Among horror fans, director Dario Argento’s name stands alongside some of the greatest of the genre. With Argento’s twenty-third feature, Dracula 3D, finally set for a limited North American release on October 4th, it seems a perfect time to introduce new readers to the filmmaker’s near forty year body of work and differentiate between his horror film classics and career missteps.
Part 1 can be found HERE and Part 2 HERE
Two Evil Eyes – “The Black Cat” (1990)
Rating: FOR ARGENTO FANS EXCLUSIVELY
For his first American production, Argento filmed this hour-long adaptation based loosely on the Edgar Allen Poe tale. It stars Harvey Keitel as Roderick Usher, a Weegee-esque photographer. When his live-in girlfriend Annabel (Madeleine Potter) takes in a stray black cat, the man’s relationship with both the animal and significant other become strained, violent and eventually deadly. This leads to some hasty home renovations that leave some nastiness hidden within the walls. In spite of Usher’s efforts, in true Poe tradition, the cat continues to re-emerge until Usher is ultimately driven mad. The film features a fine lead in Keitel, who manages to sell the dialogue and keep you watching in spite of his character having few, if any, redeeming qualities. His strangling of cats, in particular, is cringe-inducing. John Amos, Martin Balsam and Sally Kirkland also appear and give solid performances. The only problems here are the muted photography (save for a couple of interesting moves in the final minutes, including a shot of a key falling several stories to the floor with the camera parallel) and slow pacing. As a result, while the segment is reasonably engaging, in general it feels a little padded out. The finished product only comes to life in the final third when the authorities close in on Usher, discover the secrets hidden in the wall and force the madman to take drastic measures. Coupled with a segment by George A. Romero, the film still only managed a limited release and a paltry $350,000 box office return in North America.
Trauma (1993)
Rating: RECOMMENDED, BUT RENT IT FIRST (and have a sense of humor about it)
Seen by most of Argento’s fans as a commercial sell-out, this title remains something of a guilty pleasure. The director’s daughter, Asia Argento, stars as Aura, the anorexic daughter of a psychic medium (Piper Laurie). After an elaborate séance, Laurie’s character is murdered and Aura is taken in by an ex-drug addict turned graphic artist (Christopher Rydell). The pair soon find themselves in the path of a headhunting psychopath, who uses a modified hammer drill to decapitate victims with a sharp wire. Shot in Minneapolis, Minnesota with an American cast, fans may have been expecting more from the performances. Yet again, all of the emphasis is on the appearance of the film, with the actors, if nothing else, appearing beautiful. The camera moves are more subtle than usual, but still staggering (Argento has not since filmed a movie that looks this attractive). When the camera does move, it spins and flies with beautiful smoothness. Argento also adopts an entertaining butterfly POV, mimicking the movements of the insect in the sky. And the film’s story itself delivers all the signifiers one expects from the director (faulty memories, animals, macro roaming camera photography and a fake-out false climax). Yet there is also a surprising dose of black humor in a suspenseful subplot featuring a child who is a neighbor to the baddie and finds himself on the verge of being discovered (not to mention maiming himself by playing with the bizarre murder weapon). The director even makes a nice if forced attempt to bring light to the struggle of many teens with anorexia. Argento’s late niece, who was the inspiration for the Aura character, appears during the end credits, dancing on a balcony. The murders are more muted than in Argento’s previous flicks, but the story moves at a steady clip and is always engaging even if it isn’t always convincing. And how can one not enjoy seeing award winning actors Piper Laurie, Frederic Forrest and Brad Dourif really ham it up?
