A Cat in the BrainMovies like A Cat in the Brain
- Key Features:
- Metafiction, Horror comedy, Psychological horror, Exploitation film, Filmmaker, Paranoia, Identity crisis, Hallucinations, Violence-high, Gore-high, Cult classic, Director-driven
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, stylized
- Target Audience:
- Horror fans, Cult film enthusiasts, Fans of Italian horror, Those interested in metafiction
- Emotional Arc:
- Confusion → Dread → Terror
A Cat in the Brain

The master of Italian horror, Lucio Fulci, stars as... Lucio Fulci, a filmmaker with a reputation for gruesome horror films. His body of work has started to plague his mental state, and he is haunted by the grotesque set-pieces his mind has conjured up during his career. His psychiatrist, Egon Schwarz, uses a hypnotised Fulci as an avatar to carry out his own disturbed fantasies, in hopes of ruining the master’s reputation once and for all.
A Cat in the Brain
Carol Hammond, daughter of a politician, has vivid nightmares involving sex orgies and LSD. In a dream, she murders a neighbor she envies and wakes up to a real investigation into her neighbor's murder.

A newsman works with a blind puzzle-solver to uncover a deadly conspiracy linked to a genetic research facility.

After a doctor kills his mistress and himself while researching the mysterious previous owner of his Boston home, his colleague, Dr. Norman Boyle, takes over his studies and moves his family into the Boston mansion. Soon after, Boyle's young son Bob becomes plagued by visions of a young girl, who warns him of the danger within the house.

A woman seemingly dies of fright after participating in a séance where she sees a vision of a Dunwich priest hanging himself in a church cemetery. New York City reporter Peter Bell investigates and learns that the priest's suicide has somehow opened a portal to Hell and must be sealed by All Saints Day, or else the dead will overtake humanity.

The brains of a Russian taxi driver and a wealthy businessman are brought together in one body by a mad scientist.

A man wakes up one morning with an annoying ringing sound in his ears. A note on the fridge says: "Your friend Luigi has died. P.S. I took the car". The problem is that he does not even remember who this guy Luigi is. This is just the beginning of a tragicomic day during which he will be plunged into the folly of the world. One of those days that changes your life forever.

A reporter and a promiscuous young woman try to solve a series of child killings in a remote southern Italian town rife with superstition and a distrust of outsiders.

A brain surgeon marries a femme fatale, causing his life to turn upside down. Things go more awry when he falls in love with a talking brain.

Psychiatrist Caruso is arguably as nutty as his patients. He can remember at two years old being completely besotted by the charms of a naked girl. Even today, he can think of little else besides sex, sex, sex.

When Ted’s beloved cat dies, the trauma triggers a terrible mental breakdown. His broken brain prompts him to bring his feline friend back – all he needs is nine human lives. Ted dons vicious deadly cat claw gloves and a creepy cat mask, and goes on a murderous rampage. As the butchery escalates, a twisted romance blossoms between Ted and Claire, a young woman who has also recently lost her cat in a horrifying incident.

Conducting clandestine experiments within the morgue at Miskatonic University, scientist Herbert West reveals to a fellow graduate student his groundbreaking work concerning the re-animation of fresh corpses.

A burned-out New York police detective teams up with a college psychoanalyst to track down a vicious serial killer randomly stalking and killing various young women around the city.

A committed environmentalist whose hyperfixation with everything that's wrong with the world is taking a toll on his marriage tries a pill that reduces human brain capacity from the usual 20% to a mere 2%. Which puts him on a par with your typical man on the street.

Professor Malcolm Evans leads his archaeological expedition into the Valley of Temples in southeast Sicily. His companion and former student, Liza Harris, is looking forward to her very first dig. But Liza feels a strange sympathy with the valley and her recurring nightmares seem strongly tied to the nearby ruins. She is drawn to the remains of a 16th Century convent and its grisly legend of crucifixion. The local villagers rise to protect the entombed secrets of their ancestors, as Liza's obsession with uncovering the truth takes her deeper into the forbidden ruins and further from sanity!

Grotesquely surreal offering charting three male generations of the same bizarre family, including a pervert who constantly seeks for new kinds of satisfaction, an obese speed eater, and a passionate embalmer.

Gioia is a buxom centerfold working for Pussycat magazine. In such a profession, having an admirer or two is expected, but Gioia's admirer is a vicious killer! He murders her fellow magazine models one at a time, using a variety of twisted implements of death. Gioia is the lucky recipient of a collection of photos, each with murdered bodies arranged around posters of her.

