Nightmare Concert (A Cat in the Brain)

1990 **

I am beginning to despise the term "cult classic". When I hear cult classic It makes me think of certain films that I love so much like A Clockwork Orange or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It really pisses me off when people throw that term around loosely. Cat in the brain was labeled as a cult classic that is written by and stars Lucio Fulci. If it's truly a cult classic I don't want to meet the cult that is following this film. I found it to be just plain weird and rather disturbing.

 The film opens up as Fulci is directing a gruesome cannibalism scene. Later that evening he goes out for dinner and finds himself disgusted by the steak in front of him thinking back to the scene from the film. He begins to have more and more disturbingly violent and sexual visions so he goes to see a psychiatrist who is absolutely no help at all. As the visions worsen he begins losing control of himself in his real-life and he starts committing criminal acts or so he believes anyway. The rest of the film is spent trying to mind fuck the viewer into a game of is it real or just a hallucination?

The only redeemable quality about this film is that the Gore is typical Fulci disgustingness. I did enjoy watching him screen an eye gouge  scene over and over stating that it wasn't realistic enough while sending the FX guy trotting off with his bowl of eyeballs. The sex scenes are just gross, although the men will be happy to know that there are plenty of boobs in this film. It just felt like a roller coaster ride of good and bad, for example: murderous rampage - good/disgusting old guy twisting nipples - bad.

Fulci spends the entire film hallucinating and freaking out like a junkie going through withdrawal while lost in a corn maze. In one particularly disgusting worm ridden corpse scene the cameraman pulls in close-up on Fulci's face and he looks a bit like Heisenberg. He might have succeeded better if he was running a meth lab rather than trying to continue this deplorable film far longer than it ever should have gone. They say it isn't over until the fat lady sings, well in this case I was praying it would end when the cross eyed woman started choking out some operatic noise that resembled singing. Or it could just have been Edie Gourmet faking an orgasm. I did award it two stars for the gore and gore alone. Okay, maybe part of that rating was for the sweet little orange & white cat that dug up a dead body. Definitely not for the super fake looking cat puppets that were eating brains. Dear Mr. Fulci, why?