Life sucks but that's okay. Dario Argento can help. Bing Crosby can help too. He taught me to go to sleep counting my blessings. Oh yeah, I finally stopped being a super wuss and wrote about my favorite horror movie of all time. It is Phenomena and you can check out my piece right here. I hope you like it. If not, there will be death in my brain forever.
Great review and a great movie, probably not my favorite horror movie of all time, but easily in my top 5 for all the reasons you mentioned - I love the inappropriate soundtrack (except for the "Motorhead scene", makes no sense given what's happening on the screen), the set design, the 80s Armani fashion and the trippy fairy tale plot.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more on this being Jennifer Connelly's best movie too and I think Pleasence might give the best performance in any Argento film (von Sydow and Malden being close seconds), shame that he's out of the movie halfway through.
One minor point though: In the review you wrote: "Near the end of the film, we have traveled with Jennifer through windswept Sweden", but the film is set in Switzerland and although both countries start with a "Sw" and are in Europe, I reckon the overall effect would've been entirely different if the fiolm had been set in Sweden (more elks, less monkeys).
"More elks, less monkeys". Nice! Thanks for pointing that out to me, captain. The movie would have been remarkably different in Sweden.
ReplyDeleteAt least Pleasence gets an awesome death scene. That whole wheelchair lift bit felt like something from Cat O' Nine Tails.
Well some of the scenes where Jennifer follows the fly _might_ look a bit like Sweden though. :-) (The forests ,not the mountains!)
ReplyDeleteBut yes Phenomena is my favorite of Argento's movies by far. How can you go wrong with Connelly _and_ Maiden!?
Cheers!
/ Other "anonymous" (gotta fix some kind of account on Google or something..)
..and excellent text once again,by the way..
ReplyDelete(and Jennifer should have starred in Argento's latest film)