The Film of Dario Argento: Two Evil Eyes

Posted on October 25, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1990, long-time friends George Romero and Dario Argento collaborated on Two Evil Eyes, anthology film that was based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. An Italian-American co-production, Two Evil Eyes featured two stories. The first was directed by George Romero, while the second was directed by Argento.

The Facts In The Case of Mr. Valdemar

(Dir by George Romero)

The first story is Romero’s, a modernized version of The Facts In The Case of M. Valdemar.

Jessica Valdemar (Adrienne Barbeau) is the 40 year-old wife of 65 year-old, Ernest Valdemar (Bingo O’Malley). Jessica only married Ernest for her money and, now that he’s on his death bed, she and her lover, Dr. Robert Hoffman (Ramy Zada), have hypnotized to him to do and say whatever they tell him to say and do. Even though Ernest is essentially comatose, the hypnosis allows them to force Ernest to sign his name to legal documents and to tell his suspicious attorney (E.G. Marshall) that he indeed wants to leave all of his money to Jessica.

When Ernest dies while under the influence of hypnosis, Jessica and Robert attempt hide his body in the basement. But is Ernest really dead? Jessica is convinced that she hears groaning from the basement and she wonders if the hypnosis has somehow left Ernest in limbo, between life and death. Robert thinks that Jessica is being foolish but it turns out that she’s not. After much paranoia and betrayal, one conspirator is dead and the other is a part of the living dead.

Usually, I like Romero’s work but this one didn’t work for me. From the flat cinematography to the shallow performances, this film felt more like an episode of a television show than anything else. Perhaps if it had been a stand-alone film, Romero could have found a way to make the material a bit more cinematic. (The story’s final shot, of blood dripping on a hundred dollar bill, is the film’s strongest moment and the part that feels the most Romeroesque.) But as a shortened chapter of an anthology film, it fell flat.

The Black Cat

(Dir by Dario Argento)

The Dario Argento segment is based on several different Poe stories. While the majority of the story is taken from The Black Cat, it also contains elements of Annabel Lee, Telltale Heat, The Pit and the Pendulum, and Buried Alive. Though this segment doesn’t really work, it’s obvious that Argento is a fan of Poe’s work and, for other Poe fans, there’s a lot of fun to be found in all of the Poe references that Argento sneaks into his story.

Harvey Keitel stars as Rod Usher, a crime scene photographer who loves his work a bit too much. He’s excited about the fact that his book of photography is about to be published. He’s less happy about the fact that his girlfriend, Annabel (Madeleine Potter), has adopted a black cat that is constantly glaring at Rod. Rod is eventually driven mad by both the cat’s apparent hatred of him and the fact that the cat itself keeps showing up no matter how far he goes to get rid of it. (This film features violence against a cat, which I hated. But it also featured a cat getting revenge and I appreciated that.) Eventually, Rod’s paranoia leads to violence and murder.

Look, this is a film about a guy who has an obsessive hatred of a cat. Obviously, this is not a film that I’m going to enjoy because I love cats. That said, I can still judge the film on its merits, even if it’s not for me on a personal level. While Argento is able to build up a good deal of tension and suspense in this film, the overall film doesn’t work because Harvey Keitel, supremely talented actor that he is, was totally the wrong choice for Rod Usher. Keitel, who reportedly did not get along with Argento during filming, gave a self-indulgent performance that featured a lot of bellowing. It’s as if Keitel is trying to compete with the constantly moving camera. The problem is that a star of a film like this has to be the director and Keitel’s histrionics take the viewer right out of the story.

Considering all of the talent involved, Two Evil Eyes is a disappointment.

The (Reviewed) Films of Dario Argento:

Horror Film Review: The Return of Swamp Thing (dir by Jim Wynorski)

Posted on October 25, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What fresh Hell is this?

The 1989 film Return of Swamp Thing is one of the many bayou-set films that I’ve watched recently. On most streaming sites, it is listed as being a “horror film” and there’s a few horror elements to be found in the film. There’s mutants and hybrids and evil moonshiners. There’s a lot jokes that are so corny that you might get scared just from hearing them. I can accept the idea that this film is technically a part of the horror genre but the film is more of a comedy than anything else. That’s not a complaint on my part, by the way. I knew what I was getting into as soon as I saw that it was directed by Jim Wynorski. Jim Wynorski has been poking fun at himself and his films for longer than I’ve been alive.

