Disc Reviews

Phenomena (1985) Blu-ray Review

• 29th May 2017

The mantle of leading Italian giallo director was handed down to Dario Argento from Mario Bava following Argento’s critical and cult success with Suspiria in 1976. That film was intended to have been the start of a trilogy of films. He followed Suspiria with Inferno (1980) and Tenebrae (1982) and preceded Suspiria with the strange and dream-like Deep Red (1975) (all these films have been released on Arrow Video, along with his his earlier films which are also on the label or set to be released). The latest release by Arrow is the film made after Tenebrae, Phenomena (1985), arguably the most hit and miss of all his horror thrillers. What the film does have that singles it out from the other films is its interesting Swiss locations, filmed somewhere between Zurich and Winterthur.

It opens on the a road between Zurich and Winterthur where a teenage school girl alights from a bus seemingly in the middle of nowhere. She walks to a home and knocks on the door. No one answers but she makes her way in looking for something or someone. She is attacked and chased by an unknown caped stranger who chases her to a waterfall where he decapitates her and throws her head into the river. Several months later an American girl, Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly) arrives in Switzerland to begin at the Richard Wagner Academy for Girls, a girls only private boarding school. Jenny shares a room with another girl. However, Jenny sleepwalks and finds herself on the roof of the school. When she wakes she witnesses another girl being murdered in the nearby woods. Jenny collapses and is unsure that what she has seen is a dream or reality. Her chaperone, Frau Brückner (Daria Nicoldi) starts to believe that Jenny is both a strange girl and a fantasist. Jenny becomes lost in the woods when she stumbles on the house of a Scottish entomologist, Dr. John McGregor (Donald Pleasance). Jenny befriends McGregor (and his pet chimpanzee) and reveals to him that she can communicate with flies and insects and has telepathic abilities. Meanwhile, Jenny’s sleepwalking and often strange behaviour leads the school to send her for some brain tests. Not long later, Jenny’s roommate, Sophie is also murdered. Her fellow schoolmate’s begin to isolate Jenny and suspect that she is behind the spate of brutal murders.

There is a lot going on in this film and not all of it feels to gel together. Not Argento’s best film and his first film in English with an early performance by Connelly. The fault of the film or some of its failure may lie in the director perhaps not able to handle the English dialogue very well with some poor lines. The killer cries out to Jennifer near the end of the film: “I killed that no-good inspector and your professor friend, to protect him! And now… I’m gonna KILL YOU TO AVENGE HIM! Why don’t you call your INSECTS! GO ON! CALL! CALL!” All a bit silly. What the film does have, and follows on from the director’s other films is an interesting use of dream-like cinematography and a great sense of style. It also has the great horror hack Donald Pleasance providing support (replete with a Scottish accent) and his vengeful monkey (no clue what that is all about).

The version available for review only had the English and Italian tracks and not the extras available on the box-set, but is never the less, the uncut version. The English language release was some 6 minutes shorter than the Italian one, even though it is the recognised proper version and is better seen in the English language. No English was recorded for the scenes not in that version and therefore at times the dialogue remains in Italian. The limited edition box-set of the film is chockablock with extras as well as shown as a 4K restoration. Extras include, as well as the commentary by giallo expert Troy Howarth, a whole host of documentaries as well as a 60 page book making it as complete a disc as you could ever wish for. What the disc also has is the, to say the least electro-heavy metal soundtrack that includes Iron Maiden, Goblin, Bill Wyman and Motörhead (‘Flash of the Blade’).

Chris Hick