(Worksop man plays a scotsman - SHOCK!!!)
Tagline - Jennifer Has A Few Million Close Friends. She's Going To Need Them
This 1985 offering from one of the horror genres masters Dario Argento is sylish and, for the Italian horror scene, beautifully shot. Set and filmed in Switzerland, the film starts of with a random Schoolgirl missing a bus and getting brutally murdered after which we see her head being thrown down a waterfall.
If you can take the nastiness and the violence, Phenomena is, visually, as stunning as anything Argento has ever done in his career, excepting perhaps Suspiria. The film’s first murder is set in the daytime on the beautiful Swiss countryside. In this beginning’s final shot we see a beautiful river flowing away, then the victim’s severed head fall directly in. Few directors have understood the power of having the beautiful and the beastly simultaneously in the same scene – fewer still have mastered it. For Argento, it seems to be an inborn instinct. The worlds he shows us can be lovely, macabre, dreamlike, and gruesome all within the same frame. Phenomena is no exception
The now completely rotting head is found some weeks later and, as it is covered in maggots, taken to world renown entomologist John McGregor (Donald Pleasence). The prof then informs us that the head had been knocking around for several weeks Duh!.
A little rich girl (Jennifer Connoly) shows up at a swiss boarding school where all the school girls seem to be in training to become hookers or something and is bullied when the girls realise she has the ability to control insects. There is a marvelous scene involving lots of blow flies blotting out the moon as they descend to wreak havoc with her tormentors.
Pleasence is a tour de force as the wheelchair bound professor who has a helper monkey who is pleasantly chilling especially when wielding a scalpel.
The version of the film I saw became a bit disjointed but we soon find out there is a serial killer on the loose who, according to Pleasence, likes to keep the bodies of the victims close at hand while they decompose.
Using a coffin beatle to locate the bodies Jennifer tracks down the murderer and their hideous offspring and a final showdown in a underground charnal house is both gross and engagingly funny.
Loads of gore and a lively pace keep this film watchable even now and Argento uses every trick in the book to dispatch the various characters. Being an Argento film it has to have some eye popping and scissors. This is a film I could watch again which is saying something.
The version I watched seems to be the original USA release which has 30 minutes missing from it - Anchor Bay have released the full version.
5 skulls and a severed head.
Tagline - Jennifer Has A Few Million Close Friends. She's Going To Need Them
This 1985 offering from one of the horror genres masters Dario Argento is sylish and, for the Italian horror scene, beautifully shot. Set and filmed in Switzerland, the film starts of with a random Schoolgirl missing a bus and getting brutally murdered after which we see her head being thrown down a waterfall.
If you can take the nastiness and the violence, Phenomena is, visually, as stunning as anything Argento has ever done in his career, excepting perhaps Suspiria. The film’s first murder is set in the daytime on the beautiful Swiss countryside. In this beginning’s final shot we see a beautiful river flowing away, then the victim’s severed head fall directly in. Few directors have understood the power of having the beautiful and the beastly simultaneously in the same scene – fewer still have mastered it. For Argento, it seems to be an inborn instinct. The worlds he shows us can be lovely, macabre, dreamlike, and gruesome all within the same frame. Phenomena is no exception
The now completely rotting head is found some weeks later and, as it is covered in maggots, taken to world renown entomologist John McGregor (Donald Pleasence). The prof then informs us that the head had been knocking around for several weeks Duh!.
A little rich girl (Jennifer Connoly) shows up at a swiss boarding school where all the school girls seem to be in training to become hookers or something and is bullied when the girls realise she has the ability to control insects. There is a marvelous scene involving lots of blow flies blotting out the moon as they descend to wreak havoc with her tormentors.
Pleasence is a tour de force as the wheelchair bound professor who has a helper monkey who is pleasantly chilling especially when wielding a scalpel.
The version of the film I saw became a bit disjointed but we soon find out there is a serial killer on the loose who, according to Pleasence, likes to keep the bodies of the victims close at hand while they decompose.
Using a coffin beatle to locate the bodies Jennifer tracks down the murderer and their hideous offspring and a final showdown in a underground charnal house is both gross and engagingly funny.
Loads of gore and a lively pace keep this film watchable even now and Argento uses every trick in the book to dispatch the various characters. Being an Argento film it has to have some eye popping and scissors. This is a film I could watch again which is saying something.
The version I watched seems to be the original USA release which has 30 minutes missing from it - Anchor Bay have released the full version.
5 skulls and a severed head.
