Whenever I’m watching a Fulci movie — or even discussing him — I turn to Becca and often speak in an Italian accent and say things like, “Can I stab the woman in the eyeball now? I’m bored.” If we’re to believe this meta-biographical film, my impression is not far off.

Fulci plays himself, a man haunted by the ever-worsening gore that his movies use. Now, real-life murders — and an obsession with violence everywhere he looks — have taken over his mind. He has, quite literally, a cat in the brain, eating away at the soft tissue, that we see while he’s trying to finish writing a script.

Finishing his latest film, Touch of Death, Fulci tries to eat a meal, but even the fillets and steak tartare he’s offered remind him of the gore he’s just directed. And then when he gets back to work, he’s irritable, even smashing a plate of animal eyeballs. Fulci is and at eyeballs? Something’s wrong!

He can’t even sleep when he gets home, as a handyman is using a chainsaw outside. Fulci flips out and uses a hatchet to smash some paint cans while the music from The Beyond plays.

Fucli decides to see a shrink, Professor Egon Swharz, who we first see fighting with his wife, Katya. His nurse, Lilly (Paola Cozzo, the pregnant nun from Demonia) lets him know that Fulci has arrived. Lilly instantly knows who the director is and Swhartz is interested to break down the barriers between film and reality.

Back at work, Fulci is struggling to complete both Touch of Death and Ghosts of Sodom (Sodoma’s Ghost) at the same time. What follows are two completely batshit sequences where Fulci directs a Nazi seduction scene and imagines a Nazi orgy while being interviewed by a long-legged German reporter. Fulci mutters a non-stop stream of sexual demands as the action unfurls in front of him, reducing him to only being able to say, Sadism. Nazism. Is there any point any more?” When we come back to reality, Fulci has smashed all of their cameras and must apologize.

When he returns for more therapy, the trap is sprung. Swharz wants to use Fulci to commit crimes, killing a string of prostitutes (using footage of other Fulci movies). The toll is taking over his professional life, as his assistant director has started working on his movie without him. Everywhere Fulci goes, death follows and even the police aren’t there to take his confession. When he goes to the police inspector’s house, he sees the man and his family stabbed, chainsawed and decapitated.

Everywhere Fulci goes, death follows and even the police aren’t there to take his confession. When he goes to the police inspector’s house, he sees the man and his family stabbed, chainsawed and decapitated. He still can’t convince anyone that he’s the murderer — he’s a kindly looking older man in a cardigan who people know creates these little gore movies.

Swharz finally flips out and kills his wife, cutting her head off with piano wire. He hypnotizes Fulci, who suffers through a series of violent images before passing out in a field next to a cute cat digging up the remains of one of the doctor’s victims. His friend the inspector finally arrives, but it’s to tell Fulci that they’ve caught the doctor in the act and that he’s innocent.

Months later, Fulci and Lilly, the nurse from earlier, are on his sailboat, named for his first movie Perversion. He uses a chainsaw to chop her up and then makes fishing lures with her bloody fingers. Is Fulci a killer? Nope. He’s just finishing the exact movie that we just watched. The film wraps and he sails away with Lilly, who is really an actress. Everything ends happily — at least in this version. Another has a scream during the credits to suggest that maybe Fulci is a killer.

Cat in the Brain — its title is a play on The Cat in the Hat — is a weird one. Fulci is the main actor in the film, but he had no confidence in his acting abilities, so his voice is dubbed by Elio Zamuto (who was also the Italian dubbing voice for Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I.).

Supposedly, the film started with a script with no dialogue that was a catalog of mutilations and the sound effects that would go with them. And Brett Halsey had no idea he was even in the film until long after it was done, as Fulci just used previously shot footage. This hurt their friendship, as Halsey felt he should have been paid.

In Fulci’s one U.S. convention appearance at the January 1996 Fangoria Horror Convention in New York City, he appeared on crutches with a bandaged foot. He was sick — he’d die two months later — and blizzards had covered the city with inches of snow. Yet fans came from all over the country for the rare chance to meet Fulci. This footage is on the second disk of Cat in the Brain and features the man himself speaking to the crowd, where he claims that Wes Craven’s New Nightmare rips off this film.

