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 The back of the box has to fit the special features and write up on bothTenebre and Deep Red so there isn't a lot of room for describing each movie
(who needs that anyway when you're spending $35 bucks?). They do note thatTenebre stars Anthony Franciosa and John Saxon "in the twisted story of a
novelist trapped in a web of unhinged homicide." It is presented "completely
uncut and uncensored for the first time ever in America!" 1982, 101 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
I had someone look up what the word "tenebre" meant. They found a version
of it in the dictionary, but I've already forgot what it means. I originally
figured that since it sounded a little like "tentacle" that maybe this movie
was going to be about a giant squid or something. Then I discovered that it
was an Italian flick so I figured that some giant squid was on the loose in
Rome slicing and slashing beautiful (well, beautiful for 1970s Italian women)
fashion models or something. Finally I saw the DVD and realized that this
movie was written and directed by Dario Argento so I knew it didn't matter what
"tenebre" meant cause none of it would make any sense anyway (have you ever
seen Inferno?). To be fair though, this was a fairly straight forward slasher flick that
made sense in that you understood someone was on the loose and killing people
and that it was all related to a book that Anthony Franciosa's character Peter
Neal had written, called coincidentally enough, Tenebre. Just because it was straight forward in this manner doesn't mean that it
really makes a lot of sense. It's another one of those Dario flicks with a
couple of shocking endings which exist because he again goes to the
"there's two murderers out there" gag that he used to better effect in The Bird With The Crystal Plumage. By the time that Franciosa's author is revealed to be one of the killers,
you aren't too surprised since there really isn't anyone else it would be (who
else would want his ex-wife or whatever she was, dead, along with his
agent that she was having an affair with?). Besides, there's still another
killer you have to figure out that does all the killing initially in the film.
Franciosa, though, shows this amateur that he's not a psycho to be trifled with
when he slams an axe into this other killer's head (and when you see the scene,
you'll say, "who else could it have been?"). Later, Franciosa is killed by
some falling piece of modern art (I'll bet there was a message in there
somewhere. Probably something about the creator being consumed by his
creation, though he wrote books, not sculpted ugly artwork). Wasn't this
"attack of the modern art" angle also used in The Bird With The Crystal Plumage?  Neal is an author of a book that everyone is talking about because it's really
violent or Kelly Ripa picked it to be her next book club selection or something
(did you even know she could read?). He
flies over to Rome to promote the book there and get some kind of deal signed.
The thing you'll notice about Neal is that he's one of these authors that
travels with an entourage that would put P. Diddy (he's asked that I call him
that instead of Puff Daddy or Puffy or Sean Combs. Hey P. Diddy - email me
whenever it's time for the next name change!) to shame. Neal has an agent,
played by John Saxon. Saxon is familiar to most of us because of his roles in Enter The Dragon and Cannibal Apocalypse and his role in this case consists of little
more than to talk kind of loud and babble on about this cool new hat that he
bought. He explains in painful detail to Neal how the hat looks really good,
but is tight enough that it won't blow right off. Immediately this movie loses
the audience, because we are now rooting for Franciosa to whack him Lizzy
Borden style just to shut him up about that durn hat. He also manages to have
an affair with his client's ex-wife or something. The movie keeps killing off
people semi-regularly, so if you don't pay attention, you might miss out on
the fact that some of the story is pretty stupid and there's really no reason
for Neal's woman to show up in Rome to hump Saxon while Neal is also in Rome
with Saxon. Why wouldn't she wait until Saxon got back to the States?
Wouldn't it be easier to explain her presence in her home country, then why
she's mysteriously shown up in Rome at precisely the same time Neal was there
(and Saxon, too.)? Don't let yourself get too bogged down in the lack of logic
that pervades the goings on in Rome. Dario isn't worried about it, so why
should you be? You probably also shouldn't get too bogged down by all these
women that Dario has running around that look like men (and apparently one
really did used to be a man). The general rule of thumb on this sort of thing
is that you should use that type of woman sparingly. I've got nothing against
them or anything, but they're very distracting to the movie. I spent most of
the movie convinced that Neal's assistant was a dude in drag and that this
would naturally result in some type of shocking finale that had The Crying Game written all over it (or at least Sleepaway Camp). All this effort to spot an Adam's apple on this person meant that I missed
the significance of several muddled clues (like the red high heeled shoes).
