The Phantom of the Opera (1998)

 

Rewatched Monday 10th March 2025

 

Director: Dario Argento

Screenplay: Dario Argento, Gérard Brach (and Giorgina Caspari)

Based on the novel by Gaston Leroux

Cast: Julian Sands as The Phantom of the Opera, Asia Argento as Christine Daaé, Andrea Di Stefano as Raoul, Baron de Chagny, Nadia Rinaldi as Carlotta Altieri, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni as Honorine, István Bubik as The Rat Catcher, Lucia Guzzardi as Madame Giry

 

Somehow because of Gaston Leroux, I can connect Lon Chaney Sr., Claude Rains, Dario Argento...and Andrew Lloyd Webber together among the many who've adapted or starred as the titular Phantom, Leroux's 1910 work first creating this figure terrorising the Paris. This is in mind I forgot Julian Sands was in this now taking up the role, emphasising alongside being a very idiosyncratic casting choice for Argento that this entire project was more idiosyncratic than I remembered. With the prologue suggesting Batman Returns (1992) in the origin of the Phantom as a baby Sands being floated across the waters of a cave in wicker basket, only with rats replacing the penguins, Argento's take with co-writer Gérard Brach taking its own direction with the source material. More so as I thought that Batman Return reference as a joke to myself as I re-watched the opening, only to forget a rat drags the wicker basket to safety and an animatronic rat puppet head in close-up is depicted as their friendship as human to rodent is shown.

Considering his 1987 film Opera, it makes sense for Argento to tackle this setting again, especially as he was always apparently adamant to Leroux's novel at some point. With the Budapest Opera House in Hungary used for the shooting location, designed as a copy of the Paris Opera House central to Leroux's story, alongside scouting real caves in Italy for the underbelly the Phantom looms in, this feels like a passion project and a really ambitious film even for Argento in terms of production. I'd argue the production value is great as a result, a period horror romance tragedy which is one of the few times in his career he went back in time. This also stands out considering this was made at the same time there was sadly the declining end of the Italian genre industry. Argento, even if also filming in Hungary, clearly had some influence least enough for the production values here to depict everything from the back stage areas full of props (even a huge life-size ship stage in one shot) to the washrooms for the linen to the caves below the Paris Opera.

It focuses on the Phantom fully as a romantic anti-hero, one who brutally kills people but has his own moral code, including one most would understand in dealing with an older male creeper of young girls obsessed beyond wanting to force chocolate on them. He is not physically disfigured, which is a significant change, arguably progressive in its own way, as the scarring is psychologically for good reason in being forced to like with rats. Sands is also really appropriate for a figure that compels Asia Argento's lead Christine Daaé, an aspiring opera singer, with the chemistry that would be found between them. As the film goes, the story finds itself deviating into differences such as explicit psychic powers that force a rat catcher to put his hand into a trap of his own set up, or the sense of humour which is that and deliberate.

A gorier and more sexually explicit take is found, feeling like Argento's full blown Gothic period horror which fully embraces its dramatic weight and doesn't suffer the many issues, particularly budget, that afflicted Dracula 3D (2012). The tonal changes and production style actually move this film in Argento's career closest to a wave of films from the nineties, such as those by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro like Delicatessen (1991), of tonally shifting genre films which embraced their practical production values and weren't above very strange moments of humour. This will put some off, but Argento's cinema was already getting weirder by the eighties, where Saxon randomly blares out in the middle of Opera with their heavy metal riffs, and probably the "weirdest" of his films, Phenomenon (1985), involving Jennifer Connelly being able to psychically communicate with insects and a chimpanzee with a razor blade.

It befits that era of baroque genre films with arguably its more lurid and tonal shifting moments helping the film from becoming too dry, be it the strange early CGI effects like Julian Sands seeing a mouse trap in the full of nude men writhing in pain superimposed in the full moon, or the bombast in style even for humour like a close-up of a singer's tonsils out of artistic creativity. Some of this does feel ridiculous but more often than not it feels like for deliberate humour - like a stint in an all-welcome sex bath house with, the potential second love interest for Christine, where equal opportunity nudity of all ages and sizes is contrasted by clothed men arguing philosophy violently in the pool.

There's the potential discomfort with this film's throw-in-the-kitchen-sink tone, if you connect the dots, with the more sexually frank moments knowing Asia Argento is Dario's daughter, though she has worked with him over the later decades to a film like Dark Glasses (2022), so thankfully theirs has felt more a happier familial relationship. Even if films like The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) before had a really deliberately uncomfortable thriller dealing with sexual violence, there's a feeling of greater trust between them which thankfully makes the pair comfortable in collaborating as they have as family in such films. Also she fits here as Christine - dubbed with another's singer voice, she does to Asia Argento's credit fit the role as a period horror lead who is meant to present the pure hearted singer an outcast like Sands would fall for. Including her conflict, when she starts to question if he is trying to dominate her as much as the reality that theirs is to be as much a tragic love, she thankfully feels like an appropriate casting choice. I like Julian Sands too, someone who befits this more glamorous version of the Phantom as much as someone who would also bite a person's tongue out for trying to steal his underground treasure.

In general, the film is over-the-top in a way that might put purists of the source off. It's not enough to have the famous scene of the huge chandelier being dropped mid-performance as a warning, but shirtless Sands sledge hammering its stone support to justify his warnings, and for it to bloodily maim a baker's dozen of the theatre patrons below. The completely abrupt tangent of a rat killing proto-golf kart would not be included in other adaptations, nor so much other Argento productions, but I can't help but think it feels broad on purpose, becoming a flex in Argento's career which you rarely see and with hindsight is appreciated for the heightened delirium of this particular film. The closest thing to this in Italian genre cinema I've seen in general was the directorial work of former actor Michele Soavi from this era, his tragically short filmography for this period even when it was more explicitly serious horror like The Sect (1991) deliberately cutting to a rabbit being able to operate a television remote for a humour jolt.