Sure, Cat in the Brain raises issues of the effect of horror on the people who make it. But is it really just a greatest hits of Fulci’s later period work? Did he feel trapped within the genre? Was it cathartic to create? These are all questions I would love to have heard him answer.

You can find this at Diabolik DVD.

Who better to take on the La Casa franchise — films that are not sequels and are not connected to one another — than the man who made Troll 2, a movie that is not a sequel and is also not about trolls?

Yep. Claudio Fragasso (Monster Dog, Rats: Night of Terror) is in control of your movie watching experience and he’s brought Troll 2 child actor Michael Stephenson along for another ride through the bottom of the movie making barrel.

A priest and his family — right off the bat, you could see that this script has holes you can drive the Landmaster from Damnation Alley through because Catholic priests can’t marry — move into a new house. Bad news for them, good news for us —  it was built over the graves of twenty dead witches.

Their son gets possessed, along with a radio and a meat cleaver. Oh yeah — there’s also the ghost of a female serial killer who wants to eat the souls of children.

And in another of those “they should have known better” moments, this is all filmed in the same building as Fulci’s The Beyond!

If you’re looking for the madcap moments that Troll 2 has, you won’t find them here. This is a more linear and controlled film, except for the crazed performance by David Brandon as Father George, an alcoholic priest whose contact with a demon has made him question his faith. You’ll marvel as he wanders down real city streets with real people — not extras — ranting like a maniac! But what do you expect? He watched a serial killer orgasm in the electric chair surrounded by the trapped spirits of her victims!

Looking for a copy for yourself? Shout! Factory has this on a double disk, along with the George Eastman directed Metamorphosis. You can also watch it on Shudder.

Until Vinegar Syndrome released this film on DVD in October of this year, Demon Wind was one of the very few horror films that had been huge on VHS that had never made the jump in format.

The best description I can find in my head for this film is a mix of Fulci and the Evil Dead, but a movie that makes way less sense. Yes, a film with less sense of plot than The Beyond and none of the aspiration toward art. And yet there’s so much to like!

In 1931, we see a body burned on a cross in the front yard. There’s another in the hallway and plenty of paintings of Jesus, as we hear singing about being washed in the blood of the lamp. We discover that a woman and her husband are trying to hide from demons. Instead, the husband transforms into a demon and kills her.

Fast forward to 1991 and Cory is dealing with the suicide of his father. He’s the grandson of the people we saw in the opening and has decided to go back to the farmhouse where they died. Often in these posts, I try and give advice. Here’s a new piece: if your family has a weird supernatural death or disappearance in its history, just leave it alone. Don’t go back to the cabin. Don’t go into the woods. Don’t go to the farmhouse. Just don’t.

He puts together a gang of his friends to hang out at the farmhouse, but of course a fog rolls in. And some demons. And lots of death. The farmhouse has a shield that keeps the demons out, but one by one, the teens are turned into demons. Luckily, they find some daggers that can kill the demons. Unluckily, the demon’s master arrives and they need to do much more to defeat him.

That said, where you’d expect things to make sense, Demon Wind goes in a much stranger direction. Like when Cory mentions he has been in a gas station before in a dream, we get to see that dream — in which he’s holding a big book while talking to his grandmother. Naked. Buck ass naked.

Also, the kids in these films have weird interconnected relationships. Like Cory’s girlfriend, Elaine used to date his best friend Dell. He greets her by kissing her directly on the lips and then high fives Cory. As you do. Dell’s new girlfriend, Terry, has an ex-boyfriend named Chuck, who brings his girlfriend Stacy, his magic tricks and an arsenal of roundhouse kicks.  I can only imagine that if these kids all worked in a mall together, they’d all have sex in the same room like Chopping Mall. Only Jack and Bonnie seem like they aren’t Eskimo brothers or sisters with someone else.

Despite warnings from old creepy men at gas stations — hello, Friday the 13th — and dead bodies and evil statements in blood on the walls, everyone acts like things are as normal as possible. It’s not just wooden acting. It’s literally like nothing phases these kids.

