Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

I just simply cannot believe that a serious genious/meister of horror, shock, and mystery such as Dario Argento would even have the slightest gumption to stamp his name on this Air-Borne Disease! I mean what could he have been possibly thinking!! As a established big-time fan of his work and vision this movie was without a doubt the "BIGGEST MISTAKE OF DARIO ARGENTO'S CAREER"! When I had heard about it being the one of the few chances I would get to see his lesser-known daughter Fiore Argento, Also when I heard that Stunningly Beautiful, Ageless, and JUST PLAIN HOT!! To say noyhing of very talented Jennifer Connelly was going to be in it as well as "Halloween" star Donald Pleasance all starring in it plus an original concept like someone who can communicate with bugs telepathically I thought how could Dario possibly go wrong here?! Well guess what He did everything horribly wrong! First of all we only see his other daughter Fiore for like maybe the first 4 minutes of the movie,when her character misses some tour bus or something and comes by some waterfall outlook point,has no real lines, and to make matters worse gets to be the murderers first victim!(some part she had!) Well anyway I tried to shrug it off and go on. So from there we meet Jennifer Connelly's character who's name is also Jennifer(GEEZ! how creative, LOL!)And is some rich attorney's princess whom he sends to some Swiss boarding school. And to make an long story short she meets her roommate who secretly has a boyfriend and is not the nice excepting friend she believes her to be 'cause behind her back her roommate and her roommates boyfriend laugh at her! And for what it's worth I feel that this "outcast who has a special secret be it a supernatural power or whatever is something that's becoming quite tiresome! Not to mention that the part of the other girls being snobs against her(in particular when they and the "B***h on Wheels teacher snoop around and find out her secret via a letter intended for her father)didn't even come up until considerably later! Anyway for some reason she has this ability and isn't quite sure how to use it or control it right. Eventually she meets and befriends Donald Pleasance's character who's a wheelchair bound scientist who studies bugs. As they get to know eachother more he somehow(of course)understands her bug telepathy better than Jennifer does! WHAT?!! And he allows her not only the knowledge of how the bugs can help her find the murderer but also a fly to help her(of which for some reason he refers to as "The Great Sarcophagus!) Again What?! A Sarcophagus is an Egyptian Mummy's coffin.What the HELL has that got to do with a fly! If it was a beetle that would make sense but not a fly! So the wicked boarding school teacher tries to commit her because she I guess doubts her ability to commune with bugs. Which presented the only cool scene as far as I'm concerned where she has a lot flies come to the windows and doors of the boarding house and with an angelic glimmer and the keen theme tune playing utters the words" I Love You All" to the flies and then faints! Needless to say after she has a completely corny easy time escaping she attempts to get a plain ticket out of Switzerland and upon failing to do so the only person at the school who was nice to her played by Argento's now ex-wife Daria Nicolodi giving Jennifer somewhere to stay at her house! I won't bore you all with too many details only that to my chagrin it wasn't bad enough Donald Pleasance's untimely death at the hands of the killer but to make matters worse get this DARIA NICOLODI's CHARACTER WAS THE KILLER THE WHOLE TIME! Not to mention Daria's character ending up being dull, bland and ONE-DIMENSIOAL! On top of that you already know she's the killer 90 minutes into the movie when there's still 15 minutes to go! Not to mention her deformed son(who quite frankly looked like a pig on acid)had some part in it!Gosh what an ugly FREAK! One bigger problem here is that that guy she left chained to the wall was neither explained nor developed as a character!I mean who was he? I also hate that Jennifer Connely's character has this control over bugs yet when Daria attempts to poison her and also when she chases after her she stupidly does not use her powers until the deformed son corners her on the motor boat! And a bigger shocker is Donald's lab monkey saving her by insanely slashing at Daria with an old fashioned razor blade which was quite disturbing! Anyway other than that I got sick and tired of looking at maggots all the time!I hate them! So in closing this movie lacked miserably in nudity,pretty colors like Dario has used in his other movies and it had a couple of annoying aforementioned plot holes! So in closing if you enjoyed Dario Argento's other movies such as the Three Mothers Trilogy(Suspiria,Inferno, and Mother of Tears)Do You Like Hitchcock? or Tenebre as much as I did then definitely skip this morbid Half-A***ed diarrhea on celluloid like the plague!

