The Psychic

“Who was it?” – the central question every classic giallo poses from its very first scenes, stretching the mystery almost to the breaking point. A sudden murder, a body discovered by chance, a killing hand whose owner remains unknown. Curiosity takes over: who did it? Every trick and every ruse serves to multiply clues and mislead the viewer searching for the truth. But every respectable giallo demands its grande finale: the final revelation. Lucio Fulci, however, ad little patience for rules – in fact, they irritated him. So why not shatter the formula by turning its mechanisms inside out, while cheekily pretending the formula still exists? That playful subversion was typical of this mischievous and defiant filmmaker. Five years after Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972), Fulci returned to the genre with The Psychic, abandoning gore and sexuality for a tense investigation driven entirely by visions. One of the high points of his career, the film is both elegant and unsettling. The face of its protagonist (Jennifer O’Neill), one of the most magnetic in giallo cinema, becomes the axis of a carefully constructed game – because that is precisely what it is: a game designed to fool everyone. And that was 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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