Opening The Cage: A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin

A Lizard But
Taller, In London*

Opening The Cage:
A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin
Written by Keri O’Shea
Warped Perspective No ISBN

Just a very quick shout out to Keri O’Shea’s new monograph, Opening The Cage: A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin. I have to admit, I bought this one thinking it would be another modern take on one of my favourite gialli which I would probably disagree with and ultimately become enraged by but, how often do you see a dedicated study on Lucio Fulci’s A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin? So I plonked down my money and received my copy a very quick two days later, accompanied by a brief note by the author thanking me for my support (I always love it when that happens.... it’s just a shame she didn’t sign the copy too).

And I have to say, I was quite joyfully surprised by this one when I started to read. I mean, okay yeah, if I ever sat with this lady in a pub there might be possibly be some slight disagreement in the difference in genre between giallo and horror in cinema but, honestly, this was a refreshing, intelligent look at the movie through none of the obfuscating prisms... nor, indeed, the usual paths I was expecting from modern film criticism.

I mean, if you’re looking for an in depth look at how the film was made or marketed etc then you are possibly at the wrong venue. What we have here instead, is an analysis of the film which goes into other areas less well travelled. And where the thing does stray to make its point, it does so in a very thorough manner and, perhaps my appreciation of this particular work on the subject comes from the fact that the writer is, indeed, taking me into areas where I don’t have nearly as much knowledge as she... so I was always going to find this one interesting, at the very least. But this isn’t “the very least”... it’s so much more.

For instance, the chapter entitled A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin And The Curious Death Of The Age Of Aquarius is one of many chapters highlighting the two ‘LSD blinded hippie witnesses’ in the movie but explains how the films main protagonist...and, okay yeah, spoiler warning, don’t read on if you’ve not seen the movie... antagonist, played by Florinda Bolkan, rejects the hippies as a negative factor (whilst obviously embracing some of their lifestyle for at least a little of the movie, in her recent back story) and how this is filtered from Lucio Fulci’s own attitudes towards them and their falling out of favour with the world after incidents like the Manson Murders. Indeed, the next chapter entitled We’re Not In Wonderland Anymore, Alice gives a good background on Manson and his followers, as other chapters veer off into such fascinating subjects as LSD and various locations in London where the movie was shot (I learned that some of it was also shot in Italy, doubling for London, which I didn’t realise before).

Above and beyond the high quality of the writing and the thought behind it, the whole book is presented well too. Starting off with the famous poster image on the front cover of Leslie McRay... who wasn’t even in the film but modelled for the advertising (see my review of The Female Bunch here for more details)... the book is really well designed and put together as an attractive package featuring lots of colour photos. Admittedly, the section on Fulci’s burgeoning interest in art and his use of it in the movie could have used a few illustrations of the paintings in question and, yeah, there are just a couple of pages where legibility and readability are slightly threatened by the colours on the underlays but, I can’t complain because the whole thing hangs together really well and just looks fantastic!

And I even learned a new word and now know what Cruention is so, yeah, the book is certainly informative in ways I wasn’t expecting it to be, too. All in all then, Opening The Cage: A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin is a very positive read on aspects of one of my favourite Fulci films that are often not considered and this one clearly demonstrates how various writers can bring their own, very valid spin to things. If you’re into the movie then I’d say snap this one up while you can. Copies can be ordered direct from the publishers at https://warped-perspective.com/index.php/shop/

 *Yeah, if you can work out that pun title... you're really good. ;-)

Flavia The Heretic

A Simple Flavia

Flavia The Heretic
aka Flavia, la monaca musulmana
Italy/France 1974
Directed by Gianfranco Mingozzi
Shameless Films DVD Region 2

Okay, I want to start off Sister Of Nunsploitation Week with a bit of an apology. My previous week celebrating the genre saw a series of four films with somewhat diminishing returns, with my verdict on the later films being mostly negative. Well, because I want to continue, with this one, the practice of reviewing this week’s films in the order they were released into cinemas, I’m afraid this first review is still a fairly negative one, it has to be said. But, please, stay with me because the film I’m reviewing tomorrow is an absolute humdinger of a movie which I was absolutely thrilled to discover (when I actually wasn’t expecting much from it, truth be told).

