Due occhi diabolici (1990)

... aka: Oczy szatana (Satan's Eyes)

... aka: Pahan silmät (Evil Eyes)

... aka: Two Evil Eyes

Directed by:

Dario Argento

George A. Romero

Originally conceived as an four-part anthology of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations with short segments to be directed by Argento, Romero, John Carpenter and Wes Craven (Stephen King was also considered), this instead ended up as a two-parter with segments from just Romero, who directed and co-wrote the first story, "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar", and Argento, who directed and co-wrote (with frequent collaborator Franco Ferrini) the second story, "The Black Cat." While it would have been interesting to see what Carpenter and Craven's contributions would have looked like (neither had done a Poe film before), it's also cool that whittling this down to just two segments that run nearly an hour apiece gives us essentially two features for the price of one. Not that the results here are flawless by any means, or anywhere near either director's best work, but there's still plenty of interest here for fans of both.

Revisiting this for the first time since my teen years, back when I much preferred Argento's segment, I've had a change of opinion now that I've looked at this again through adult eyes. Unsurprisingly, Argento's segment is much more bizarre, exploitative, flashy, attention-grabbing and visually creative and thus obviously would have appealed more to the instant gratification seeking teenager I used to be. However, it needs to be said that Romero is trying for something completely different with his take, something much more measured, moody and with reverence to both the tone and style of the source material. The brevity of most of Poe's classic stories didn't allow for much plot complication and most were structured as a steady atmospheric build toward a final shocking moment. That's similar to how Romero has approached this job, with respect for Poe's writing style, as opposed to Argento, who opted to stick to his signature directorial style. Both offer up imperfect visions with rewarding moments done in two completely different ways so it's impossible for me to say one is "better" than the other.

"The Facts in the Case..." opens with Jessica Valdemar (Adrienne Barbeau) paying a visit to family lawyer Steven Pike (E.G. Marshall) to liquidate a large portion of her dying husband's stocks. It would appear that the elderly husband, Ernest (Bingo O'Malley), who has just three to six weeks left to live, wants to make sure his much-younger wife is well taken care of in his absence. As for her feelings, she rather bluntly points out, "I was a flight attendant that Ernie brought home off the Red Eye to the shock and dismay of you and everyone else in this town. I married a rich old man. I let him use me for pleasure and for show. Now I'm going to let him pay me for my services." Jessica wants her payment for services rendered in the form of large sums of cash and doesn't want to wait the eighteen months to two years it would take to settle the estate. She not only has the signed paperwork to prove her husband's intent but she even puts her husband on the phone to have him personally ensure it's what he wants. Though suspicious, Pike prepares the paperwork as instructed.

Naturally, all is not what it appears to be. While Ernest is indeed on his deathbed, he's being kept in a state of hypnosis by Dr. Robert Hoffman (Ramy Zada). Using a pyramid-shaped electronic metronome and voice commands, he's able to control what his subject says and what he does, including making him sign important documents he'd otherwise not be signing. When out of the trance, Ernest is in such excruciating pain that all he can do is curse, scream and denigrate his wife, though apparently he wasn't a kind and decent man even in good health. Hoffman turns out to be Jessica's former lover who now wants to rekindle things. Though the two are conspiring to gain complete control over Ernest's estate, Jessica's still not completely sold on getting back together with Robert on a permanent basis. Both have their doubts about how trustworthy their partner in crime may, or may not, be.

A wrench is thrown into the scheming duo's master plan when Ernest dies before they're able to get his signature to receive the bulk of his money. Instead of reporting his death, Robert hatches a plan to hide his corpse in a freezer in the basement and pretend like he's still alive long enough to have Jessica forge the remaining documents herself. However, because Ernest was in a hypnotic state when he passed, he's become trapped in a limbo between our world and the next. While his corpse lies frozen solid, he's still able to continue communicating and, wherever he's now speaking from, it's dark, cold and "there are others..."

