Even a moderately intense horror film aficionado should be familiar with Dario Argento, the Italian writer and director who's been at it since the 1960's. Even casual horror fans probably know of his work at least indirectly, since he had one of his films, "Suspiria," recently remade in 2018. However, today I'd like to discuss one of his more obscure offerings, 1985's "Phenomena." It's not one of his best, but I believe it hasn't gotten the credit it deserves. As usual, I'll start with a brief, spoiler-free synopsis, then a long, spoiler-rich recap, and follow this with a discussion of some of the film's strengths and themes, and conclude with some cast and crew information. My recap, and general discussion, will be about the longest, 116 minute European cut of the movie. The U.S. version, called "Creepers," was about 30 minutes shorter.
An unseen and possibly monstrous killer is plying his or her trade in Switzerland. Shortly after, young American Jennifer Corvino begins a term at a boarding school in the same area. Strange and disturbing things start to happen. Jennifer is plagued by nightmarish visions, and bouts of sleepwalking. The killer continues to eliminate girls, including a friend of Jennifer's. Only a friendly entomologist, Professor John McGregor, offers Jennifer any friendship and help. Who (or what) is behind the brutal slayings? And will they claim Jennifer as their next victim?
(SPOILERS AHEAD UNTIL MARKED) "Phenomena" opens in a beautiful, but isolated alpine scene in Switzerland. A girl misses her tour bus, and goes to a nearby house for help. However, a mysterious figure breaks its chains and attacks her. After a brief chase the young woman is murdered, and her decapitated head falls into a river.
Next we see a chimpanzee walking into a house. She's a "helper ape"/quasi-nurse for the wheelchair-bound entomologist Professor John McGregor, and she's named Inga. McGregor is talking with a couple of policemen, including Inspector Geiger, about an unsolved murder case. The life cycles of the maggots consuming the head of Vera Brandt, the victim from the opening scene, indicate that it's been 8 months since the killing. The scene then cuts to a limo with Jennifer Corvino in it, along with a school employee, Frau Bruckner. Jennifer is starting a term at the Swiss boarding school, the Richard Wagner International School. Her father is the famous actor Paul Corvino, who will be unreachable because he's on a year long project in the Philippines. The audience learns that Jennifer loves insects, and the feeling appears mutual. At the school she meets her roommate, Sophie. Sophie is a huge fan of Paul Corvino, and as such knows much about Jennifer's family situation. Such as how Jennifer's mother left the family to marry another man in India. Sophie also tells Jennifer about the murderer loose in the area. That very night, Jennifer has nightmares, and then sleepwalks outside. She witnesses a brutal slaying on the top floor of the school, and then she falls off the crumbling roof into some bushes below. Still in her trance-like state, she wanders into town, and is hit by a car. The boys inside get her into the car, but she panics and jumps out, and rolls down a wooded hill. She snaps out of her sleepwalking, and meets a chimpanzee. The friendly ape is Inga, and she takes Jennifer back to her house to meet John McGregor. McGregor is pleased to discover that Jennifer shares his love of insects, although he's puzzled that they seem to love her back.
Back at the school the headmistress is upset about Jennifer's sleepwalking, and has the on site doctor perform an EEG on her. They're concerned that Jennifer might be developing schizophrenia. Jennifer cuts the session short when the EEG causes her to remember some of the disturbing details of the previous night. She attempts to call her father's agent/lawyer Morris Shapiro, but he's out of town. That night, Jennifer asks Sophie to keep an eye on her, to stop her from sleepwalking again. But, Sophie leaves the room after her boyfriend signals her from outside. After a quick make out session Sophie's boyfriend departs. Right after, Sophie is slaughtered, by a killer wielding the same blade on a pole as the previous murder. Jennifer hears Sophie's death scream, and goes outside. A firefly leads her to a glove hidden in some brush. The next day, at McGregor's, he examines the maggots found on the glove, and speculates that the glove may belong to the killer. When Jennifer mentions her ability to communicate with insects McGregor is supportive, and points out that ESP is common amongst insects.