The curious mix of romance, horror, style and silliness of The Phantom of the Opera feels like the culmination of Argento's more absurd touches, and one thing that has made me be won over by the film is knowledge that this is still at the time before his most divisive, lower budget films came to be. Everything after The Card Player (2004) up to Dark Glasses are his most maligned works and projects where he was having to work with lower budgets. Here, there is the budget, and its sincerity in shifting between romantic tragedy to gore to absurd comedic shifts is feels less like many compromises have come to play, but are the point. As a result, I feel the film's been unfairly maligned in Dario Argento's career and have come to appreciate it.

Phenomena (1985)

 

Director: Dario Argento

Screenplay: Franco Ferrini and Dario Argento

Cast: Jennifer Connelly as Jennifer Corvino, Daria Nicolodi as Frau Brückner, Dalila Di Lazzaro as the Headmistress, Patrick Bauchau as Inspector Rudolf Geiger, Donald Pleasence as Professor John McGregor, Fiore Argento as Vera Brandt, Federica Mastroianni as Sophie, Gaspare Capparoni as Karl, Fiorenza Tessari as Gisela Sulzer, Mario Donatone as Morris Shapiro

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

It can definitely be said Phenomena is a wildly idiosyncratic film in terms of Argento's career. It has a simple premise at heart, a killer murdering young women in Switzerland, but it is one of the strangest in how it is telling it, with nods to Suspiria (1977) and the terror of boarding schools, entomology and insects, and Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe among other details. You also get Iron Maiden on the soundtrack and Donald Pleasence with a chimpanzee assistant, and that is not even factoring in our lead, Jennifer Connelly as a young woman with the telepathic ability to communicate with insects.

She is Jennifer Corvino, daughter of a popular actor, staying in a strict all-girls school where its headmistress, when learning Jennifer has an extreme form of sleepwalking, has her strapped to a bed, examined on by a doctor, and thinks she is high on vague drugs. From here, when she is pulled into the main story, it definitely emphasises Dario Argento did not embrace logic in many of his films conventionally despite the acclaim for his earlier seventies giallo. We get to her meeting Donald Pleasence, as a Scottish entomologist who has a female chimpanzee assistant due to being wheelchair bound, by way of the most dreamlike take on sleepwalking that includes Jennifer being a "kinda" witness to a gristly murder. In context to the films which came before from Argento, I can definitely say this one is more significantly ridiculous, a film which might put people off entirely for how bizarre it is. It argues thought, whilst with their own potential flaws, the era of his films especially after the Millennium have been misread for Argento in terms of plot logic criticism, more so when he was already entering films with more tangents to them. Case in point, with Dark Glasses (2022), the abruptness with its killer and rationale for their actions, alongside having an uncomfortable real life logic to it as it involves a misogynist killer picking off random women, feels a lot more grounded next to the likes of Phenomena or Inferno (1980), though the later has a more precise structure to it. In general, Argento's films, even his giallos, have their moments that deliberately break from logic in what he clearly thought would be more dynamic and dramatic; with Phenomena, the result is broader, which may be a tipping point for many, yet I love Phenomena itself for this lack of logic and fully aware of how absurd this is.

The strange airs around it help even in terms of accidental ones, such as for when the editing choices were made for these films when distributed in their original English dubs, which make no sense in hindsight, they have ended up with passages only available in their Italian language version for the restored version. Maybe Motörhead abruptly playing in one scene is the one odd choice even for me - I have gotten to appreciate Argento's use of heavy metal in the eighties even if not for everyone, and Iron Maiden's Flash of the Blade in multiple scenes actually works well - but even that adds to the personality of the game for the better. Details in the plot like the emphasis on the "Swiss Transylvania" this is set in and the Alp air's strange effect on the people, are the type of details you normally do not get enough of in some horror films and are the flourishes, even if never part of the main plot, that add weight. They feel like tonal flourishes you get from an Edgar Allen Poe tale, apt as he is referenced explicitly in a tribute to one of his iconic stories, Argento bringing in Donald Pleasence, a great casting choice, and giving him a chimpanzee as a sympathetic character who is yet an excuse, when tragedy leads to her needing to get revenge, to have her inexplicably find a switchblade in an outside bin the middle of nowhere and gun after the culprit.

Contrasted by the washed out blue touch that permeates the film, as Tenebrae (1982) was stark in its use of septic white, the film does feel like a dream. It started off from the idea of insects and their life cycles being able to identify the time of death, which was clearly the main fascination for the script, and spring boarded into something like a fever dream. Has all of it aged well? You can argue its plot reveal of the killer, in its take on mental asylums and disability, has not aged well, but the result includes a monster child with a spike on a retractable steel stick in a boat, so the film's absurd edge thankfully undercuts any bad taste to this, alongside giving Daria Nicolodi, despite this being the time her relationship with Argento ended for good, the chance to chew the scenery for the better. It is helped by Jennifer Connelly too; she is a visibly charismatic figure who helped keep the film grounded for all its absurd turns and ridiculous dubbing readings. The scenes in the worst all-girls' school possible, leading to her summoning a swarm of insects around the building, is ethereal as a set piece, and she keeps someone there in the centre to prevent this stumbling over, as it gets weirder. That also is the case when the film becomes more morbid, as it effectively gets into a killer who likes keeping the decaying bodies of their victims like a blanket comforter, then moving to a new house leaving them behind. Eventually when we get an entire underground swimming pool of decay in the location of the finale, one of the most grotesque scenes from the director, Connelly is still there to allow a legitimately sympathetic figure in the centre of this.