This was my second dip into the Argento pool. I had recently watched "Tenebre", one of Argento's best from what I can gather. I was worried about a let down because I enjoyed that film so much. So I prepared myself. I read some reviews and took some advice. The results of my preparation were a mixed bag; some good, some bad. So, I appropriately lowered my expectations but hoped for the best. What I learned about Argento from watching "Phenomena" was that perhaps his biggest weakness is his clumsy story telling. Let me get to the point, hopefully quicker than "Phenomena".

-IF YOU WANT TO BE IMPORTANT, YOU HAVE TO LOOK IMPORTANT.
Argento has a knack for making everything look so important that you are glued to the imagery on the screen. "Phenomena" is full of long, stylish, detailed, seemingly important scenes. Every scene has a sort of leisurely pace to it. I began to assume that if I didn't pay attention, I would miss something. Eventually, this became a chore. After about 70 minutes, there had been 4 fairly unremarkable murders and yet we were no closer to knowing who the killer was. When it was finally over, I scratched my head and thought, "Did I miss something?" So I watched it all again. It turned out that I hadn't missed a thing. Most of the movie was not nearly as important to the plot as its treatment would have you believe. The result was an overly arduous, not particularly meaningful journey for a brief and crazy end.

-SO, WHICH STORY DID YOU LIKE?
Even though most of the movie was treated with overwrought and unwarranted importance, nothing that happened could be declared useless. But there were so many things that were given importance I wondered which thread of the story was the one that mattered most. How important was the generous time spent on the entomologist's theories? What role would the girl's talent with insects play? Why is the school so important? Does the hot but nasty teacher hold any significance? Was that time spent at the bank warranted? It turned out that all of the unique threads had very convoluted and somewhat ludicrous connection to how the film ended. I was forced to invest effort into all of the deceptive threads resulting in disappointment at their ultimate lack of importance. The worst part about it was that most of it wasn't particularly exciting or interesting.

-AT LEAST THE T-SHIRT IS OK. (Content could be interpreted as spoilers)
So I went through all this effort on stuff that varied in importance because I couldn't be sure what really mattered. My reward for all of this was an ending that bordered on cheating. It turns out the murders were committed by someone we never met directly or were never given cause to suspect until they are revealed. You could not possibly have deduced who it was because no meaningful clues were ever presented. Luckily, the ending has enough wacked-out moments and lively pacing that at least some satisfaction is achieved. However, that's only when compared to the rest of the films slogging pace.

-JUST BE YOURSELF JENNIFER.
Jennifer Connelly and Donald Pleasance are the big attraction here. Jennifer is very good at acting like Jennifer; a female Harrison Ford. Donald scrapped his usually wonderful British accent for a nearly undecipherable Scottish accent. There were other actors I won't mention though they were all capable for the most part. The chimp (Yes, the chimp) was actually an interesting figure whose function is clumsily jammed into place.

-SHE'S BRUSHING HER TEETH; CUE MOTORHEAD.
The music was wildly varied in style from scene to scene and just as wildly inappropriate in its placement. We often get scenes of someone walking slowly with some crazy guitar rock grinding away in the background. I can't say this had a big impact on me because I had bigger problems than the music to worry about. It didn't help though.

-SAY IT ISN'T SO!!
Some might be disappointed that there is no nudity and limited gore in this film. I don't mind those things but it wasn't a major sticking point with me in "Phenomena". I will say that a little more gore and nudity might have distracted me from the sluggish pace of the story. Yet, I think it would have had limited affect. Of course, the frenzied ending, which could be considered gratuitous, goes a long way to keep this from being a total loss.

-VENUS FLYTRAP.
As I stated before, Argento has a talent for giving drama to the most mundane event. Up to now, I really do like the overall feel of his films. They have a very inviting visual style. However, the enticing visuals could not enhance the plodding story enough to keep me interested or entertained throughout. He almost fooled me into believing that what I was seeing was always important.

-THE FLY ON THE WALL.
The fly on the wall knows the truth. In all honestly, I didn't like the way this story was played out. It was almost as if Argento had an ending in mind and then back-loaded the story to provide him all the pieces to construct his grand finale. The grand finale was pretty compelling but the back-loaded story was clumsy and those pieces didn't always fit too well. Why Jennifer's talent with bugs is important, why the chimp matters, why we spend so much time at school or in the bank and everything else was not nearly as important as the attention it was given. No matter how visually compelling things were, the events taking place just weren't that big a deal most of the time. Though Argento's talent is evident, the decent acting and visual aspects of this film were not enough to fix the convoluted story.

Story.....2 stars
Acting...3.5 stars
Visuals...4 stars
Music....2.5 stars

Average..3 stars