Albeit visually unimpressive and routine / predictable at points, this certainly isn't bad from a technical standpoint. Romero both works in some of his trademark social commentary ("Sick stuff always turns out to be rich people") and does a fair job of extending the short story by adding the conspiring-against-the-corpse angle to the works. Most of the highlights are quite subtle, so I'm not surprised many critics and viewers have completely overlooked them. Take the character Barbeau plays for instance. What probably would have been a one dimensional gold-digger role in another filmmaker's hands is more fleshed out than is the norm here thanks to both the script and Barbeau's performance. We're given enough information (working class background, abusive husband, upper class "polite society" never accepting someone with her background into their ranks...) to make both her motivations and her cold, hard exterior (used to mask her insecurities) all make sense.

Romero had originally wanted to update "The Masque of the Red Death" to comment upon the AIDS crisis and growing wealth disparity in Reagan-era America, which honestly sounds much more interesting than what we get here, but his concept was reportedly rejected by Argento (the executive producer of both segments) so he settled for this instead. Minor roles are played by Tom Atkins, who shows up near the end as a police inspector, Romero's then-wife Christine Forrest as a nurse and Antone Di Leo Jr. (Day of the Dead) as a taxi driver. The same story had previously been filmed, actually a fair sight better if I'm to be honest, by Roger Corman for his anthology TALES OF TERROR (1963), which starred Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone.

As we swing into Argento's take on "The Black Cat," we're immediately greeted with gore (body parts strewn about), full frontal nudity (a bisected nude female body), Poe references (the victim was killed with a razor-sharp pendulum), Argento's usual weird camera shots (from the POV of a swinging pendulum) and dreary narration talking about depravity and perversity. The near 180 degree change in approach from Romero's slow-moving, steady-handed, routinely filmed and comparatively classy segment to this is quite jarring! We open at a bloody crime scene where Detective Legrand (John Amos) and his men examine the carnage and photographer Rod Usher (Harvey Keitel) is busy snapping away at the grisly findings, completely unfazed by what surrounds him. Usher, who does not work for the police, actually makes his living publishing photographs of mangled and dismembered corpses taken at murder scenes. Is that even legal?

Usher's latest book, "Metropolitan Horrors," stirs up a lot of controversy, but his relationship with a pouty, much-younger violin teacher named Annabel (Madeleine Potter) is crumbling because of his alcoholism and cruel and controlling ways. When Annabel brings home a black cat that she refuses to divulge the name of, the animal is immediately and rightfully leery of Usher and hisses at his mere presence. Rod responds to that by murdering the cat and taking photos of him torturing and killing it, putting said photos into another of his morbid books. 

This all makes for quite an interesting contrast to how the central evildoer was handled in Romero's segment. While Jessica has reservations and moral qualms to work through, and a backstory to work off of, we know absolutely nothing about Rod aside from the fact he's an unpleasant degenerate with sociopathic tendencies. That doesn't enable Keitel to modulate his performance nor provide much nuance and, despite him garnering rave reviews from some fans, he seems completely lost here to me. What he does get to do is suck down about a quart of tequila shot-by-shot over the course of the film, scream and curse a lot and provide the occasional stilted and / or unintentionally funny line read. It's a memorable performance in a strange way, just how he's overwrought one minute and flat the next, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a good one.

Annabel strongly suspects Rod has killed her beloved pet, but he denies it ("It's a fuckin' cat! Meow! Meow! A cat!") and slaps her for accusing him. He then has a weird dream where he's swept back to Medieval times and gets executed (dropped on a sharpened spear that goes through his crotch and out his mouth to be precise!) for killing the feline. He runs into a black cat with the same exact distinct markings while at a bar, which the extremely strange-acting barmaid, Eleonora (Sally Kirkland), lets him take home. He attempts to kill it again, but Annabel interrupts and the two gets into a fight, which ends with him chopping her up with a cleaver. Instead of trying to dispose of the body elsewhere, he puts it in an upstairs closet, builds a wall in front of it and puts a bookshelf in front of that.

Paranoia soon sets in as the phone keeps ringing and Annabel's favorite student Christian (Holter Ford Graham), his elderly neighbors (Martin Balsam and Kim Hunter) and others show up looking for her. Not everyone is willing to buy his excuse that she went on a long concert tour either. As for the black cat that's already been killed a time or two, it shows up yet again in the home, only this time clawing its way through the wall from inside the hidden room housing Annabel's corpse. Though it's chopped in half with a saw, the cat leaves a secret behind that leads to Rod's undoing.