Add to this the music which is not the heavy metal, scored by Goblin and as strong as expected from them, and the film has always been one I have loved even if the one, even next to the Three Mothers films with their surrealist nightmare tones, that feels the maddest and peculiar in Dario Argento's career. This would have definitely been a film which gained a greater appreciation as time went on, with the irony knowing that the weight of expectation over Argento's career would have been harsh on the likes of this and Opera (1987), also with its heavy metal tinged eccentricities, next to his seventies smashes. For me, watching Phenomena even next to some of the great Italian genre films of the era did bring up the fact that Argento had become an auteur at that point. Even if one of the horror genre, he gained a traction and a weight to his name where Phenomena, for all its strange decisions in the plot, feels like a big event production in terms of the gravitas and style filtered through it. Rather than playing safe too, he decided to make something like Phenomena, and that realization has made my love for the film grow further.

Inferno (1980)

 

Director: Dario Argento

Screenplay: Dario Argento

Cast: Irene Miracle as Rose Elliott; Leigh McCloskey as Mark Elliott; Eleonora Giorgi as Sara; Daria Nicolodi as Elise Stallone Van Adler; Sacha Pitoëff as Kazanian

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) / An Abstract Re-Review

 

Continuing on from Suspiria (1977), Inferno builds up the mythology of the Three Mothers, three powerful witches who control the world: Mater Lachrymarum (The Lady of Tears), Mater Suspiriorum (The Lady of Sighs) and Mater Tenebrarum (The Lady of Darkness). Mater Suspiriorum, who occupied Germany, was central to Suspiria, whilst Mater Lachrymarum, who appears briefly in this film, occupies Rome and is central to the 2007 Argento film Mother of Tears. Mater Tenebrarum, who rules New York, is central to Inferno, which follows a very simple plot mechanic that a diary from an architect and occultist about the mothers is being suppressed violently through bloody murders to acquire all the published copies of it. One such case in this film leads to music student Mark Elliot (McCloskey) travelling to the USA after learning of the distress of his sister Rose Elliot (Miracle) upon discovering the knowledge of the Three Mothers herself, and finds himself on route to meeting Mater Tenebrarum herself.

Inferno overcomes probably one of the biggest issues with a genre film in structure. A narratively driven film can fall foul of being merely dragged along by the plot exposition and having to cover the narrative beats far too much, and as much as I have come to love many for this flaw, their desire to explain everything rather than let you drift through the film by your own intuition is a scourge for a lot of horror films if you want to appreciate them not for a humoured charm. Inferno's solution could be bluntly described as dream logic, but it is different from this. A very simple, concise plot unfolds but both enough is explained to the viewer whilst plenty is not, letting in moments which do not make sense in logic but do in the nightmarish form transpire, and leaving one to travel through the events with enough knowledge to grasp it but a lot more being discovered alongside the characters. Splitting the film up into situations following different characters has a pronounced effect. Everything connects together but the segments unfold as their own narratives, usually leading to gruesome death. While Mark becomes the lynchpin to keep it all together, events can unfold without him, having a drastic effect on how the film is watched. Every character introduced not only stands out but many get central focus for many minutes, and as a result, you get plenty of incredibly memorable sequences but also an unpredictable tone, all whilst they find themselves interconnecting into each other's lives or uncovering strange pockets into their world.

There are plenty of moments in Inferno that stand out, all of which interconnect under this loose plot completely seamlessly. You begin the film with a standout and elaborate underwater sequence in a submerged room and it gets better from there, beginning the movie with an appropriate sense of anything being possible. Since this is a Dario Argento film the murder sequences are extremely stylish and heightened, but since Suspiria was a supernatural horror film, its sequel follows in the unconventional and fantastical mixed with symbolism from his down-to-earth giallo thrillers. Not only do you have the Grand Guignol of the more conventional murder sequences, brutal and unsettling, but also you have sequences like people being savaged by cats or eaten to death by rats, all of which manages to be both beautiful but utterly foul and horrific, only with the issue that, whilst not showing actual animal cruelty, these scenes especially with the cats need to be warned about for certain viewers. Unlike other Italian genre films which come off as cheesy, even if adored by myself, Argento's from this era still sting when it comes to depicting the deaths, and the morbid nature around his films in general has retained potency from this.

With Inferno, you have the same heightened tone that is shared with Suspiria, very artificial set around an elaborate apartment complex where the evil is centred yet fully immersive at the same time. Genre filmmaking should effortlessly flow. It should use its narrative to lead the viewer through a journey, especially if the film is entertainment first, having the virtue of effecting a viewer's emotions directly if done well. I have changed my mind and contradicted this only because this statement can be challenged as subjective, and because the films that fail I have grown to appreciate and find their own logic with, but with those striving for the best of genre tropes, this is an ideal worth trying to achieve even if you fail. One of the best virtues of the Italian genre films in their heyday was their dreamy tones which allowed one to accept the irrational, thus avoiding distractions of logic in semblance to the real world that break the visage. Cinema is inherently an unrealistic medium, and unless one attempts to be as realistic as possible, it should negate the stumbles and falters as much as possible that take place when exposition and plotting block the steady flow of time. Inferno does not attempt to fully explain what is going on but this is for the better, as a quick witted viewer can build up enough from what they see onscreen and instead worry about the labyrinth of turns and abrupt ends that takes place for the characters, as much a film about travelling through various layers as one finds out the apartment complex has secret pipes and entrances within itself. Various strands from petty greed to the Three Mothers mythos interlink tentatively, and as various memorable casting choices like Nicolodi and Alida Valli pass onscreen, the film is able to work as a tense, eerily aired horror movie whilst ditching anything that would drag the film down into a mere plod.

Suspiria itself was an exceptional film just for how its use of colour and lighting took the viewer into a supernatural world, which left a huge task in attempting to match it, but Inferno's aesthetic manages to go even further in some ways by becoming even more coloured and bold in its look. This would one of the last things the great director Mario Bava worked on before his death, behind the optical and visual effects, and in many ways, as a tip of the hat from Argento to the innovator who helped build the Italian genre industry, this film reflects the bold colours of his work like Blood and Black Lace (1964) incredibly. Like Suspiria, terror is not just to be found in the darkness but in colour itself, at their brightest and lurid during the most unsettling incidents. With Argento's work during his golden period, the colour saturation (or lack of colour as in Tenebrae (1981) fully envelops and becomes one with the haunted moods of his films.

