Opera (1987)

... aka: Dario Argento's Opera
... aka: Terror at the Opera

Directed by:
Dario Argento

There are a lot of differing opinions about this film and just what it meant for Argento's career. Many believe this is his last really good film and that it's all downhill from here. Others believe the film itself is substandard and was the beginning of the director's downward spiral. And then there are those super-fans who both love this film (I've even seen “masterpiece” volleyed around a bit) and continue to love many of Argento's later offerings. In my humble opinion, nothing Argento has made after this point would be quite as good, though that doesn't mean this is quite on par with some of his better earlier offerings either. Still, who wouldn't take something creative, well-made / produced, delightfully bonkers and boasting some of the most inventive camerawork of the entire decade over the vast majority of comparably unimaginative slasher flicks and endless sequels that dominated this decade? I know I sure would. Despite having a fair amount of issues with the narrative, this is still a good notch or two above the norm any way you slice it.

Things center around an operatic theater version of Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth that's being staged by famous blood n' guts horror film director Mark (Ian Charleson). Bitchy star diva Mara Czekova is accidentally (maybe) struck down by a car while storming out of the opera house due to the director's insistence on using real ravens and other such annoyances with the avant-garde production. Wide-eyed understudy Betty (cute Spanish model Cristina Marsillach), whose mother was also a famous singer, is then drafted to take her place. Knowing that the opera is rumored to be cursed and to bring back luck, Betty is apprehensive about taking on the lead Lady Macbeth role but relents due to optimistic pressure from her agent, Mira (Daria Nicolodi), and the show's producer (Antonino Iuorio). Successfully overcoming her jitters, Betty's debut performance ends up being a smashing success. Unfortunately, a stage hand is murdered upstairs while the performance is underway and Betty appears to have somehow already managed to pique the interest of an obsessive fan / stalker. This man also may be somehow tied into her past.

The horrors continue for poor Betty whenever the psycho starts terrorizing her over the phone, sneaks into the theater to slash up her costume and a few of the ravens (who apparently have really good memories and a taste for vengeance!) and then forces her to take part in his vicious slayings. He accomplishes the latter by ambushing her, tying her up, gagging her and then taping a line of needles beneath her eyes so if she tries to close them she'll rip her eyelids apart; thus forcing her to witness each of his bloody crimes. After he dispatches Betty's would-be stage manager lover Stefano (William McNamara), she calls the police to report the murder but, curiously enough, hangs up the phone whenever they ask for her name. She does however confide in Mark (who also doesn't bother involving he cops) and confesses that it all seems to tie in with a recurring nightmare she's had since childhood, which centers around a man wearing a black hood, a distinctive-looking dagger, a dilapidated building, kinky sex, pulsating brain matter and murder-voyeurism. An investigation led by Inspector Alan Santini (Urbano Barberini) is soon underway.

During an excellent sequence, Betty again finds herself tied up and forced to watch as brassy wardrobe mistress Giulia (Coralina Cataldi Tassoni) is strangled, stabbed and then has her throat cut open to retrieve a piece of evidence she accidentally swallowed. This time Betty is confronted by Inspector Santini on the way back to her apartment and spills the beans. He tells her to lock her door and wait for his assistant, Daniele Soave (second unit director Michele Soavi in an uncredited cameo), to show up. Agent Mira stops by long enough for another great scene where she's shot through a peephole, with the bullet shown traveling through the hole, shattering glass, flying through Mira's head and then destroying the telephone behind her in slow motion.

Mark and animal trainer Maurizio (Maurizio Garrone) then devise a "genius" (i.e. utterly absurd!) plan to weed out the killer, with all of the red herrings and the actual killer all in attendance at another Macbeth performance. That results in a raven pecking out an eyeball, followed by a blazing fire that burns down part of the opera house. Then, in a very polarizing second climax, the film retreats to the Swiss Alps for a handful of admittedly amusing PHENOMENA (1985) in-jokes and another appearance by the psycho. How he managed to pull the wool over the investigator's eyes, fake his own death and escape the opera house is, for lack of a better word, dumb. But, hey, at least the scenery is great.

