Harefooted Halloween: Phenomena

What I Liked: Good pacing.  The story keeps moving and evolving subverting your expectations at every turn.  It starts out like a typical slasher picture with a girl’s boarding school setting but it doesn’t take long to chuck that out the window and go off in another direction entirely.  I mean check out this crazy six minute sequence of events: the protagonist Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly (Dark City)) sleep walks, witnesses a murder, falls from a balcony unharmed, walks into oncoming traffic, gets picked up by creepy molesters, jumps from their car, tumbles down a hill, encounters a monkey in the woods, the monkey takes her to meet a world famous entomologist (Donald Pleasance (Halloweens)).  Holy guaca-fuckin’-mole.

Even though this is about a girl who can communicate telepathically or emotionally somehow with insects there isn’t any gratuitous gross out bug stuff.  Sure there are some closeups but the filmmakers don’t linger on them daring you to look away.  The nastiest thing that happens isn’t insect related but instead Jennifer falls into a vat of sludge filled with decomposing human remains.  Bugs are in there breaking down the meat but I think we can all agree that’s not the grossest part of that situation.

Oh.  My.  God.  The soundtrack.  Hard rock/metal luminaries such as Iron Maiden, Motörhead and, of course, Goblin contribute heart pounding, fist pumping, ass kicking tunes.  It’s so over the top and sorta comical how the music doesn’t really fit the scenes but man is it memorable and cool as shit.  Fuck yea dude.

What I Didn’t Like: Too much deus ex machina bullshit.

There’s a monkey as a main character and it’s really weird how they use him in the story.  He’s there for two very specific purposes but unfortunately I can’t go into it because of spoilers.  Still I think he gets a strangely abundant amount of screen time.

Overall Impressions: This one is by Dario Argento and it’s my favorite of his so far.  Honestly I’m not a huge fan his two biggest pictures, Deep Red and Suspiria.  I always liked Tenebrae more and now Phenomena has pulled ahead.  It’s more disjointed than usual though with the movie throwing so many ideas at you.  For example Jennifer has a special connection with insects but she also sleepwalks and is the daughter of a famous actor which is a plot point and she teams up with a fly to try to catch the local murderer and do you see what I mean?  There’s just a lot here and amazingly it flows.  I gave into the whims and didn’t ask a lot of questions.

If you’re new to Italian horror I guess this is as good a place to start as any.  I’m sure most other folks will point you towards Suspiria or whatever but if you’re looking for something less abstract and with a quicker tempo try this one out.