THE PSYCHIC (1977) Limited Edition Blu-ray
Director: Lucio Fulci
Scorpion Releasing


Lucio Fulci ponders the inescapable nature of fate with his paranormal giallo THE PSYCHIC, on Blu-ray from Scorpion Releasing.

As a child in Italy, American interior decorator Virginia (Jennifer O'Neill, SCANNERS) telepathically saw the brutal death of her mother (Elizabeth Turner, WAVE OF LUST) miles away in England. Over the years she has had other visions that have not come to pass, but none so clearly as those of an old woman murdered by a limping man and walled up that assail her on the way home from seeing her husband Francesco (Gianni Garko, COLD EYES OF FEAR) off on business trip. Her parapsychologist friend Luca (Marc Porel, THE SISTER OF URSULA) believes they are hallucinations caused by stress, so an exasperated Virginia decides to busy herself by restoring a long-derelict country house belonging to her husband. While cleaning up a room, she is assailed by the visions again and realizes that it is the room in which the woman was walled up. Taking a pickaxe to the wall she unearths a skeleton. When the police investigate, she is surprised to discover that the forensics team have determined that the skeleton belongs to a twenty-five year old girl probably dead for the last four or five years rather than on old woman. Francesco's ownership of the villa makes him a suspect, more so than his sister Gloria (Evelyn Stewart, THE BLOODSTAINED BUTTERFLY) when it is discovered that he had a brief relationship with the murdered girl Agnese Bignardi who was reported missing in 1972. When Francesco is arrested, Virginia looks to Luca to help her decipher her visions, leading her to a museum curator (Gabrielle Ferzetti, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST), a mystery involving a stolen Vermeer painting, and sightings of the supposedly dead older woman (Veronica Michielini) who might be a ghost; but there may be more horror to come in the future rather than the past.

Lucio Fulci's fourth giallo following his jazzy 1960s ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER, the psychedelic A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN, and the rural horrors of DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING, THE PSYCHIC was one of the most accessible Fulci films from his pre-ZOMBIE days for American viewers. While Dario Argento's influential DEEP RED offered up a series of DON'T LOOK NOW-esque imagery that found analogs in the film's climax, THE PSYCHIC provides a concrete series of images and it is through the progression of the narrative that we discover that the mystery lies in their false initial interpretation as they fall into place – in a way, a novel variation on Argento's "I saw something important but I don't understand its significance yet" mechanism – before an almost unbearably tense drawn-out finale. Like DEEP RED, THE PSYCHIC is a film in which it pays to rewatch it to see those clues falling into place (even if editor Vincenzo Tomassi does bludgeon viewers over the head when they appear). The final moments are not so much open-ended as the expected part of the resolution is just unnecessary to depict. After his cycle of gothic horror films in the early eighties, Fulci would return to the giallo with the brutal NEW YORK RIPPER, the stylishly silly MURDER-ROCK, and the supernatural-tinged VOICES FROM BEYOND while a variation on THE PSYCHIC's finale would also find its way into THE BLACK CAT. Fabio Frizzi (THE BEYOND) in collaboration with Vince Tempera (THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS) and Franco Bixio (SILVER SADDLE) provide a score that is simultaneously Goblin-esque while centered around a carillon melody of seven notes not unlike an Ennio Morricone giallo score. Although not shot in Techniscope, the photography of future Fulci regular Sergio Salvati (THE WAX MASK) is occasionally inventive while this may be the only film in Fulci's cannon where his fixation on close-ups of eyes is narratively justified. The film also features Fabrizio Jovane (CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD's Father Thomas) as a police commissioner, THE STENDHAL SYNDROME's Luigi Diberti as the prosecutor, ENIGMA ROSSO's Fausta Avelli as Virginia in the flashbacks, THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS' Bruno Corazzari as a racing jockey, and THE SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF A MINOR's Jenny Tamburi as Luca's secretary who is more assertive in digging up clues than Virginia or Luca.

