Phenomena (1985)
Country: IT/SW
Technical: col 116m
Director: Dario Argento
Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Donald Pleasence, Patrick Bauchau, Dalila Di Lazzaro, Daria Nocolodi
Synopsis:
An U.S. film producer sends his daughter to a girls' boarding school in Switzerland, where she rapidly becomes involved in a series of gruesome murders by virtue of her peculiar affinity for insects.
Review:
Notable for a gutsy performance from Connelly, herself fresh from Once Upon a Time in America, this excessive tale of entomology and putrefaction adds little to the director's box of tricks, consisting of decaying empty houses, designer murder and gory shock effects; the killing witnessed impotently from an extra-liminal space (cf. Crystal Plumage) and a Heavy Metal soundtrack (Suspiria). Not content with repeating himself, he also references De Palma's Dressed to Kill and Roeg's Don't Look Now. Argento's undoubted flamboyance of visual technique is, however, constantly betrayed by the clunky dialogue and performance of secondary characters, and by the contrived approach to action and perfunctory plotting. The latter appear directed by the imperative of deploying adolescent girls in flight from an unseen assailant, before being penetrated by an elongated metal blade and then decapitated. Intriguing in its sleepwalking device and inconsistent in its approach to freaks, who are fine so long as they are beautiful, this nothing if not baroque giallo thriller also gives us a Scottish paraplegic scientist (Pleasence on good form) and his chimpanzee personal assistant, who may or may not be the next serial killer!
Country: IT/SW
Technical: col 116m
Director: Dario Argento
Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Donald Pleasence, Patrick Bauchau, Dalila Di Lazzaro, Daria Nocolodi
Synopsis:
An U.S. film producer sends his daughter to a girls' boarding school in Switzerland, where she rapidly becomes involved in a series of gruesome murders by virtue of her peculiar affinity for insects.
Review:
Notable for a gutsy performance from Connelly, herself fresh from Once Upon a Time in America, this excessive tale of entomology and putrefaction adds little to the director's box of tricks, consisting of decaying empty houses, designer murder and gory shock effects; the killing witnessed impotently from an extra-liminal space (cf. Crystal Plumage) and a Heavy Metal soundtrack (Suspiria). Not content with repeating himself, he also references De Palma's Dressed to Kill and Roeg's Don't Look Now. Argento's undoubted flamboyance of visual technique is, however, constantly betrayed by the clunky dialogue and performance of secondary characters, and by the contrived approach to action and perfunctory plotting. The latter appear directed by the imperative of deploying adolescent girls in flight from an unseen assailant, before being penetrated by an elongated metal blade and then decapitated. Intriguing in its sleepwalking device and inconsistent in its approach to freaks, who are fine so long as they are beautiful, this nothing if not baroque giallo thriller also gives us a Scottish paraplegic scientist (Pleasence on good form) and his chimpanzee personal assistant, who may or may not be the next serial killer!
Country: IT/SW
Technical: col 116m
Director: Dario Argento
Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Donald Pleasence, Patrick Bauchau, Dalila Di Lazzaro, Daria Nocolodi
Synopsis:
An U.S. film producer sends his daughter to a girls' boarding school in Switzerland, where she rapidly becomes involved in a series of gruesome murders by virtue of her peculiar affinity for insects.
Review:
Notable for a gutsy performance from Connelly, herself fresh from Once Upon a Time in America, this excessive tale of entomology and putrefaction adds little to the director's box of tricks, consisting of decaying empty houses, designer murder and gory shock effects; the killing witnessed impotently from an extra-liminal space (cf. Crystal Plumage) and a Heavy Metal soundtrack (Suspiria). Not content with repeating himself, he also references De Palma's Dressed to Kill and Roeg's Don't Look Now. Argento's undoubted flamboyance of visual technique is, however, constantly betrayed by the clunky dialogue and performance of secondary characters, and by the contrived approach to action and perfunctory plotting. The latter appear directed by the imperative of deploying adolescent girls in flight from an unseen assailant, before being penetrated by an elongated metal blade and then decapitated. Intriguing in its sleepwalking device and inconsistent in its approach to freaks, who are fine so long as they are beautiful, this nothing if not baroque giallo thriller also gives us a Scottish paraplegic scientist (Pleasence on good form) and his chimpanzee personal assistant, who may or may not be the next serial killer!