The Stendahl Syndrome (1996)
Rating: RUN AWAY SCREAMING
After the criticism levelled at Trauma and poor box office for both that project and Two Evil Eyes, Argento returned to Italy with the intention of shocking audiences and making one of his most brutal and harshest efforts. Asia Argento returns as Detective Anna Manni, a woman on the trail of a horrendous serial rapist/murderer Alfredo Grossi (Thomas Kretschmann, later to be seen in Peter Jackson’s King Kong and Argento’s upcoming Dracula 3D). Just to seem even more intimidating, the aptly named Grossi enjoys using his tongue to flip a razorblade around in his mouth and teeth. For the first twenty or thirty minutes, the film is visually inspired. Confused and suffering from the title condition, Manni actually hallucinates herself entering works of art, in one case even swimming under the sea and kissing a large fish. All of her experiences entering the canvases or the characters from the works bursting into the real world are expertly achieved. Impressive, but again, early on, Manni wanders through a doorway inside of her hotel room out into a street in an impressive single take. However, the rape sequences are difficult to endure. One gets the impression during the first attack that the camera’s lingering on the details is intended to show the true horror of such an event, but as events recur, it feels pointless and exploitative. The performances by the supporting cast members are too campy to deal appropriately with the trauma being inflicted. By the halfway point, a twist in the story (reminiscent of an earlier film Tenebre) results in a new series of slayings. However, all suspense and mystery from this moment forward is completely eliminated, as it is completely obvious what is actually occurring. The film limps its way to an uninspired anticlimax. Coupled with the awkward handling and unpleasantness of the subject matter, this title remains something of a misstep in the Argento cannon. Ennio Morricone (composer of the director’s first three titles) does return to provide a capable, if not particularly memorable, score.
Phantom of the Opera (1998)
Rating: RUN AWAY SCREAMING
This train-wreck of a movie features disfigurement-free Julian Sands as a buff, muscular Phantom with the appearance of a Fabio-esque hero out of a dime store romance novel. Sound scary yet? In spite of his looks, this Phantom was raised to adulthood by rats! Yet, he speaks perfect English and woos Asia Argento’s understudy character between brutally murdering the theatre’s crewmembers and gnawing on their faces (not necessarily in that order). The sets and costumes are lavishly designed and the authentic Hungarian caverns are beautiful as filmed by Ronnie Taylor, but it’s not convincing as a period piece and is a little too stately shot. This is one of the few movies where incidental characters are so incompetent that they can get themselves axed without any help from the stalker of the title. Take, for example, a terrible, digitally augmented sequence that appears out of nowhere. In it, a rat killer and his dwarf pal careen through the underground caves in a ridiculous, blade-wielding vehicular contraption that malfunctions and accidentally decapitates one of them. Whoops! Worst of all, the romance key to the film isn’t convincing. Asia goes over the top with histrionics, screeching for her very abusive lover during the last ten to fifteen minutes in a manner more audibly painful than a pencil being plunged into an eardrum. The agonizingly overlong finale will make viewers wonder if the title character is ever going to die already.
Sleepless (2001)
Rating: RECOMMENDED, BUT RENT IT FIRST
“The dwarf is dead!” First, the bad news; this title features some of the worst acting (particularly from the first victim) and dubbing ever from an Italian cast in an Argento flick, which is really saying something. As for the good news; the uncut version features all of the themes and hallmarks of classic Argento. This includes smooth, long Steadicam takes, macro photography (this time as the camera studies the small shapes of several paper animals), gruesome killings by a supposedly black-gloved “dwarf killer” (to clarify, a dwarf who kills, not a murderer who preys on dwarves) and a plotline featuring a faulty memory that is re-examined and eventually leads to the actual fanatic. Max von Sydow also appears to lend some credibility and offset the less than stellar Italian performances. While the end result is not a classic, it has actually aged well since its release. Argento, working for the third time with director of photography Ronnie Taylor, stages a fantastically elaborate and thrilling opening double murder set piece involving a train and train station. It runs nearly twenty minutes. More visually interesting than previous works, gore fans will also flinch at the numerous wince-inducing impalements, fingertip clippings, horrible abuses via English horn (I swear I’ll never put that instrument near my mouth as long as I live) and an effectively abrupt, yet fantastically juicy surprise ending for our antagonist. This one is far superior than many will recall it being.
