Gianviti, with possible tinkering by Jose Luis Martinez Mollá and Andre Tranche (though it more than likely these two names were added for co-production purposes, rather than making any substantial contribution).

Unusually for it’s time, A LIZARD IN A WOMAN’S SKIN is entirely original in it’s source material and content. It was popular at the time to adapt ideas, codas, storylines, or even to use titles of respected authors of crime fiction. Agatha Christies TEN LITTLE NIGGERS had been used and would continue to be used; Edgar Wallace had been the inspiration behind various German krimis and various gialli to come. The only "nod" was to Dario Argento – with the usage of an animal in the title. Yet the similarity stops there, the film does not allude or borrow from Argento’s works, nor Argento’s ultimate mentor, Mario Bava. No black-gloved killers stalk this (nor any of Fulci’s thrillers in fact). Other giallo motifs are present though, and the movie was daring for it’s time, treading on dangerous ground, showing more explicit lesbianism, blood, sexuality and eroticised violence between victim and perpetrator.

For some, this is the ne plus ultra of Fulci's repertoire. Made in the middle of Fulci's trio of creativity moods. The first - the oft over looked witty comedies (which arguably are not to everyone's tastes), the second - end of the 60's/start of the 70's, and the third, (the most popular), the end of the 70's and the start of the 80's, populated with zombies, blood, and screaming heroines.

Made between two of the films which Fulci considered to be his finest and regularly showed his friends - i.e. BEATRICE CENCI and NON SI SERVIZIA UN PAPARINO - and brimming with influences from other 60's movies. Set in chic, fashionable upper class London - a London which must have been teaming with Italian film crews, London being the center of all that is cool - relatively fresh from BLOW UP and given new life in an old capital (starting with THE FIFTH SPEED by Brass) with constant injections of Italian film crews over the next six or so years - from SOLANGE, to the COLD EYES OF FEAR to ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK.

Watching this film along side A DOPPIA FACCIA - which co-scripted by Fulci, it is interesting to see the comparisons when the two pieces stand side by side - from the male protagonist working in a law firm, a wife of dubious sexuality, a wild outlandish look at hippie lifestyle - hell at one point both Christiane Kruger and Florinda Bolkan wear the same fur coat. Motifs from other gialli surface, the labyrinth a briefly nude Florinda Bolkan falls into is also to be seen in Mario Caiano’s BLOOD – made the same year. Fulci himself was expressing perhaps the upset in the loss of his own wife, a French woman, the first of three and mother of his two daughters, Antonella and the more talented Camilla (who went on to assist her father in projects from 1983 until his final feature in 1991). Fulci’s wife had committed suicide, by suffocating herself to death in a gas oven. Fulci’s subsequent marriages were short lived, to a German woman and later to a black American girl – neither lasted as long nor bore issue.

 
  


Florinda Bolkan, although not an obvious choice for an English upper crust woman (Fulci wanted her blonde, she told him to get lost and use Virna Lisi, a bond formed between director and star), is superb as the twitchy, frosty frigid wife - is it any wonder she and he husband, giallo regular and she sleep in single beds? Carol is a woman from a background of privilege. She is a socialite, the daughter of a titled lawyer looking to go into politics and she is educated in law. Yet she does not work, and is content to be the second wife of a continually unfaithful husband from a considerably less well-off background than her own.

Investigating the crime(s) is Inspector Corwin, perhaps played with an air of nonchalance, by Stanley Baker. His whistling throughout the picture displays indifference, from the outset he is unimpressed at having to go to a crime scene during his time off, and he has little respect, almost an apathy towards his superiors, those for from a different back ground to himself (be they hippie layabouts or above his bourgeois background, or fellow policeman, where he mocks the toxicologist or looks with dismay at Brandon freshening his breath). Yet at the same time he advises Brandon of his place, yet he is unaware of his own.

Fulci once again uses split screens, used previously in ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER, and pre-Brian De Palma - however, this time to convey a message. In one side, a wild hippy party - filled with sex drugs and rock and roll, the other a staid dinner party where the daughter taps her foot to a beat. Yet, whilst most viewers (and the Hammonds) scoff at the party next door which "sounds like a football match" - the contrast is clear. Julia Durer, the neighbor, and her friends are celebrating free love. In the cold quiet atmosphere next door, there is pent up anger, adultery, and violent death being plotted by one of those around the table.

The viewer enters the psychotic mind of what could be a murderess. Allowing her hidden fantasies to penetrate her dreams. One moment the woman is thrown into her sexual tryst with her neighbor seemingly falling into darkness then emerging - a submissive passive victim to another woman's Sapphic desires where she lies and allows herself to be caressed. The next time she is assertive aggressive, taking sexual delight in the sensuality of her victim before striking, stabbing her victim in the breast and then in her belly. All of this a dream perhaps.



