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 A young opera singer gets the leading role in a production of Verdi's Macbeth
and "triggers the madness of a crazed fan who repeatedly forces the diva to
watch the brutal murders of her loved ones." She has a recurring nightmare
that may hold the key to who this murderer is. They note that Dario Argento is
"legendary" and that he is the co-writer of this film. They call the movie a
"savagely stunning thriller" with "some of the most shocking sequences of the
maestro's entire career." They close by bragging that this is the uncut and
uncensored version. 1987, 107 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
I think I must have missed the wedding. You know, the one where Dario Argento
got married to the steadicam. I think John Carpenter gave the bride away.
When you watch Argento's take on The Phantom of the Opera (not to be confused with the the regular version of the film he did about 11
years later), you're alternately impressed with the sweeping shots of the
opera house and nauseated by the floating views he uses to follow some of the
action. A little bit of this fancy, film school stuff goes along way. Dario
obviously has the technique down pat, but more time should have been devoted to
coming up with a story that was a little more original than the one hiccuped
here. Opera tells the very simple and forgettable story of a young opera
singer stalked by a maniac. That's it. Nothing is really new here, except
that there is actually less to this story than with something like the Claude
Raines version of the Phantom. There you had a maniac stalking a young opera star as well, but it was
interesting because of the background you had on the Phantom in that film. He
was a regular old violin player who secretly pined away for the unattainable
singer, until he could no longer play and through a bunch of unfortunate
circumstances was driven around the bend into Jody Foster-obsession territory.
In Dario's version (and was I the only one who snickered when the credit popped
up on the screen that said the Big D himself had come up with the story for
this film?), the killer is chiefly distinguished by the creativity he shows in
forcing Betty, the opera star of his affections, to watch as he hacks up
various members of the opera troupe (or is that term just used for circus
performers?). You can't deny the visual impact of a scene where this chick is
tied up and has all these nails taped to her bottom eyelids, so that she has to
keep her eyes open, lest she tear them apart by blinking. Visually arresting,
yes, but it's simply another well orchestrated and well shot death scene, that
does little but provide a brief cheap thrill.  The movie starts out promisingly enough, the camera swirling (steadicam again!)
around a rehearsal of Macbeth that the opera dudes are getting ready to put on.
The director is a movie director who apparently likes to try his hand at
updating these stuffy old operas with some new fangled ideas. Here those ideas
involve having these trained ravens flying all over during various scenes. The
ravens get a couple of big scenes in this movie, including a The Birds -like attack
on the killer while the opera is being performed. You won't see a more
ridiculous unmasking of a killer than the one that takes place near the end of
this film. Since this is one of these deals where we're backstage and our main
character, Betty, is the up and coming opera star, we have to have the
established soprano be one of those hoity-toity jerks that we just love to see
run over and put out of the show giving our heroine a chance to shine. This
happens when this stuck-up broad bitches about the ravens pooping on her or
something and she bolts out of the theatre, only to be run over by a car. She
gets a broken leg, but the show must go on and Betty is strapped into the
costume and hauled out on stage for her debut performance. It's a good
performance as opening nights go with the exception of the falling spotlights
and the death of a stage hand, who makes the mistake of getting in the face our
hooded killer and gets his head impaled on a coat hook in one of those private
boxes that all the big wigs pay big bucks for (you know they're watching
wrestling or something in there). Periodically we also get these shots of a
pulsating brain and then we see some woman tied up and we see another woman and
one or both of them get killed or something, and I was never sure of whether
these were visions the killer was having or just daydreams that Betty was
having. Later Betty has this dream that she is tied up and sort of violated by
a hooded killer, at least I think it was her. Sometimes Dario can be a bit
opaque with his imagery. Some attribute that to him using symbolism and being
arty. I like to think it's the result of bad editing and poor continuity
management.  After her performance, Betty is given congrats by everyone including the stage
manager who will unsuccessfully try to get her to perform an aria for him in
private later. She also gets the kudos of the local cop who is supposedly
there to check out this accident and the death of the stage hand. His name is
Inspector Alan and he is your hooded killer. It's fairly evident early on
that he is the guy that did it, so I don't think I'm doing too much damage (at
least less damage than this movie did to my pocket book) to
you in letting that slip. These movies where people say that "they won't
reveal the ending" or whodunit or whatever always make me roll my eyes. They
act like they're doing you some big favor and letting you discover for yourself
the great puzzlebox that is the mystery movie. That's okay though, really it
is. You see, without those boobs running around, parcelling out information
like it was blue kryptonite or something, people like Anchor Bay wouldn't be
able to get people like you to shell out 35 bucks for stuff like this. If you
take a look at this movie, the mystery to me is "who else could it have been?"
