Dario Argento's Tenebre (1982) (Special Edition)

Tenebre

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Jul 15, 2001

Tenebre In many ways, Tenebre is a throwback to Argento's earliest work in the Italian giallo genre, recalling movies such as The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. It features a black-gloved killer who likes to use a straight razor to slice open the thr...oats of his victims. Anthony Franciosa plays a murder mystery novelist who arrives in Rome on a publicity junket. Soon after his plane lands, a string of murders begins--complete with victims killed like those in Franciosa's book. Is the killer a copycat murderer showing off for Franciosa? Or could the killer be Franciosa himself? Most of Tenebre's notoriety comes from the murder scenes. In one scene, the camera slowly moves around an apartment building while tracking the intended victims. The camera becomes the killer, implicating the audience in the crime and allowing us to vicariously enjoy the bloodshed. Scenes like this one have brought the wrath of critics upon Argento, who have questioned Argento's enthusiastic portrayals of vicious murders (which frequently feature heads crashing through panes of glass in slow motion). However, the sequence is a technical tour de force. In one long, protracted take (approximately 2 ½ minutes), the camera slowly scales the side of the apartment building, occasionally pausing to peek in windows. It darts in a window and then back out and up onto the roof. It swings across the roof tiles and then slides back inside the building. One of the movie's most famous images comes from this scene: as a woman pulls on a new blouse, the killer strikes. With the blouse covering her head, the killer swings the razor and opens a gaping hole in the blouse--so that we can see her terror stricken eyes. And then the razor strikes again. In another truly incredible sequence, a girl is pursued by a Doberman pinscher. She begins by taunting the dog, which barks from the other side of a fence. After she runs down the street, the dog leaps the fence and runs full speed in her direction. She scrambles over a fence and desperately tries to get away, but the dog is like "The Terminator." He doesn't give up. She scales a tall chain link fence. The dog runs to the fence as if sizing up the required effort. In one long shot, the dog circles back a dozen steps and then he explodes toward the fence. Ka-chink! The dog hits the top of the fence and then he's on the other side, pursuing the girl again. Not much of Tenebre makes much sense. The plot becomes little more than an excuse for Argento to stage the murder sequences. And these are some of the bloodiest murders of Argento's career. In one scene, the killer uses an ax to chop off a woman's forearm and the camera watches as her blood gushes over a wall. (This sequence has long been missing from Italian prints of Tenebre because the actress later married a media magnate and he used his influence to have the sequence removed.) The commentary on the DVD's alternate audio track is nearly as disappointing as the commentary for Phenomena. Argento and journalist Loris Curci insist that Tenebre is different than Argento's other giallo thrillers because the murders take place in broad daylight. While this may be true for some of the murders, all of the movie's most famous murder sequences take place at night--including the entire ending sequence, which takes place during an evening thunderstorm. Curci asks banal questions such as "Dario, do you think this is a scary movie?" Disappointingly, when Curci mistakenly insists that the first murder takes place 50 minutes into the movie--completely forgetting about an earlier murder--Argento actually agrees with him. Curci continues to feed Argento with obvious questions: "Why are you filming the shoes?" he asks, goading Argento to talk about the killer's psychological background. And Argento responds by reciting the obvious and the superficial. Read more Less