 Un Gatto nel Cervello(A Cat in the Brain/Nightmare Concert/I Volti del Terrore) Synopsis: Fulci plays horror film director "Lucio Fulci", whose macabre imagination has spawned such horrible images that he goes to a psychiatrist for help. Unfortunately, the psychiatrist is a madman himself, who plans to use Fulci's movies as the blueprints for his own crimes... while the blame falls on the poor tormented director.
Notes: This autobiographical film is an ironic comment by Fulci on his place in Italian cinema - the bloody madman, the outsider, the corrupting influence on our nation's youth, etc. The film is mostly made up of clip after revolting clip of the most extreme movies in Fulci's late output (as well as clips from other movies Fulci was involved with, such as Mario Bianchi's Non Avere Paura della Zia Marta/Don't Be Afraid of Aunt Martha/Aunt Marta Does Dreadful Things and Andrea Bianchi's Massacre, none of them classics).  The film as a whole works surprisingly well, chiefly because the idea is so intriguing. The director has gone too deep into the dark parts of his imagination and let loose the "cat in the brain". When he tries to distance himself from his films, the outside world refuses to let him: his psychiatrist wants to be his "monster", the receptionist wants to a movie star, his neighbor draws him further into voyeurism by stripping at her window, a woman whom Fulci attacks in his delirium enjoys being molested by a famous director... Fulci dreams his characters have begun to film him. The whole done-to-death idea of the audience as voyeurs, so dear to pretentious film critics, has been turned upside down -- now it's the director who's helpless, forced to watch and collaborate as the horrors play out before him.Fulci apparently stepped in at the last minute when the lead actor failed to appear. Whatever the case, Fulci turns in one of the best performances in any of his movies! However, the movie is nearly ruined by the sub-par effects work and the lack of continuity between the new scenes and the inserts from the other movies. Many of the inserts, including some of the least convincing, are run more than once. The result of seeing all this cheap gore out of context is confusion and nausea. The blackly humorous tone of the movie makes it watchable, but still... eurghhh. This movie has two endings, Fulci's excellent original and a truncated version by the Italian producer. Both are avaiable on one tape from Revok Film Prodigies.
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