The only other person that would have mattered was the director, and you know
he didn't do it. He's spending the night of one the murders with his
slut-model girlfriend who is pissed that he's laying in bed reading the reviews
of that night's show. Not exactly serial killer material there. There's
really no one else in the movie other than Betty. Since there's a total dearth
of suspects (and as such everyone in the theatre can dope out the real killer
right away) the focus then has to shift (but it doesn't) from whodunit to
whydunit. Maybe if you can give a real sweet explanation for this guy's
demented focus on Betty, I can forgive the Clue Club style "mystery" you came up with in your story, Dario. I don't think this
would have even stumped Whimper and Woofer. Dario does give us the whys later
on, but they don't exactly leave you fulfilled. After the show, Betty and her
stage manager boyfriend go off to his uncle's mansion (which looks like a
really big, ornate museum) and she just isn't in the mood. He goes off to get
some Zima or something and this allows Alan, I mean the mysterious killer, to
slip in, tie her up and tape her eyes open with his nails. Then he hacks up
Alan when he returns while forcing Betty to watch. Following the death of the stage manager, the next day's practice at the opera
house starts off with Inspector Alan nosing around, "investigating" things.
There's also a scene where the killer sneaks into the prop room, where they
store stuff for the show like Betty's fugly costume and those ravens. The
ravens don't like the killer and escape their cages and fly all over and
generally harass him until he smacks some of them down. He steals some or all
of the costume, but leaves a clue behind. Later when the seamstress gets the
costume to repair it and refit it for Betty (she's been pounding down too many
beers after each show apparently) she notices a piece of jewelry that's stuck
to the costume. It's a gold bracelet or something and has a date on it. I
never figured out what exactly this had to do with anything, except that the
maniac who was behind all these things dropped it and I don't recall that they
ever explained what it all meant, even when Alan was spilling his guts to Betty
about why he was the opera's most enthusiastic fan. Betty gets herself tied up
again and the killer and the seamstress have this fight. The woman actually
gives a pretty good account of herself, whacking the guy with an iron and
knocking him out briefly. Then she doesn't keep her eyes on the prize and
instead of finishing that sucker off, she lollygags around, taking the dude's
hood off, shocked that it is the cop. He gets up and stabs her and cuts her
tongue out or puts some crowns on her teeth and then he lets Betty go again and
disappears. She decides she needs to chill out at her pad, and her new bestest
pal, Inspector Alan tells her that he's assigned some detective to watch her at
her place. Nobody but he knows that he did this (especially anyone connected
to the opera - the only other suspects we might have had) so when a guy shows
up saying that he's the Inspector's buddy and then later a guy calls from
downstairs saying that he is the inspector's buddy, it becomes as obvious as
the bunions on my dearly departed grandma's feet that our killer is Alan.
Here's a question for you. How was this going to work? I'm assuming that the
first guy who went into her apartment was the real Daniel or whatever his name
was. He would have to be since Alan can't just show up himself or with a hood
over his head. But then what's the entire point of this little scheme of
Alan's? I think later, Alan pretending to be Daniel calls from downstairs and
we realize that somewhere there is a fake Daniel. The Daniel in her apartment
is never seen because she has put drops in her eyes that blur her vision (give
me a break!) and then we only see the back of him sitting in another room.