While Romero's segment has a more linear and coherent script, better characterizations and better performances, Argento's certainly has more visual flair, fluid camerawork and panache. Instead of going for a gloomy Poe-esque mood, he's content generally following the primary events of the covered short story and then scattering references to numerous other Poe works throughout the rest. There are not only nods to Cat, Pit and Usher but also The Premature Burial, Berenice, Annabel Lee and more. The best moment here is a protracted suspense scene near the end when Amos' detective and his partner (James MacDonald) show up at Rod's home and, through a series of minor incidents that prolong their visit, are around long enough to hear strange noises coming from upstairs.

Usually listed as a U.S. / Italian co-production, this was filmed entirely in and around Pittsburgh by a mostly American crew and features mostly American actors, though the two production companies who bankrolled it and all of the credited producers (including Claudio Argento) are Italian. Tom Savini was in charge of the typically solid make-up fx and appears in a brief cameo in Argento's segment. Pino Donaggio provided the scores for both segments, which are so different you'd never even guess that the same guy did both!

I can't say for sure how well Eyes did during its theatrical run in Italy, but it was a box office flop here in America when it was dumped into 150 theaters in 1991 and didn't even gross half a million dollars. However, the film likely made up for that with a strong global push on the home video market. I've found releases from nearly every corner of the globe.

After numerous DVD releases from Anchor Bay and other companies, Blue Underground finally gave it the Blu-ray treatment in 2009. Their 2 disc set comes with the 30-minute documentary Two Masters' Eyes (2003) which features interviews with Romero, Savini and a troika of Argento's; Dario, Claudio and Asia (who dubbed some of the characters in the Italian-language version). There are additional featurettes with Savini, as well as a brief separate interview with Barbeau that was originally intended for Roy Frumkes' 1989 Romero documentary Document of the Dead, which also touches on this production.

★★1/2

Fog, The (1980)

... aka: A Bruma Assassina (The Killing Fog)

... aka: Der Nebel des Grauens (The Fog of Horror)

... aka: John Carpenter's The Fog

Directed by:

John Carpenter

I've never been as enamored with this film as a lot of other people and always felt it was middling, forgettable Carpenter, especially as it's sandwiched between two of his very best genre films: Halloween (long overdue for a proper review here... maybe later this month!) and THE THING (1982). Then again, I should also point out that prior to this current viewing, I'd just seen this film twice before; once in high school and once in college. While I never hated or even disliked it, I was mostly left feeling indifferent after each viewing and never really had any desire to make it part of my annual film rotation. Seeing how this film's stock has risen somewhat in recent years (the ratings are more often than not positive - if not glowing - on genre sites and blogs), I figured it was about time for a reevaluation. Sad to say, after this re-watch my opinion remains exactly the same.

Things start out promisingly with the premise and tone established right out of the gate by the pre-credits sequence, which features John Houseman as a elder seaman telling a group of scared children ghost stories at a beach side campfire late one night. According to local legend, a hundred years earlier, a clipper ship called the Elizabeth Dane was traveling through uncommonly dense fog and, drawn inland by a campfire, crashed against the rocks in Antonio Bay. The ship was broken in two, sank and the six men onboard all died. Ever since, fishermen in the area have passed down this tale; adding a spooky epilogue... Supposedly, when the same thick, luminous fog returns on the 100 year anniversary of the crash, the dead men will return to get their revenge. Revenge for what, you say? Well, we will soon find out.

As the 100th anniversary approaches, the small, Northern California coastal town is rocked by bizarre, supernatural-tinged events. Bottles in a store start ratting and falling off shelves as if there's a minor earthquake going on. At a service station, lights and a hydraulic lift come on all by themselves and the alarm systems on cars all simultaneously go off. TVs switch on, chairs move across floors, car windshields bust out and a thick blanket of fog going against wind patterns slowly approaches the area. All are harbingers of bad things to come. Out at sea, a small fishing boat called the Sea Grass runs afoul of a larger ghost ship. All three men on board are slaughtered by shrouded phantoms brandishing swords and hooks. The ghosts will then make their way to Antonio Bay, just in time for their centennial celebration.