Instead of Goblin, the music changed for this film, with Keith Emerson from the prog band Emerson, Lake and Palmer as composer. That band is an acquired taste, but Emerson's film scoring career is a cult following still waiting to happen - alongside Inferno you have the notorious anime blockbuster Harmagedon (1983), Nighthawks (1981) with Sylvester Stallone and Rutger Hauer, and Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) amongst other films. While many of these films are not available in the UK, it is not surprising that prog rock fans can buy a compilation of Emerson's scores, the one for Inferno a great addition to Argento's musical canon by itself. Far more hysterical and on the cusp of absurdity with its choral chanting than the Goblin score for Suspiria, it helps push the irrationality of the film further with its alarmed, drastic tone, whilst allowing this to have its own personality in contrast to its predecessor.

Head to head with Suspiria, Inferno is Argento's most unconventional film, Inferno especially rejecting the plot heavy narratives that his giallos tend to have completely, and even Suspiria had for its phantasmagoric content. It follows a logic of its own that drifts between various characters and never gives priority over any specific one, Mark Elliot merely a grounded figure for the events happening to circle around. It is a filmic world where one can go to a library in Rome and, going downstairs, find oneself in an alchemist's laboratory fully of boiling paste for book binding. It is a film where events such as a total eclipse suddenly happens only to disappear, or the fact that there is a hot dog vendor out near a sewage pipe in the middle of the night, making only any sense in that they are as inclined to kill potential patrons as they are likely not getting many customers in their chosen spot; I do not complain about this sudden inclusion and abrupt end to such sights because the canvas of the film allows the moment to soak in regardless. So much more terrifying in films for me, like in Suspiria, is irrationality, where deaths can happen abruptly or events happen without being signposted, and as this desired template stands, Inferno is one of the strongest examples.

Inferno is one of my favourite films. I accept that it is one where the plot can be seen full of holes, but you have a scene where someone is terrorised as the lights keep going on and off in their apartment, a classic piece on the vinyl player stopping and starting to the power cuts, and the sense of absolute dread it can produce, and you see the skill that came into Argento's work. The mythos built here helps give the film a greater atmosphere, building up a background that fills in what is not dealt with, and also never becomes the main crux of the production, something which has plagued storytelling in various genres when needing to elaborate on it more and more per sequel. There is the contentious issue of Mother of Tears, which is a film I wish to return to as its own creation, part of the completely contentious issue in its own right of Argento's films post 2000s in general. It cannot ruin the two films which came before regardless of what I come view it as, but just emphasises how they both were exceptional productions, Inferno an experience where, unlike a rollercoaster, everything presented onscreen is felt.

Every death is painful, every jolt is startling, but the moments of quietness are just as effective. The scene with the ants crawling in an apartment is a clue but feel like a nod of iconography from surrealist art even if by accident, and absurd scenes like death by rats have a phantasmagoric ickiness to them that is still effecting. Rather than coming away from Inferno as another horror film padded out with attempts to rationalise everything, the completely lack of this adds to its mystique, leaving it at the end with the same level of intensity felt as with Suspiria. Together the duo is an incredible example of Italian horror cinema. Debating for myself which is the better film is a painful thing to consider, especially as Inferno really became a film I adored even beyond Dario Argento as a filmmaker.

Abstract Spectrum: Fantastique/Psychotronic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High

Masters of Horror Season 2 Part 1: Pelts (2006)

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Director: John Carpenter

Screenplay: Matt Venne

Based on a short story by F. Paul Wilson

Cast: Meat Loaf as Jake Feldman; Link Baker as Lou Chinaski; Emilio Salituro as Sergio; Ellen Ewusie as Shanna; John Saxon as Jeb 'Pa' Jameson

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #18

I return back to Masters of Horror for Season 2, which had a surprisingly quick turnaround as whilst the first season ended in the spring of 2006, the second started in late 2006. Even swifter than this is how, not far from viewing Dario Argento's Jenifer (2005), I'm now viewing his second addition to the TV series Pelts. Jenifer was an immense disappointment, having the potential for a great psychosexual drama but given to the wrong director. Pelts is an immediately better episode. Not great, but better. 

The one advantage Pelts has, for all its silliness, is that it relies on the tone of ancient folklore to justify anything that happens in the plot. Meat Loaf is Jake Feldman, a greedy fur merchant with an obsession with a stripper/former model Shanna (Ellen Ewusie) who thinks he can bribe her affection and succeed in life when he acquires a set of suspicious fur pelts from a trapper Jeb Jameson (John Saxon, whose return to an Argento film after Tenebre (1982) is still awesome even if his role is brief). The pelts are cleared hexed the moment they were acquired, taken from a sacred raccoon shrine in the woods, with a tendency to woo people into committing suicide in utterly ridiculous ways.

Expecting a deeper message of Pelts being anti-fur is absurd, but what stands out for the better is how the pelts as an item of symbolic meaning evokes common folklore in various cultures of the dangers of transgressing nature. In this case, the curse generated against those who transgressed over a sacred animal shrine allows the episode to get away with such ludicrous deaths as witnessed throughout the episode. Sewing one's face close is absurd, but using the logic of this taboo in human myth makes it more acceptable, as such folklore stretched into the fantastical.

Aside from this, it's Argento making a lurid story for the sake of it, which varies per viewer in reward. Whilst his golden run of films were lurid too, especially on gore, they were also filtered through a rich aesthetic and stories which twist and turned with invention and spark. Here, in later year Argento, its having everything ramped up to an exaggerated extent with that content itself the main dish being served. Where Meat Loaf chews scenery. Where the gore, including the most impractical of suicide methods including animal trap, are as visceral as possible and not stylised. Where sex and nudity is up front, including random lesbianism. Stuff you'd expect more from an Andrea Bianchi or one of the other more infamous Italian genre directors of yore. Not Argento who combined the hyper violent and sensual with a bit more class than this.

