Touches You

Excellent but underrated film

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

This is an engaging, interesting Lucio Fulci film that tends to get overlooked a little as it was made during the period where he was mostly making very gory horror films. It's a supernatural thriller made with more restraint on Fulcis' part than usual (not that there isn't any gore; there's still some nice gruesome bits to enjoy). It's full of familiar faces and is filmed on a variety of real English locations and sets.Set in England, it's "freely adapted" from the Edgar Allan Poe tale, as it tells of mysterious deaths occurring in a small country village populated by people such as snooping photographer Jill Trevers (Mimsy Farmer) and Professor Robert Miles (old pro Patrick Magee, in one of his final roles), a crotchety old man attempting to communicate with the dead. As Jill and the intrepid Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck, also of Fulcis' "The Beyond") work the clues, she can't help but notice the cat scratches left on more than one victim. Could a demonic little feline really be the culprit?Beautiful cinematography (by Sergio Salvati), extremely impressive camera-work (by Franco Bruni and Roberto Forges Davanzati), wonderful music by the prolific Pino Donaggio, and a pervasive, weird atmosphere are all assets of this well told, reasonably absorbing mystery. It's certainly fun to watch the cast in this thing. Warbeck is a delight as the cop, Mimsy is very sincere in her performance, Magee is excellent as always, and Fulci regular Al Cliver ("Zombi 2", "The Beyond"), sexy Dagmar Lassander ("The House by the Cemetery"), and the lovely Daniela Doria (recipient of a lot of abuse in Fulci films) round out the cast."The Black Cat" is entertaining stuff that finds its director in fine form, always keeping his audience on edge. He does go for the close-up (of human and feline eyes) an awful lot, but this doesn't distract too much from the various spooky goings on, including one absolutely harrowing scene of a house (and person) catching on fire.Recommended to Fulci fans.Eight out of 10.

If this was any other director, I would probably have given this a higher rating, but this is Fulci and, frankly, we expect better things.A mad old guy - played by Patrick Magee, the guy in the wheelchair from A Clockwork Orange - owns a cat, which he uses to kill people he isn't too fond of, but gradually the cat develops a mind of its own and is not so easy to control. Those pesky felines and their wily ways.I'll admit, there are some spooky moments, and the effects occasionally border on the gross - though nothing compared with his more famous work - but overall it has the feel of an above average Hammer movie.Not bad, but not great either.

I really don't care what anyone says; "The Black Cat" is pretty damn cool. As far as the gore goes, it's not excessive as most of Fulci's films are, but it doesn't need to be. That being said, this film is not for the faint of heart. If you watched it with your grandma or someone who has not been jaded by the blood and guts in Italian horror films, you'd see it from a different side. A dude gets impaled, a girl burns to death, rotting corpses are found in a hot boat shack, and a cat repeatedly rips the flesh off a guy's face, goring him up. I mean, it's not "New York Ripper" but it's not a slasher film. It's more like a giallo.This film is most notable for the brilliant cinematography. The shots from the cat's point of view are awesome. And then there's the excellent acting (for a Fulci film). Mimsy Farmer is decent! And the other dude, Patrick Magee from "Clockwork Orange" isn't bad either. Better than other Fulci stuff for sure.The fact that the acting is above par and the fact that there isn't a constant onslaught of gore has contributed to the low rating on here. The film is a good giallo-style horror movie and it oozes with old school ambiance and mood. The soundtrack is great and all in all, it's a great adaptation of the Poe story.I recommend it to Italian horror fans who can stand to be entertained without seeing people get disemboweled.7 out of 10, kids.

Italy's 'godfather of gore', Lucio Fulci, serves up less splatter and more atmosphere than usual in this surprisingly enjoyable movie (loosely based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe) about a malevolent moggy murdering people in rural England.Fulci's directorial decision-making is sometimes questionable (just how many close-ups of eyes do you need in one film?), but with a reliable cast that should be familiar to fans of Italian horror, some nice cinematography, several creative deaths (which, whilst not as quite as gory as in other Fulci efforts, are still quite horrific), and a wonderful score from Pino Donaggio, this often overlooked Gothic tale is actually pretty good.Set in a small English town, The Black Cat sees the titular feline causing a series of deaths after tapping into the suppressed hatred of its psychic owner (Patrick Magee). When the crazy medium finally cottons on to what is happening, he tries to do away with the cat, drugging it and then stringing it up from a tree. But the whiskery menace is no ordinary puss, returning from the dead to exact revenge on its ungrateful owner.Mimsy Farmer also stars as a pretty American photographer caught up in the supernatural mystery, along with David Warbeck as a police inspector from the city who is called in to help solve the mystery, and Al Cliver as a local rozzer.A lot of Fulci fans might be put off from watching this effort by the fact that it doesn't contain graphic scenes of eye impalement, head drilling, or gut vomiting, preferring instead to concentrate on generating an eerie vibe. I suggest, even if your love of Fulci is purely down to his usually over-generous servings of gore, that you still give The Black Cat a chance.The death scenes in this one might not be as violently OTT as in his better known films, but Fulci doesn't entirely wimp out on the nastiness: there are a couple of burnings, an impalement, and one unfortunate couple get nibbled on by rats. Plus, you get a story that mostly makes sense.And in a Fulci film, you can't really ask for much more than that.