Bonnie reads the words off the wall a– “Now Satan shall walk” in Latin — and an explosive chicken shoots out of the oven and almost kills everyone. You read that one right. An explosive chicken. Somehow, Bonnie instinctively knows how this all works and has one request: when she dies, please don’t bury her here.

Also — The Fog (or the fog) covers the town, making sure that every escape attempt brings them right back to the farmhouse. And then three little girls take Bonnie, who disappears, leaving behind a burning baby doll.

Everyone decides that they will stay in the farmhouse for protection. Whereas in a film like Night of the Living Dead you’d batten down the hatches and board up the windows, these kids clean the house. Yes, in the face of certain death, the first thing they decide to do is some spring cleaning.

Then another couple just randomly shows up! Demon Wind doesn’t just go off the rails. It throws the rails off a cliff and follows them into the abyss.

The final act of this film just gets more and more bizarre. There’s gunplay. Demons feel up women and trying to get them off just by touching their breasts. Cow skulls eat faces. A female demon strips in the front yard, begging for the guys to come out and have sex, at which point they look at one another and say, “Demon,” like this is some demented Bud Lite commercial. And oh yeah — Cory transforms into a demon himself to battle the final boss.

There’s some decent gore. Some horrible acting. And no relation to the normal world in which you live and breathe. I often joke that there are some films that I just won’t recommend to normal people. Demon Wind is one of those films. But to my friends that I trust, to those that can effortlessly deal with trifling concerns like plot, motivation or dealing with multiple dream sequences, I’ll give this a recommendation.

Update: This is now streaming for free with an Amazon Prime subscription.

Sicily. 1486. A bunch of villages descend on five nuns — suspected of being witches — and drop the witch hammer on them. Each is crucified and then nails are driven into their chests. Blood sprays everywhere. Fulci is pleased.

Toronto. 1990. Liza is at a seance where she sees the crucified nuns and collapses, screaming on the floor. Perhaps you may recognize that this is kind of how Fulci began City of the Living Dead.

Liza then joins an archaeology team led by Professor Evans (Brett Halsey, The Devil’s Honey) as they visit Greek ruins near Sicily. Locals like Turi (Lino Salemme, Ripper from Demons!) and Porter (Al Cliver, 2020 Texas Gladiators, Zombi 2) warn them of the local legends that surround the monastery. And even after Professor Evans warns Liza to stay away from the unknown after the way she reacted to the seance, she enters the crypt within the ruins.

Using a pickaxe, she breaks into the wall and finds the remains of the nuns, angering the Professor and setting off a series of murders, like Porter being killed by a nun with a harpoon gun and two members of the team being killed by metal spikes.

Liza meets with a medium named Lilla, who tells her all about the witches. They’d invite young people to partake in orgies and kill them at the moment of orgasm, drinking their blood and going insane. If they ever got pregnant, they’d have the baby and throw it into a fire. Suffice to say, these are very evil nuns we’re dealing with. The kind of evil nuns that make Lille’s cats eat her the moment Fulci leaves. If you’re wondering, do they eat her eyeballs, then the answer is yes. Obviously, you know Fulci like I know Fulci.

Everyone suspects Turi, but he dies, too. A nun comes into the butcher shop and impales him on a hook, then stabs him in the neck, then nails his tongue to a block, then freezes him. Fulci, you scamp!

Inspector Carter (Fulci) starts to suspect the Professor, who decides to get out of town. Liza is going crazy and she refuses to leave, even when the townsfolk attack the ruins. Robby, a young boy, gets kidnapped by a white nun with no face, but he escapes just in time to watch his father get torn in half. Fulci strikes again!

Liza then stabs the Professor and disappears. The townsfolk charge into her chamber, where she foams at the mouth as she hangs on a cross. They set the crosses on fire again and everyone is destroyed, leaving the Professor to stagger in, bloodied, where he sees Liza’s dead body.

There are some great shots in the open here, with the camera wildly swinging through the seance and the nuns being executed. And the film looks so much better than Touch of Death. The city feels like A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin. It starts like City of the Living Dead. And Fulci has done possession before with Manhattan Baby. But this isn’t a greatest hits collection — we still need to watch A Cat in the Brain.