Back at school Jennifer's classmates bully and taunt her. Jennifer summons a giant cloud of flies, which mass outside the school's windows. Jennifer then collapses into a coma-like state. Upon waking she overhears the schoolmistress saying that Jennifer will be taken to a mental hospital, and that she might be evil, a "Lord of the flies" devil-like woman. Jennifer manages to slip out of the school before the hospital attendants arrive, and she goes to McGregor's. He's studied the glove maggots, and identified them as a species that only feeds on human bodies. He sends Jennifer out on the same bus route that Vera took, accompanied by one of the corpse flies. When it reacts strongly she gets off the bus, and quickly is led to the original death house, which is now empty. The estate agent accosts her, so she flees. Then the agent is questioned by Inspector Geiger, and the policeman learns that the house has been empty for 8 months.
Inga is distracted outside, and someone enters McGregor's house and locks the door. McGregor is then viciously slain, by a black clad killer wielding the same blade on a pole. Inga attempts to follow the killer, but she eventually falls off the roof of the killer's car. After a visit to the local mental hospital, Geiger discovers an incident that took place 15 years before, an attack by an patient. Jennifer gets through to Shapiro on the phone, and begs for money for a plane ticket home. Shapiro is concerned, and he calls the school. They send Frau Bruckner to the bank. She explains that a ticket was bought, but it doesn't leave until the next day. Because Jennifer doesn't want to return to the school, Bruckner offers to let her spend the night at her house.
At her house Bruckner starts to act strangely. She tells about her sick son, who's so sensitive about his appearance that all the mirrors are covered. She pushes Jennifer to take some pills, for an alleged fever. When a pill makes her feel sick, Jennifer deliberately pukes it up, and she also notices corpse maggots in the bathroom. When she attempts to call Shapiro again Bruckner grows agitated. A scuffle ensues, during which time Jennifer is briefly knocked out, and then securely locked in the house, and the phone put in another room. Bruckner does this just as Jennifer starts to call for help, and Geiger has just arrived at the house. Jennifer manages to get to the phone, but accidently drops it down a weird tunnel in the floor. Climbing down, Jennifer finds out that Geiger was attacked by Bruckner, and is now chained to a wall in a dungeon-like room. Jennifer falls into a pit filled with rotting corpses and tons of maggots. Shapiro arrives at the house, but Bruckner sends him away with a lie. Bruckner then confronts her two prisoners in the basement room. Geiger manages to slip out of his chains and subdue Bruckner, while Jennifer gets out of the pit and flees. She hears Bruckner's son crying, but she recoils when he turns around and reveals that he's a monstrously deformed. Jennifer makes it outside, and she heads for a boat by the dock. The deformed child attacks her, but he is attacked and partially consumed by a cloud of flies that Jennifer has summoned. As the boat catches fire, Jennifer swims underwater, and evades the grip of the dying child. At the shore she's delighted to see Shapiro approaching. But Bruckner decapitates him with a metal sheet, and starts to do the same to Jennifer. At the last moment Inga appears and slices up Bruckner with a blade. Inga and Jennifer then embrace.
"Phenomena" doesn't just have one or two common horror movie tropes--it has practically all of them. Unseen, mysterious killers who preys mainly on nubile women? Check. Creepy boarding school? Check. Hideously deformed child? Check. Domineering and crazy mother? Check. Psychic link/dream connection with the killer? Check. Torture Dungeon? Check. Even the more rare one, a knife-wielding, non-human primate! Sometimes this would be a mess, laughable. But here it somehow works. Yes, it's ludicrous, and consistently over-the-top, but somehow it creates a zesty horror stew, so to speak.
One of the major themes in "Phenomena" is isolation, both physical and social. Jennifer is uprooted from her home, and taken to live in a foreign country. In an remote, underpopulated area. Where she knows no one. Her father is completely unavailable, even by phone. Her family lawyer is also on another continent for most of the movie, and inconsistently available by phone. The headmistress of her school is quickly convinced that Jennifer is crazy, and perhaps even Satanically evil, and seeks to have her committed. Her classmates, save one, are openly mocking and hateful. The police seem ethical, but they are always a step behind the killer(s). And the few friends that Jennifer does make along the way don't last long. Sophie is murdered on Jennifer's second night in Switzerland. McGregor is killed shortly afterward. Shapiro is absent until the very end of the movie, and is slaughtered seconds after meeting up with Jennifer. The only friend who's there for her, offering her love and support, and who is alive at the movie's conclusion is the chimpanzee! (And insects in general, I suppose!) Which makes me wonder how Jennifer will respond to this situation. Will she avoid close relationships, since people always get killed or abandon her? Or will she go the other way, and be clingy, constantly want people around her?