Okay, so the notorious Flavia The Heretic, often cut in the UK but presented uncut finally by Shameless, on both their DVD and later Blu Ray edition (why they can’t do the same for The New York Ripper, which contains similarly exploitative scenes, is anybody’s guess at this point), is a film I was mostly disappointed with, in all honesty. Not that I was expecting a lot from it but, the ideas behind the movie are interesting... I just found it was all done in a fairly dry and dull manner.

The film starts off with a pre-credits sequence giving a semblance of motivation to the main protagonist, as young Flavia... who has been looking on at a battlefield filled with the slaughtered bodies of Muslims... sympathises and shares a moment with the one surviving enemy soldier before her father, despite her pleading, then cuts his head off. Then, she is sent to a nunnery and, sometime during the fairly dull opening credits, we are told the year is around 1400 and she manages to grow up into famous actress Florinda Bolkan, right in the middle of a scene which jumps time via a clever cut.

The film is mostly a lot of boring conversations between her, her friend Sister Agatha (played by María Casares) and pretty much anyone who will listen, about how men are all bad (apart from the odd one or two she likes) and how women should be doing more stuff. Yup, she’s a real feminist but, I dunno, she’s definitely ahead of her time and seems like one of those new era, man hating feminists who seem to have taken the stage in recent years (which seems to me less like proper feminism and more like enhancing the inherent matriarchy of society but, yeah, I’m not getting into that here).

So she hates her father and all the men in her Christian town, especially what they did to one of her fellow nuns for showing sexual interest during a bizarre scene in which a bunch of lunatics are let into the convent for a little while, for purposes less clear to me. And what they do to the nun in question is one of the notorious scenes which always used to be snipped out on these shores until recently... so body having hot pitch dripped on it, cutting the nipples off etc. Things get no better after Flavia runs away from the convent with her favourite male tutor and the father recaptures her and has her flogged (for reasons again unclear to me but presumably as a metaphor for the prominence of the stupidity of male power over the female?).

Flavia also has a sympathy for Muslim invaders since her experience on the battlefield as a kid... looking up to them and having odd, surreal moments when a painting of one comes alive to interact with her now and again. So when the Muslims show up, Flavia and Agatha spout their feminist mantra gleefully at the fleeing Christians and stay to watch the carnage, walking around the battlefield unmolested as they witness various conflicts. Unmolested, that is, until Sister Agatha is speared to death by one of the Christians due to her words. So Flavia throws herself at the Muslim chief, sexes him up and then, after a slightly surreal scene where she takes them all back to the nunnery to get revenge by sexing the nuns up (naked nun climbing into the stomach of a slaughtered, hanging cow anyone?)... wakes to find the nuns all dead. Then she armours up and joins the battle as the Muslims take her father’s town but, after this, comes a cropper with her new man and is left behind when the invaders return to the sea. After which, Florinda Bolkan continues the cliché of coming to a rather sticky end in some of her films, by being held to account for her crimes by the remaining Christians and having the skin torn from her body.

And it’s a film which admirably pushes the idea of feminism and acceptance pretty well, more so than I’ve seen in many other movies but, at the same time, I have to say that with all these spectacular and truly exploitative things also happening, I found the film pretty much dull as ditchwater. I think Florinda Bolkan is a pretty good actress but here she just spends the whole film in a kind of moody anger all the time, scowling at almost anyone who tries to engage with her.

Also... and I don’t think this is anything to do with the print that Shameless Films sourced, the colours are all completely washed out. I mean, it’s a given perhaps that the monastery and its interiors are just full of creams and beige hues but, even when Flavia ventures into a green landscape, it’s extremely pale like it’s dried out with dead grass in terms of its colouring. There are no really strong colours in the movie and this, combined with the lack of any really interesting frame designs, is maybe why I responded to the film in a less than enthusiastic manner. Don’t get me wrong, the camerawork is fine, with the director using moving camera to capture both the subject of a shot and then shifting to others reacting to that within the same shot without a cut so... yeah, it’s economical in that manner and holds some interest rather than just cutting to reverse shots all the time but... I dunno... nothing really grabbed me about this one.

So that’s me done on Flavia The Heretic... a film which has some notorious exploitation moments but, ultimately, left me more than a little cold. I don’t think I’d recommend this to many people, to be honest. However, come back tomorrow and you certainly will find me reviewing a true masterpiece which I certainly would recommend to all lovers of cinema. Hopefully you’ll take a look.