How am I expected to solve the case when I can't even solve whether someone is
a man or a woman?  Once Neal and his posse arrive in Rome, strange things begin to happen. Things
such as Neal's luggage getting all wrecked inside as well as the packet of
photos he gets slid under the door of the place he is staying at. These aren't
8x10 headshots his publicist wants him to sign for the throngs of Italians that
apparently can read and have enjoyed his work. They're photos of some skank
the killer sliced up. I would note at this point that we do get the killer
quoting from and reading from this awful book that Neal has written. It's a
bunch of purple prose about annihilation, humiliation, and people getting
killed.
This book is so great that this woman in Rome tries to shoplift the thing! She
gets caught, but the security guy lets her go once she gives him her home
address so that he can come by and kill her later. We later find out that he
was not the killer and I can't seem to remember how it would be that the real
killer would have done her in since there was no way he would know she ever had
anything to do with the book, but die she does. In order to promote his book,
Neal endures questioning from a few reporters at the airport and later at a TV
station. At the airport, this woman reporter starts berating him for his
treatment of women in the novel. He responds that it isn't his view of women,
but the character's view of chicks, so don't blame me, I just thought up and
wrote the damn thing down. Could this woman be the killer? The killer is
talking about getting rid of people that the killer views as filth
(shoplifters, lesbos, that sort of thing) and eliminating the corrupter (Neal).
Later, at the TV interview, the talk show host makes some strange comments
along these
lines and Neal decides that he is going to help the police out by trying to
solve this real-life murder! This leads to one of those scenes where the main
character goes off and investigates the killer's house without telling anyone
(making it much easier for really bad and stupid things to happen to all
involved). Suspecting the TV talk show host, because we all know that TV talk
show hosts have nothing to do with disseminating filth and corrupting people,
he and his young male friend (apparently his entourage wasn't big enough,
because they hired this guy to be some kind of helper as soon as they landed in
Rome) head out to this TV guy's plush house. This young kid peeks in the
window and sees TV Guy saying something and seeing someone he recognizes and
then TV Guy gets an axe embedded in his head for his trouble. Where is Neal
during
all this? His boy Friday finds him laid out in the weeds with a bump on his
head, but I think we can all see through that gag. In an effort to be really
tricky, Argento isn't. It makes no sense dramatically for Neal not see the
killing, unless that is because he is the killer. Wouldn't it be more powerful
for the main character to see this guy get whacked? Of course. But since it
was just some throwaway character that saw it, you know that the main character
must be the perp. 
The movie involves more people getting bumped off and they're is one of those
scenes where Neal is trying to "talk it out" like they do on that Who Wants To Be A Millionaire TV show. He says stuff like, "theres' just a small piece of the puzzle
missing." Um, yeah, like "you did it." He also says, "it's like someone who
should be dead is alive or someone who is alive should be dead." Yeah, maybe
what you mean to say is that, "I did it." Then he breaks out one of my
favorite old chestnuts of detective philosophy. It's the old line from
Sherlock Holmes about how "whenever you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth." People always are
saying that in these kinds of movies, but does it really help solve any crimes?
Maybe somebody should suggest this avenue to Donald Rumsfeld so that they can
finally nab this Bin Laden dude. Just eliminate all the places it would be
impossible for him to hide and then all you have left is the improbable places
and that's where he'll be, bright-eyed and waiting. See how dumb that line is?