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Masters of Horror Season 1 Part 5

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Jenifer (2005)

Director: Dario Argento

Screenplay: Steven Weber

Based on a comic book story Jenifer by written by Bruce Jones and illustrated by Berni Wrightson

Cast: Steven Weber as Frank Spivey; Carrie Anne Fleming as Jenifer; Brenda James as Ruby Spivey; Harris Allan as Pete Spivey; Beau Starr as Chief Charlie; Laurie Brunetti as Spacey

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #12

Amongst the growing list of disappointing entries by favourite directors in this series, Dario Argento's Jenifer can be added to them. This is neither with a sense of pain other fans of Argento's either as my relationship to his work, past Opera (1987) to be technically accurate, is more complicated than others who merely look down on it all mostly. I'd argue Sleepless (2001), flaws and virtues alike, was a great later gem and I'm not in a minority with that thankfully¹. For that period in general, the nineties is the one hazy area of Argento's career I need to view but after Sleepless I'll admit it's not been a great run. Not completely painful to sit through but with lows like Mother of Tears (2007) I couldn't delude myself in viewing as good.

There's still brief snippets of the old Argento though in these later films, like the ending of Giallo (2009), which in amidst the bad (like Adrien Brody in Giallo also) makes it a far more difficult job evaluating what's happened to the quality control of Argento's filmography. Personally the strain of resources available to Argento as a genre filmmaker is the real issue, which ties back into his episode of Masters of Horror if one forgives a tangent for the paragraph. Horror is in a scenario, since the 2000s, where it's in a golden age for many but there's none of the vibrant industry in other places where one would think it could be capitalised on. Older directors in this series (Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter) were edged out of the market at this point and for Argento it was likely a even bigger mountain to climb as (arguably) the last Italian genre filmmaker of the golden age of the industry still churning films out. Not all of them were considered "great", but the iconic and memorable names from the late fifties-early nineties run of Italian genre filmmaking have mostly left or are gone. Others died as the industry also died (Lucio Fulci), retired (Sergio Martino), had to leave or go to television directing other genres (Michele Soavi), or ended careers shooting super low budget films elsewhere until their deaths (Bruno Mattei in the Philippines). Argento, one of the best of them all, is the last of them too. He's also not someone helped by the resources he's stuck with, the screenplays he's stuck with for later work nor the lower budgets and increasing use of materials like CGI. A TV production like Masters of Horror sadly doesn't help either.

I have never read the original comic tale Jenifer originates from, though it does have a considerable reputation, enough to have been included in 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die next to legendary titles, something whatever you think of such books is still of considerable interest here for a medium like horror comics. The story as adapted to screen here - another glum policeman for the series - Frank Spivey (Steve Weber) rescues a woman from being killed in the woods only to find she's both deformed severely in the face and a simple minded, cannibalistic entity he becomes obsessive over - doesn't come off well with an immediate problem in the gender depiction. Inherently what should be a fascinating tale of male obsession over women, where one figure still yields a powerful sensuality in spite of drastic birth defects, just evokes the misogynistic phrase involving the words "paper bag". The script doesn't help, lead actor Weber not a good penman as he has male characters say "subtle" dialogue about how beautiful Jenifer is below the neck, the result of which is just the start of how crass the story is instead of showings the innate meanings you could draw from between the lines. 

The problems have nothing to do with actress Carrie Anne Fleming as Jenifer mind. In fact, under heavy makeup baring one dream sequence where she's seen without it, Fleming as an actress I've never seen in any other production does a commendable job, the one little slither of saving grace to an otherwise bland episode by doing something far more rewarding than anyone else onscreen. Playing it as a adult child who doesn't understand the difference between animal or human (even child) as baring when jealously is involved, she does a commendable job of playing a savant who yet welds an knowing, wanting sense of sensuality that proceeds to scramble Spivey's mind. In the best circumstance, a story like this rather than evoking the unfortunate misogynistic ideas I mentioned a paragraph before should've been about the problems underlining the male heterosexual libido, evoking not only ancient myths of female-monster hybrids that complicated men's notions of female beauty, but more modern retellings of this issue such as Junji Ito's pitch perfect take for manga Tomie (1987-2000) where men are easily bended towards amorality against a figure entirely supernatural, to which Fleming is playing her role as. Unfortunately, as much as I view Dario Argento as one of the best horror/mystery directors of all time, he's clearly here not a director meant for small scale character drama especially when it's not presenting him anything to work with baring Fleming herself.

What plays off as a psycho-sexual drama, where an original act of kindness by the protagonist becomes a strangely beautiful love affair, should be something worth so much more fascinating and transgressive beyond merely nasty gore. Even when Jenifer commits atrocious acts, Spivey gladly buries the evidence and flees with her, which could've lead to a rewarding narrative even if it deviated away from the original text. But the wrong person is at the helm. It's also clear the script is not good enough, just for how obvious and crass it is before as much of the blame is on Argento as well. How else does one explain how the immediate reaction to first meeting Jenifer leading to Spivey's emotional state being depicted with an unfortunate choice of moment in the episode, a change of behaviour mid-coitus with his wife later that night in the bedroom which comes off as silly as it is eyebrow raising. As much of this is Argento too in terms of the lack of carefulness to this material felt onscreen.

The utter lack of any of Argento's style is also felt. Even Dracula 3D (2012) has more of his touch in comparison, which is a truly damning comment to say. Only having Claudio Simonetti, a regular collaborator, evokes any of the old magic even if the score's far from memorable. The production style of Masters of Horror feels alien for a director as visual obsessed as Argento, but further enforced as well near the end of this series is that, again, when the story's not up to snuff there's going to be problems, even if its adaptation a stone cold classic from another medium.