Oliviero is a drunk, burned-out writer who amuses himself by hosting orgies at his grand country manor and humiliating his wife Irina. When a number of women are murdered in grisly fashion, Oliviero becomes a prime suspect.

Franco Lucci is an entrepreneur on the verge of bankruptcy. The salvation of his company hangs on a large public contract that he could obtain thanks to the intervention of a minister who has become a friend and whom he has invited to dinner. Together with Michele, his partner and brother-in-law, Franco has organized the perfect evening: in addition to paying him a large bribe, the two arrange for him to find a girl willing to sleep with him in exchange for a recommendation. All under the eyes of Rita, Franco's wife, who tries to indulge her husband in his last desperate attempt to obtain the million-dollar contract. Because of the girl, the evening takes an unexpected turn.

After an abandoned boat sails into New York harbor with a zombie aboard, a reporter teams up with the daughter of the boat's missing owner to investigate the island where he was last seen conducting research—the site of an alleged zombie outbreak.

The old and overcrowded penitentiaries are just a memory. Inmates now serve their sentence in a state of deep sleep that renders them harmless, and has drastically reduced recidivism. Until one day, a psychologist in charge of monitoring the mental state of inmates finds himself confronted with a prisoner over whom he's lost all control.

Mrs. Van Houten has shown signs of losing touch with reality, and her husband discusses possible treatment with Dr. Caligari, who says Mrs. Van Houten has a disease of the libido.

After having successfully eluded the authorities for years, Hannibal peacefully lives in Italy in disguise as an art scholar. Trouble strikes again when he's discovered leaving a deserving few dead in the process. He returns to America to make contact with now disgraced Agent Clarice Starling, who is suffering the wrath of a malicious FBI rival as well as the media.

A psychotic small-time criminal realizes that the everyday robberies, rapes and murders he commits aren't profitable enough, so he figures to hit the big time by kidnapping the daughter of a rich man.

An insurance investigator visits a small town while looking into the strange disappearance of a popular horror novelist. He soon finds that the impact of the author’s books is far more than inspirational.

Andrea Artusi is a successful businessman with a beautiful wife, Maria, and a happy marriage - until he has an affair. After his own cheating, he starts to become obsessed with his wife's fidelity. Since she is one of the most desired women in town, he worries that it would be very easy for her to cheat on him. Now every time a man looks at his wife, Andrea goes crazy. Meanwhile, Maria finds out about her husband's affair and decides to plan her revenge.

A young policewoman slowly goes insane while tracking down an elusive serial rapist/killer through Italy when she herself becomes a victim of the brutal man's obsession.

Carroll Baker stars in this psychedelic shocker about a mysterious witch who casts a spell over attractive, youthful fashion photographer Valentina Rosselli. Thrust into a world of sadism, Valentina must figure out whether the torture being inflicted on her is because of one woman's twisted agenda … or a curse known as Baba Yaga.

A San Francisco doctor encounters a prostitute who bears a striking resemblance to his late wife.

Italian Gothic horror that tells the tale of a man who stops at a remote castle hoping to get medical help for an injured woman, only to find the inhabitants mirror the darker sides of the woman and himself.

Bruno Bonomo was a famous producer of B-movies in the ‘70s. After a long hiatus, Bonomo offers a screenplay to RAI centered on the figure of Italy’s prime minister and media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, a subject so controversial that even the public television broadcaster refuses to produce it

An aspiring filmmaker goes to shocking extremes to convince Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway to star in his film. First entry in Adrian Țofei's spiritual trilogy which includes We Put the World to Sleep and Pure.

A police inspector suspects a serial killer is afoot in the university city of Bologna, luring in his victims through online video chats before murdering them and assuming their identity.

In the year 80 AMM (After Mickey Mouse) on planet X the crime-syndicated Cats try to erase the Mouse-population once and for all. A scientist of the mice, prof. Fushimishi seems to have found the weapon against the threat - so Intermouse calls its best (albeit retired) agent, Nick Grabowsky, to get the plans. As a distraction for the Cats, they also send a second agent - Seargent Lazy Dick - for the mission.

A sadistic count tortures and murders his unfaithful wife and her lover, then removes their hearts from their bodies. Years later, the count remarries and the new wife experiences nightmares and hauntings.

