Lizard in a Woman’s Skin

Understanding who Lucio Fulci was requires not only patience but also an exceptionally broad perspective. This Roman visionary – a tangle of stubbornness, cynicism, bravado, and mischievous defiance – embodied a way of making and experiencing cinema very different from that of the “sacred monsters” such as Visconti or Fellini. Fulci’s cinema was more visceral, more physical, deeply rooted in the popular culture of postwar Italy. The key lies in the true meaning of the word popular: films that stirred the emotions of mass audiences during the collective ritual of watching cinema together – an experience quite different from today. In 1971, at the height of the giallo boom, Fulci – already the author of twenty-two feature films, ranging from comedies and erotic films to musicarelli and spaghetti westerns – directed his second thriller in the genre. But he had no interest in following Dario Argento’s formula. Instead, he created a film that is at once visionary and grounded, psychedelic yet bourgeois, blending elements of trash cinema, splatter, and gore in his own unmistakable way. The opening five minutes remain one of Fulci’s greatest achievements – a moment when giallo cinema seems to break free from the constraints of logic and convention. Is it worth explaining what happens there? Absolutely not. It must be experienced. “I did it my way” – the epitaph Fulci reportedly wished for on his tombstone in Rome. Long live Lucio Fulci!

Stanisław Bardadin

Lucio Fulci (1927–1996) – Italian director and screenwriter, creator of comedies, adventure films, and gialli. Throughout his career, he consistently challenged the classical rules of narrative realism. His films cross the boundaries of genre conventions, using special effects and dream sequences to construct hallucinatory, sensual visions filled with violence and perversity.

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