Also around this time, Betty's agent shows up and together these two chicks
scream and run around the apartment because of the two Daniels. Whatever
happened to the one that started in the apartment? Now, the one from outside
shows up and the agent looks through the peephole and Alan shoots her through
the peephole and all the way through her eye in a shot that is simply amazing to
watch. But really what is the point? By assigning this guy to guard things,
Alan assures himself of a confrontation with this guy (except that he
disappears) needlessly. If it turns out that there was only one guy all along
and Alan was able to leave the apartment and call from outside while Betty was
watching Ananda's new talk show, then you have to wonder again what the point
of it all was, because Alan had to expect that when he came in the first time,
Betty wouldn't be conveniently blinded and thus would know he showed up instead
of Daniel, thus obviating the need for the entire Daniel ruse in the first
place. As you can tell, I really had no idea what was happening and it was
kind of like I was supposed to be singing in a choir but didn't know any of the
words except the chorus. I just hummed and mumbled while all this was going
on, not really rejoining things until that chick got her eye blasted out. I
was able to follow the film again at that point (eye shot out - that I can
understand!).  Betty and the director put their heads together and come up with a plan to
smoke out the culprit. The plan goes something like this (and I am not making
any of this up). They put on the opera like normal and then at some point they
let all the ravens loose in the auditorium. The ravens fly around and swoop to
and fro snatching hairpieces and doo-dooing on people until all the ravens set
upon a single person. It's Inspector Alan and the ravens manage to peck his
eye clean out of the socket (there's a whole bunch of eye things going on in
this movie, but the movie isn't good enough to try and dope out Dario's stab
(hohoho) at symbolism). Alan is really mad and starts shooting and somehow
gets Betty taken hostage in all the chaos. He takes her to a storeroom and
explains everything to her. It's something about he was her mother's sex slave
and now he was fixated on her since the mother is dead and Betty and I were
kind of shrugging our shoulders since this made about as much sense as having
the ravens try and arrest a killer cop. He blindfolds her, ties her up and
sets everything on fire including himself. She escapes and I gulped as I
noticed there was something like ten minutes of Dario's "story" remaining.
Alan only faked his fiery death and catches up with Betty and the director up
in the mountains (what are they doing up there?). There's some more really bad
moments of chasing and people getting stabbed and hit by rocks and the whole
thing felt unnecessary and tacked on, but it did allow Betty to declare that
she's not like her mother and then she rolled around in the grass and played
with a lizard. Something tells me her mamma ain't too broke up with the fact
that she's not like her. Though not as annoyingly impenetrable as something
like Argento's Inferno, the movie still fails to sustain much in the way of
interest. The story isn't all that intriguing and has stretches that leave you
scratching your head either because what went on didn't make any sense (the
ravens) or was simply superfluous (the ending). Basically this is a slasher
version of The Phantom Of The Opera, which probably isn't the worst idea you could have come
up with, but the way Dario executes it, with it's bad mystery and weak payoff
certainly doesn't make you want to revisit this territory any time soon. It
seems like a lot of people praise this, but I suspect that they're merely
blinded by how good the movie looks. Dario creates some really good shots
(though his use of opera and heavy metal music that sounds like the Ronnie
James Dio era of Black Sabbath leave a lot to be desired - one or the other is
fine, not both) and gets these big panoramic views of the opera (when the
ravens are
solving the case) that will leave you impressed with his command of the camera.
I just think that maybe Dario should leave the story up to somebody else.
There's no reason anyone should shell out for Anchor Bay's collector's edition
of this. You get a bonus CD that features the soundtrack, but I've still yet
to find anyone that sits around their house listening to music from bad foreign
horror movies. Your 35 bucks doesn't get you a lot else (there's a 36 minute
documentary that's subtitled - so you can comfortably listen to the CD while
watching Dario, who looks like he's about to drop dead blather endlessly in
Italian about the movie you just spent two hours regretting you purchased). If
you get this, you should know that Anchor Bay churned out a batch of defective
discs. The new ones have a red dot on them or something. The first time I
tried to watch this, about 45 minutes into it, the picture exploded into a
mass of pixels
and refused to play anymore. It was off to Anchor Bay's web site where I had
to fill out a form to get a new disc mailed to me. I got it about 3 or 4 weeks
later and the new one worked fine. As added punishment though, Anchor Bay also
shipped me their DVD release of the Moonlighting television pilot free of charge. Thanks for that. Do I look like an outlet
store or something? Couldn't you have shipped one of your Hammer movies to me
instead? Or even a Fulci movie?
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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