Another theme about the film that struck me was the way it examined parenting styles. Jennifer clearly suffers from "under-parenting," if that's an expression. Her mother is awful. Divorces are unfortunately common, and sometimes the non-custodial parent moves far away, but any decent one would still try to be a part of their child's life, even if it's by letter or phone (or in modern days, Skype, social media, etc.). But Jennifer's mother has completely abandoned her. And her father isn't really that much better. We're told he's a big movie star. Which suggests that he probably has a decent pick of the roles he takes. Surely he could choose projects that don't last a year at a time, or, at least, he could avoid working on jobs that are so remote that phone calls are impossible. It's no wonder that Jennifer develops kind of a father-daughter bond with McGregor. He's nice, and supportive, and he's THERE. Conversely, Frau Bruckner shows the other extreme, ridiculous over-parenting. It's admirable that she can still love her son despite the circumstances of his conception (it's a little vague, but heavily implied that a mental patient raped her). And despite him being profoundly deformed. But she clearly takes it way too far. No decent person would ever tolerate a child's penchant for committing brutal murders. She even goes so far as to commit her own murders, to cover up her son's killings. Both these families need to hit that happy medium--love your kids, support them, be there for them, but call the police if they're psychotic and violent!
Dario Argento, like his fellow Italian movie director Lucio Fulci (see my post about "The City of the Living Dead on May 25, 2019), seems to have a thing about worms, and maggots. In "Phenomena" he takes it to extremes. There are numerous shorter scenes early on which feature a small number of maggots. But near the end it gets nuts, as Jennifer literally falls into a pit of them, along with rotting corpses. So if you're afraid of, and/or repulsed by maggots, then this movie is going to be tough to get through. And if you're into maggots, well, this is practically larva porn.
Two things are a little strange, and innovative, about the main killer in "Phenomena." (Here I mean Frau Bruckner's (unnamed) son, not Bruckner herself--her kills, while illegal and immoral, are logical, since she's trying to cover up her son's murders.) One is the killer's age. Given the reported timeline of the attack on his mother, he's 14 or 15. There are some exceptions, like Michael Myers in the first "Halloween" movie, or Jason Voorhees in the first "Friday the 13th" (although his attack appears to be a dream), but usually killers are at least old enough to legally drink in the U.S. (age 21). The other point is mentioned in passing, but it's still there: McGregor says that the particular type of warm wind the region is currently experiencing, which comes down from the mountains, can cause madness. Clearly this isn't the whole answer for the murders, since the whole community isn't busy bumping each other off. But maybe we're supposed to think that the wind is the final straw for people who are on the brink of psychotic killings. Maybe if Frau Bruckner had moved to the seashore her son wouldn't have started hacking up coeds. (Probably not true, but it's fun to speculate.)
I do have some nitpicky plot holes to report. First off, communication between insects is amazing, but there's no evidence that they have telepathy or ESP. A lot of this communication is by chemical pheromones. And honeybees do marvelous, intricate dances to tell their peers how to find certain flowers and such. Secondly, Jennifer doesn't take advantage of her relationships with insects enough. For example, when she's initially trapped in Bruckner's house, why not call in her bug buddies? They could have found a way into the house, surely, and then she could have had them attack Bruckner straight away. Or, why not use them to attack Bruckner at the end, when Jennifer is seconds away from losing her head? Bruckner even taunts her about that very point. Hell, some of those flies were probably still hovering over the lake, finished eating the face off of Bruckner's son. (And yes, I realize that the real reason is that it would have ended the movie too quickly and easily, but I mean within the logic and reality of the movie's world.) All I'm saying is, if insects did my bidding, and a killer was lurking about, I'd at least keep some bees in my pocket or something, to deter any would-be attackers, and I wouldn't hesitate to call on them if I was in real danger. Or maybe I'd use millions of them to bring me pizza and beer, kind of like Homer did with the group of crows in that episode of "The Simpsons." Jennifer shouldn't waste her gifts!
