Review: The Psychic (1977)

(aka Sette note in nero, Seven Notes in Black, Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes)
Directed by: Lucio Fulci
Starring: Jennifer O'Neill, Gabriele Ferzetti, Marc Porel
Written by: Roberto Gianviti, Dardano Sacchetti
Music by: Franco Bixio, Fabio Frizzi, Vince Tempera
Country: Italy
Available on: Blu-ray (Scorpion Releasing)
IMDb

On one hand, it’s awesome that Quentin Tarantino directed so many new people towards Lucio Fulci’s filmography when he included the main musical theme from The Psychic in a prominent sequence from 2003’s Kill Bill: Volume 1. On the other hand, The Psychic isn’t a great representation of Fulci’s post-comedy work, so I’m not entirely sure how many of those potential new fans stuck around once they laid eyes on the tarantula scene in The Beyond. The film focuses on the titular psychic, who witnesses a murder during a strange series of premonitions and decides to investigate. Outside of the totally out of place opening scene of a woman leaping to her death from a cliff while scraping her face flesh off on the rocks as she plummets in slow motion (that’s a total retread of a very similar sequence in Don’t Torture a Duckling), this is Fulci’s most restrained giallo. Channeling Hitchcock instead of his usual bloodier muses, Fulci crafts a suspenseful and moody, if slow-churning and mostly nonviolent flick (not a single eye-gouging, for Jesus’ sake!) that takes some sweet, sweet time to build momentum. The first couple acts almost lost me — it seems as though Fulci only filmed one “vision,” and he serves it to you often, in differently sized bites — but when things start rolling in the last third, it’s hard to avert your attention. The final 30 minutes or so are mostly without dialogue or a break in tension, and The Psychic’s last scene is the type of chilling stuff most directors masturbate to before bed. All of these thrills are helped immensely by the killer score from Franco Bixio, Fabio Frizzi, and Vince Tempera. The main motif that everyone Tarantino fan loves is just a small tidbit of a very emotive and haunting whole, among the very best soundtracks in Fulci and Frizzi’s considerably fruitful collaborations. However, though there’s definitely some fine filmmaking on display in spots, The Psychic seems tedious and unimaginative compared to something like A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin. I wouldn’t consider the movie among Fulci’s best, but it’s worth seeking out for the slivers of brilliance that reveal themselves.

Overall rating: 6.5 out of 10