Cheap Dario Argento's Phenomena (The Giallo Collection) [Region 2 PAL Import] (DVD) (Jennifer Connelly, Dario Nicolodi, Dalila Di Lazzaro, Patrick Bauchau, Donald Pleasance) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Dario Argento's Phenomena (The Giallo Collection) [Region 2 PAL Import]

Force yourself to sit through the slow stuff to get to Argento's endgame
I checked out Dario Argento's "Phenomena" as Volume 1 of the "Dario Argento Collection." This is the original 110-minute version of the 1985 film that was eventually edited down to the 82-minute edited version known in the U.S. as [[ASIN:B00030WW5I "Creepers"]]. I will have to check that out some time because less might actually be more in the case of this particular film. I say that because I was ready to give up on this movie because halfway through the DVD kept coming to a stop. I kept taking it out, cleaning it and blowing into the player, over and over again in an attending to get the offending dust mote or whatever. Just before I decided to send the DVD back because I had no compelling reason to watch the rest of the film, I tried it on a different DVD player and found out that this horror film has an ending that you have to see in order to believe.<
><
>"Phenomena" begins with a young girl (the director's daughter Fiore) getting off of a bus somewhere in the Swiss Alps and getting killed. Fans of Argento knows he likes heads to break glass when people are getting killed and that happens for the first of two times in this film. Eight months later Inspector Geiger (Patrick Bauchau) is still working the case, one of a string of murders, and consulting with Professor John McGregor (Donald Pleasance), a wheelchair-bound insect specialist who knows all about what insects do to human corpses. Then we meet 13-year-old Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly in her first lead role), who has been sent by her parents to a private girls academy. Having an American movie star for a parent cuts no slack with the other girls, who ridicule Jennifer for being a sleepwalker who likes bugs. The headmistress of the school denounces Jennifer as a "Lady of the Flies" while the local doctor is worried that Jennifer's sleepwalking is the first step towards developing a split personality (really, this is their diagnosis). When the girls torment Jennifer she calls all of the insects around the school to her aid and you are thinking that what Argento is doing here is a variation of "Carrie," where the tormented girl with the strange powers turns the table of her tormenters. But there is still that unknown killer running around and Argento has no intention of taking full advantage of this strange little power. <
><
>After getting the necessary explanations and exposition from Prof. McGregor, Jennifer actually uses one of her insect friends to find the spot along the bus route where the first girl was killed, which is rather original. This is where the DVD I was watching started giving me headaches and I was ready to just give up on the film, because the only part that had really caught my attention was the chimpanzee that keeps Prof. McGregor company and who was stealing the movie from the human cast. But I am certainly glad I watched the rest of "Phenomena" because that chimp has two of the better scenes in the entire movie and Argento pulls out all of the stops for the big finish. The endgame of this film really erupts given how relatively tame the rest of the film has been up to this point. There is a little bit of everything here in the effort to totally turn your stomach (I have to wonder if the makers of "Saw III" happened to catch this movie because of what Inspector Gieger does). <
><
>The result is not even close to being a great film because the weaving together of the science fiction and horror elements is quite uneven, but then there comes a scene like the one where the chimp goes after a Japanese carp kite stuck in a tree on a moonlight night and suddenly I am really pay attention. By the time Jennifer is following that phone cord the gloves are off. I do not know if this is the one Dario Argento film you should see if you only see one of his macabre little films, but at the very least the last act of this film will definitely give you something to talk about. I decided to round up on "Phenomena," but it could well be that whoever edited it down to "Creepers" helped the slow first half of this film so it could well be that the butchered American version ends up being a solid four. If and when I check it out I will remember to come back here and render a verdict on that score.