A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971)
Obsessed with her Bohemian nuisance-neighbour, Julia (Anita Strindberg), wealthy London socialite Carol (Florinda Bolkan) dreams alternately of making love to or killing the other woman, only to find herself the chief suspect when Julia is found dead in real life.
The first twenty minutes of this Lucio Fulci-helmed giallo are quite special, with surreal, pared back dream sequences contrasting scenes of Carol’s banal domestic life, with unusual (for the time) handheld camerawork bringing a real sense of tension to the conversations at the dining table. I had hoped we were in for a gender-swapped version of weird-noir classic
Performance, but disappointingly, however, the film can’t keep this strangeness up, and becomes something more conventional for most of its runtime.
It is still a good example of the form, but it’s also worth warning that, in its unedited version, the film does contain one scene of very graphic (but, I must stress, simulated) animal cruelty, which seems to serve no purpose other than a cheap jump scare.
Predator: Badlands
Following the death of his brother, Yautja hunter Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) journeys to a hostile planet to kill the legendary beast that he believes will make him worthy in the eyes of his clansmen, only to end up in an unlikely alliance with stranded synthetic human Thia (Elle Fanning), after both have bitten off more than they can chew.
There is definitely a conversation to be had here about what people want from a
Predator movie.
Badlands largely tones down the horror element that distinguished pretty much everything else in the series (including director Dan Trachtenberg’s own
Prey), in favour of a muscular adventure-quest, with a strong hint of buddy-cop schtick, as Thia provides a motor-mouthed commentary to make up for Dek’s mono-syllabic glower. With its jovial tone and questionable companions, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there’s even something of latter day
Star Wars about the proceedings. We’ve come a long way from Arnie calling someone an ugly muppet-plucker.
Yet, if you can approach it with an open mind, I think you’d be hard pushed not to find something to your liking here. The two people I saw it with dug their heels in and hated it, but I thought it was tremendous. The quippy dialogue can grate at times, but this feels like an absolute love letter to classic genre movies, with great action and effects work to complement a surprisingly charming odd-couple dynamic at its heart. I’d go as far as to say I think this is a better movie than
Prey (it brings more fresh ideas to the table) and I’m genuinely keen to see what Trachtenberg will do with his next film.
If you’re in the mood for something else along similar lines, I can recommend
The Challenge. It’s a little overlong (I reached tolerance point for looking at Scott Glenn’s terrible hairdo after about an hour) but Toshiro Mifune gives it a touch of class and the finale is bananas.
