Le Venin de la peur

It’s quite the atypical Fulci film. Instead of the classic scrapping of defenseless people, this time he prefers to serve up a detective story about a young woman's hallucinations, which may be connected to the murder of her neighbor in more than just the dream phase. There’s a distinctly Hitchcockian paranoia here (dreams, the color spectrum), but also a De Palma-esque trip (LSD, lesbians)., though that comparison may be a bit off given the year it was created. Fulci proves to be a skilled craftsman, this time coaching the distinctively artistic camera, working wonderfully with the editing, and generally managing to create tension even after all these years (the scene in the bowels of the organ). Unfortunately, it loses on the narrative front by default and at times the film is unnecessarily drawn out and chatty. Beyond that, it’s probably the best film I've seen from him so far. 4 ½. (29/11/2007)

Scripts were never Fulci's forte, but his execution of visually captivating scenes was masterful. The story is such a melodramatic soap bubble, a bit naive and a bit psychedelic (yeah, LSD was so hot back then :o). The conspiracy around which it all revolves is a bit of a head-scratcher, and the final reveal lacks narrative power, but otherwise the film offers enough bizarre moments to hold the attention. All the optical games, great timing of the scenes (the organ!!), sometimes pleasant erotic stuffiness (the sexual revolution was at its peak then), plus Fulci was perfect with women and the female body, most of his films had a strong female lead and it's similar here. The rating is on the borderline, it was nice, but in six months I'll probably forget about it. (16/01/2019)

This Fulci Giallo wasn’t very good. In old films like this, hallucinations and other deformations of reality annoy me a lot… But I will sure remember the church scene, that one is great. (28/02/2010)