Return of Swamp Thing is a sequel to Wes Craven’s 1982 Swamp Thing, a film that I haven’t seen but which I’ve been assured was considerably more serious than the sequel. (That’s the difference between Craven and Wynorski.) The film features Louis Jourdan as Dr. Arcane, a mad scientist who lives in a mansion in Louisiana. Dr. Arcane is obsessed with finding the secret to immortality, which he thinks lies in splicing together different strands of DNA. As a result of Arcane’s experiments, the swamp is now crawling with bizarre human/animal hybrids. The bayou is no longer a safe place but, fortunately, the bayou has a protector! Swamp Thing (Dick Durock) is a human-plant hybrid who wanders around the swamp and beats up evil doers. Swamp Thing is described as being a humanoid vegetable but he really just looks like a stuntman wearing a green costume.

Abby Arcane (Heather Locklear) is Dr. Arcane’s stepdaughter. She thinks that Arcane had something to do with her mother’s death and, of course, he did. Abby heads down to the swamp to confront Arcane but, unfortunately, it turns out that she’s in over her head when it comes to surviving in the bayou. When she’s not being chased by the weird mutant creatures, she’s having to deal with toothless moonshiners. Do you know what the worst bayou is? Bayouself! (Did I already tell that joke this month?) Fortunately, Abby is not alone for long because Swamp Thing emerges from the water and protects her. Abby quickly falls in love with Swamp Thing.

“I’m a plant,” Swamp Thing tells her.

“I’m a vegetarian,” she replies, which I guess means she’s going to cannibalize Swamp Thing after he’s no longer any use to her. Yikes! Look out, Swamp Thing!

Dr. Arcane wants to use Abby’s DNA for his experiments. Swamp Thing decides to protect Abby and the two dumbass kids who keep following him around. It’s time for a battle in the bayou!

Obviously, Wynorski does not approach this material seriously or with a hint of subtlety and that’s definitely the right approach to take. The sight of Louis Jourdan in the Louisiana bayous is so ludicrous that you have no choice but to laugh at it. That said, the film is never quite as funny as one might hope. It’s easy to imagine it working as a 30-minute pilot for a Swamp Thing sitcom but, as an 90-minute film, it quickly runs out of gas. Louis Jourdan looks bored but Dick Durock is amusingly earnest as Swamp Thing. Heather Locklear shows a flair for comedy but the box office failure of The Return of Swamp Thing pretty much ended her film career before it began.

After this, I think I’m going to avoid the swamp for a while.

Horror Film Review: The Tingler (dir by William Castle)

Posted on October 25, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1959 film, The Tingler, opens with a middle-aged man standing on a stage and speaking directly to the audience.

“I am William Castle, the director of the motion picture you are about to see. I feel obligated to warn you that some of the sensations—some of the physical reactions which the actors on the screen will feel—will also be experienced, for the first time in motion picture history, by certain members of this audience. I say ‘certain members’ because some people are more sensitive to these mysterious electronic impulses than others. These unfortunate, sensitive people will at times feel a strange, tingling sensation; other people will feel it less strongly. But don’t be alarmed—you can protect yourself. At any time you are conscious of a tingling sensation, you may obtain immediate relief by screaming. Don’t be embarrassed about opening your mouth and letting rip with all you’ve got, because the person in the seat right next to you will probably be screaming too. And remember this—a scream at the right time may save your life.”

When this film was first released in 1959, William Castle wasn’t lying in this warning. Certain audience members would feel the tingling sensation of fear because some theaters agreed to wire certain seats with buzzers that, when activated, would give the viewer a tingling sensation. Castle also arranged for certain theaters to fake an attack by the film’s monster, complete with the houselights coming up, a woman screaming and pretending to faint, and the voice of Vincent Price encouraging everyone in the audience to scream because “the Tingler is loose in the theater!”

Uhmm …. that sounds like fun. When it comes to William Castle’s gimmicks, there’s a lot of documentation concerning what Castle arranged but there’s not as much documentation about how people reacted to being buzzed while watching a movie. Hopefully, everyone screamed, played along, and had fun. Personally, I probably would have left the theater during the chaos and snuck into a showing of Anatomy of a Murder.

As for the film, it stars the great Vincent Price as Warren Chapin, a pathologist who is investigating the source of fear. As he explains to his colleague, Dave Morris (Dwayne Hickman), he believes that the tingling that people feel at the base of their spine is actually a living creature that is formed by fear. The only way to kill the creature is to scream. If you don’t scream, the creature will eventually snap your spine. Well, I guess you better scream then.

