Lara Wendel | Through the Shattered Lens

A few Octobers ago, I got the bright idea to try to review all of Dario Argento’s films over the course of TSL’s annual horrorthon. Unfortunately, I got that idea on September 29th, two days before the start of Horrorthon. I managed to make my way through Inferno until I had to temporarily abandon the project to focus on everything else that was going on that month. However, since I’m not the type to fully give up on anything, I figured this would be the great year to finish up my Argento reviews.

Following the commercial failure of Inferno, a disillusioned Dario Argento returned to Rome. His bad experience with 20th Century Fox had soured Argento on continuing to work with Hollywood and his struggles to film Inferno (as well as his increasingly strained relationship with girlfriend Daria Nicolodi) left him with little desire to continue The Three Mothers trilogy. Instead, he focused on a new idea, one that was inspired by his own experience with an obsessed fan who had left vaguely threatening messages for him when he was in New York. Released in 1982, Tenebrae was Argento’s return to the giallo genre and it would turn out to be a very triumphant return, even if in, typical Argento fashion, it would take a few years for many people to realize just how triumphant.

Argento himself claimed that, while the film was certainly a giallo, it was also his first stab at science fiction. In an interview that appeared in Cinefantastique, Argento said that the film was meant to take place a few years in the future, after some sort of calamity had occurred that has greatly reduced the world’s population. Interestingly, Argento said that the survivors were largely from the upper class and that none of them wanted to talk about or remember what had happened.

Is the science fiction element actually present in this film? I think it is, though perhaps only because I’ve specifically looked for it. Rome, as portrayed in Tenebrae, is a city that is full of sleek but impersonal buildings, the type that would have been recently built by a wealthy society that was unsure of what it believed. Argento specifically avoids filming any scene near any historical landmarks, suggesting all of the evidence of Rome’s former greatness has been wiped out.

Perhaps the most futuristic element of the film (and the most prophetic) is that no one really seems to have a connection with anyone else. The crowd scenes in Tenebrae aren’t really that crowded, even the ones that take place in what should be a busy airport. (In many ways, the film’s portrayal of a Rome that is both busy but strangely empty brings to mind Jean Rollin’s portrayal of Paris in The Night of the Hunted.) Even when we see people socialize, there seems to be an invisible barrier between them, as if they don’t want to run the risk of getting too close to each other. When one character is fatally stabbed while out in public, perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the murder is that so many people just walk away, as if they’ve been conditioned to ignore anything unpleasant. The only thing that prevents this scene from feeling like a vision of 2023 is that there aren’t a bunch of people filming the victim’s final moments on their phone.

The film opens with a sequence that, as a former teen shoplifter, left me feeling disturbed. Elisa Manni (Ania Pieroni, who played The Mother of Tears in Inferno and the enigmatic housekeeper in Fulci’s The House By The Cemetery) is a shoplifter who gets caught trying to steal the latest book by thriller novelist Peter Neal. After being released, the carefree Elisa walks back to her home and, after being menaced by both a barking dog and a pervy old man, Elisa arrives in the safety of her house, starts to undress, and is promptly attacked by a black-gloved killer who slashes her neck and stuffs pages of Neal’s book into her mouth. It’s not just the murder that makes this scene disturbing but also the fact that the killer was somehow waiting for Elisa in her house, establishing that this is a world where the safety of even a locked door is an illusion.

Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa), who we first see riding his bicycle in New York, has come to Italy to promote his latest book, Tenebrae. He arrives in Rome with his manager, Bullmer (John Saxon, giving a likable performance) and his assistant, Anne (Daria Nicolodi). Confident to the point of arrogance, Peter is a pro at dismissing claims that his books are violent and misogynistic but even he is taken aback when an old friend of his, the journalist Tilde (Mirella D’Angelo), suggests that Tenebrae might inspire violence.

Peter Neal is a celebrity and a pretty obvious stand-in for Argento and everyone in the film is obsessed with him. His ex-fiancée, Jane (Victoria Lario), has followed Peter to Rome, intent on getting some sort of revenge for the way that he treated her while they were together. (Daria Nicolodi felt the vindictive and unstable Jane was based on her, which was another thing that strained her notoriously volatile relationship with Dario.) Peter’ young assistant, Gianni (Christian Borromeo, of Deodato’s The House on the Edge of the Park and Fulci’s Murderrock) hero worships him. The puritanical talk show host, Christiano Berti (John Steiner), wants to interview Peter about the morality of his books. And the killer, whoever they may be, is leaving letters for Peter, informing him that his book have inspired the killer’s crimes. Detective Germani (Spaghetti western star Giuliano Gemma) is investigating the letters and he is an admitted fan of Peter Neal’s novels but, somewhat alarmingly, he mentions that he’s never able to guess the killer’s identity.

Argento’s camera restlessly prowls his futuristic Rome while Goblin’s music booms on the soundtrack as the people in Peter Neal’s life are murdered by a killer wearing black gloves and carrying a straight razor. The murder scenes feature some of Argento’s best work, directed in such a ruthless and relentless manner that we understand the killer’s determination without having to see their face. This is a film of elaborate set pieces and, as if in direct response to 20th Century Fox’s attempts to control his work on Inferno, Argento is eager to show what he can do when left alone. The film is remembered for the sequence where the camera glides over the exterior of an apartment building while the killer stalks the inhabitants but, for me, the scariest scene is when poor Maria (Lara Wendel), the daughter of Neal’s landlord, finds herself being chased straight into the killer’s lair by a very viscous Doberman.

