Note: Severin Films today announced that due to an authoring error resulting in very low levels on the feature audio they will be destroying all copies of the first press of THE PSYCHIC. The levels that were authored to preview copies of the DVD were unacceptable and therefore have to be corrected prior to release. This has meant postponing the street date until December 4.

No, it’s not the rise and fall of Dionne Warwick’s network of friends… it’s Fulci.

By 1977, director Lucio Fulci was starting to find his calling in Italian cinema… and it only took him about twenty years to do so.  Aside from some really bad comedies, James Bond rip-offs (I love wanna-Bonds personally), a few Spaghetti Westerns and a number of Sexploitation flicks, Fulci had also dabbled in the giallo genre, with now-cult classics Don’t Torture A Duckling and A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin under his belt.  For me, however neither of those two films had quite the impact on me as Sette Note In Nero, or The Psychic, did.

Mind you, this film was released a full two years before Fulci would find his shtick with Zombi 2 and the subsequent gore class-icks such as City of the Living Dead, The Beyond and The House By The Cemetery, not to mention Contraband and the incredibly misogynistic The New York Ripper… all of which would seal Lucio’s fate as one of the most famous Italian Splatter directors.

The Psychic begins in England, 1959.  A woman drives to the cliffs of Dover and promptly falls to her death in what I assume is suicide.  At the same time in Florence, Italy, her daughter experiences a vision of her mother plummeting to her demise…her face peeling off on the now not-so-white cliffs as she goes down.

Yep, she’s psychic, folks.

Jump to modern time (well, the late 70s).  The little girl from 1959 is all grown up, bears the name Virginia and has changed her hair and eye color significantly.  She also looks a lot like that chick from Scanners.  Virginia (Jennifer O’Neill) is married to Francesco Ducci, a local Italian rich guy.  One late afternoon, after dropping her husband off at his private plane (told you he was rich), Virginia suffers another vision while traveling through a tunnel: this time of a dead old woman being walled up in a room (there are more than a few nods to Poe here).  Naturally, no one believes her, including her psychologist/friend Luca (Marc Porel).

Deciding to take her mind off of the whole thing, she retreats to a dilapidated villa with the hopes of remodeling it.  As she starts to unveil the furniture, she realizes that she is in the room from her vision.  Acting on impulse, she begins to tear down the wall, only to find the skeletal remains of a murder victim.

When Francesco is arrested (it’s his house, after all), Virginia begins to do some investigating (the police are always less-than-efficient in these films) and is shocked when she finds out the skeleton belonged to a young woman, not the older lady she saw.  The situation grows worse when Luca suggests that the vision Virginia saw was not from the past, but rather is from the future… and, through the cruel hand of destiny, she’s now directly in the center of it all.

The Psychic is classic pre-gore Fulci made during the heyday of the Italian giallo and infinitely better than most of the other thrillers released that year (such as Antonio Bido’s Watch Me When I Kill) and could easily contend with Dario Argento’s earlier works.  The film is graced with some excellent camerawork, the editing is well-done, the actors manage to act for a change and the story manages to keep you guessing.  The music by Franco Bixio, Fabio Frizzi and Vince Tempera is excellent -- especially the haunting theme music that was featured in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and has been copied numerous times in film, television and video games!

Presentation
The Psychic was horribly mangled on it’s initial US release and is presented uncut in America for the first time (those foreigners laugh at us, you know).  I first saw The Psychic thanks to an out-of-print videocassette rental.  It was obvious that my dreaded arch-nemesis, the Editing Room Floor Slasher, had already had his way with the film.  Worse yet, the transfer was an awful full frame pan and scan atrocity.  Nevertheless, the film struck a chord with me (or at least seven notes) and I’ve been awaiting a new release for ages.  In the late 90s, Quentin Tarantino once talked about re-releasing the film under his Rolling Thunder label, but nothing seemed to come from that (aside from the personal belief that Tarantino was all talk and no action… fortunately, he would redeem himself in the future).

Severin Films has done a remarkable job with the video print here: there is some noticeable grain and wear during the credits and the occasional imperfection, but otherwise, the film looks wonderful!  The print is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen.

The audio, on the other hand, is a letdown.  I had to pump up the 2-channel mono considerably (it’s still better than Anchor Bay’s Short Night of Glass Dolls -- I had that one cranked up to max and it was still faint!).  The audio appears to be from the original International version (I think the old VHS print was re-looped by American voices).  The big disappointment, however, is that there is no Italian audio track included (apparently, it was supposed to have one…if so, where is it?).

Extras
If you want to see how poorly an independent company can market a trailer via a crappy preview, check out the original US Trailer.
Also included is the “Voices from the Black” Featurette; this consists of audio interviews with co-writer Dardano Sacchetti, costume designer Massimo Lentini and editor Bruno Micheli.  These interviews were conducted over the telephone and are set to clips of the film over the 27 minute running time.  Each interviewee recalls the making of the film from their end, their relationship with Fulci an so on.

There are two other versions of this film available in France, one of which is a 2-Disc special edition featuring extra that are not to be found here.  You would think that Severin could have spent a few dollars more, picked up some additional features and turned this into a 30th Anniversary Edition or something (Jennifer O’Neill shows up on talk shows every once in a while, so recording a commentary track probably wouldn’t be beneath her).

The Bottom Line
Do yourself a favor and buy it.  Then thank me.  Then send me money.  Lots of money.  I’m not cheap, you know.