From https://riversofgrue.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/
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From https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c2/Masters_of_
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Dance of the Dead (2005)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Screenplay: Richard Christian Matheson

Based on a short story by Richard Matheson

Cast: Margot Berner as Marie; Marilyn Norry as Kate; Sharon Heath as Gerri; Jessica Lowndes as Peggy; Robert Englund as the MC; Ryan McDonald as Boxx; Jonathan Tucker as Jak; Don MacKay as Steven           

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #13

Dance of the Dead, set in a post apocalyptic world where chemical warfare's ravaged the American infrastructure, attempts its hardest to stand out amongst the pack. To do so, it's the most mid 2000s of the entire season in appearance and style but it was a nice try. Shaky camera. Quick editing. Beige, grey and washed out colours. Faux Goth and alt culture at the bar where the title event happens, where people are half naked, bound in leather or thrashing about to the house metal band whilst Robert Englund's the MC for Hell in his snake-like manner and constant potty mouth. Consider Tobe Hooper was in his early sixties at the time of this production, it at least warmed my heart briefly that the director I'll defend more than others was just as wild and unhinged as he was throughout the rest of his career. I'll openly admit to being an apologist, but Hooper's career is much more rewarding than initially thought of after Poltergeist (1982) throughout the eighties. Its only from Crocodile (2000) onwards, the film where any of his trademark manic energy and style was sold out, that the films are more difficult to defend from what I've seen, where even The Mangler (1995) beforehand still had a glorious derangement to it in spite of its silliness. In the beginning it looks like Dance of the Dead will be the same with an added advantage of trying to stand out from the other episodes.

As a story however Dance of the Dead is bad. A tedious drama of a young woman  growing up in post-apocalypse America going with the wrong crowd against her mother's wishes, a drama which doesn't work due to the lack of interest in any of the characters. The plot revolves entirely around its titular event which is obvious from the beginning and leads to clichés of chemical experimentation and exploitation of human life at the club. Even the title event is nothing of particular interest, leading to nothing but actors writhing about on a stage. The other problem, more crucial is that it relies on an emotional hook about the protagonist's older sister throughout the narrative. This is a problem as, baring flashbacks to a birthday party where she's a child, not as an adult, one is not provided with the connective tissue as an adult character one needs for her absence to effect one, thus leaving her as a disconnected non-entity. By its end Dance of the Dead is one of the more difficult episodes of Masters of Horror to write a lot about because it has little to actual write about in detail. Nothing particularly stands out as actually of interest, not even Englund in a very sleazy role, because there's no meat to the material as an actual story. The result after the initial rush of its tone is an immense disappointment for me.

From https://vareverta.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/dance.jpg

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(1) - If only more people could see it nowadays though. An abrupt legal issue meant Arrow Video in the UK didn't just let the license go out of print, but were forced to pull copies off Amazon etc. Whatever the reason, sadly it means it's more difficult for newcomers to the director to see the film in a decent release. Bolstered by his more creative scenes of the 2000s, Max von Sydow in the best performance in any Argento film, and a killer soundtrack from the form of Goblin who reunited for that production, Sleepless has a lot to admire.

Mother of Tears (2007) [Mini Review]

From http://stuffpoint.com/horror/image/
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Director: Dario Argento

Screenplay: Jace Anderson, Dario Argento, Walter Fasano, Adam Gierasch, Simona Simonetti

Cast: Asia Argento (as Sarah Mandy); Cristian Solimeno (as Detective Enzo Marchi); Adam James (as Michael Pierce); Moran Atias (as Mater Lachrymarum); Valéria Cavalli (as Marta Colussi); Philippe Leroy (as Guglielmo De Witt); Daria Nicolodi (as Elisa Mandy)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #6

Kim Newman - the (rightly) acclaimed horror academic, film reviewer and fiction/non-fiction author - stated that the wait for Mother of Tears, the final of supposed triptych of films by Dario Argento about the Three Mothers he created in Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980), was like following up the first two Lord of the Rings films with Krull (1983). I find that the experience of Mother of Tears is significantly worse. Later Dario Argento films are an issue that plagues fans of his classics, but for me there was significantly less of a problem willing to accept their flaws as long as some personality was alive in them. Baring the nineties¹, and one or two pieces from the seventies and noughts², I've seen almost everything. Sleepless (2001) for its flaws is still strong, only the flatness of its look marring an interesting giallo. The Card Player (2004), in need of a revisit, was a film that was utterly ludicrous and somehow made cinematography master Benoît Debie create a flat looking palette, but it was certainly not the train wreck it's been described as. Giallo (2009), while laughably bad and clichéd  to an extreme level, was fun and had a great twist ending. It was only with Dracula (2012), for how entertaining I still found it, that I showed any real palatable concern as Argento not only made a silly film but sacrificed his trademarks on it. In hindsight however it's a great film next to the Mother of Tears, the last film I needed to see of the noughts which is the black stain in his career, making even Giallo look credible in quality.

The issue with Mother of Tears is that, even if it wasn't connected to the Three Mothers films of before or even to Argento, it would be terrible. There is a discrepancy to films after the Millennium where ultra schlocky, gory movies can come off as tawdry, repulsive and tedious whilst the older films can be charming and fun unless they are diabolically bad; but a lot of it here is to do with how lifeless and bleak the result is in the newer films like this. Without any of the hallucinatory look of Suspiria and Inferno, without the fairy tale and dream logic, this is a more straightforward story, about an outbreak of murder and chaos in Rome when the Mother of Tears claims a mythical artefact and gets her followers to create anarchy. With Rome becoming a pit of violence, infanticide and mass rioting on the streets, archaeology student Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento) finds she is the only one who can stop the Mother of Tears, her late mother Elisa Mandy (Daria Nicolodi) returning from the grave to inform her of latent abilities as a white witch inherited from her parent. The entire execution of this narrative, barring one or two moments, is terrible and is a completely style-less dabbling into pondering exposition and ultra-violent gothic horror without any grace to it.