After the nightmare, reality bites. The neighbor is found dead, yet for some reason the family keep the details from Carol - as if they all know the dark secrets of her dreams. From the cold safety in the isolated prison on the house off Elizabeth Street in Belgravia, an expensive suburb of London, and when cast into the open air, Carol begins to wonder if indeed she is starting to crack. She spies the two hippies of her nightmare - pop musicians of the day Penny Brown and Mike Kennedy. After following them across parts of London - from SW London (fashionable Portobello Road) to an abandoned theater - she and Joan confront what will be both women's ultimate nemesis. The red haired hippie and Jenny, his companion. Joan will pay with her life, Carol will pay with her freedom and the loss of her father.

Fulci’s perception and view of London’s geography is equally confusing. Carol and her father leave the Old Bailey, London’s center of justice with a pan down from Justice overlooking proceedings and cuts to a zoom shot of Corwin and Brandon standing outside the Royal Albert Hall, watching events, even though the two buildings are some close to 10 miles a part. Fulci’s uses of London locations are subdued, and he does not resort to travelogue style "padding out" to portray that his film is set in London. Brief glimpses here and there are given, Lambeth Palace Road, beneath Waterloo Bridge, the aforementioned locations. Most directors sought to prove the locations Fulci’s doesn’t – his film has the whole English feel, mixed with distinctly Italian Catholic guilt.

All of the suspects of the crime live in alternative realities, living double lives. Carol with her dreams alternating between lesbian fantasies and cold-blooded murder, and hallucinations and fears. Frank, the two timing philandering husband, who due to his marriage to Carol has made it from rags to riches. Yet he never married his true love, Deborah, also from an affluent background, who introduced him to Carol. Deborah, equally is two faced, she sits there enjoying dinner with the Hammonds or sharing an afternoon with them yet she and Frank meet for the occasional secret rendezvous. Even the seemingly innocent Joan, Frank’s daughter from his first marriage secretly yearns for the freedom next door in the Durer flat. Despite her staid and formal (well dressed Catholic girl as opposed to upper middle class English), she mixes and frequents with hippies, one of whom she recognises at the commune, and embraces whilst with a perplexed Carol. Certainly Joan feels more at freedom with the drugs and rock and roll of the era, unlike her relatives, she is inquisitive, nosey (she reads Carol’s notes of her dreams) yet she is deeply loyal to her father – doing what she can, even endangering her life to protect him.

Some critiques and writers have said that this film (along with BEATRICE CENCI) is a study by Fulci into the vices of the "per bene", the upper classes and their vice driven instincts which culminate in murder. This perhaps is unfair and untrue - as two years later, with Florinda Bolkan cast by contrast as the "Martiara", a filthy, esoteric peasant woman, in DUCKLING suffers violent death by Southern Italian peasants. Proving that regardless of breeding, class or money, the ability to commit violent crime and murder exists within all our souls.

From the enclosure of her home (attacked by the noise next door), the quaint shopping expedition (spying the two hippies), the safety of the sanatorium, a church (where, in both locations, Carol is chased) even to the comfort of her fathers grand home in the countryside ("Green Hill") - Carol realizes there, there is no escape. Fulci uses close ups and zooms at objects, people who trap Carol, from the bolted banging door at Alexandra Palace (the "Wendon Street Catholic Church"), the hippies window shopping, to the arrival of Jenny, possibly blackmailing Carol, possibly needing money or leading Carol into a trap - standing between the trees, waiting for Carol on her horse. The only time Carol seems to experience liberation is in what appear to be her dreams with Julia Durer, as explained to her by Dr. Kerr, through her dreams she is liberated, perhaps from her sexual repression, her psychiatrist explains his belief that her dream is a liberation although later we discover this liberation is from a blackmailer.

It is up to the viewer of the film to decide what he sees and what he understands and perceives to be real. Even the title is deceptive. One of the hippies sees is "a red blob" or "a galloping horse", the other "A Lizard, in a woman's skin". But if that was not real, how much is real? The eyes of the hippies are glazed over, white with acid, yet it is seemingly Carol who is seeing things and hallucinations - and her eyes are clear. Is Carol really on the verge of schizophrenia - her dreams and imagination, seeing the great white swan, the yelping vivisected dogs at the clinic, the attack of the bats (later used again in HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY), her encounters with Julia Durer. When arrested, we see her flinching eye - perhaps a nod to the opening credits created by Maurice Binder for Roman Polanski's REPULSION - another study of a neurotic troubled female, giving away no clue to the dark demons within. What is real in Bolkan’s eye, these dark brown almost black eyes, and ultimately in those of ours, the viewer?

© K.J.G. 2003 and CINEMA NOCTURNA 2003

 

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