Anyway, Dr. Chapin confronts his wife Isabel (Patricia Cutts) over the fact that she’s cheating on him. He pulls a gun on her and, as she begs for his life, he fires. She collapses but fear not! The gun was loaded with blanks and Dr. Chapin just wanted to scare her so that he could x-ray her back and see if the Tingler was forming on her spine. Dr. Chapin is overjoyed when the Tingler shows up on x-rays but now, he needs to bring a Tingler into the real world….

(I’m not sure why you would want a Tingler but whatever….)

One of Chapin’s friends is Ollie Higgins (Philip Coolidge) who owns a movie theater with his wife, Martha (Judith Evelyn). Martha is deaf and mute and therefore cannot scream. When Ollie deliberately frightens her, the Tingler appears on her spine and snaps it. At the subsequent autopsy, Chapin is able to remove the Tingler from Martha’s spine. The Tingler, which is a giant centipede that likes to crawl up people’s legs, gets loose and needless to say, all tingling heck breaks out.

Wow, this is a silly film! There’s is absolutely nothing frightening about a plastic centipede being pulled across the screen by wires. But, at the same time, it’s a Vincent Price film and Vincent knew exactly how to play his mad-but-not-evil scientist, delivering his lines with the perfect combination of snark and melodrama. This film came out the same year as another Castle/Price collaboration, The House on Haunted Hill. It’s nowhere near as good as The House on Haunted Hill but The Tingler is still a lot of fun in its silly way. It won’t make you scream from fright but you might laugh really loudly.

Horror On The Lens: Tales From The Crypt (dir by Freddie Francis)

Posted on October 25, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s Horror on the Lens, we have 1972’s Tales From The Crypt, a British anthology film which features The Crypt Keeper (Ralph Richardson) informing five strangers of how they will die. This classic, all-star film was based on stories that originally appeared in the Tales From The Crypt comic book.

In general, I’m not a huge fan of anthology films but Tales From The Crypt is an exception to that role. It’s an entertaining collection of macabre stories and the cast is to die for …. maybe literally!

This Amicus-produced movie is probably best remembered for the segment in which Joan Collins is menaced by an evil Santa but the whole thing is good.

October Positivity: A Distant Thunder (dir by Donald W. Thompson)

Posted on October 24, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1978 film, A Distant Thunder, opens with a group of people confined in what appears to be a high school gym. They have cots to sleep on and not much else. They have been informed that they have a choice to make. They can either agree to take “the mark” and declare their allegiance to the United Nations and Brother Christopher or they can be executed. They have a day to decide.

Many of the people are willing to go to their death rather than get the mark. But Patty Myers (Patty Dunning) isn’t so sure. Her friends and fellow prisoners encourage her to refuse the mark but Patty says that she doesn’t know if she can stay loyal to a God who would allow so many bad things to happen. One of her friends asks Patty to tell the story of how she came to be a prisoner of UNITE, the UN’s secret police force….

A Distant Thunder is a sequel to 1972’s A Thief In the Night and the first twenty minutes of A Distant Thunder is made up of flashbacks to the previous film. Once again, we see how Patty had a dream about waking up to discover that her husband and all the other Christians in the world had mysteriously vanished and now, the UN was in charge of everything. We even get the phenomenom of flashbacks within flashbacks as Patty remembers the times that she remembered her former life. A Thief In the Night ended with Patty being tossed over a bridge by her friends, Jerry (Thom Rachford) and Diane (Maryann Rachford), just for Patty to then wake up and discover that her husband really was missing and her dream was coming true!

Once A Distant Thunder finishes up its recap of the first film, it follows Patty as she hides out on a farm with her friends, Wenda (Sally Johnson) and Wenda’s little sister, Sandy (Sandy Christian). While they hide out, the world around grows more and more hostile. There are wars. There is a plague. Brother Christopher announces that everyone will be required to have a special form of identification if they want to buy products, receive government food, or even get healthcare for their children. Eventually, Brother Christopher announces that the identification is no longer optional. People can either get the mark or they can face execution. Wenda, who goes from being a nonbeliever to being a Christian, is determined to not get the mark. Patty is more conflicted.

