Baseshment
I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.
Curapedi
I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.
Loui Blair
It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.
Claudio Carvalho
In London, Carol Hammond (Florinda Bolkan) lives in a fancy building with her husband Frank Hammond (Jean Sorel) and her stepdaughter Joan Hammond (Edy Gall). Carol is the beloved daughter of the wealthy and prominent lawyer and politician Edmond Brighton (Leo Genn) and Frank is his partner in his office and has a love affair with Deborah (Silvia Monti). Carol's next door neighbor Julia Durer (Anita Strindberg) is a depraved woman that promotes parties with drugs and orgies. Carol has psychoanalyze sessions with Dr. Kerr (George Rigaud) and is intrigued with a nightmare where she stabs Julia to death three times with a couple watching the murder. When Julia is found dead in her apartment, the efficient Inspector Corvin (Stanley Baker) and his partner Sgt. Brandon (Alberto de Mendoza) are assigned to investigate. All the evidences point out to Carol, but was a dream or reality?"Una lucertola con la pelle di donna", a.k.a "A Lizard in Woman's Skin", is a great giallo by Lucio Fulci. The story is complex with many twists and there are many suspects that might have killed Julia Durer. The conclusion is exceptional, with Inspector Corvin soling the case. Florinda Bolkan has great performance and is extremely elegant. The graphic dog scene is impressive and was necessary to prove in court that it was the work of the special effects. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Uma Lagartixa num Corpo de Mulher" ("A Gecko in a Woman's Body")
Leofwine_draca
An early effort from Italian goremeister Lucio Fulci, this slow-moving giallo has a really odd dream-like atmosphere to commend it. Despite being unintelligible and rather too complex in parts, for the main it's an intriguing murder mystery packed with suspects, red herrings, and a dogged inspector pursuing the case until its very end. Unlike most gialli of the time, there is only one murder here, but every facet of the crime is explored in full detail.There are plenty of good points in this film's favour. Firstly, the wacky direction from Fulci, which has the camera darting all over the place. Secondly, a rubbery bat attack which comes out of nowhere and rips off a certain Hitchcock classic. Then we also have an imported Stanley Baker lurking about, whistling a little ditty constantly. He's a cross between John Saxon and Donald Pleasence in DEATHLINE - fantastic! The only thing missing in this film is the excess gore we've come to expect from Fulci - apart from the one bloody murder and an arm slashing, this is gore free, although there is a very disturbing moment involving vivisection. The acting is generally very good here, and a lot better than you might expect. Florinda Bolkan is very good as the confused, haunted victim and Leo Genn adds a touch of class to the movie.Don't be put off by the slow first half, as things soon pick up in the latter segment. Okay, so at times they do get too complex, but there's a wonderfully tense chase which seems to last forever, plus about a billion different people involved in the crime at the end - and the motives are somewhat bizarre, to say the least. This isn't a brilliant film by any means, but I would recommend it to Italian horror/mystery fans as there are a lot of interesting bits.
lastliberal
O goody, Anita Strindberg (Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, Women in Cellblock 7, The Eroticist) is back as a wild partier next door to Carol (Florinda Bolkan). Carol keeps dreaming of being ravished by her neighbor.However she wants to be ravished, she is torn and kills her in the next dream. She is, of course, a suspect when her neighbor turns up dead the next day.Nice touch with the bats in the belfry. If Carol wasn't crazy before, she certainly would be after that scene.As is usual in Giallo, there is always a twist at the end when elaborate plans are revealed and mistakes found.Great Fulci thriller.
ferbs54
"Lizard in a Woman's Skin" (1971) is an early, comparatively goreless giallo from Italian master Lucio Fulci. In it, Florinda Bolkan (who would go on to play the epileptic voodoo woman so memorably chain-whipped to death in Fulci's 1972 effort "Don't Torture a Duckling") portrays Carol Hammond, a well-to-do wife living in London who suffers from dreams of a very startling nature. Her latest involves the murder of her swinging next-door neighbor, a gorgeous blonde who's always throwing psychedelic, acid-drenched orgies. (Why can't I get invited to one of these things?!?) When that neighbor is found brutally slain a few days later, poor Carol is thrown into quite a state indeed... Anyway, director Fulci uses all the tricks in his considerable arsenal--split screens, slo-mo, smeared lenses, rapid-fire editing, unusual camera angles--to create a sense of decided strangeness in his picture, and he is abetted by the maestro himself, Ennio Morricone, who provides a score that is alternately freaky and quite lovely. Despite the relative lack of gore and the low number of actual homicides, the film boasts at least one bravura set piece, in which Florinda plays cat and mouse with a crazed killer in an immense, deserted cathedral, inhabited only by rampaging bats. (Fulci would use a similar bat attack sequence in a later film, 1981's "The Black Cat.") I cannot imagine anyone being able to divine the identity of the killer in this picture (unlike detective Stanley Baker, who is very fine here, by the way), but must admit that the film does hang together logically and coherently, unlike some other gialli that I have seen. In all, a most worthwhile film indeed, and the very decent-looking DVD that I just watched from the fine folks at Shriek Show serves it well.