Florinda’s Giant Steps

Footprints on the Moon

aka Footprints

aka Le Orme 1975 Italy

Directed by Luigi Bazzoni

Shameless Screen Entertainment

DVD Region 0

Wow. Just wow!

That’s the second time lately that I’ve seen a really fresh and memorable film and both times it’s been courtesy of Shameless Screen Entertainment. You know, I keep thinking that pretty soon I’m going to watch one of their presentations and really hate it... well that will probably happen at some point sooner or later but... this wasn’t it. Shameless’ re-build edit of this lost and mostly forgotten movie is a really great viewing experience for those of you who like minimal dialogue and long sequences of reflective atmosphere.

Footprints on the Moon is, I confess, a movie I’d not heard about until I started exploring Shameless’ back catalogue... but I saw a trailer for it on one of their other releases and the cinematography looked so beautiful that I thought I’d give it a go... and I’m really glad I picked it up. Going on the sleeve artwork, the film comes across as a cross between a science fiction movie and a giallo... the truth of the matter is, though, that Footprints on the Moon is neither... so I’m a bit puzzled by Shameless’ description of it as “the most haunting and beautiful giallo you will ever see." I guess if you’re trying to sell DVDs then gialli are really popular right now in the UK.

They’re absolutely right though in their assertion that it’s a haunting and beautiful film. The cinematography is, indeed, quite stunning... and no wonder. It’s by the acclaimed Vittorio Storaro of all people!

The film starts with Alice (played by “giallo-babe” Florinda Bolkan) awaking from a sci-fi dream which features Klaus Kinski and his colleagues stranding an astronaut on the moon in raw black and white photography. When Alice, who is played as an icy and private individual by Bolkan, goes to work she finds she may have lost her job as a translator because, and she only discovers this when she gets to work, she appears to have lost three days of her life which she can’t remember.

A postcard in her wonderfully spacious apartment which has been torn into four pieces leads her to investigate and stay in a hotel on the island of Garma... where people seem to know her from a previous stay which she has no memory of, albeit under a different name. So the whole film becomes a mystery puzzle where the main protagonist is trying to find out what the hell has happened to her and why she keeps dreaming of herself as an astronaut stranded on the moon. With it’s moody cinematography, long reflective passages sans dialogue and atmospheric musical cues by composer Nicola Piovani (there really needs to be a score CD of this movie!), I found that Footprints on the Moon kept reminding me of Resnais’ Last Year In Marienbad... which as far as I’m concerned is a really good thing. And with the island of Garma... I couldn’t help but pick up a little on that whole Portmerion and The Prisoner vibe coming at me. It almost certainly wasn’t intentional... but that really doesn’t matter.

And for fans of the giallo film (of which this is definitely not an example), the film also features young Nicoletta Elmi, or as me and my friend Jake refer to her - “dodgy giallo child”, in a prominent role in the film. You may remember her from such giallo and horror genre classics as Deep Red (Profondo Rosso), Who Saw Her Die?, Bay of Blood (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve), Baron Blood as well as her “all grown up” form in the first Demons movie (famously as the usherette). It’s always a good moment when watching these kinds of movies that we get a new Nicoletta Elmi sighting!

The one problem with the film, if indeed it has any problem at all, is that the end sequence answers all the mystery puzzle questions with one sweeping and, perhaps, unsatisfying gesture. And when you look back at the history of Bolkan’s character in the movie (her job for instance) then it doesn’t really add up too well or make a lot of sense. But then again, Last Year In Marienbad never made a lot of sense either but you don’t hear people complaining about that (I hope). It’s perhaps a slight spoiler to say that the end coda of this movie takes as it’s template what I always refer to as “The Caligari Conclusion” in that it shares the same stylistic dismissal of its main protagonist with the same lack of respect afforded the characters in both The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920) and The Cabinet of Caligari (1962). This bothered me a little since the puzzle element took such a strong hold in my mind during my first viewing of this movie... but it’s such a great movie that this particular ingredient will soon diminish in my mind and this will be a movie I’m sure I’ll probably rewatch a number of times over the coming years. My gratitude and respect to Shameless for putting this one out there for people to see.