Chris Jordan continues 31 Days Of Hell with his review of Argento's Phenomena.
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| "What? No David Bowie in this?" |
Dario Argento, in his prime, was a horror maestro with an unusual ability
to juggle tone and style. He could combine elegant Hitchcockian suspense and
outlandish grand guignol horror and have it still feel tonally consistent, even
when it seemed like it shouldn’t. Perhaps the greatest illustration of the
duality of his work is Suspiria,
which at once is a poetic and psychologically-subjective art film that
influenced Black Swan, and also a
brutally violent tale of killers and witchcraft. Throughout the mid-1970s and
1980s he reached a career peak, making a string of critically-acclaimed films
that, in varying combinations, walked this line of elegant suspense and brutal
horror. Then in 1985, he decided to do something different, and allow the
ghoulish horror side of his imagination to run free, with no restraints; or,
for that matter, restraint. Largely setting the Hitchcockian element of his
filmmaking aside to allow the grand guignol to go nuts, he made the single
weirdest film in a career that was full of some pretty weird films. The result,
Phenomena, wound up being his
personal favorite among his own filmography, and certainly one of his most
unique. If Suspiria is an ethereal,
subtlely unreal nightmare, Phenomena
is an utterly insane, no-brakes bad trip. And yet somehow, it still has that
artistic, thoughtfully-made visual poetry that you can’t quite find anywhere
besides career-prime Argento.
How does one even start to describe this film? It’s about a slasher
terrorizing a secluded girl’s boarding school. But it’s also about a psychic
girl who has the power to control insects. It stars a young Jennifer Connelly
in her first leading role, and co-stars horror staple Donald Pleasence. It also
co-stars a monkey – you can’t forget that monkey. It features a moody score by Goblin, jarringly
interrupted every now and then by Motörhead
and Iron Maiden. In short, Phenomena is
many things, several of which could have been a whole movie on their own. Yet Argento juggles them all at once, and
through the sheer storytelling talent that he possessed in his prime he makes
it all reasonably cohesive. It just gets weirder and weirder as it goes along,
and then just when you think it can’t possibly throw any more insane
curve-balls at you, it does. But every time your jaw drops in incredulity, you
pick it up just as quickly, thinking “well yeah, that makes sense,” because
Argento has created a fever-dream world in which it actually does.
Navigating the slippery logic of this nightmare is Jennifer Connelly, a
year before Labyrinth, responsible for
carrying the emotional weight of it all in her debut performance. As we see
most of the film through her perspective, the craziness can only really work if
she can sell her character’s experience of it – and she does. She’s very good,
with a gravitas beyond her years; if you had seen this in 1985, it would have
been immediately clear that she was an actress with a bright future. Pleasence
is his usual soft-spoken but powerful self, and while he is largely stuck in
the role of exposition-giver, he nonetheless has some fun with it. Plus, he
gets to have pet monkey. Beyond those two, the main standout is Dario Argento
himself, whose wild imagination and intense visual style are obvious in every
frame of the film. Whether it’s a giallo-style stalking sequence or a swarming
insect attack, every scene is dripping with atmosphere, and looks great. It
can’t quite top the perfection of Suspiria
when it comes to atmosphere and visual power, but it is very impressive
nonetheless.
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| "Look!!! Head in a box!" |
Phenomena is commonly
available in two different versions. Argento’s director’s cut – the version
actually called Phenomena – is nearly
two hours long, and is available on DVD from Anchor Bay and on blu-ray from
Arrow Video. But that version only became available in North America in 1999,
when Anchor Bay debuted it as part of their Dario Argento Collection. Prior to 1999
it was only available here as New Line Cinema’s American theatrical cut,
re-titled Creepers, which still
circulates on streaming platforms and bargain-priced DVDs. Creepers is about half an hour shorter than Phenomena; mostly cuts made to accelerate the film’s pace, although
the gore had to be trimmed a little to get an R-rating. The Creepers version is actually still very
good, and the film is not harmed by the cuts as badly as one might think,
although the character development is weaker. If you were a North American
viewer watching the film in the 1980s or ‘90s, you probably wouldn’t have known
you were missing much. But that said,
the added attention to character in the director’s cut makes the film stronger,
and Argento’s deliberate pacing is more effective in creating that nightmare
atmosphere. Since the director’s cut is now so readily available, it’s clearly
the best version to get; although the theatrical cut is fine if you just want
to sample the film’s strangeness as cheaply as possible before committing to a
buy.
With its gorgeously moody atmosphere, great early performance from
Connelly, and jaw-dropping level of nightmarish insanity, Phenomena is definitely a one-of-a-kind film, even by the strange
and unhinged standards of 1980s Italian cult cinema. That said, it’s not for
all tastes; its weirdness makes it a highly divisive film even among Argento
fans, for some of whom it’s just too far out there. Personally, I’ll always
give the upper hand to the near-perfect Suspiria,
but this nonetheless ranks high on the list. It is, after all, Dario Argento’s
favorite Dario Argento film, and that’s a pretty strong recommendation in
itself. One way or another, it’s a bad trip that’s definitely worth taking.
- Christopher S. Jordan