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The Psychic
[Severin]
1977; color
Directed by Lucio Fulci
Starring: Gabrielle Ferzetti, Marc Porel, Gianni Garko & Evelyn Stewart
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In this film's opening scene we see a pretty woman driving a stylish car down a deserted street in England. (We know it's England by the way because when she reaches the ocean front hillside that is her destination, the location, date and time appear on the screen. At the exact same time, in Florence, a young girl is being led through the schoolyard a la one of my mother's favorite children's books to read to her nursery school class, Madeline. Back in England we see the woman get out of her oddly sized but cool looking car and walk to the edge of a cliff. Simultaneously the schoolgirl stops in her tracks and says "mommy" out loud. Seconds later the woman shrieks and falls. Then, she kind of bounces down the mountain in an unfunny Homer Simpson-esque fashion, bashing her face and noggin several times. Um, ouch. The little girl appears to see all of this as it happens and continues to cry "mommy" appropriately. Naturally the woman dies (otherwise we'd have a film called The Disfigured Woman or something instead of one called The Psychic) and the young girl grows up. Years later we re-meet the young girl as an adult and see that she's quite lovely and looks a bit like Jaqueline Bisset. We see her frolic, giggle and snuggle with her husband at their lush estate and in their expensive ride. They take a long lazy drive to the airport, where hubby jumps aboard his private plane and off into the wild blue yonder he goes. This brings a bit of a pensive look to our heroine's face but she shrugs whatever it is off and takes the wheel of her marital automobile and swings on down a road marked by many tunnels. Which shouldn't pose too much of a problem - unless, in a Principal Skinner-esque fashion, your mother forbids you from driving through them because of what they represent. She's European though, so we have to assume that her discomfort in these dark cylindrical passages comes from something else. She gets through the first two without too much stress but in the third one she begins to see flashes of seemingly unrelated items - a broken mirror, a taxi cab, a flashing red light, a black and white picture with something scribbled on it, an impressionistic painting, and so forth. Then we're transported into a red room where the flashes start to get a little more lingering - and we see (among other things that will all come into play as the film plays itself out) a bloody dead woman, shuffling feet, an overturned statue and a weird Euro cigarette in a blue ashtray. Then things go black. The woman awakens, with the help of a police officer, to find herself on the side of the road on the other side of the tunnel. She is a bit dazed by the experience but otherwise seems OK. She consults a friend / parapsychologist about her experience but he pretty much dismisses her visions, instead preferring to use the visit as an excuse to insult her husband. (Because, I guess, he's hot for her or something. I don't know, this movie is a bit disjointed in parts and some of the sound is low enough that I missed a couple lines, even with repeat rewinding.) At any rate, after this we - and she - arrive at what we learn to be a home owned by her husband that has been vacant for quite some time and here's where the action really starts to pick up. Although, as far as action, it never really picks up that much. But the story does start to get a lot more interesting as the woman begins to discover a room in the house that looks awfully familiar... Despite my general aversion to Fulci's more famous works, all of which are too icky for me, I really enjoyed this derivative yet unique "giallo". Which really isn't a giallo, I don't think; thus the quotes. I would say it's more of an atmospheric psychological thriller. Either way, it was a good movie.
—Bunny
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