A Cat in the Brain (Italy, 1990)

I’ve worried in previous years that I’m running low on Fulci films to include in my October Horror Movie Challenge. The real problem, however, is that I’m running low on good ones. Fulci directed over 60 features, but we only really remember a handful. A Cat in the Brain is from late in his career, when he may have been running out of steam. I probably wouldn’t have sought it out if I hadn’t seen all his classics already.

That said, A Cat in the Brain is a hell of a name, although the title card for the film calls it Nightmare Concert. Given the literal depiction of a cat eating brains in the opening sequence, and the way it’s used as a metaphor in the film, it’s weird that it was also released under a different title. Then again, would it really be an Italian horror film if it weren’t known by a half-dozen different names?

A Cat in the Brain is currently available on DVD in the UK.

Synopsis

Lucio Fulci is losing his mind. As he works on his latest film, which features a cheerful cannibal, elements of it start bleeding into his life as vivid hallucinations. This causes embarrassment when he conflates the German backers of the film and the Nazis that also, somehow, feature in what he’s shooting. It’s probably best not to dwell on the details of this film within the film.

Of course, Fulci seeks medical help. When his new psychiatrist watches Fulci’s films, he sees an opportunity. It turns out, inevitably, that this psychiatrist is a homicidal maniac, and he decides to frame Fulci for his planned murder spree. He implants a hypnotic suggestion that Fulci is committing these murders. In practice, however, this never has any effect beyond Fulci stumbling across crime scenes and hallucinating weird shit.

So will Fulci realise he is being set up? How much of what he is witnessing is real? And just how many disconnected scenes of gore can the audience sit through before we completely check out?

General Thoughts

A Cat in the Brain is a wildly inconsistent film, even by Fulci standards. It seems at first that we may see an exploration of the corrosive effects of obsessively imagining the most terrible acts of violence. The psychiatrist is insistent that Fulci’s work is responsible for his mental state. More interestingly, he believes he can blame his own murder spree on the corrupting effects of Fulci’s work. Like so much in this film, however, there is no pay-off to any of this.

There does seem to be an element of self-parody as well, especially when Fulci reviews a scene where a woman sings opera in bed while being strangled by her husband, using a leather whip. Similarly, the scene where he mistakes his German backers for Nazis is almost comedic but just ends up being uncomfortable. It feels like Fulci wants to poke fun at himself but can never entirely commit to it.

Mostly, however, A Cat in the Brain feels like an excuse to show the violent and highly sexualised murder of a lot of women. That’s hardly unique to this film, but it grows jarringly repetitive, especially in the latter half. For a film that’s about an imagination out of control, it could have used more actual imagination.

It is at least interesting to see Fulci play himself. He’s not a gifted actor, but he does have an expressive face. There is something creepy about the wish-fulfilment, however, when we see Fulci, in his mid-sixties, sailing off with a new twenty-something starlet girlfriend at the end. I’m not sure if the boat being named “Perversion” makes this better or worse.

Perhaps the high point of the film is when Fulci opines, “Sadism. Nazism. Is there any point anymore?” I feel you, Lucio. I feel you.

Verdict

The concept behind A Cat in the Brain is stronger than its execution, although I’m not entirely convinced by either. While there might be an interesting film to be made about a horror director’s growing disquiet with his own work, this isn’t quite it. Fulci doesn’t address any of the questions he raises, and the whole subplot with the killer psychiatrist just seems like a needless distraction. Even more irritatingly, it’s all resolved off-screen in a terribly anti-climactic moment.

Worse, perhaps, it all just feels like an excuse for Fulci to showcase vignettes of sex and violence that he couldn’t shoehorn into another film. That might have worked if any of them had actually been woth watching. Maybe you could create an unsettling effect by hinting at a larger context for these clips, or by presenting genuinely shocking images, but most of the vignettes are pretty tame by Fulci standards. Perhaps the closest to a weird sequence is the Nazi orgy, but even there the most depraved thing Fulci could find to show us is an SS officer playing pool with a naked woman sprawled across the table, using her crotch as a pocket.

A Cat in the Brain isn’t a terrible film, and it’s certainly not the worst thing Fulci made, but it is still disappointing. It’s a mistake to expect his films to be coherent, but this is a mess even by his standards. But, worst of all, it’s nowhere near as weird or transgressive as it thinks it is. It’s perhaps still worth watching if you are a Fulci fan and want to see the man himself in front of the camera, but save it until you’ve run out of his better films.

The October Horror Movie Challenge

Please do join in and share your own thoughts with us about this or any other films as the month goes on. You can usually find us on BlueSky, Reddit, Discord, or lurking in the dark corners of your home.

If you would like to play along at home, my provisional selections are:

Heretic (USA, 2024)
The Sadness (Taiwan, 2021)
The Uninvited (USA, 1944)
The Lodge (UK/USA, 2019)
WolfCop (Canada, 2014)
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Czechoslovakia, 1970)
The Monkey (USA, 2025)
Sister Midnight (India/UK, 2024)
Roadgames (Australia, 1981)
Nightmare City (Italy, 1985)
Dangerous Animals (Australia, 2025)
Dead Talents Society (Taiwan, 2024)
Winterbeast (USA, 1992)
Byzantium (UK/Ireland, 2013)
The Ugly Stepsister (Norway, 2025)
A Page of Madness (Japan, 1926)
Heart Eyes (USA, 2025)
Grafted (New Zealand, 2024)
Arrebato (Spain, 1979)
Hatching (Finland, 2022)
Abigail (USA, 2024)
Ganja & Hess (USA, 1973)
The Devil’s Bath (Austria, 2025)
Pieces (Spain, 1982)
Infested (France, 2023)
Best Wishes to All (Japan, 2022)
A Cat in the Brain (Italy, 1990)
Enys Men (UK, 2022)
Creature From the Black Lagoon (USA, 1954)
Perewangan (Indonesia, 2024)
Bring Her Back (Australia, 2025)

A Final Note

If you have been enticed here by these posts, please do look around at some of our other film reviews. We also have a podcast, called The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, which occasionally covers horror films. If this appeals, you might want to check out some of the following episodes.