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Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

For his third and last full length film, Guilio Questi mixes art-house with exploitation and leaves me feeling like one of those crazy chickens from Death Laid An Egg. Initially this seems to be a horror film about a mother and son who do tarot readings and pretend to heal folks, whilst both of them have genuine powers that the son feels should be exploited more. The actual story itself then proceeds to be buried under a barrage of surreal imagery until the film ends.That's not to say I didn't like it though. The horror elements are presented first, with the son healing their customers as they sit in a circle babbling (one of them pishes themselves into the bargain). The son also has hundreds of pictures of hands and random people arranged in specific patterns over which the son dangles animal teeth before dressing up like his mother with a pair of tights over his head. You know, the usual stuff teenagers get into.The son seems to take a liking to a certain girl who comes for reading regarding herself and her boyfriend. She asks the mother for a love potion but the son isn't too happy decide to make his own, but doesn't quite know how. Around this time the tarot cards start playing themselves and dishes start moving around the kitchen, which gets worse when the son ties up his mother, starts cutting her breasts with a dagger, and gets the real love recipe from her. Although up to this point we've already witnessed people with missing limbs being arrested from a queue in a bank, characters turning around to deliberately stare into the camera, and small kids dragging an egg on a string about for no reason, nothing quite prepared me for the "Family dancing to fiddle music while the mother vomits up live frogs while subway workers try and get on a subway train but also while another fiddler plays music to a bemused donkey being hoisted up a building scene". Have I ever mentioned that Questi used to work with Fellini?Things get even more fragmented after that but what's the point in mentioning every crazy thing that happens? This is more of a weird trip than a film, and it's a pity Questi stopped making films after this, because I'd love to have seen his art-house take on other Italian Exploitation films like the Mad Max rip-off and the Jaws rip-off!

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.

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.

1970's Italian film is a strange trip through 1970 Italy on the verge of modernity, decay, madness and revolution. Widowed witch Mrs. Tarantino is using any method at her disposal to eke out a living as a psychic medium and healer, plying her trade with the help of her more powerfully gifted son. Disgusted by his mother's clients and her obvious use of chicanery, the son begins a late coming of age journey discovering not only who he is but also his true powers. (**Spoiler Alert**) The seemingly ambiguous plot is open to interpretation. I certainly can't tell you what the filmmaker wanted to convey - only what I took from it: That he son is actually a familiar created by the mother after the accidental death of the father (during the construction of a subway). The son struggles with themes of power, real magic and identity (actual and sexual). He tests his growing power of arcane knowledge on his mother's seedier clients. Then, after finding no trace of his father in the subway, he curses it by hanging a mobile over the entrance. Then he curses the city with mobiles strung from TV antennas. In the end, he decides to create another familiar in the womb of an attractive victim, which will be his bride. But she dies before it can be delivered. Then the revolution starts (because of the curse?). Or something like that.The story is told with uncommon imagery like, but not limited to: cross-dressing, bread-men, snakes, amputation, feral children, levitating dishes, tarot cards, peeing, photo retouching, bondage, regurgitated frogs, pantyhose masks, oedipal imagery, breast slashing and a donkey in a hoist.