Lucio Fulci was one of the most prolific Italian directors by the time of his death in 1996, yet his career had long since descended into a downward spiral of increasingly futile genre entries that could barely stand in the shadow of his earlier work. For much of the '70s into the mid-'80s, he cranked out such stylistically distinctive horrors as "City of the Living Dead," "The Beyond," and the brutal giallo "The New York Ripper," fondly remembered by fans like myself. And while "Cat in the Brain" falls in with the era of Fulci's decline as a filmmaker, it is a shocking, darkly hilarious headtrip that, while a clearly inferior work (the framing, effects, and acting are below par), proves an interesting, open-ended meditation on pop psychology and film's ability to desensitize. Make no mistake: "Cat in the Brain" is a total gorefest, and as disjointed as Fulci's previous films, but it deserves credit for trying to be something more. In a deliciously tongue-in-cheek touch, Fulci plays himself: a director in the midst of filming yet another violent horror flick who comes down with perverse/murderous hallucinations; after visiting a shrink who puts him under hypnosis, his dreams and reality begin to intersect, to the point where the viewer cannot discern the two. The recent DVD from Grindhouse Releasing mentions "Cat" as an heir apparent to the likes of "Eraserhead," and it does carry a similarly disquieting, awkwardly funny quality associated with the best surrealist art.