Produced as SEVEN NOTES IN BLACK referring to a central clue and prepared for export as MURDER TO THE TUNE OF SEVEN BLACK NOTES, the film was released theatrically in the United States by Brandon Chase's Group 1 International in 1979 as THE PSYCHIC with a shortened opening credits sequence and the end credits lopped off (a treatment Group 1 also gave to the Silvio Amadio's giallo AMUCK), and it arrived on VHS from Lightning Video in that form. Severin Films released the film on DVD in 2007 in an anamorphic transfer with the English dub and the featurette "Voices from the Black" with screenwriter Dardanno Sachhetti (DEMONS), costume designer Massimo Lentini (TROLL 2), and editor Bruno Micheli (ANTHROPOPHAGUS). A stacked two-disc DVD edition followed in France from Neo Publishing that included an English track but no English subtitles for the Italian audio commentary by cinematographer Salvati or the second disc with an hour-long documentary, an interview with actor Garko, composer Frizzi, and editors Ornella and Bruno Micheli. The first Blu-ray came out in Germany in 2015 from Elea Media once again with English audio but no translation for the commentary by German film historian Marcus Stiglegger. That transfer was an upgrade over the DVDs but an older HD master with the dreaded scanner noise.

Scorpion's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray – featuring the MURDER TO THE TUNE OF SEVEN BLACK NOTES title card and English opening and ending credits – boasts of being a new 2018 2K scan of the original 35mm camera negatives and generally looks good when one takes into account the diffusion deployed by Salvati in the day exteriors and the various lens occlusions during the psychic visions while the enhanced detail draws attention to some of the recurrences of imagery from Virginia's visions before she notices them. The encoding has been criticized and there are moments zooming into the image where it seems like the encoder lost the war with the film grain resulting in some smeary renditions of solid colors and facial features; however, this is nothing like the replaced first pressing of Blue Underground's Blu-ray of THE STENDHAL SYNDROME and it may well do for most fans whether a new encode is done for a standard release or a UK edition pops up (the film has not thus far been released there theatrically or in any home entertainment format).

Scorpion has recorded a brand new audio commentary by film historian Troy Howarth – author of "Splintered Visions: Lucio Fulci and His Films" – in which he discusses the long path of development of the script with Fulci and Roberto Gianviti (SEVEN BLOOD-STAINED ORCHIDS) initially hired to adapt Vieri Razzini's novel "Deadly Therapy" for producer Luigi De Laurentiis (LEVIATHAN). He also discusses the production of the film, its plotting (including callbacks to DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING), and analysis of the story including the unlikely but amusing subtext of Freudian tunnel symbolism. "Defeating Fate" (50:14) is an interview with screenwriter Sacchetti that includes audio excerpt from Fulci. Sacchetti rehashes the story of Fulci and Gianviti working on the Razzini adaptation and getting nowhere, De Laurentiis bringing him in because he had worked with Argento on CAT O'NINE TAILS and Bava's A BAY OF BLOOD, which angered Fulci who thought he was there to spy on them for the producer. Gianviti helped Sacchetti learn to work with Fulci, but the adaptation they completed was rejected by de Laurentiis. A disagreement about whether it was possible to escape one's predetermined fate lead to the development of what would become THE PSYCHIC which Fulci choosing the SEVEN NOTES IN BLACK based on the mechanism that allows the circumventing to fate, but the script would also be rejected by de Laurentiis before it found another company. Sacchetti is disappointed that the film flopped upon release because he considers it a "jewel" in the genre and is pleased that it later found an audience. The disc also includes a stills gallery (2:29), the American trailer (1:06) which gives the twist away (like the poster tagline), a reversible cover with new artwork on the front and the American artwork on the back, a limited edition slipcover, and a 9x11 mini poster with artwork by Wes Benscoter
. (Eric Cotenas)

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