Admittedly there are Italian horror films (from the eighties especially) that can be accused of this, but the layer of gloss and kitsch to them is lost here with the post-Millennial look and realistic palette, squandering the Catholicism of Rome as a location and the occult trappings of witchcraft. Instead the result looks cheap and delves into the kind of Gothic symbolism that would embarrass Goths with any sort of taste: the Mother of Tears is a model who lives in only her birthday suit and the apocalyptic riots in Rome are partially signalled by what appears to be a worldwide Goth conventional, people coming in on airplanes saying boo to the people within the terminal buildings. The earlier films, even if they were tasteless schlock, still had class even in poverty row in terms of style, this film meant to have a grandeur to match the first Three Mothers films but instead looking like a lot of bland American genre films from the same decade, Asia Argento looking lost as a protagonist while Nicolodi is re-enacting the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi in green hued CGI.

The worst part is that in its attempt to still be a competent horror film, it becomes the most violent film in Argento's career but manages to just be grim and too violence artistically for the tone. I would defend far more violent and disturbing films that this (Baise-Moi (2000), Ichi The Killer (2001) etc.) but there are cases of films that are far too violent for their tone, the result when they merely become desensitising and numb me rather than cause me to feel shock, revulsion or illicit laughter. The perfect spectrum for gore in horror is either in the absurd camp (literally) of a Herschell Gordon Lewis film or one that illicit shock and disgust; desentisiting violence exists completely outside of this spectrum and illicit no emotion whatsoever. CGI aided, it feels like Argento is trying too hard here and is creates an off-putting work in terms of how it was put together. Children are killed numerous times and it's not shocking, merely crass, and the film also has the lowest point in Argento's career in a scene involving a lesbian couple and a pike that is arguably misogynistic, not something to be debated like criticisms of his older work but completely offensive in its place in the film, tone and how the pike is involved. The result is disgusting but eye-rolling, this type of violence ultimately pointless, neither transgressive in real revulsion or ridiculous but merely a pointless escapade.

This entire tone can be felt throughout the film, the sense Mother of Tears was merely created to finish a triptych that really didn't need to happen, the duo of Suspiria and Inferno perfect as they are by themselves. As if to make things worse a terrible metal song scored by Claudio Simonetti, who should have known better, plays over the end credits, reminding me of a bad Cradle of Filth knock-off only to realise Dani Filth of the band, he of some questionable decisions in terms of films he's involved with, is actually singing the vocals. The ultimate disgust I have with Mother of Tears, when there's plenty of older Italian schlock I can still find entertainment in, is that this is a colourless, characterless and cynical work to have been created, less about continuing the Three Mothers trilogy but all the worst aspects of gothic horror and the legacy of the first films, misinterpreted and abused, dumped on screen. It neither feels tasteless in a fun way or something ridiculous, merely an exercise. It feels less like a b-movie equivalent of the first two films, to reference the opening Kim Newman quote, but a dreadful c-level cash grab.

From http://www.horreur.net/sites/default/files/upload/motheroftearspic4.jpg

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¹ The films made in the nineties is the huge gap in terms of his horror films for me barring seeing Two Evil Eyes (1990) and The Stendhal Syndrome (1996). Revisiting the two mentioned films and catching up the others will be an interesting experience in lieu to what I think of his work in the noughties.

²Mainly the TV work. There is also the one non-horror film in his career, the exceptionally rare historical drama The Five Days (1973), which I still need to see but the prospects of seeing it considering how commercially unsuccessful it was will be difficult. 

Halloween 31 For 31: Inferno (1980)

From http://www.qwipster.net/inferno.jpg

Director: Dario Argento

Screenplay: Dario Argento

Cast: Irene Miracle (as Rose Elliott); Leigh McCloskey (as Mark Elliott); Eleonora Giorgi (as Sara); Daria Nicolodi (as Elise Stallone Van Adler); Sacha Pitoëff (as Kazanian)

Synopsis: Continuing on from Suspiria (1977), Inferno builds up the mythology of the Three Mothers, three powerful witches who control the world. Mater Lachrymarum (The Lady of Tears), Mater Suspiriorum (The Lady of Sighs) and Mater Tenebrarum (The Lady of Darkness). Mater Suspiriorum, who occupied Germany, was central to Suspiria, whilst Mater Lachrymarum, who appears briefly in this film, occupies Rome and is central to the 2007 Argento film Mother of Tears. Mater Tenebrarum, who rules New York, is central to Inferno, as the information of the Three Mothers is being suppressed violently through bloody murders. Music student Mark Elliot (McCloskey) travels to the USA after learning of the distress of his sister Rose Elliot (Miracle) upon discovering the knowledge of the Three Mothers herself, and finds himself on route to meeting Mater Tenebrarum himself.

From https://myownpersonalhellblog.files.wordpress.com/
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Inferno overcomes probably one of the biggest issues with a genre film in structure. A narratively driven film can fall foul of being merely dragged along by the plot exposition and having to cover the narrative beats far too much. They desire to explain everything rather than let you drift through the film by your own intuition. Inferno's solution could be bluntly described as dream logic, but it's different from this. A very simple, concise plot unfolds but both enough is explained to the viewer whilst plenty isn't, leaving one to travel through the events with enough knowledge to grasp it but a lot more being discovered alongside the characters. Splitting the film up into situations following different characters has a pronounced effect. Everything connects together but the segments unfold as their own narratives, usually leading to gruesome death. While Mark becomes the lynchpin to keep it all together, events can unfold without him as well, having a drastic effect on how the film is watched. Every character introduced not only stands out but many get central focus for many minutes. As a result you get plenty of incredibly memorable sequences but also an unpredictable tone.

From http://www.timeoutdubai.com/images/content
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There's plenty of moments in Inferno that stand out, all of which interconnect under this loose plot completely seamlessly. You being the film with a standout and elaborate underwater sequence in a submerged room and it gets better from there, beginning the movie with an appropriate sense of anything being possible. Since this is a Dario Argento film the murder sequences are extremely stylish and heightened, but since Suspiria was a supernatural horror film, its sequel follows in the unconventional and fantastical mixed with symbolism from his down-to-earth giallo thrillers. Not only do you have the grand guinol of the more conventional murder sequences, brutal and unsettling, but you have sequences like people being savaged by cats or eaten to death by rats, all of which manages to be both beautiful but utterly foul and horrific. Unlike other Italian genre films which come off as cheesy, Argento's from this era still sting when it comes to depicting the deaths and the morbid nature around his films in general has retained a potency from this.

