FLORINDA BOLKAN 'A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN' STANLEY BAKER

Title: A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN Year: 1971 Rating: ***

Most giallos... offbeat Italian-made b-horror/thrillers.. look great with creative camera angles backed by crisp cinematography where blood is thicker and redder than ever... but the acting, even when filled with terrific actors, can often be lacking, perhaps because all the dialogue is so badly/noticeably dubbed... 

But in the case of Lucio Fulci's A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN... where Stanley Baker plays the token snoopy cop... it's a whistle, his whistle, that awkwardly coincides with the Ennio Morricone score as if Baker's Inspector Corvin got the actual movie's soundtrack stuck in his head...

Florinda Bolkan in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN

And yet, while traipsing through the crime scene, this is simply what his character does in an almost deliberately-irksome manner while seeking the truth of a violent high-class murder... 

In this case possibly committed by main character Carol Hammond underplayed by the usually vigorous and always gorgeous Florinda Bolkan as a British politician's conventional daughter, who dreams about stabbing her all-night-party debutante neighbor to death, which then comes true... but is Carol the killer? 

Stanley Baker in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN

Sadly, Baker and Bolkan (whose surrounding family also includes a cheating husband, her lover, and a snarky daughter-in-law) share very little screen time, so most of LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN is as surreal and off-putting as the title... 

With so many hallucinatory, masturbatory, psychedelic hippie-trope dream sequences, it's not always clear what's really happening — and what does happen glosses around the otherwise intriguing investigation where style doesn't only hurdle substance, it outright hinders it.  

Stanley Baker in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN with Alberto de Mendoza

Stanley Baker in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN

Florinda Bolkan in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN

Florinda Bolkan in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN

Florinda Bolkan in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN with Stanley Baker

Stanley Baker in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN

Florinda Bolkan in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN

Stanley Baker in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN

Daughter-in-law Ely Galleani and Penny Brown in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN

Florinda Bolkan in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN with Stanley Baker

Florinda Bolkan in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN with Stanley Baker

Florinda Bolkan in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN with Stanley Baker

Florinda Bolkan in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN

Florinda Bolkan in A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN with murdered Anita Strindberg