Arcana

I was following Arcana for the first half. It told the story of a psychic and her son. The psychic appears to be a fake, running a con game on her clients (although she does mention that her mother was a true witch). The son is odd, sometimes dressing in women's clothes and stealing photographs from his mother's clients. The relationship between mother and son is charged with sexual tension. The story begins to change when the son becomes fixated on a pretty girl, engaged to be married, who comes to the mother for a reading. It was there the film lost me.

In the second half, the son begins to take a dominant role. Is he crazy, psychic, running a con, or some strange combination of all of these? There are flashbacks to the countryside where the mother's mother works her magic with a house full of gypsies and a donkey outside suspended in air. The film builds to an ending so grim that it could be described as apocalyptic, if it is to be taken literally. The film opens with a scrawl stating that the film is a card game and not all of it is real. I was left confused by both the ending and the film as a whole.

Arcana has much to recommend it. Lucia Bose as the mother is excellent and she gives the performance her all. In the country scene, she looks to be actually removing toads from her mouth. If that is not a special effect, then Miss Bose is one fearless actress! Furthermore, the film is eye catching with the hypnotic country scene being the stand out (catchy gypsy music too). An often intriguing film, but the ambiguity proved too much for me.

Experimental occult film that makes very little sense narratively... but may make some kind of sense symbolically - though I'm not sure.

You must be a fan of arthouse, dreamlike, highly symbolic films to really get through this one. Even then, it's pretty slow in part. I liked the soundtrack - appropriately unsettling. I wish the ending added up to something. I guess it's a cautionary tale. Don't practice black magic.

Directed by Giulio Questi, he of Django Kill and Death Laid An Egg, was never going to make a straightforward film about a clairvoyant and her son in Milan. The spaghetti western included a crucifixion and a band of gay cowboys whilst the giallo included the rearing of headless chickens, so this surreal outing has its own very strange moments. For the most part though, this is very powerful and disturbing tale with the much loved Lucia Bose as the fake clairvoyant and the lovely, Tina Aumont as one of her clients. Her son, who does seem to have powers, falls for the younger woman with devastating results. As I say for the most part an extraordinary and involving horror but there is a playfulness that detracts and an ending that bemuses. great soundtrack that very much adds to the very creepy feel.

This weird , out-of-the-schemes movie is one of the few Giulio Questi's works. Rough and poorly made, but with some sense of measure (thus very real-life-looking) it occasionally slips into the usual clichés of trash 'b' gore - horror works but the overall result is surprisingly suggestive.

It happens sometimes that obscure directors happen to make something really outstanding , only to fall back again in mediocrity for the rest of their careers (remember Tobe Hooper ?) .

This spooky and politically incorrect tale of filth and horror is almost dead and gone: the movie is impossible to find , there must be still one copy in some wet vault (the grave of old movies) and folklore says that the director himself was looking for a copy of it.

Mrs.Tarantino is the widowed wife of a poor worker from southern Italy living with her creepy son in a shabby block of industrial Milan.She plans to make money exploiting as a charlatan a crowd of rich dullards looking for supernatural advice like tarot and hand reading.The mother is an expert in magic rituals and cleverly uses it to lure her prey,while her son is a psychic.The problem arises when the son falls in love with her mother's client and uses his arcane powers to gain her love with devastating consequences...Extremely obscure and forgotten Italian horror movie with some nice surreal touches and often implied Oedipux complex.The score by Berto Pisano is fantastic with phenomenal violin motif.I hope that "Arcana" will be released on DVD soon.8 out of 10.