by Jeremy Webster

If you’re reading this site, chances are you’re more than a little familiar with Dario Argento. His creative, innovative, and often violent directoral sensibilities have supplied us with some of the genre’s most revered and emulated works. From giallo (the “Three Animals Trilogy” – The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Cat O’ Nine Tails, Four Flies On Grey Velvet – Deep Red, Tenebrae) to outright horror (the “Three Mothers Trilogy” – Suspiria, Inferno, and Mother Of Tears), Argento has blazed a unique and bloody trail through cinema, becoming one of the most revered genre directors to emerge from Italy.

 On the whole, Argento’s 1985 film Phenomena is not held in nearly as high of regard as most of the films mentioned above. And yet, when I think back on the Argento films I’ve seen, this has always been a personal favorite of mine.

 Phenomena is the story of Jennifer Corvino (a teenaged Jennifer Connelly in her first starring role), the daughter of a wealthy rock star, as she begins her semester at an all-girls boarding school in Switzerland only to begin suffering a number of odd sleepwalking incidents. There’s a brutal killer on the loose stalking victims at night, and Jennifer soon realizes that her sleepwalking is brought on by some psychic connection with this killer… for when she sleepwalks, her unconscious body tracks the killer…

 But that’s not Jennifer’s only psychic talent. She also has a unique empathic and telepathic relationship with insects, which she can control if she so desires.

 In one evening’s sleepwalking fit she stumbles across Professor John McGregor (Donald Pleasence, speaking in a quiet Scottish accent), an entomologist whose talents have been called upon by the local police to help catch the killer. A paraplegic, McGregor keeps an intelligent, trained chimpanzee with him as his assistant, maid, and general “go-for.” Realizing how powerful Jennifer’s psychic abilities are, McGregor enlists her help with the case. The girl may break the case for him and the police, but her involvement also puts her in terrible danger as someone she trusts may have a sinister involvement she doesn’t suspect.

 Compared with Argento’s earlier straight horror works, Phenomena wields a very complicated plot – possibly too complicated for its own good. Sometimes it’s a little too convenient (who throws a perfectly good straight razor in the trash?), but, as has been true with Argento’s work, the story is the framework on which his nightmarish visuals are mounted, justifying their existence in the piece. And there’s a LOT of that in this movie, which is quite possibly Argento’s most disgusting work, not just for the violence, but for its constant use of insects and their larvae.

 And yet, that’s subject to interpretation. Argento’s created an interesting little challenge for horror movie regulars here by crafting a movie where the very maggots and insects we hate so much – creatures often used in the genre to represent the grim reality of death – are GOOD GUYS. Hell, they’re the HEROES.

 C’mon, admit it. You hate maggots, don’t you? Nasty, smelly, creepy little bastards, right? But yet, from nature’s standpoint, these creatures really aren’t monsters, and they’re certainly not “unnatural.” They’re doing what they’ve evolved to do according to the natural order. They’re not good or evil – they’re acting on natural instinct.

 In fact, it is because of these natural instincts that Jennifer’s insect friends are so capable of helping her out as she works toward solving the mystery and evading the killer. Argento throws a whole new perspective on creepy little arthropods, making us feel more like they’re part of the natural order as opposed to icky little monsters than your high school biology book could ever HOPE to do. Who would have ever thought your common housefly or honeybee could be as good a pet as a golden retriever?

That doesn’t mean this movie’s going to make for great viewing for that friend who obsessively swats at flies in his house for hours on end, though. Argento heaps on the maggot-and-worm encrusted grue throughout the film. If you have any weakness to such imagery at all, you’re gonna feel your stomach pull off possibly more than a few flip-flops along the way. Just as Argento sets us up with a sympathetic view toward Jennifer’s little six-legged friends, he is also fully willing to show them at work en masse doing their nasty business.

If you can take the nastiness and the violence, Phenomena is, visually, as stunning as anything Argento has ever done in his career, excepting perhaps Suspiria. The film’s first murder is set in the daytime on the beautiful Swiss countryside. In this beginning’s final shot we see a beautiful river flowing away, then the victim’s severed head fall directly in. Few directors have understood the power of having the beautiful and the beastly simultaneously in the same scene – fewer still have mastered it. For Argento, it seems to be an inborn instinct. The worlds he shows us can be lovely, macabre, dreamlike, and gruesome all within the same frame. Phenomena is no exception.

If Phenomena suffers from a weakness, it is in its reliance on heavy metal and rock music from the period the movie was made to bolster the soundtrack. A lot of it may have sounded dark and sinister and evil back in 1985, but now much of it is awkwardly dated. Here’s a note to today’s horror film producers and directors – if you want to see how detrimental using the hottest new rock sound can be in your film, get yourself a copy of Phenomena. Hey Zack Snyder! That’s EXACTLY how people are gonna respond twenty years from now when they watch your remake of Dawn Of The Dead and “Down With The Sickness” has passed into musical obscurity! I really wish Argento would go back and have Claudio Simonetti rescore this film. Still, it’s not like we’re being forced to listen to the Partridge Family.

 Like many of the Italian horror movies that came across the sea to North American cinemas, Phenomena was substantially edited for its initial theatrical and video releases. Over half an hour of the movie was cut, and the resulting abomination was retitled Creepers. But the original, uncut version has found its way to our shores courtesy of Anchor Bay, and I unreservedly recommend it to horror fans.

 If nothing else, you’ll never look at that damned fly that insists on landing on your candy bar the same way again.