Aside from a handful of showstopper murder set pieces, smooth scene transitions (especially a shot disappearing into the darkness of an air vent and then emerging in an orchestra pit) and some fantastic camerawork (like a raven POV circling way above the audience and then swooping down upon them), this also boasts a soundtrack that has no qualms going from opera to ambient (Brian Eno and Roger Eno) to bursts of metal from obscure acts like the Italian band Gow (who use the alias "Steel Grave" in the credits) and the Swedish group Norden Light ("No Escape") during the more horrific moments. There are also contributions from Bill Wyman and Goblin's Claudio Simonetti. Viewers will either love this eclectic mix or be completely turned off by it but that's par for the course with Argento.

Despite doing some truly head-scratchingly-stupid things at times, the main character provides a somewhat interesting focal point. Betty is an aloof, tentative young woman sabotaged on both a personal and professional level by insecurities brought on by her traumatic past. She's a self-proclaimed "disaster in bed," recoils from touch, seems incapable of having a real romantic relationship and almost spoils her own chances at success by trying to back out of a star-making role. So, in a way, the core of this film is really about her character overcoming her past to reclaim her life. One of the final images at the finale is of her freeing a trapped lizard. The last line is "Go free."

Though Marsillach is serviceable in the lead here, Argento apparently hated working with her and originally wanted Phenomena star Jennifer Connelly to play this part instead. Vanessa Redgrave was also originally cast as the bitchy opera star but backed out at the last minute so her role was reduced to POV shots and a voice-over done by another actress. Antonella Vitale (THE CHURCH), who has a small role as Mark's model lover, was Argento's real-life girlfriend at the time. He also gave her the lead in his short-lived series Turno di notte before the two split up. Also appearing in small roles are Barbara Cupisti (STAGE FRIGHT) as the producer's assistant, Carola Stagnaro (TENEBRAE) as Betty's tarty neighbor, Peter Pitsch and Karl Zinny (both from DEMONS, along with Barberini) and real-life conductor / Hungarian opera director György Gyõriványi.

The director of photography was Ronnie Taylor, a Brit who'd won an Oscar just a few years earlier for shooting Gandhi (1982), which also featured the late Charleson (an acclaimed theater actor, though you'd never guess that here). Taylor went on to shoot Argento's rather crappy Phantom of the Opera re-do in 1998 and the giallo Sleepless in 2001.

With an 8 million dollar budget, Opera was Argento's most expensive film to date. Though it was fairly successful in Italy, release in other countries was delayed, sometimes by years. It wouldn't show up on VHS here in America until 1991 when Southgate released two separate videos: an R-rated cut and an unrated / uncut version. The former had 11 minutes removed. Naturally the subsequent DVD and Blu-ray releases from companies like Anchor Bay, Scorpion Releasing and Blue Underground have all been the uncut 107 minute version.

★★★

Phenomena (1985)

... aka: Creepers
... aka: Dario Argento's Phenomena
... aka: Nadnaravni pojavi (Supernatural Phenomena)
... aka: Phenomenon
... aka: Satánica inocencia (Satanic Innocence)

Directed by:
Dario Argento

Controversial opinion: The heavily-cut U.S. version of this film is superior to the original version. There, I said it. Somebody needs to. And I completely understand this sounds like blasphemy or perhaps even a tad hypocritical on my part. I usually hate when censors or distributors alter a director's original vision... except when it actually benefits the film. While that's a very rare occurrence, it does occasionally happen. After New Line Cinema acquired the U.S. distribution rights to the film, they re-titled it Creepers and then cut it down to a brisker 83 minutes; an edit supervised by director Jack Sholder. That may not sound too bad until you realize the fullest version, the Italian release, runs a whopping 116 minutes. That's over 30 minutes removed. That's quite significant! Only in this case it's not nearly as bad as it sounds. Unlike with the butcher job committed on Argento's earlier DEEP RED (1975), which irreparably harmed that film, very little of what was removed here negatively effects the original cut's pacing, story, characterization or even the film's coherence. After recently comparing the two versions side by side, I completely understand why they removed most of what they did. The plot itself doesn't change in any significant way even shorn of 30+ minutes; only the amount of extraneous material does.