The Card Player (2004)
Rating: RUN AWAY SCREAMING
Another big experiment from Argento, but sadly, this one results in an epic disaster of the scale of The Five Days in Milan. Taking his cue from the new popularity of shows like CSI in Italy, the director abandons all of his exaggerated camera and lighting flourishes and elaborate murder sequences. Instead he shoots using simple, flat, TV-style set-ups. There’s no personality and nothing to look at here, the lack of style only drawing more attention to the plot holes, poor acting from the local supporting cast members and general ludicrousness occurring on screen. The story involves a tech-savvy psychopath who kidnaps targets and challenges the police to play poker for the lives of his victims in an online chat room, which translates into the cheesiest-looking poker site imaginable. The coppers bite, enlisting the help of a computer whiz found at an arcade, then spend most of the running time hysterically screaming and yelling at computer monitors while playing card games. Of course, the technical department can’t figure out where the killer is, because, “He’s probably protected by a firewall and using multi-proxies to jump from one server to another.” Huh? The film climaxes in an absurd laptop internet poker game between two characters chained to rails as a speeding train approaches. It’s hysterical. The flick also features a distractingly grating techno score by the usually reliable Claudio Simonetti.
Do You Like Hitchcock? (TV) (2005)
Rating: RECOMMENDED, BUT RENT IT FIRST
Although the movie’s awkward opening scene will be sure to cast heavy doubts, as it progresses this becomes a surprisingly decent made-for-television effort, packed with movie reference in-jokes. After a murder occurs in the apartment directly across from his own, an overly obsessive film student named Giulio (Elio Germano) invents a theory as to who the killer is and struggles to prove it by spying on his suspects, rummaging through their apartments and using other highly illegal means, with complicated and brutal results. While certainly exaggerated, the plotline (obviously borrowed from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window) is tight and rational enough, by Argento standards, to involve viewers in the mystery. This title not only makes nods to other films like Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train but also Argento’s own film history. The impressive extreme close ups of gears and keys opening doors hark back to earlier titles like Inferno. Additionally, the film is surprisingly graphic for a TV movie – the head-splitting murder is appropriately stylish, shocking and disturbing. The camera work is much more playful than in the director’s other more recent efforts and at times even comes across as inspired. These positives and what appears to be surprising emphasis on humor leads to a fun little television exercise that should impress viewers.
Masters of Horror – “Jenifer” (2005)
Rating: RUN AWAY SCREAMING
This segment of the cable series Masters of Horror saw Argento returning to North America and adapting material originally printed as a comic book story. It begins with a promising camera angle, as two police detectives (including star Steven Weber as detective Frank Spivey) sit in their cruiser eating lunch and swatting flies, the camera placed directly above them. When Spivey intercedes and prevents the murder of a young mute woman named Jenifer (Carrie Fleming), things get more complicated than he, or the viewing audience, can possibly digest. While the title character is otherwise attractive, she hides a hideously deformed face and a vicious streak. Suspension of disbelief flies out the window as the man takes the girl home to live with his family. She proceeds to attack his wife, eat the family cat and murder the neighbours. For anyone, this would be reason enough to eject the houseguest, but the character becomes so infatuated and addicted to the frequent sexual favours being offered that he can’t let her go. From this point on, what follows are a series of preposterous and unbelievable scenarios in which Jenifer alienates Spivey from society, until the two are reduced to living in a dilapidated shack in the woods. At this point, Spivey does not pull out an acoustic guitar and start belting out Rocky Mountain High to his lady love (though I would have preferred it had that occurred). Weber is a good actor and does his best as the film’s lead, but the big problem is that his script never really gives us enough of a reason to identify with or buy into Spivey’s obsession.
Masters of Horror – “Pelts” (2006)
Rating: RUN AWAY SCREAMING
“[With] Pelts like these… the sky is the limit. We can have anything our hearts desire!” Oh boy. This Masters of Horror episode does have a few allusions to classic Argento, including the use of black gloves as well as an animal motif (in this case, racoons). Sadly, beyond the director’s usual signifiers, this mini-movie suffers from a completely absurd story that is nearly impossible to get involved in. Meatloaf Aday stars as a vulgar coat manufacturer trying to win the affections of a lesbian stripper (Ellen Ewusie), oh, and also manufacture the greatest racoon fur coat the world has ever seen. The only problem is the animal pelts used are so beautiful that anyone who comes too close hears bizarre vocal cues (via the less than subtle score) and then, without explanation, tries to mutilate themselves. While it is clear that all of the characters in this tale are supposed to be animalistic (self-serving hunters who are obsessed with using the pelts for their own purposes), they are so repugnant that it leaves absolutely no one to root for. The evil witches from Suspiria and Inferno seem delightfully charming in comparison to beholding the hulking lead’s rape fantasies. The only positives are the incredibly gory murders/self mutilations, including a face that is plunged into a raccoon trap and a self-disembowelling with scissors. Admittedly, the final self-skinning is disturbing, sure to upset the most hardened of viewers. Yet even these horrors are dulled as the film follows a predictable and repetitive pattern of a character suddenly becomingobsessed with the pelt or coat (possessed by the spirits of, yes, vengeful raccoons), which immediately drives them to execute themselves in a flatly presented, you-know-exactly-what’s-coming-so-here-it-is manner. As a result, these sequences are anything but suspenseful. This misfire manages to waste the talents of both Aday and Tenebre’s John Saxon.