It sounds nifty and I guess works when you are solving cases on the moors or
where ever, but it has no real-world application. I would also submit that
anytime a character goes on about stuff like that, it's pretty obvious that he
is the culprit. Who would ever have guessed he was talking about himself? What
about John Saxon and his hoochie? Saxon is waiting around at some plaza in
Rome for his nookie and the next thing we know, he's getting knifed in the gut
in broad daylight. No one manages to see any of this until Saxon is laid
sprawled out on the ground in a pool of blood. Though it seems stupid that a
killer as cunning as Neal would risk gutting his pal in broad daylight (what
about your alibi, Neal?), at least that murder makes a little sense in the
grand scheme of things here (jilted jealous guy gets revenge on dude who stole
wife) you've also got your murders that make little sense (or at least there
are coincidences that make little sense that result in murders). I am of
course referring to the infamous "dog chases Neal's landlord's daughter into
killer's house" sequence. This girl somehow gets chased by this big mean
doggie and it attacks her and tries to eat her and then she seeks refuge in TV
Guy's house and she notices all these pictures of dead chicks and a bunch of
letters cut from magazines and then the killer gets her. What did that have to
do with anything? Talk about artificially pumping up your body count. The
scenes with the dog are great and watching the dog run up to a really high
fence that the woman scaled, seeing him regard its height, then having him turn
around and walk a little so that he can get a running start to jump it really
reinforces the relentlessness this murderous pooch had. This dog should have
been our killer! But again, I'm not real sure what any of this had to do with
Neal, TV Guy or that crappy book Neal wrote. The end comes when Neal ends up at the place his ex-wife is at and he hacks
her up
real good. You get your bloodiest scenes here with a real stunner when her
hand gets lopped off and red liquid sprays everywhere. Another woman shows up
and gets an axe in the back (she was a female cop), then the male cop who was
investigating shows up and you get a nice scene of Neal slitting his own throat
(I knew he was faking it - this movie is like F/X or something). Neal isn't quite finished and we learn that he killed off
Saxon and his woman because he was humiliated by them or something. It all has
something to do with this confusing flashback involving this ugly she-male on
a beach grinding her red spiked heels into his face. Apparently Neal killed
someone when he was a kid, but they couldn't make the charges stick because he
was a Kennedy or something and they figure that this warped him enough to write
bad prose, get real jealous and take advantage of the fact that there was a
killer on the loose in Rome just when he happened to be there and this killer
just happened to be killing people because of his book. None of this is
remotely believable, but Dario does keep things going with frequent kills and
loud background music from Goblin or some facsimile thereof. I still have yet
to figure out why people heap praise on stuff like this. It's okay enough in
that you're not going to be falling asleep during the movie and the Argentos of
the world usually turn in a good performance technically behind the camera, but
does it really make up for the haphazard and slapdash plotting we get in this
one? It's an exercise in scenes designed to shock, from the flashback on the
beach to the really sharp implements being shoved into hapless victims. Lucio
Fulci's giallo (Italian for "slasher movie") Don't Torture A Duckling has its share of shocking scenes, but that one's a lot better at keeping a
handle on its story (and it had a twist ending, too!) and is the better for
doing so. It's easier to forgive the lackadaisical plotting in movies like The Beyond or City Of The Living Dead, because they don't even pretend to be
grounded in reality. Tenebre would like to be a psychological thriller/mystery
type movie where everything is explainable. When it veers off the tracks,
logic-wise, it hurts it more than a movie about zombies eating people (what
hurts those movies is not enough zombies eating people). I'm not even going to
bother commenting on Argento's lame attempt to put a message in here about
people criticizing his movies for being violent or misogynistic. It's a conceit
when film makers do that, that I care if they care that people hate their
movies. If you believe in what your doing, you don't have to justify it to
anybody, so quit using your movie to whine. Besides, is anyone really
complaining about these movies and their effect on society? Who's going to see
it, except some gorehound with thirty bucks? If I want a message, I'll go to
church. I watch these movies to be drawn in by the story and characters and
entertained by the execution of those things (so to speak). Don't bother
rationalizing what your movies are really all about within the movie itself. If
anyone is going to
bitch and moan about your movie, Dario, it will be because it just isn't a
very good one.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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