Giallo films are not the first thing many modern fans link to Fulci. Usually the gore drenched series of films which include the over discussed THE BEYOND or the zombie nasty masterpiece ZOMBIE 2 (aka ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS). These are the films which get the eyes and the reams of discussions on the web. Blood soaking, limb splitting and subtext filled! Occasionally though you meet a film fan who has seen something off the beaten track of Fulci. From the outstanding DONT TORTURE A DUCKLING to the average A LIZARD IN A WOMANS SKIN, these are films which reveal more about the great film maker and his connection with a genre, most Italian!

Virginia (Jennifer O’Niell) has moved to Italy with her new husband. Since childhood, a psychic power has traumatise her. Flashbacks trouble her waking hours. New bouts of horrific visions have her traumatised further still. She cant work out why she dreams of death, walls, people buried inside them, blood and the dark. Moving to Italy should change her life, it may give her freedom and may even stop the terrible fears from taking over her hopes. A new home, one that has been handed down to her husband and on to his children, could be the trigger for this future free of waking nightmares. When she meets a psychologist who explores her fears, this seems to make her visions darker. Then to discover that they’re premonitions of deaths are true.

THE PSYCHIC was not a free and easy production. It suffered under the delays of money and a clarity of content. Its producer, Luigi De Laurentiis (younger brother of the more famed Dino) was unable to find head way. Gialli were on the decline and the logic was to move away from them into other popular genres, like the police films or the later horror films. Finally however it was made in 1977, the same year cinema changed ultimately thanks to a space opera, it is not hard to see why De Laurentiis was concerned but it is sadly telling that the delay of some 5 years, was to damage its longer reputation. Fulci pushed the film and hard, but it failed and he would have been saddened by this no doubt. The new release form that Shameless has taken for the film is very clever in that it almost tries to move on from this failure. The films darker tones are embraced. It focuses on the magnetism in the films body and dream. Then you have the restorations of the film. It is solid in many ways but the realisation of reds, a colour that Fulci returns to regularly. This is its best quality. Fulci concerned himself more with his films then would be credited by even his biggest fan. The interview with Antonella on him, which is the best thing of all on the disc, reveals so much about him. In particular is that note of his use of nightmare and disturbance, that is absorbing. People need to understand him and that will allow them to feel the film. As this is an experience like no other indeed.

Extras:

• ‘TOUCHING FATE’ – A new exclusive interview of Antonella Fulci about ‘The Psychic’
• ‘DADDY DEAREST’ – An interview with Antonella Fulci about her father Lucio Fulci
• Restoration process for the Psychic – showing different stages
• ‘ESCAPE FROM DOOM’ – An interview with writer Dardano Sacchetti on working with Fulci
• ‘BEHIND THE WALL’ – An interview with Fabio Frizzi on scoring The Psychic (the music later used by Tarantino)

Pre-order: https://bit.ly/PsychicShameless

The Psychic is on Blu-ray and digital 9 August from Shameless Films