The Psychic

Fueled by last week's entry, The Lizard in a Woman's Skin, I watched another Fulci Giallo;

Seven Notes in Black, a.k.a. Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes, a.k.a. Death Tolls Seven Times, a.k.a. The Psychic (1977).

We begin the movie with a woman leaping to her death from the cliffs of Dover while her daughter back in Florence sees it happening. We cut to the current day (back in '77) and the now adult daughter, Virginia (Jennifer O'Neill) is happily married to a rich Italian businessman, Francesco Ducci (Gianni Garko). He departs on a business trip and while she's driving home, Virginia starts having vivid visions. She sees a room in red, a hole hacked in a wall, a woman murdered, a magazine cover, someone being walled up alive and more. Deeply disturbed, she visits her parapsychologist friend Luca Fattori (Marc Porel) to get some advice. Later, Virginia decides to renovate an old palazzo that her husband owns in order to distract her from the visions and as a nice surprise for him. To her horror, she recognizes a room in the palazzo and frantically hacks a hole in the wall. What she finds sets in motion a long investigation and series of horrific events.

That's pretty much what I can reveal without spoiling too much.

Like his other Gialli, The Psychic is beautifully shot. I have been so impressed with Fulci's cinematography in his Gialli that I may have to revisit some of his horror movies to see if it was always there, but I have been too distracted by all the buckets of blood and the hordes of zombies to notice. Time will tell on that one.

The Psychic actually has two plot lines that intertwine. One is Virginia's psychic visions and the other one is everything else. The visions are well done and don't cheat. Everything you see is relevant, whether you and Virginia understand what is shown or not. The other plot is a bit muddled. There were a few scenes where important things were mentioned but it's so quick that if you sneeze, you might miss it. That annoyed me as when I read a synopsis after I was done watching, I realized that what I thought was a bit of fluff was actually a super important clue. This might be an issue with this version of the movie, or just a bit of a screw up.

My other big criticism is that most of The Psychic is really slow. A movie being slow isn't automatically a bad thing, but the sense of mystery and doom doesn't manifest until we get to the “endgame”. At that point everything makes sense and I got the feeling that it wasn't just all worth it but that The Psychic is actually a good movie. Before then, I wasn't so sure.

Besides the lovely cinematography, the rest of the movie is also competent. The actors are very good, particularly Jennifer O'Neill, who's piercing eyes work perfectly for the role of Virginia. I realized while watching this movie that Fulci had a real talent for making people seem sinister so that it was absolutely impossible for me to solve the mystery. I did pick up on a couple of important clues, but not the most relevant one.

At one point, Virginia is gifted a watch that plays the titular tune, and I just knew that I had heard it before. Then I read that Quentin Tarantino wanted to remake The Psychic, but that project failed to materialize. However he used the tune in Kill Bill Vol. 1 and that's where I had heard it.

So, do I recommend this movie? Yes, it is good, at least when you get to the end. It's not really up there with The Lizard in a Woman's Skin or Don't Torture a Duckling, but it is absolutely worth watching.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!