Unnecessary opening narration has been scrapped and several minutes from an overly-long detective scene at the beginning were removed, which is no big loss seeing how it's redundant, poorly scripted and kills momentum after the excellent opening sequence. An entire scene of our heroine, Jennifer, receiving an electroencephalogram has been taken out but the scene is awkward and pointless. In the uncut version, a large portion from Iron Maiden's "Flash of the Blade" plays two different times; once during an early scene where a victim walks around a room, finds a candle, lights it and walks around and, later, when our heroine is trying to find her way out of a locked room. In the cut version, the vocal portions of the song only figure during the later scene, which creates more of a surprise when it suddenly erupts on the soundtrack during one of the film's more suspenseful moment. That surprise is not there in the uncut version as we'd already heard a large chunk of the song used prior.

Most of the other snips are to tighten up the film and reduce the amount of time spent lingering on establishing shots, people standing around, cumbersome dialogue exchanges, needless exposition and the like. The only significant cut that does much damage is a nice character bit when Jennifer first arrives at the school and talks about her mother having an affair and abandoning the family, which should have been left entirely intact as it helps viewers sympathize with, and relate to, the lead character.

While some of the others edits made for Creepers are likewise not ideal, they're hardly crippling. The few jarring jumps in picture and sound bizarrely manage to only heighten the film's surreal qualities. Since it was released during a time when the slasher-hating MPAA demanded cuts to nearly every depiction of on-screen violence, most especially those in a horror context, New Line did trim some of the more violent moments. However, we still see most of the murders even in the cut version as only strategic frames were eliminated, not the kills themselves. For instance, in the uncut version we see a pair of scissors nailing a hand to a doorway and lingering for a few seconds while the victim screams and pulls the scissors out. In the cut version we only see the scissor impact before it cuts away. Personally, I'm willing to trade off that and a few shots of a razor sliding across a face for a viewing experience that glides along instead of one in a constant state of start-stop throughout the first half.

Phenomena casts future Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly, then just 14-years-old and with only a small but memorable role in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America under her celluloid belt, in her first leading role. It proved to be a pretty apt casting choice as Connelly emerges here as one of the most uncommonly well-rounded and appealing female leads in any Argento film. Hell, glancing back through his filmography, she probably IS the most well-rounded and appealing. Not saying her lack of experience isn't evident at times, but she at least manages to shade her strong-willing, determined heroine with vulnerabilities and insecurities to keep from coming off as one-dimensional. Connelly plays Jennifer Corvino, the daughter of a famous movie star / heartthrob who's dumped off at an exclusive girl's boarding school, the Richard Wagner Academy, in Switzerland. There, a psycho killer is running around offing teenage girls with a steel spear and hiding their bodies. Sounds like your typical slasher movie plot, right? Well, not so fast...

Jennifer isn't really your normal final girl trope and is much more akin to a troubled protagonist like Carrie White. First, she's a sleepwalker who doesn't remember anything that occurs while she's under. Second, she's a young teenager set adrift in a foreign country surrounded by strangers thanks to the self-serving preoccupations of her negligent parents. Third, she has a bizarre relationship with insects that's both telepathic and telekinetic; meaning she can communicate with, control and even share visions with insects. While those qualities may make her an outcast at school and the target of bullying, have her being labeled an epileptic devil-worshiping schizophrenic drug addict by the school staff and put her in harm's way on more than one occasion, they eventually come in handy when she becomes the killer's primary target. Jennifer does manage to find a couple of non-bug allies in the area. She's befriended by wheelchair-bound Scottish entomology professor John McGregor (Donald Pleasence), who understands what it's like to be different ("People have the ability to almost make you hate yourself"), and his pet chimpanzee "nurse" Inga (Tanga).

With the cruel headmistress (Dalila Di Lazzaro) and most of her peers convinced she's evil incarnate, her roommate (Federica Mastroianni) failing to protect her and getting herself killed in the process, her mom busy with her new lover, her father busy on location shooting in the Philippines and impossible to get in contact with and the father's Jewish agent and attorney (Mario Donatone) busy during Passover, Jennifer is stuck in a situation where she must uncover who's responsible for the killings or potentially become the next victim. And she must rely on her own courage and (super) natural gifts to do so since her parents, short-term (human) friends and authority figures have all failed her. Even assistance from her mentor and kindred spirit Professor McGregor, who had a previous relationship (perhaps even a sexual one) with an underage schoolgirl who's been killed, comes with limits. He does at least first hook her up with one of the world's greatest detectives, "the great sarcophagus fly," which is drawn exclusively to decaying human flesh, to get the ball rolling on her investigation.