The Mother of Tears (2007)
Rating: FOR ARGENTO FANS EXCLUSIVELY
Twenty-seven years after Inferno, Argento finally finishes “The Three Mothers” trilogy that began with Suspiria. Asia Argento stars as Sarah, an art restoration student who has to vanquish the titular witch after an ancient and powerful urn is opened, unleashing chaos on Rome (as most urns do in horror movies). Good thing her ghostly mother (played by Daria Nicolodi) is a white witch that appears via cornball digital effects to lend her daughter advice on how best to use her repressed supernatural talents. Weird scenes follow, including an incomprehensible bit in which Sarah meets an alchemist who once knew her mother. He recognizes her, then presses her through an elaborate testing process (forcing her eye open with metallic instrument) to prove her identity to him. Didn’t he already know who she was? It’s all pretty absurd, even for an Argento movie. Probably the most drastic change is in the lighting and cinematography. While attractive at times, the movie does not possess the neon-tinted scheme familiar to fans, save for the final sequence set at the witch’s manor (cast in an appropriately vibrant tint). There are a couple of great moments, including an elaborate train station sequence featuring the heroine pursued by both the police and a group of scenery-chewing, punkish-looking low-level witches. The payoff comes when a witch’s head is crushed by a door and her eye pops out for gooey effect. At least gore fans will appreciate the level of gruesomeness. This includes a scene in which a woman has her stomach cut open and is strangled by her own intestines. However, as shocking as these bits are, they are not suspenseful. Unlike the opening double murder set-piece of Suspiria, these gore shots are filmed in a matter-of-fact, locked-off style without any suspense building techniques. They more closely echo the shock value gore shots of a Lucio Fulci film than what is expected from the once flamboyant Argento.
Giallo (2009)
RATING: RUN AWAY SCREAMING
Amazingly, Argento managed to wrangle great cast and a reported $14 million dollar budget for his most recent thriller. Unfortunately, the results were unimpressive, despite the fact that it is well produced and probably the strongest film in the “Run Away Screaming” rating category. Oscar winner Adrian Brody takes on the role of Detective Avolfi. He’s obsessed with hunting down a deranged, yellow-skinned, taxi-cab driving, baby pacifier sucking serial killer played by… umm… Adrian Brody. When a fashion model is abducted by the creep after hailing his cab, her sister (Emmanuelle Seigner) joins the detective in trying to solve the mystery. Seigner and the Brody’s Avolfi are engaging enough, but the killer looks and behaves in a ridiculous manner. The phoney hair and make-up job includes a perm, large red headband, large prosthetic nose and yellow hued skin. With a substandard make-up job, one can’t help but expect Avolfi to be revealed as the killer wearing an amateurish disguise, yet this never occurs. There are some nasty and mean spirited tortures, which at least are dulled somewhat by the killer’s unintentionally ridiculous look. Visually, the movie is well lit and actually looks slick, but there isn’t much technical savvy present with regard to the suspense sequences (with the exception of the final death, which is appropriately wince-inducing). One can imagine a lot of fun to be had with the concept of a villain cruising the streets and taking fares in a viciously tricked out taxi-cab, but the concept isn’t developed. The plot is fairly standard and by the numbers. Further problems were revealed when Brody later sued the film’s producers, claiming he hadn’t been properly paid for his role(s), and attempted to stop the movie’s release. With little fanfare, it eventually loped onto North American home video in 2011. Reportedly, the producers also recut the film before its release, and a final scene was inserted to give the movie a happy ending that appears to contradict the entire message of the film. Argento himself disowned it and people in general should follow suit. Capiche!?