A Cat in the Brain

A Cat in the Brain Italian Un gatto nel cervello also known as Nightmare Concert and I volti del terrore is a 1990 Italian horror film written and directed by the Italian godfather of gore Lucio Fulci. A Cat in the Brain is one of Lucio Fulcis final films and is notable for selfreflexively summing up his career. The film is a metafilm in which the director appears playing himself, a tortured horror filmmaker who is driven by the violent visions that he experiences both behind the camera and off the set. Feeling like hes losing his grip on reality and disturbed by murderous fantasies, Fulci consults a psychotherapist. The shrink exploits the directors vulnerabilities to his own murderous ends. A Cat in the Brain has been called the horror film equivalent of Federico Fellinis 8, using cynical, Grand Guignol humour. Juxtaposing gory horror clips from several of his own past horror films which he either directed andor produced, Lucio Fulci shot a wraparound segment featuring his own plot and used Vincenzo Tomassis film editing as well as his own voice over to create the storyline a personal insight into the effects of horror filmmaking on the psyche.

Dr. Lucio Fulci more or less playing himself is a former medical doctorturned director of gory horror films. He wraps up shooting for the day on his latest film Touch of Death with Brett Halsey playing the human monstercannibal of women. Fulci leaves the Cincettia Studios for a local restaurant down the street. The young friendly waiter recognizes him and suggests his typical meal a fillet of steak, or steak tarter. Fulci cannot look at the sample plates of meat without having flashbacks to the cannibalistic scene hed been filming earlier. Shaken, he leaves the restaurant without ordering a meal. Later, while checking an effects shot from another movie, Fulci irritably snaps at a technician to get a plate of animal eyeballs out of his sight.Returning home to his row house in an old suburb of Rome, the troubled director tries to sleep, but the noise of a handymans chainsaw outside keeps him awake with recollections of his own recently shot chainsaw mayhem. In a rage, Fulci storms outside and smashes a hatchet into cans of paint belonging to the handyman. The spilled red paint reminds Fulci of the acidblood scene in The Beyond. ........

Source: Wikipedia