At a church-turned-death house in Des Moines, Patty, Wenda, and Sandy wait for their time with the guillotine and also their chance to make their final decision….

A Distant Thunder was made by the same people who did the first film and the majority of the first film’s cast returns for the sequel, which provides a nice sense of continuity between A Thief In the Night and A Distant Thunder. Unfortunately, A Distant Thunder never quite reaches the fever dream intensity of A Thief In The Night. A Thief In the Night worked because its imagery often captured the stark horror of an intense nightmare. A Distant Thunder is a much more talky film and, as such, it exposes the defecencies of the largely amateur cast.

That said, there are a few moments where A Distant Thunder matches the first film’s atmosphere of paranoia. As with the first film, A Distant Thunder benefits from having been filmed in Ames, Iowa. Seeing the forces of UNITE invading the actual heartland was surreal in a way that the film never would have been if it had been set in a large and familiar city. The scene where Patty and Wenda first see the guillotine is also effectively done. It’s a frightening sight, all the more so because it’s standing in front of a fairly innocuous-looking church. Seriously, people make fun of guillotines now but, as devices of punishment, they pretty much radiated the promise of a bloody death.

That said, the film is done in by its slow pace and its less than convincing performances. Still, A Distant Thunder was enough of a success that it led to a sequel that I’ll look at tomorrow.

October Hacks: Sleepaway Camp (dir by Robert Hiltzik)

Posted on October 24, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So much attention has been devoted to dissecting and discussing the ending of 1983’s Sleepaway Camp, that I think people tend to overlook the bigger issue. This film is the biggest argument against summer camp over filmed.

Seriously, don’t send your kids to camp! Don’t get a job working at a camp! Don’t live anywhere near a camp! If someone tries to open a camp near your home, gather together a posse and run them out of town! If you discover an abandoned camp within one hundred miles of your home, set the place on fire! Camps are bad news. They attract bullies and tragedy and murder. If there’s anything that I’ve learned from watching the horror movies of the early 80s, it’s that summer camps mean trouble.

Consider the camp in Sleepaway Camp. Even before the murders start, the place comes across as being a prison camp. Seriously, I’ve seen a lot of summer camps in a lot of slasher films and it’s hard to think of any of them that look as shabby and dirty as the camp in Sleepaway Camp. None of the campers appear to be happy to be there. No one is allowed to leave. The campers are divided into two groups, the bullies who rule the place like mini-tyrants and the poor kids who spend the entire summer being beaten up and taunted. Not even the counselors are worth much. Counselor Meg (Katherine Kamhi) is best friends with the camp’s main mean girl, Judy (Karen Fields). Meg is the type who tosses a camper in the lake, just because Judy tells her to. Meanwhile, the owner of the camp is named Mel (Mike Kellin) and he’s just an old perv who doesn’t want to bothered with anyone’s problems. What type of horrific world is this?

And then, let’s consider some of the murders at the camp. The skeevy camp cook get scalded with boiling water. (It’s debatable whether the cook actually dies or not.) Kenny, one of the camp’s bullies, get drowned while playing a canoe-related prank. Another bully is stung to death by bees. That’s just three of the many deaths here and yet, the camp never closes. It never occurs to the camp’s owner to send anyone home. It never occurs to anyone that maybe they should send the campers to another camp. None of the deaths lead to an increased police presence nor does it lead to any changes with the camp’s schedule. None of the campers appear to be particularly upset by all the deaths. It’s a disturbing world.

Everyone who dies at the camp earlier picked on Angela (Felissa Rose), an introvert who ends up getting targeted by Judy. Angela’s cousin, Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten), is very protective of Angela and, as a result, he becomes the number one suspect. As the film’s ending reveals, the truth is something much different. The film ends with a justifiably famous shot and it does stick with you as the end credits role. It’s tempting to read a lot of meaning into the film’s ending but I imagine that’s giving the filmmakers a bit too much credit. The film was made for 1983 audiences who were looking for a shock, not 2023 cultural critics.

Even before that ending, though, Sleepaway Camp is a bit more creepy than the average 80s slasher film. The killer is relentless and ruthless and it’s disturbing that the victimized campers are played by performers who are close to the age of their victims as opposed to the usual 30 year-old who played teenagers in these type of films. The scene with the curling iron is something that I can only watching through the fingers that I’m holding in front of my eyes. It’s not a great film by any stretch of the imagination but it does definitely capture the feel of being at the worst summer camp imaginable (seriously, one can hear the flies buzzing and even smell the stale order of stopped-up plumbing) and it does stick with you after you watch it. It’s nothing to lose your head over, it’s just too bad no one told that to the campers.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: I Drink Your Blood (dir by David E. Durston)

Posted on October 24, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Put yourself in the shoes of the townspeople in 1971’s I Drink Your Blood.

