Bring Out the Perverts: Tenebrae (1982)

cover

While Mario Bava may have invented the Giallo, it was Dario Argento who popularized it in 1970 with The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. Without that film, we wouldn’t be talking about Giallo at all. Then in 1975, he perfected the genre with Deep Red.

While the genre was a very popular one, it had its critics. Many criticized its overt sexualization of violence and its graphic violence towards women. In 1982, just over a decade after making The Bird With the Crystal Plumage and thus creating the Giallo craze, Argento made Tenebrae, a film that can be viewed as the director’s direct response to the criticism of his films. While the genre would continue to be popular throughout the 1980s and Argento would make several more, Tenebrae can also be looked at as a final statement about the genre from the director.

While The Bird With the Crystal Plumage opens with the killer typing something on a typewriter – he is the creator of the art, Tenebrae opens with the killer reading an already-published novel – he is an audience to the art. That novel, also titled Tenebrae, was written by our protagonist Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) and it could rightly be considered a Giallo. It is about a killer who attacks women he considers to be perversions to society.

The real killer acts like a copycat to the killer inside the book (inside this film). We see him murder a woman who offers herself up sexually in order to get out of a shoplifting charge, and then later a lesbian couple with an open relationship. Like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, the killer believes he has been sent to rid the streets of so-called scum.

Peter Neal is in Rome for a book tour celebrating Tenebrae. His agent Bullmer (John Saxon) keeps booking him interviews in which Peter is constantly being asked about what effects the violence in his book may create in society. That’s Argento getting meta, as he was often asked similar questions about his movies.

When one of the murder victims has pages of his book inserted into her mouth the police begin asking Peter questions. Later the killer will slide quotes from Tenebrae under his door. Peter and his assistant Anne (Daria Nicolodi) start their own investigation.

The film is filled with scenes exactly what you’ve come to expect from an Argento-directed Giallo. There are sly camera angles, extreme close-ups, surprising jump-scares, blood-soaked violence, and a righteous score from Goblin (well, three of the members at least).

While the film does present lots of questions about violence and art – does it create violence in society or is it simply a depiction of the existing violence in society? Argento doesn’t give us any concrete answers. His on-screen surrogate, Peter Neal bats the questions away with pat answers, but the movie seems to indulge the idea both ways. Perhaps his films are a reflection of the real-life violence Argento was surrounded by, or perhaps his films influenced others to violence in society. Maybe a little bit of both occurred. It is clear Argento loved depicting violence in his films. I suspect he was never ever to truly untangle the reasons why. I love his films and abhor real-life violence so I have no pat answers either.

What we are left with is a pretty darn good little film filled with stylish violence and an interesting mystery. That is more than enough for me.

Bring Out the Perverts: Deep Red (1975)

poster

I wrote about Deep Red for my Friday Night Horror movie a little over a year ago. I don’t know that I have a whole lot more to say about it. It is my favorite Giallo. I think it perfectly encapsulates everything I love about the genre.

Dario Argento is a master of creating fascinating visual images. Working with cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller they created a film that is stunningly beautiful, thrilling, and often quite terrifying.

I’ve seen it at least half a dozen times and it has never lost its allure for me. I’m always captivated.

I still do get it confused with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. They have similar plots starting with a protagonist who witnesses a murder inside a building while he is on the streets of Rome. There is some detail he saw but can’t quite put his finger on.

But it doesn’t matter. Plots really don’t matter in these things, especially in Deep Red. I still couldn’t tell you all the details of what happens in this film, or at least what they mean. There are moments and entire scenes that don’t make any sort of logical sense, but they completely work for me. They are frightening, alluring, or at the very least visually interesting.

The score from the progressive rock band Goblin is an all-timer for me. It is sometimes a bit over the top but it somehow works perfectly within this film.

Everything works perfectly within this film. I love it so much.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Paganini Horror (1988)

paganini horror

Horror, as a genre, can take some of the dumbest plot points and turn them into something fun, and interesting, and when you’re lucky, even scary. Killer clowns are living in the sewer, hatchet-wielding dudes slice up coeds in isolated campgrounds, killer tomatoes lurk at the grocery store, and just today I watched a short film called Hair Wolf.

Sometimes the movies are in on the gag (that killer tomato movie is full of winks towards the camera), sometimes they find ways to elevate the material, and sometimes they are just dumb.

Paganini Horror has a fairly interesting (if rather silly) idea but doesn’t find a way to do anything interesting with it.

An all-girl rock band is struggling to come up with their next big hit. Their producer Lavinia (Maria Cristina Mastrangeli) complains that all their new songs sound like their old ones. They need something new, something bold, something that will wow their fans.

Naturally, they buy an unpublished score by the famous Italian violinist and composer Paganini from an unscrupulous dealer (Donald Pleasence who doesn’t get to do much but has one scene in which he throws piles of cash off a tall building while muttering “fly away little demons.” Naturally, they decide to shoot a video of them performing their rock-n-roll version of the Paganini song inside the murder house where he lived. Naturally, this unleashes a gateway to Hell.

See what I mean? That’s not a bad setup. I mean, it’s pretty silly, but a good writer and director could do something with that. Instead, we get some half-thought-out ideas, a couple of decent bouts of gore and violence, and two (count them) two full-on music videos.

Daria Nicolodi who starred in a bunch of great Dario Argento films (and cowrote Suspiria with him) costars as the owner of the creepy mansion. She also co-wrote it with director Luigi Cozzi and Raimondo Del Balzo (who hasn’t done anything else I’ve seen). You can kind of see what they were going for, but without a true master like Argento to help out it all comes out as a big mess.