Written by Dario Argento and Franco Ferrini
Directed by Dario Argento
Starring Jennifer Connelly, Daria Nicolodi, Dalila Di Lazzaro, Patrick Bauchau and Donald Pleasence
Italy, 1985
I’ve bagged on Italian horror here before and I guess that’s mainly because of Lucio Fulci, though they’re all offenders in their own way. Even though I feel like I’ve exhausted Dario Argento’s filmography, this 1985 flick popped up on my radar and it has two recognizable stars in Jennifer Connelly and Donal Pleasence, so I figured I’d give it a go.
PHENOMENA does suffer from some of the excesses of Italian horror, relying a little too much on long, drawn-out dream sequences and shocking moments of gore. They usually sacrifice any semblance of logic at the altar of just being crazy, and this one kinda does that, though it’s mostly the premise’s fault – get this. A teen girl, sent to a boarding school in the Swiss Alps, can telepathically communicate with bugs. An entymologist teams up with her to try to solve a string of serial murders going down in the area. His reasoning? Since bugs are involved in decomposition, they might lead her to the bodies.
There’s more to it than that, but them’s the basics. As usual, no matter how bored I got I still could not guess who the killer was or why they were killing, and as lame as some of the middle passages of this film are, the climax does have to be seen to be believed. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say it does not violate the Chekhov’s monkey rule like RETURN OF DR. X did, much to my delight.
Also of note is the dope ass soundtrack this thing has going featuring the likes of Iron Maiden and Motörhead. I’d say Goblin’s on hand to contribute, too, except with Argento, that’s basically a given.
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