Here you are. You’re minding your own business. Life isn’t great because of the economic downtown. Your town is nearly deserted and is basically full of empty buildings. In fact, it seems like there are currently more construction workers around then townspeople. The workers are working on the dam. Maybe a dam will help the area. Maybe it won’t.

The sexist construction workers are kind of a pain but then, things get even worse when a bunch of hippies show up. Led by the mysterious Horace Bones (played by dancer Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury), these are not your typical (if annoying) peace-and-love hippies. These hippies have more in common with the Manson Family than they do with the commune folks from Easy Rider. They are a remarkably diverse group of hippies. Some of them are young. Some of them are older. Some of them really enjoy attacking other people. Some of them are just along for the ride. For his part, Horace is really into Satanism and human sacrifice and he encourages his followers to feel the same way. Has anyone nice ever been named Horace Bones?

When the cultists assault a local girl named Sylvia (Arlene Farber), they are confronted in the abandoned building in which they are squatting by Sylvia’s grandfather, Doc Banner (Richard Bowler). They proceed to beat up the kindly doctor and they force him to take LSD. Sylvia’s younger brother, Pete (Riley Mills), get revenge by injecting the blood of a rabid dog into several pies and then selling them to Horace and his hippies. Almost all of the hippies eat the pies and soon, they are foaming at the mouth and rampaging through the countryside, infected by and spreading rabies. One of the hippie women ends up having sex with all of the construction workers, which leads to the rabies spreading even more. Soon, it’s hippies vs hardhats as the fights happening across the real world are repeated in small town America. Of course, there’s no police around to break up the fights and, thanks to the rabies, everyone is fighting to the death. Heads are ripped off. Electric knives are used to carve more than just food. People are set on fire. Blood is definitely drank.

Only one hippie didn’t eat the pies. Andy (Tyde Kierney) was never a big fan of Horace’s Manson-like tendencies and he pretty much draws the line at human sacrifice. Andy flees from Horace’s world and finds himself with Sylvia, Pete, and Mildred (Elizabeth Marner-Brooks), the owner of the local bakery. The four of them struggle to survive in a world that has literally gone mad.

I Drink Your Blood was, not surprisingly, controversial when it was first released. It was one of the few films to be given an X-rating for its violence as opposed to its sexual content. It is definitely violent, though it’s really nowhere near as graphic as some of the R-rated horror films that have come out over the past few years.

I Drink Your Blood is a classic grindhouse film, one that takes a fairly ridiculous premise and works wonders with it. The crazed hippies fighting the far more blue collar construction workers stand in for the fanatical soldiers in America’s cultural wars, with innocents like Sylvia, Pete, and Mildred caught in the middle with Andy. Director David Durston mixes horror and satire with a deft hand, suggesting that the rabies is ultimately just allowing people to show their true selves. I Drink Your Blood is an underground classic and thematically, it’s portrayal of a rabid world is just as relevant today as when it was first released.

Evil Obsession (1996, directed by Richard W. Munchkin)

Posted on October 24, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

11 models have been murdered in Los Angeles and Margo (Kimberly Stevens) fears that she could be next. She’s been receiving threatening notes and feels as if someone is watching her and her boyfriend, Bill (Michael Phenicie). She hires a private detective (Mark Derwin) to protect her but it might be too late because Homer (Corey Feldman), the man who has been sending her the notes, has already enrolled in the same acting class of Margo. After Bill turns up dead, Homer is assigned to be Margo’s new scene partner. Is Homer moving in for the kill or is someone else responsible for the murders?

This mix of erotic thriller and horror was one of those movies that used to show up on a late night Cinemax in the 90s, where it could be watched by teenagers who kept one eye on the screen and one eye looking out for their parents. Corey Feldman starred in a lot of these films and in this one, he gives a twitchy and occasionally funny performance as the nerdy Homer. Homer is the most obvious stalker imaginable and it’s hard to believe that Margo, who is so concerned about being stalked that she’s hired a private detective, would not look at Homer and immediately realize that he was the culprit. Feldman overacts but he at least provides the film with the energy that is missing from the performances of Kimberly Stevens and Mark Derwin. Even better is the performance of Brion James as the autocratic and pretentious acting teacher. Watching him, I got the feeling that James probably could have based his performance on any number of Hollywood acting coaches.