Horror junkie Joe Foster gets to live out his ultimate scary movie fantasy courtesy of Fear Inc., a company that specializes in giving you the fright of your life. But as lines blur between what is and is not part of the game, Joe's dream come true begins to look more like a nightmare.

One by one, with a sweet but inexorable rate, Ugo's colleagues, go to a better life. When Ugo is attending at one of the innumerable funerals, he and the priest remain involved in an accident. The doctor says that Ugo as only one week left to live

Neurosurgeon Koichi uses an experimental technique to enter the brain of his beloved Atsumi, who is in a coma after attempting suicide. In his quest, Koichi drifts steadily further into the sweltering marshes of the spirit. It is soon no longer clear what is real and what is not.

A young woman inherits an old hotel in Louisiana where, following a series of supernatural "accidents", she learns that the building was built over one of the entrances to Hell.

A group of people are trapped in a West Berlin movie theater infested with ravenous demons who proceed to kill and possess the humans one-by-one, thereby multiplying their numbers.

A young man, Marco, working as a butcher, accidentally kills a taxi driver. His girlfriend Paula wants to go to the police so he has to kill her too. He then has to kill his brother, his brother’s fiancée and his father, who have become suspicious. He gets rid of the bodies by taking them to a slaughter house.

Federico Fellini welcomes us into his world of film making with a mockumentary about his life in film, as a Japanese film crew follows him around.

Mafia hitman Tommy Spinelli is flying to San Diego with a bag that holds eight severed heads, which he's bringing to his superiors to prove that some troublesome rival mobsters are permanently out of the picture. When his bag gets accidentally switched at the airport, Tommy must track down his duffel bag and the 8 heads it contains.

A disturbed young embalmer digs the grave of his recently deceased girlfriend and brings her body to his family villa with help from his strange housekeeper. But his bouts of insanity are just beginning.

Unable to process the death of his daughter, Detective Boyd embarks on a hunt for a serial killer who murders according to a brutal tribal ritual: Muti. The only person who can help Boyd is Professor Mackles, an anthropologist who hides an unspeakable secret. The line between sanity and madness thins as Boyd goes deeper into the killer’s world.

In the 1970s, a British sound technician is brought to Italy to work on the sound effects for a gruesome horror film. His nightmarish task slowly takes over his psyche, driving him to confront his own past.

A razor-wielding serial killer is on the loose, murdering those around Peter Neal, an American mystery author in Italy to promote his newest novel.

Following a bungled robbery, three violent criminals take a young woman, a middle-aged man, and a child hostage and force them to drive them outside Rome to help them make a clean getaway.

A deeply disturbed and epileptic young man benignly decides to murder other members of his dysfunctional family for altruistic reasons.

Arthur and Anatole are two little robbers. They want to rob money, money that will travel in a special train from Paris to Bruxelles. They don't know that other people have planned to do the same thing.

A woman with psychic powers has a vision of a murder that took place in a house owned by her husband.

Dr. Blake runs a TV show called "Independent Thinkers", which is sort of a Scientology-like self-help/religion program. But he's not making his audience think any more independently - with the help of an alien organism he calls The Brain, he's using brainwashing and mind control. The only thing that stands between them and world domination is a brilliant but troubled high school student with a penchant for pranks...

As the result of a head injury, brilliant computer scientist Harry Benson begins to experience violent seizures. In an attempt to control the seizures, Benson undergoes a new surgical procedure in which a microcomputer is inserted into his brain. The procedure is not entirely successful.

A second-class horror movie has to be shown at Cannes Film Festival, but, before each screening, the projectionist is killed by a mysterious fellow, with hammer and sickle, just as it happens in the film to be shown.

In a small Scottish village, horribly murdered bodies keep turning up. Suspicion falls upon the residents of a nearby castle that is haunted by a curse involving a killer cat.

A middle-aged man dissatisfied with the present state of things finds himself in a parallel universe where all technology is stuck in the 1990s.

A psychotic man, troubled by his childhood abuse, kills and mutilates young women and local models on the streets of New York City.

Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men. A woman offers to take an injured man to the hospital. A widowed father and his son seek for a new wife/mother. A man seeks revenge for a woman's honor. A bored housewife tries to explain to her husband that he's not as romantic as he used to be.

An ophthalmologist's assistant with an unhealthy interest in human eyeballs goes on a killing spree to collect eyeballs for his overbearing mother's collection. Reality soon takes a bizarre turn, both for the characters and the audience.