Whether one watches the longest or shortest cut, you're ultimately rewarded for enduring some uneven moments in the first half with the liveliest and most entertaining finales in the entire Argento oeuvre, which features one surprise after another in pretty rapid succession. Not that what's leading up to that is necessarily bad. A lot of it is splendid actually. The visual pallet here is essentially the same steely blue look as what was used in TENEBRAE , which is a bit odd considering this was shot by INFERNO's cinematographer Romano Albani and not Tenebrae's DOP Luciano Tovoli. Even lacking the ultra-colorful, superficially gratifying look of some of the earlier films, just as much style seeps through here and it's even more imaginative.

Unlike many of his previous films, which are rather set-bound, excellent use is made out of outdoor locations, including a lake, a patch of woods near the school (Argento has a neat way of photographing even trees to make them look ominous!) and a stretch of road leading to a secluded cottage with the Swiss Alps, rumored to put off wind that leads to madness, in the backdrop. The sleepwalking scenes are a mix of a camera traveling down a white corridor past black doors at various speeds, Vaseline smeared lens and overbearing lighting. There are even POV shots from not just the killer, but also kaleidoscopic visions from a ladybug and even a maggot! Oh, did I mention there are a LOT of maggots in this film? Yes. Indeed there are, including a large pit of them feasting on the remains of the killer's victims.

Many film historians, including a good number of genre aficionados who are otherwise big defenders of the director, were highly critical of the film when it was released. I find that bizarre seeing how every issue they complained about, from the poor dubbing of the supporting cast to the inconsistent plotting to the occasional senseless / idiotic character actions, is present in every single other Argento film they'd praised. Only those debits, to me, are far less pronounced here due to its melding of giallo / slasher with supernatural / fairy tale and just how weird, wild, gory, creative and unpredictable the whole thing is. The audacious soundtrack, featuring contributions from Bill Wyman, Simon Boswell, Goblin, Motörhead, Claudio Simonetti and others, also polarizes with its mix of classical, synth / electronica, heavy metal and even opera. It's a truly bizarre soundscape, yet it's in service of a truly bizarre film, so should it be anything but?

Regardless of the initial reception, Phenomena / Creepers became Argento's biggest international hit since SUSPIRIA almost ten years earlier. It was popular in Europe, the U.S., Asia (especially Japan) and elsewhere, was one of Argento's most widely distributed titles during the video era and remains one of his most viewed films. The fact it features future star Connelly has also helped ensure that it's kept in circulation. This film also provided Daria Nicolodi, then-girlfriend of the director, with her only memorable part in one of his films and she gives a gloriously over-the-top performance as a seemingly-reserved schoolteacher who figures prominently during the finale. Patrick Bauchau and Michele Soavi (also the assistant director) show up playing police inspectors and Argento's eldest daughter Fiore Argento plays the Danish schoolgirl killed in the opening scene. The gory makeups are from Sergio Stivaletti while Luigi Cozzi worked on optical effects.

There have been countless releases for this title over the years. Media was the initial U.S. VHS distributor in the States (of the heavily-cut version) while Anchor Bay introduced American audiences to most of the previously-unseen cut footage with their 1999 DVD release. The 2016 release from Synapse includes three different cuts of the film: the 83-minute Creepers cut, the 110 minute English-language international cut and the 116 minute Italian language version. One of the many extras on the 2 disc set is the feature-length documentary Dario Argento's World of Horror (1985). It also comes with a soundtrack CD. Perhaps the definitive version to be released is the UK Arrow 4 DISC release, which contains the various cuts of the film, loads of extras and a brand new 2 hour documentary on the film titled Of Flies and Maggots.

Aside from the usually-lauded Deep Red and Suspiria, everyone seems to have their own opinion about which other Argento film(s) are the strongest in his filmography. For me, this one is right at the very top. It includes pretty much everything I want out of this particular director... plus a few things I didn't even realize I wanted until I saw them here. A straight-razor-armed chimp with a vendetta is just the tip of the iceberg.

★★★1/2