October True Crime: Goodnight Sweet Wife: A Murder In Boston (dir by Jerrold Freedman)

Posted on October 24, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1990’s Goodnight Sweet Wife opens with a frantic 9-11 call.

A man named Charles Stuart (Ken Olin) calls the Boston Police Department and says that he and his pregnant wife have just been shot. He says that he got lost while trying to drive home and that a black man got in the car, made Charles drive to a remote location, robbed Charles and his wife, and then shot them. When the police finally manage to track Charles down, he’s nearly dead as a result of having been shot in the stomach. Carol was shot in the head and is pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital. Her baby, named Christopher, is delivered via C-section but dies a few days later.

The city of Boston is outraged as the crime makes national news. The story that thousands hear is that Charles Stuart, a hard-working and financially successful man who has never had any trouble with the police, took one wrong turn, ended up in a “bad” neighborhood, and lost his wife and his son as a result. As Charles recovers in the hospital, the police make capturing his assailant their number one priority and soon, black men are being stopped and frisked in the streets.

With the entire world mourning the loss of Carol and Christopher Stuart, there are only a few people in Boston who are willing to take a careful look at Charles’s story. There are quite a few inconsistencies in Charles’s story, not the least of which was his claim that he was shot in a nearly deserted area of town when the neighborhood is actually one of Boston’s busiest. Some start to suspect that Charles killed his wife and then shot himself to make it look like a robbery and the fact that Charles nearly died from his wound is not proof that Charles was actually the victim but instead just a sign that Charles didn’t know where to shoot himself in order to not nearly die. However, even with all of the inconsistencies in Charles’s story, the police still announce that they’ve arrested a man for the crime. Charles even identifies the suspect, William Bennett, as being the murderer.

Of course, as is revealed in flashbacks, Charles Stuart is a murderer and he’s not a particularly clever one. He’s the type of murderer who openly talked to people about how he was considering committing a murder. He’s the type who roped his own brother into helping him fake the robbery. Far from being the successful professional that he presented himself as being, Charles was mediocre broker who depended on his wife’s salary to finance his lifestyle. With Carol pregnant and planning on quitting her job to be a full-time mother, Charles decided to kill her for the insurance and he also figured that he would be able to get away with it as long as he blamed the crime on a black man.

Tragically, it turned out that Charles Stuart was almost right. In both the movie and in real life, Charles Stuart was believed because he didn’t look like what most people thought a criminal looked like. He was a young, handsome, middle class white guy and because he couldn’t face the prospect of having to cut back financially, he killed his wife and his son and he nearly put an innocent black man in prison. The film does a good job of depicting the consequences of both Stuart’s crime and the rush to judgment on the part of the police. Ken Olin plays Charles Stuart as being outwardly friendly but empty on the inside, a cold sociopath who is incapable of truly caring about anyone but himself. In real life, Stuart chose to jump into the Mystic River rather than face the consequences of his actions. Stuart’s brother, who helped Charles fake the robbery and later turned Charles into the police, died in a homeless shelter 30 years later. Carol’s family set up a scholarship fund in her name to aid students in Mission Hill, the neighborhood where Charles claimed he had been hijacked. One of the scholarship’s first recipients was the daughter of William Bennett.

The Films of Dario Argento: Opera

Posted on October 24, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It can be argued that 1987’s Opera is one of Dario Argento’s most personal films.

In the mid-80s, Argento was hired to direct an opera, in this case a production Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth. Argento described the opportunity to direct an opera as being a case of one of his childhood dreams coming true. Unfortunately, certain people were scandalized with the idea of hiring a director of violent horror films to direct the opera, even though Macbeth is one of the most horrific of Shakespeare’s plays. I mean, if any story seems to be custom-made for a director who is known for his complex set pieces and his willingness to indulge in graphic imagery, it would seem to be Macbeth. Despite this, the production was canceled and Argento was left feeling like an outsider in his own industry.

