Bugs, Monkeys and Murdering Maniacs: Dario Argento’s PHENOMENA
Lots of strange horror movies come out of Italy, but only one of them features a teenage Jennifer Connelly as a character has a psychic connection with insects, a slasher who wields a knife on the end of a pole, and a monkey with a straight razor.
Dario Argento’s PHENOMENA is one of the strangest scary movies of the 80’s. Jennifer Connelly uses her mental link with insects to chase down a killer who is stalking her classmates at an international school for girls in Switzerland.
She gets tangled up in the murder mystery thanks to her sleepwalking episodes. Connelly walks in her sleep and can’t wake up until she hears the screaming of the next victim.
Sleepwalking into a murder scene is only half of Connelly’s problem-her prudish schoolteachers and gossipy students think she is possessed by the devil, and there is a second maniac somewhere around causing even more mischief!
PHENOMENA also stars Donald Pleasance as a kindly doctor who helps the teenage Connelly figure out who the murderer could be. One of the most frightening scenes comes toward the end of the film when Jennifer Connelly discovers just who has been killing off her classmates; she takes a plunge into a maggot-infested pit filled with dead bodies and water.
She was a long way off from starring in The Hulk, House of Sand and Fog or even Requiem For A Dream. In this role she is every bit as good, and for such an early age her performance is amazing. How Connelly put up with being covered in flies and maggots for this role is beyond belief.
Director Dario Argento has done a large number of hyper-violent horror movies; this is one of his best. Oddly enough, he says it was the film he was least involved in ’emotionally’ but the fact that his ex-wife was one of the co-stars may have had something to do with this.
Argento also has a habit of casting his children in his films; in PHENOMENA his daughter Fiore Argento plays the first victim of the slasher. Apparently the Argento family has a Halloween-style sense of humor, Argento has his daughter’s character getting her head chopped off and thrown down a waterfall. The scene is picturesque, but bizarre knowing it’s his daughter getting the chop!
In the early 90’s, PHENOMENA got a revival among industrial music fans. The group Skinny Puppy created a series of underground music videos featuring cuts from many Italian horror films, PHENOMENA was prominently featured in several of the band’s videos.
Skinny Puppy was renown for being obsessive horror buffs; their use of Argento’s work in their “Rated X” video collection (never officially released) proves PHENOMENA as a major influence.
Phenomena has a killer (sorry) soundtrack featuring the Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman, Iron Maiden, Andi Sex Gang, Simon Boswell and many others.
The DVD is available from Anchor Bay Entertainment as is the majority of the Dario Argento collection. At one time, PHENOMENA was released in a heavily cut and censored edition called CREEPERS, Anchor Bay has restored the film to its original form and title for the DVD release.
PHENOMENA is highly recommended on a double feature with any Wes Craven, John Carpenter or Ridley Scott scary movie you can think of. See it with I Know What You Did Last Summer, the comedy Scary Movie or Friday the Thirteenth.