Several people disappear from and at the sea. Their bodies are found gnawed to the skeleton, even the marrow is missing. The scientists have no idea which animal could do such things. Dr. Turner begins to suspect that the company which builds a tunnel beneath the bay might have poisoned the environment and caused an octopus to mutate to giant dimensions...

In late 19th century London, a woman weds a necrophiliac doctor whose first wife died under mysterious circumstances - and who might be returning from the grave to torment her successor.

A scientist comes to believe that evil is a disease of the blood and that the flesh of a skeleton he has brought back from New Guinea contains it in a pure form. Convinced that his wife, a Folies Bergere dancer who went insane, manifested this evil, he is terrified that it will be passed on to their daughter. He tries to use the skeleton's blood to immunise her against this eventuality, but his attempt has anything but the desired result.

In this adaptation of Tolstoy's story the Wurdulak, a mentally ill patient known as Nicola flashes back to horrifying experiences that he encountered while driving through the country. Upon damaging his car, Nicola sets out for help, only to meet a mysterious family that lives in total fear of someone or something. This evil force slowly penetrates the household and thrusts each of its members into a frenzy of absolute terror!

In an attempt to convince Minnie that he hasn't forgotten to buy her an anniversary present, Mickey Mouse ends up promising to take her to Hawaii. Funds being short, he applies for a job as lab assistant to the sinister Dr. Frankenollie, who happens to be searching for a donor to provide his monstrous creation with a brain.

A medical school dropout loses his fiancée in a tragic lawnmower incident and decides to bring her back to life. Unfortunately, he was only able to save her head, so he goes to the red light district in the city and lures prostitutes into a hotel room so he can collect body parts to reassemble her.

Beautiful young manicurist Carole suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen, leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend, Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness.

Felice Sciosciammocca, the mayor of Roccasecca, sends his nephew Ciccillo to Naples so that he will become a good doctor.

A quiet, epileptic taxidermist plans the perfect crime. All he needs is the right opportunity. An accident, perhaps…

A cat named Lorenzo is dismayed to discover that his tail has developed a personality of its own.

A beautiful film which is basically about a man, a piano player, who meets and falls in love with a beautiful and voluptuous woman, who, by some strange procedure, leaves the man unable to move but with a permanent priapism! After some time he becomes sick of it and she relieves his paralysis. Eventually she gets bored and decides to leave, but he can't take it because he loves her…

Edward is a friendly, harmless film editor in the splatter and gore department of a horror film company. Ed is assigned to work on the new Loose Limbs series of horror films after the previous editor killed himself with a hand grenade. Later his reality begins to twist and distort into a horrifying world where nothing is as it seems. Soon enough this turns Ed into Evil Ed!

An Italian high school student becomes infatuated with a woman he sees outside his class window. Her fiancée is in jail for being involved in a radical movement, and she spends much time in court providing moral support. At first she resists the student's advances, but eventually begins an affair with him. Their situation is condemned by her family and his father, who is the woman's psychologist.

Ottavio Camaldoli is a professor of Latin and Greek. An honest and gentleman, he is considered a "fool" by everyone around him. But what would happen if this defenseless man, a victim of petty daily abuses in his social life, at work, and even at home, were to receive another man's heart transplant? Especially if this other man, the donor, were a brutal criminal with the sinister nickname of "O Barbiere" (The Barber)? Would Ottavio Camaldoli, after inheriting the heart, automatically become a criminal? Science tells us that these are just silly, ancient beliefs. But what if Donna Carmela, the Barber's ruthless mother, were convinced that her son is still alive thanks to the heart now beating in the professor's chest?

The charismatic Snaporaz encounters an alluring woman on a train and pursues her through a forest. He ends up at a hotel populated by women gathered for a feminist conference, where he is an unwanted presence. Snaporaz soon discovers he’s entered a phantasmagoric world where women have taken power.

Townspeople of a small English village begin to die in a series of horrible accidents, and a Scotland Yard inspector arrives to investigate a mysterious local medium who records conversations with the dead.

In a nameless European city, a local reporter and his doctor wife try to escape from hordes of blood thirsty zombies, undead people exposed to nuclear radioactivity, while the military leaders fight a losing war of attrition against the relentless atomic zombies.