Along with his disappointment over the canceled production of Macbeth, Argento was also suffering on a personal level when he directed Opera because he had just separated from his long time partner and collaborator, Daria Nicolodi. The two of them had a notoriously volitale relationship, one that led to some of Argento’s best films and reportedly some of his biggest on-set fights. Despite the fact that they had split up, Argento still wrote a role for her in his latest film. At first, Nicolodi refused the role but she changed her mind when Argento promised her the most spectacular death scene in the movie. However, when it came time to shoot the scene, Nicolodi apparently grew paranoid that Argento was planning to kill her for real. Fortunately, Nicolodi was incorrect about that and Argento was totally correct about her scene being one of the best in the film.

Opera takes place during a production of Macbeth, one that is directed by a controversial horror director named Marco (played by Ian Charleson, the star of the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire). When his star is injured in an auto accident, Marco is forced to cast the young understudy, Beth (Cristina Marsillach), as Lady Macbeth. Despite the doubts of many, Betty gives a strong performance in the role. She stuns the audience. Perhaps the power of her performance is due to her own traumatic memories of her mother being murdered by a never captured assailant.

Speaking of murder, people around Betty start dying as well, often while Betty is forced to watch. The black-gloved killer often come out of nowhere, gags Betty, and ties her to whatever is nearby. The killer always tapes a row of needles under Betty’s eyes, keeping her from being able to close them or to look away as the killer then proceeds to murder her friends. The first victim is Betty’s handsome boyfriend, Stefano (William McNamara). The second murder is a costumer (Barbara Cupisti). Three of the opera’s ravens are killed, leaving the remaining ravens determined to get revenge.

Betty, it should be noted, refuses to go the police about what she has witnesses because she thinks that the killer is the same person who murdered her mother. You have to wonder at her logic or the fact that director Marco agrees with her decision. Personally, if I witnessed a murder as brutal as the murder of Stefano, I would go to the police. It’s hard to really sympathize with Betty’s decision, as much as the film seems to think that I should.

Opera has a lot of fans and it does feature some of Argento’s strongest visuals. Towards the end of the film, there’s an extended raven attack in the opera house that is one of Argento’s greatest set pieces. And, for all of her fears that she was about to be killed for real, Daria Nicolodi’s shocking death scene is Argento at his best. Both Ian Charleson and Urbano Barberini give excellent performance and, even if the genesis of the film was found in Argento’s anger over his canceled version of Macbeth, there’s a lot of affection to be found in the film’s portrayal of what goes into putting on a massive production. One gets the feeling that, for once, Argento actually likes the majority of the characters in the film.

That said, I have to admit that there are a few things that I don’t particularly care for in Opera. If I liked Phenomena more than most viewers, I like Opera a bit less. After each murder, Argento attacks our ears with heavy metal and I assume the point is to contrast the stateliness of the opera with the chaos of the killer’s actions. But, while I can respect Argento’s logic (assuming that was his logic), the music itself tends to be repetitive and, after the second time that we hear it, it gets kind of boring. And Betty is not a particularly sympathetic protagonist, both due to the way she’s written and also Cristina Marsillach’s less than convincing performance in the role. Reportedly, Argento and Marsillach did not get along during filming and perhaps that explains why her performance never really seems to come alive. Everyone in the film insists the Betty is a revelation of Lady Macbeth but there’s nothing about Marsillach’s performance that makes us believe that. It’s hard not to feel that the film would have been improved if Cristina Marsillach and Barbara Cupisti had switched roles.

(Director Michele Soavi, who has a small role in this film, did later cast Cupisti as the lead in his film Stage Fright and watching Cupisti in that film, it’s even easier to imagine her as the lead in Argento’s film.)

The film ends on a strange note, one that seems to serve as a call-back to Phenomena. What I find interesting is that critics who like the film overall tend to be critical of the ending and the idea of Marsillach talking to a lizard. Whereas I, someone who does not like the film quite as much as some others, absolutely loves the ending because it’s just so weird and it comes to use from out-of-nowhere. It’s as if Argento is saying, “You might have kept me from directing an opera but it’s my movie and I’m in control here.”

Opera did well in Italy and the rest of Europe but, as was so often the case, Argento was screwed by his American distributors. Opera was originally supposed to get an American theatrical release but, when the distributor went bankrupt, the film was only given a video release, with much of the gore edited out to ensure that the film received an R-rating and could be carried by Blockbuster. (That’s right. Blockbuster wouldn’t carry anything above an R. Where’s your God now, video nerds?) Fortunately, all that was edited out was put back in when Opera was released on DVD in 2002.