The music in "Phenomena" is a bit polarizing. Argento used a lot of heavy metal songs, including some from Iron Maiden and Motorhead. Some people found this heavy-handed and it took them out of the film. I found it jarring and disturbing, and I felt it aided the tone of the film in that way.
(END OF SPOILERS, SAFE FOR ALL READERS) As I've mentioned throughout this post, Dario Argento has had a long film career. He started out as a writer, with his most notable effort being a co-writer for the story behind "Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968). For almost all of his directing projects he also served as writer or co-writer. Much of his directing output has been in the giallo category, which is an Italian style of murder mystery, categorized by an emphasis on the killings rather than the investigation, usually committed by black gloved, unseen murderers, and doing so in grotesque, gory ways. His directorial debut was 1970's "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage," followed by films like "The Cat o' Nine Tails" (1971), "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" (1972), "Deep Red" (1975), "Suspiria" (1977), "Inferno" (1980), "Tenebrae" (1982), "Opera" (1987), and "Mother of Tears" (2007). He also co-wrote and produced "Demons" (1985) and "Demons 2" (1986). He's been busy well into the 21st century, but alas, most or all of these are not very respected, or successful. I haven't seen most of these, so I can't comment, but even his fans regard his 1970's and maybe 1980's movies to be his best.
As for the cast of "Phenomena," Jennifer Corvino portrayer Jennifer Connelly is one of the rare child actors who both continued to have a successful and respected acting career as an adult, and didn't succumb to poverty and addictions. Some of her career highlights include roles in such films as "Once Upon a Time in America" (1984), "Labyrinth" (1986), "Mulholland Falls" (1996), "Dark City" (1998), "Requiem for a Dream" (1999), "A Beautiful Mind" (2001, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress), "Blood Diamond" (2006), and the upcoming "Top Gun: Maverick" (2021). Frau Bruckner was played by Daria Nicoladi, who was Argento's girlfriend for years, and who sadly just passed away recently. Among her credits were roles in "Deep Red" (1975), "Shock" (1977), "Inferno" (1980), "Tenebrae" (1982), "The Sect" (1991), "Rosa and Cornelia" (2000), and "Mother of Tears" (2007). She also co-wrote "Suspiria" (1977), "Inferno" (1980), "Paganini Horror" (1989) and "The Black Cat" (1989). Patrick Bauchau (Inspector Geiger), was also in "Enigma" (1982), "Choose Me" (1984), "A View to a Kill" (1985), "Australia" (1989), "Clear and Present Danger" (1994), "Get the Gringo" (2012) and "Mega Shark vs. Kolossus" (2015). Professor John McGregor was played by Donald Pleasence, who was in such movies as "1984" (1956), "The Great Escape" (1963), "Fantastic Voyage" (1966), "You Only Live Twice" (1967), "Death Line" (1972), "Halloween" (1978), "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1979), "Halloween II" (1981), "Escape from New York" (1981), "Prince of Darkness" (1987) and "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers" (1988) (plus two other "Halloween" movies). Finally, Michael Soavi had a small role as Inspector Geiger's assistant police officer. Soavi acted in such movies as "City of the Living Dead" (1980, and again, see my post on May 25, 2019), "Alien Terror" (1980), "The New York Ripper" (1982), and "Demons" (1986). He also was an assistant/2nd unit director for films like "Tenebrae" (1982), "A Blade in the Dark" (1983), "Demons" (1986), "Opera" (1987), and "The Brothers Grimm" (2005). And then he directed such projects as "Stage Fright" (1987), "The Church" (1989), "The Sect" (1991) "Cemetery Man" (1994), "Blood of the Losers" (2008), and "The Legend of the Christmas Witch" (2018).
Therefore, if you want to see a ridiculous, yet still intense and fun horror flick, you could do a lot worse than "Phenomena." And then if you haven't already, check out Argento's masterpieces, like "Suspira" (1977) and "Deep Red" (1975), and beyond.
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