When the film does slow down, it’s for flashbacks to a beach and acts of sexual violence performed by and against an enigmatic woman (who is played by transgender performer, Eva Robbins). The beach flashbacks unfold in a hazy, dream-like manner and they leave us to wonder if what we’re watching is real or if it’s just a fantasy. If the “modern” scenes feature Argento at his most energetic, the beach scenes feature Argento at his most enigmatic.

Daria Nicolodi often said that she considered her final scene in this film to be Argento’s greatest act of cruelty to her. Coming across the killer’s final tableaux and discovering the truth about who the killer is, Anne stands in the rain and screams over and over again. Nicolodi apparently felt that Argento required her to stand there soaked and screaming in order to punish her for having worked (with Tenebrae co-star John Steiner) on Mario Bava’s Shock, instead of having accepted a supporting role in Suspiria.

Whatever personal motives may have been involved in the decision, I think Nicolodi’s screaming is one of the most powerful moments to be found in Tenebrae. It’s certainly the most human moment because I think anyone with a soul would scream upon learning the truth of what has been happening in Rome. Every assumption that Anne had has been overturned. Who wouldn’t scream? Continuing with Argento’s claim that the film was about a world where people no longer discuss the terrible things that have happened, Anne’s screams are the most human part of the movie.

Tenebrae is the last of Agento’s truly great and flawless films. Of course, in usual Argento fashion, it was not treated well in the States, where it was initially released in a heavily edited version and with a terrible title (Unsane, under which it can still be found in certain Mill Creek box sets). But Tenebrae has since been rediscovered and today stands as one of Argento’s greatest triumphs.

The (Reviewed) Films of Dario Argento:

You have to love the utter shamelessness that was often displayed by the Italian horror directors of the 70s and 80s.

Consider this:

In Italy, both Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 were huge hits. Evil Dead was released under the name Las Casa so, of course, Evil Dead 2 was called La Casa 2.

Now, imagine that you’re Umberto Lenzi, a veteran Italian filmmaker who has directed everything from thrillers to westerns to war movies to gangster dramas. Over the decades, you’ve followed the trends. Whatever genre was popular at the time is the genre that you worked in. It’s now the late 80s and, even though the Italian film industry is in decline, Italian horror movies are still popular enough to make money. So, that’s what you now make. You’ve made cannibal films. You’ve made giallo films. You’ve made zombie films. Now, it’s time to make a haunted house film.

And how do you make sure that people will spend their money to see your haunted house film?

You call it La Casa 3.

Sure, your film has close to nothing to actually do with either one of the Evil Dead films. I mean, there is a deserted house and a scary basement and a message on a tape recorder but otherwise, your film is definitely not a part of the Evil Dead universe. For that matter, your own rather staid directorial style is absolutely nothing like Sam Raimi’s.

Who cares? Just call your movie La Casa 3 and make some of that Evil Dead money for yourself!

Of course, when the film is released in other countries, the name is going to have to be changed. After all, no one outside of Italy knows the significance of La Casa. In some territories, La Casa 3 is actually released under the name Evil Dead 3! However, in the United Sates, it’s known as Ghosthouse.

As for the film itself, it opens with a murder and ends with a lesson about why you should be careful when crossing the street. The film deals with a guy who spends all of his time in his apartment, listening to radio frequencies. He hears someone screaming for help so he drags his girlfriend with him in a search for the source of the scream. When she suggests that maybe it was a prank, he says, “That wouldn’t be ethical!”

Anyway, their search eventually leads them to an abandoned house in New England. If the house looks familiar, it’s because it’s the exact same house that Lucio Fulci used for The House By The Cemetery. It’s a pretty good location, too. Almost all of Ghosthouse’seerie moments are due to the fact that the house is just naturally spooky. Anyway it turns out that the house was the scene of a brutal murder. If you enter the house, you might run into a little girl who is holding a scary clown doll. As quite a few characters discover over the course of this film, the little girl will kill you just as soon as look at you.

As prolific as Umberto Lenzi was, he never really developed a signature style. As opposed to the work of other Italian genre directors — like Dario Argento, Mario and Lamberto Bava, Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino, Anthony Margheriti, and so many others — it’s rare that you ever watch an Umberto Lenzi film and think to yourself, “That is such an Umberto Lenzi moment. Only Umberto Lenzi could have made this film work.” As a result, Lenzi’s filmography tends to be a bit more uneven than the work of some of his contemporaries.

If you accept a film like Nightmare City as being an example of Lenzi at his most memorable and something like The Hitcher In The Dark as being Lenzi at his most forgettable, Ghosthouse is somewhere in the middle, between those two extremes. It has lots of atmosphere and those looking for gore will get what they’re looking for. At the same time, it doesn’t really add up to much beyond random people coming to the house, seeing something weird, and then dying. If you’re a fan of horror that doesn’t demand much from the audience, Ghosthouse is a diverting enough waste of time. If you’re looking for something deeper, I’d suggest rewatching The House By The Cemetery.