 (A Lizard in a Woman's Skin/Schizoid) Synopsis: A woman from a pompous upper-class English family dreams of having a sexual encounter with the woman who lives next door, a drug-dealer who frequently hosts loud orgiastic parties. The dreams continue until, one day, the woman dreams she has murdered the other woman. Then the other woman is found murdered in exactly the same manner as the dream. The police unearth the entire family's sordid secrets until almost everyone is under suspicion. Tragedy, ruin and death follow until the real killer is revealed at last.
Notes: This movie won an award at the Rouge et Noir Festival in France, and has long been regarded as Fulci's masterpiece. It is, however, a film which does not live up to its reputation:  it suffers from poor pacing and too much talk, and its once-controversial themes of homosexuality and drug use are now dated and stale.One of the most irritating things about the movie is the Police Inspector's habit of whistling. This seems to be meant as a little character device, like Harmonica's harmonica in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. As he did with the sound of the harmonica in Leone's film, Ennio Morricone inserts the whistle in places where the detective isn't actually whistling; but in any case, the sound is piercing and ear-splitting, and clearly not coming from the detective's lips. The best parts of the movie are the delirious dream sequences, especially the one involving the murder. In addition to Fulci's usual unflinching treatment of violent acts, this movie features some very bizarre imagery, including an attack by an enormous bird and an unnerving scene involving vivisected dogs (the latter scene drew bitter attacks from anti-vivisectionists, many of whom did not realize the "dogs" were only models).
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