The Black Cat

If it weren’t for the ubiquitous zooms to people’s eyes, you wouldn’t even recognize this as a Lucio Fulci film. With it’s clearly thought-out screenplay, The Black Cat is a thriller with minimal blood, shot on location in an English village. The story revolves mysteriously around a black cat and its owner, a hero-detective, a heroine-journalist and the gradual unraveling of the mystery surrounding the murders committed by the aforementioned cat. This is one of Fulci’s most conventional opuses, though in the mainstream context, it is also one of his strongest. The acting and visuals are well done, as is the music (Pino Donaggio is a pro). The only problem is the lack of real suspense, so the film is a bit boring in places. (20/01/2004)

Lucio Fulci's last really good film. His typical eye fetish is taken to the extreme here (I'm not lying when I write that there are a good 30 close-ups of eyes), but the plot makes a lot of sense, as it's based on a good short story by E.A. Poe (some of whose motifs were successfully flirted with by Roger Corman in the 60s), some of the murders are laughably naive and some are solidly executed, and there's a really decent soundtrack for Fulci's films. As for the violence that is so typical of Fulci, it’s not so naturalistic, and he’s relatively sparing with the blood, though he coaxes the whole thing with the insight of a reliable craftsman. (08/09/2017)