“Phenomena” (1985) doesn’t stand out from the pack of Dario Argento’s catalog in a way we might hope, since it is sometimes called Argento’s “Carrie.” But it is stylish schlock horror with cinematography that shows off a region of mountains, forests and cottages known as – for this film’s purposes only — “the Swiss Transylvania.”
Don’t monkey around with this killer
Goblin (“Deep Red,” “Suspiria”) provides some of the music, and Argento keeps the vibe alive by hiring several Eighties bands to further slather the film with intense doom metal. Iron Maiden’s “Flash of the Blade” is prominent. While this type of music is not represented on my CD shelf, I’m glad it’s in the film; a silent backdrop to all these sequences of our heroine investigating spaces would be boring.
“Phenomena” starts with one of the most sympathetic First Girls outside of “Friday the 13th” (1980), as a teen (Fiore Argento) misses her bus ride and looks for help in a nearby cottage where doom awaits. Then Argento tries for a more complex protagonist than usual, as Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly, before finding her acting chops) is a bug whisperer with a tendency to sleepwalk.
“Phenomena” (1985)
Director: Dario Argento
Writers: Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini
Stars: Jennifer Connelly, Donald Pleasence, Daria Nicolodi
Upon her first inadvertent stroll away from her boarding school, Jennifer befriends wheelchair-bound insect scientist Professor McGregor (Donald Pleasence — difficult to tell if he’s acting or sleepwalking himself) and his “nurse” chimp friend Inga. He’s amazed at how insects love Jennifer, but – in the manner of youths – it’s no big deal to her.
Also creeping into Argento’s toolbox here are composited effects, decently used for swarms of bugs. As always, the gore effects for the slasher kills remain strong, and we also see a workmanlike facial prosthetic.
By this point in my Argento journey, I realize he sticks close to a formula. The style is strong enough that I’m not knocked out of the story, yet I always hope Argento will do something a little extra, or a little differently, than before. In small ways, it almost happens, like with one of the grossest scenes in Argento’s catalog amid the final act. In big ways, it’s just another Argento film.
Formula very much in place
Jennifer, the daughter of a Hollywood heartthrob who remains off screen, is not at all like Carrie. So while a sequence of every single classmate circling around her and chanting about her love of bugs makes us hate them, they get off remarkably unscathed considering that there’s a serial killer on the loose and that their bullying target could kill them with her bug-control powers. Always clad in pure white, Jennifer is consistently the Good Girl, only developing an edge during the delay in receiving a plane ticket home so she can avoid being murdered.
(SPOILERS FOLLOW.)
Ultimately, “Phenomena” is a mix of “Suspiria” on one hand and “Bird with the Crystal Plumage” and “Deep Red” on the other. Jennifer is in a foreign girls’ school and one of the teachers ends up being the killer, continuing Argento’s career-long point that women can fill stereotypical male roles. It’s beginning to be less of a fake-out and more rote.
Frau Bruckner (Daria Nicolodi) is a nothing character until the plot needs her. Granted, she might be too obviously the killer for viewers who remember Nicolodi was a major player in “Deep Red” and “Tenebrae.”
“Phenomena” copies the “Bird” and “Deep Red” revelations wherein a male and female are teamed up in the killings – although this time it’s more confusing as to what’s going on. Bruckner’s young son is deformed like Jason Voorhees, and when we meet him he attacks Jennifer. But it seems unlikely a small boy committed any of these serial murders of bigger people; even if he committed some, certainly his mom did most of them. But why? Those previous films at least had a “why.”
(END OF SPOILERS.)
Argento delivers what we expect in “Phenomena” – good slasher-kill set pieces, lived-in architecture, a nice look and sound – but he doesn’t have any new social comments to make. It meets the requirements of a VHS rental for an Eighties sleepover party, though, and that’s not nothing.