The Psychic, A Peek Into the Future...Italian Style

Psychics get no respect. No one believes them. I guess it is fair to wonder why they never win the lottery or make it rich in Vegas picking World Series winners. In fairness to these misunderstood souls, seeing the future can be quite stressful. I maintain if we knew what would happen tomorrow, we would not get out of bed in the morning. When Lucio Fulci does a film about a very beautiful psychic, our view may change. Sure, picking fun at Jonathan Edwards of the Syfy Channel is fun, but as soon as a sultry damsel is in much peril, we get behind them. Hence 1977's "The Psychic."

18 years earlier Virginia (Jennifer O'Neill) saw her mother's gory suicide using her clairvoyance. Scarred and traumatized, the little girl grew into a beautiful woman and married an Italian nobleman, Francesco (Gianni Garko). Now happily married and quite rich, Virginia has another vision. She sees a murder.  Bad news for our psychic, the murder took place at her husband's villa and she leads police to the skeletal remains secreted in the wall. More bad news...Francesco had a one night stand with the deceased five years earlier...he'll be arrested. Now Virginia attempts to clear her husband's name by figuring out who the killer was.

As Virginia pieces together more clues from her vision, it becomes apparent she may be in danger. After all, if her husband is not the killer, the real killer might not want her to solve the mystery. More bad news for Virginia...lab results and forensics indicate many of the details of her vision were wrong. Indignant to science and police competence, Virginia doubles down on her efforts. Only her handsome parapsychologist, Luca (Marc Porel), believes her. Double uh oh...indications suggest Virginia's vision may not have been the murder that produced a dead body in the walls of her husband's villa, but a vision of a murder that hasn't happened yet?

Who is the dead woman found in the walls of Francesco's villa? Who will be the dead girl walled into the villa if Virginia's vision is a peek into the future? Is it even possible that two murders within a few years would yield a secreted body in the same place? Interesting and seeping with irony, "The Psychic" is weird and twisted. As Virginia delves deeper and deeper into the mystery, we see her enveloped into bloody peril. For some nice Giallo, enjoy Lucio Fulci's "The Psychic."