From http://screenmusings.org/movie/blu-ray/Inferno/images/Inferno-163.jpg

With Inferno you have the same heightened tone that is shared with Suspiria, very artificial set around an elaborate apartment complex where the evil is centred yet fully immersive at the same time. Genre filmmaking should effortlessly flow. It should use it's narrative to lead the viewer through a journey, especially if the film is entertainment first, having the virtue of effecting a viewer's emotions directly if done well. One of the best virtues of the Italian genre films in their heyday was their dreamy tones which allowed one to accept the irrational, thus avoiding distractions of logic in semblance to the real world that break the visage. Cinema is inherently an unrealistic medium, and unless one attempts to be as realistic as possible, it should negate the stumbles and falters as much as possible that take place when exposition and plotting block the steady flow of time. Inferno doesn't attempt to fully explain what's going on but this is for the better, as a quick witted viewer can build up enough from what they see onscreen and instead worry about the labyrinth of turns and abrupt ends that takes place for the characters, as much a film about travelling through various layers as one finds out the apartment complex has secret pipes and entrances within itself. Various strands from petty greed to the Three Mothers mythos interlink tentatively, and as various memorable casting choices like Nicolodi and Alida Valli pass onscreen, the film is able to work as a tense, eerily aired horror movie whilst ditching anything that would drag the film down into a mere plod.

From http://i263.photobucket.com/albums
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Technical Detail:

Suspiria was an exceptional film just for how its use of colour and lighting took the viewer into a supernatural world, but Inferno's aesthetic manages to go even further in some ways by becoming even more coloured and bold in its look. This would one of the last things the great director Mario Bava worked on before his death, behind the optical and visual effects, and in many ways, as a tip of the hat from Argento to the innovator who helped build the Italian genre industry, this film reflects the bold colours of his work like Blood and Black Lace (1964) incredibly. Like Suspiria, terror is not just to be found in the darkness but in colour itself, at their brightest and lurid during the most unsettling incidents. With Argento's work during his golden period, the colour saturation (or lack of colour as in Tenebrae (1981) fully envelops and becomes one with the haunted moods of his films.

Instead of Goblin, the music changed for this film, with Keith Emerson from the prog band Emerson, Lake and Palmer as composer. That band's an acquired taste, but Emerson's film scoring career is a cult following still waiting to happen - alongside Inferno you have the notorious anime blockbuster Harmagedon (1983), Nighthawks (1981) with Sylvester Stallone and Rutger Hauer, and Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) amongst other films. While many of these films aren't available in the UK, it's not surprising that prog rock fans can buy a compilation of Emerson's scores, the one for Inferno a great addition to Argento's musical canon by itself. Far more hysterical and on the cusp of absurdity with its choral chanting than the Goblin score for Suspiria, it helps push the irrationality of the film further with its alarmed, drastic tone.

From https://www.acheronbooks.com/img/cms
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Abstract Spectrum: Fantastique/Psychotronic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High

Inferno is Argento's most unconventional film, more than even Suspiria, rejecting the plot heavy narratives that his giallos tend to have completely. It follows a logic of its own that drifts between various characters and never gives priority over any specific one, Mark Elliot merely a grounded figure for the events happening to circle around. It's a filmic world where one can go to a library in Rome and, going downstairs, find oneself in an alchemist's laboratory. It's a film where events such as a total eclipse suddenly happens only to disappear; I don't complain about this sudden inclusion and abrupt end to such sights because the canvas of the film allows the moment to soak in regardless. So much more terrifying in films for me, like in Suspiria, is irrationality, that deaths can happen abruptly or events happen without being signposted, and as this desired template stands, Inferno is one of the strongest examples.

From http://photos.bravenet.com/272/478/925/3/E829847AD5.jpg

Personal Opinion:

Finishing off the Halloween 31 For 31 here with this the 31st entry, it's been a lot of written blog pages but aside from the fun of it, is there anything worth mentioning about it as a whole? Like the years before, once this is over some films I even praised highly will disappear from memory, not because they'll suddenly become bad but because my tastes are very selective. Some will grow in memory with the possibility of ones I gave less than stellar reviews of growing in stature. Others were too fun to even care about this. But there's a certain type of cinema that appeals to me, something that can sometimes be directly linked to a dream logic, which are very loose with structure plotting allowing the viewer to fill in the space, or merely have a unique personality to them of their own.

Inferno is one of the my favourite films. I don't care if the plot's ridiculous, makes no sense rationally or that like Suspiria another building of evil gets set on fire because of an accident at the end, far and away more appealing for this reason than countless horror films that are so heavily plotted you're stuck sitting through exposition scenes. The mythos built here helps give the film a greater atmosphere, building up a background that fills in what is not dealt with; unfortunately it seems, yet to dare see it, that Mother of Tears ruined the trilogy, but what is created here is a lot better than other horror films. With this film I'm not thinking of its logic or letting the world it creates become ruined by over thinking about it, instead an experience where, unlike a rollercoaster, everything presented onscreen is felt. Every death is painful, every jolt is startling, but the moments of quietness are just as effective. When the power goes on and off in one scene, causing a classic piece of music on a record player to jump, it lifts the hairs on the back of my neck, and more absurd scenes like death by rats have a phantasmagoric ickiness to them that's still effecting. Rather than coming away from Inferno as another horror film padded out with attempts to rationalise everything, the completely lack of this adds to its mystique, leaving it at the end with the same level of intensity felt as with Suspiria. Together the duo are incredible examples of Italian horror cinema, but I confess I may love Inferno the most.