AKA: 7 Note in Nero
Murder to the Tune of the 7 Black Notes
If you were to walk up to the average man on the street and ask him what he knew about Lucio Fulci, you’d undoubtedly be greeted by blank stares and a resounding round of ‘who?’. If you asked the average horror fan what he knew about Lucio Fulci, he’d most likely tell you about how Fulci was revered by fans of demented cinema and christened the ‘godfather of gore’. You’d no doubt here about his film Zombie, and how it ushered in an immensely popular (and long lived) cycle of Italian zombie flicks. And while this answer is a good one, it really only illuminates one facet of Fulci’s career. Prior to the success of Zombie, Fulci had made literally dozens of films—working in whatever genre was hot at the moment…be it the gialli, the western, or even comedy. In fact, many of his early films eschew the gore elements almost entirely—showing that the late director could make films that were successful for reasons other than because they piled on buckets of blood.
In 1977, Fulci would release one of his most intriguing, and underrated, films, The Psychic a nifty little giallo that was actually driven by a plot—not just a threadbare assortment of scenes designed to get us from one gory set piece to the next.
The film opens with a segment set in Italy in 1959. In it, we see a middle-aged woman driving through the countryside. Then, we cut to a young girl at school. When we get back to the woman, she’s stopped her car on top a steep cliff overlooking the ocean. She pauses for a second, then dives (which gives Fulci the opportunity to re-use the ‘mannequin face smashing into craggy rocks’ FX shot that he first gave us in 1972’s Don’t Torture a Duckling). We then cut to the little girl, who can somehow see the events—and is screaming for her mother…who’s the woman who jumped to her death.
From there, we jump to the future. The young girl is all grown up and has recently married an Italian businessman. However, our heroine (Victoria, played by Jennifer O’Neill) still has the odd psychic visions. When she sees one wherein a woman is murdered by a man with a limp—in her very own home—she becomes obsessed with solving the crime. After tearing down a wall in the house, she finds the skeletal remains of a woman…but it turns out to be someone other than the woman in her vision.
Soon, her husband has been arrested for committing the crime and Victoria must follow up on the clues hidden in her vision in order to free him. But, are these visions part of the past, or somehow precognitive? Finding the answer may cost Victoria her life.
Upon a casual inspection it appears as though The Psychic has a lot in common with The Eyes of Laura Mars--another film wherein a psychic woman goes after a killer. However, before you write this off as yet another instance of Fulci ‘borrowing’ from an American film, consider that this film was released in 1977—and The Eyes of Laura Mars didn’t show up until 1978.
Saying this is one of Fulci’s most accomplished efforts is an understatement. The direction here is some of the most solid I’ve ever seen from the director. There’s very little of the standard Fulci ‘trademarks’—no rough transitional edits from one scene to the next, no crass and leering zoom shots on gore FX, and no ocular mayhem anywhere to be found. Instead, Fulci relies on a series of straightforward visuals to tell his tale and lets the script provide the chills. The only real stylistic excess to be found in this film (and I really hesitate to call it excess) is the shimmery look of the scenes when Victoria is seeing something with her psychic powers.
Fulci seems to borrow a bit from Argento’s Suspiria in terms of the set design at the climax (the murder takes place in a room with blood red walls and ornate decoration that is very reminiscent of the dance academy where Mater Suspiriorum dwells in the Argento film), but it’s subtle and really adds to the overall mood. The blood red walls work to unsettle the viewer on an almost subconscious level—and since subtlety was never a Fulci strongpoint, I can do nothing but praise the effect here.
The film does have a few faults, most notably in the acting department. O’Neill isn’t a great actress, and her performance here strays into the arena of melodrama on a few occasions. Her ‘thousand yard stare’ whenever she’s about to have a vision is bit oversold as well. The rest of the cast is decent, with no one standing out as particularly good or all that awful—which is an accomplishment.
Further complicating matters is the awful dialogue. Fulci’s never demonstrated an ear for believable conversation (look no further than The Gates of Hell if you need further convincing), and while the speech here isn’t nearly that bad, the script does contain its share of expository conversation and clunky exchanges. This ultimately hurts the film (particularly in the first two acts where there’s not a lot of action), but doesn’t completely ruin the mood.
This is at least partially because Fulci saves his best work for the climax, which is a fairly intense cat and mouse sequence involving Victoria and the man we believe to be the murderer. Fulci keeps the tension high for nearly roughly 15 minutes, then gives us a brief respite by cutting to another scene, then turns it up again when the legitimate bad guy shows up on the scene. The power of the sequence stems from the sure pace of Fulci’s filming. He’s not rushing things here in a mad dash to get to the next gore scene (because there is no gore scene in this film), but instead takes the time to build suspense and allow the audience to dwell on their feelings of dread for minutes at a time. It really is impressive—particularly when one compares it to many of Fulci’s other films.
Things get even better when, during that climactic sequence, all the little parts of the earlier vision start to come to pass. With each event, the audience becomes a little more worried—and Fulci lets us squirm, offering next to nothing in relief. Even the final shot offers no real resolution, and instead leaves us to wonder exactly how the events played out after the Poe-esque revelation.
Truthfully, the only downside to the sequence is that Fulci often fails to give the audience any credit. Time and again, as each event from the vision comes to pass, Fulci shows the same scene in the shimmery psychic vision once again—a not so subtle reminder that ‘hey, see, this means something’. Of course, it’s hard to expect a completely restrained film from Fulci, and in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t all that awful—it’s more annoying than anything.
Fans expecting the usual ration of Fulci gore and sleaze will be disappointed by The Psychic--there’s relatively no gore and absolutely no sex or nudity to be found. This is a restrained, plot driven Fulci film, so if you’re looking for gore and sex, check out some of his post 1979 work.
Ultimately, The Psychic is a finely crafted giallo from a director who’s become synonymous with creating over the top gorefests. To call this one of Fulci’s most technically accomplished films would be a major understatement—it’s clearly one of the best films in his entire filmography, and representative of the fact that he could make a movie that relied on plot and story as opposed to gore. It certainly has its faults, including a weak lead performance and some bad dialogue, but that’s not enough to make it a bad film overall. Ideally, I’d give The Psychic 3.5 stars, but since that’s not an option, I’m going to give it 3 stars and a hearty recommendation. It’s not your standard Fulci, but it’s a nice change of pace.
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