At a local church, Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) locates a journal from his grandfather hidden behind the rock walls, which was written in 1880 and gives a little insight into the area and the history of the Elizabeth Dane. Instead of the tale that's been told around town, the ship was actually intentionally sunk by townspeople because it had lepers on board who wanted to start their own colony nearby. As Father Malone aptly points out, that makes the entire celebration extremely inappropriate. Kinda like Columbus Day. Nevertheless, harried busybody Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh), who's in charge of putting together the celebration, plots to carry on as if nothing is wrong.

Top-billed Adrienne Barbeau (then married to the director) is Stevie Wayne, a sultry-voiced radio station owner / DJ who works out of a secluded lighthouse and is also a widowed single mother to young Andy (Ty Mitchell). After having a spooky encounter with a piece of leaky driftwood, she tries to warn locals about the fog over the radio (kind of hard to do when the power is out) and finally gets chased all the way up to the lighthouse roof when the ghosts come after her. Acting-wise, Barbeau makes a very good impression here as our heroine. On a more shallow note, I wish she'd kept this same hairstyle throughout the 80s instead of that afro-perm thing she switched to soon after this and kept for the rest of the decade.

A parallel thread follows Nick Castle (Tom Atkins), a fisherman who typically works on the Sea Grass and is investigating the disappearance of his colleagues. He teams up with free-spirited hitchhiker / artist Elizabeth, who's played by Jamie Lee Curtis right in the middle of her late 70s / early 80s Scream Queen run. While there is nothing wrong with her acting, Curtis feels underutilized and is basically just tagging along for the ride. It's also disappointing that she's in the same film as real-life mother Leigh and the two barely even interact with one another! I'd say this is probably the worst role Curtis had in her first string of genre films, though certainly not the worst movie she was in. Fellow Halloween vets Nancy Loomis and Charles Cyphers are both also here as, respectively, Kathy's assistant and Stevie's weatherman colleague. They're given even less to do than Curtis.

Great locations and vistas. Great widescreen photography from Dean Cundey. Great atmosphere. Great cast. Great score by Carpenter (with "electronic realization" by Dan Wyman). Great idea to keep the ghosts (sometimes seen with red, glowing eyes) mostly shrouded in fog and never fully seen. However, none of the above is fully able to overcome an extremely uneven (and usually bland) script. Frequent cross-cutting hampers the tension, a number of supporting characters feel unnecessary and this is very thinly and routinely plotted, lacking in surprise and more than a bit clumsy in regards to the narrative. And there may be a good reason why...

After shooting was completed, Carpenter was dissatisfied with the first edit and then went back and filmed brand new scenes to splice into the film. About 30 percent of the released film is comprised of this new footage and it appears some crucial establishing scenes and dialogue were lost along the way. Here, characters seem to know things they not only weren't around to witness but also things that were never once relayed to them by another character. A good example of this is that we're told that if the ghosts don't get their golden cross back, they'll claim six victims. Though three fishermen were killed, no one even sees the fourth and fifth victims killed and then, at the very end, the priest character notes the ghosts have only killed five of their six proposed victims. Huh?

Tommy Lee Wallace, the production manager and editor, also plays one of the ghosts, as does Rob Bottin, who was in charge of the (barely seen) make-up effects. The cast includes John F. Goff, James Canning and George 'Buck' Flower as victims, Darwin Joston (Assault on Precinct 13) as a doctor and Carpenter himself in an uncredited cameo. This was Carpenter's second collaboration with producer / co-writer Debra Hill after Halloween. The two would work together on numerous other films and also co-produced (the God awful) 2005 remake of this film.

Made on a budget of a million dollars, Avco Embassy spent three times that amount on advertising, which paid off as the film grossed over 20 million in North American theaters. While that pales in comparison to the director's prior genre hit (and also pales in comparison to the same year's FRIDAY THE 13TH, which grossed nearly double that on an even-smaller budget), this was actually Carpenter's second most financially successful genre film; behind only Halloween.

★★1/2