When a cynical journalist accepts a wager that he won't survive the night in a haunted castle, it unlocks an odyssey of sexual torment, undead vengeance, and a dark seductress who surrenders the gravest of pleasures.

A middle-aged woman, traumatized from the death of her adulterous lover, moves into a room at a New Orleans boarding house where the blind landlord becomes suspicious to her activities of continuing her affair with her dead lover.

Middle-aged Giulietta grows suspicious of her husband, Giorgio, when his behavior grows increasingly questionable. One night when Giorgio initiates a seance amongst his friends, Giulietta gets in touch with spirits and learns more about herself and her painful past. Slightly skeptical, but intrigued, she visits a mystic who gives her more information -- and nudges her toward the realization that her husband is indeed a philanderer.

In a Naples suspended between magic and superstition, madness and rationality, a mystery envelops the existence of Adriana, overwhelmed by a sudden love and a violent crime.

A rich, mentally-unstable man with a penchant for playing deadly S&M games with women who resemble his dead wife, sparks off a chain of bizarre events after getting remarried.

Dr. Marcus, a renowned psychiatrist, has selected 6 severe mentally ill and dangerous patients from the Spring Valley Mental Hospital to interview as part of research for his new book. As Dr. Marcus interviews each patient, one by one the horrors they have committed begin to unfold. However, Dr. Marcus soon learns that there is one patient who ties them all together - Patient Seven.

Inspector Tellini investigates serial crimes where victims are paralyzed while having their bellies ripped open with a sharp knife.

A police inspector has to help an eccentric stranger who seems to have lost his memory.

A New York University professor returns from a rescue mission to the Amazon rainforest with the footage shot by a lost team of documentarians who were making a film about the area's local cannibal tribes.

A vicious serial sex killer is on the loose, and landscape gardener and shop-window outfitter Loris is the prime suspect, thanks to his unfortunate habit of getting caught in compromising situations (for which there is always a totally innocent explanation that the police fail to spot). Undercover policewoman Jessica is assigned by eccentric police psychologist Taccone to follow Loris.

A young woman abducts a doctor whom she holds responsible for the death of her boyfriend and subjects him to various sexual torture acts.

Two dramatic stories. In an undetermined past, a young cannibal (who killed his own father) is condemned to be torn to pieces by some wild beasts. In the second story, Julian, the young son of a post-war German industrialist, is on the way to lie down with his farm's pigs, because he doesn't like human relationships.

An undertaker who hasn't had any 'customers' in a long time is forced to pay one year's back-rent. To get money he starts to kill people, which brings absurd results.

Martin Durnley is a young man with an infantilizing mother, resentful stepfather and an institutionalized brother with Down's syndrome. To cope, he retreats into an alternate child personality he calls Georgie. After being caught during a theft attempt at a department store, he befriends a female customer who is sympathetic to him, but his friendship soon turns into obsession.

A masked serial killer with psychosexual issues strangles female coeds with scarves before dismembering them. When a wealthy student identifies one of the scarves and thinks she has a lead on a suspect, she becomes the killer's next target, retreating to her family's remote cliffside villa with three of her girlfriends.

When a machine that allows therapists to enter their patient's dreams is stolen, all hell breaks loose. Only a young female therapist can stop it and recover it before damage is done: Paprika.

An Italian nobleman seeks help after his paralyzed daughter becomes possessed by the spirit of a malevolent ancestress.

Francesco is a psychoanalyst grappling with three hopeless causes: a bookseller in love with a book thief, a lesbian hell-bent on becoming straight after a heartbreak, and an 18-year-old in a relationship with a much older married man. Unfortunately, these patients are also his three beloved daughters!

Five ordinary people disillusioned with politics—a perennial temp, a docker, a university professor, a TV reporter, and a convict—decide to kidnap a politician, to dispense justice and use the ransom money to compensate the family of a blue-collar worker who died in workplace accident.

The wife of a psychoanalyst falls prey to a devious quack hypnotist when he discovers she is an habitual shoplifter. Then one of his previous patients now being treated by the real doctor is found murdered, with her still at the scene, and suspicion points only one way.

So-yeon suffers from claustrophobia and inherits a Persian cat when its owner dies. She begins having nightmares and people around her begin dying as she searches for the truth.

A psychoanalyst learns to have an illness and as a consequence he decides to quit his job. All his patients get together to find a way to make him feel better.

Four comedic episodes framed within the story of a tyrannical Zen master and his two hapless disciples.

