Phenomena aka Creepers (Dario Argento, 1985)

One of the last peak-strength Dario Argento films (I think '87's Opera is his last really good movie, though '93's Trauma has its moments and is a fascinatingly weird ride), Phenomena (also released in shortened and rearranged, many would say mangled, form in the U.S. and U.K. as Creepers) is stuffed with visual ideas, style, an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink story, some silliness, some creepiness, beautifully composed death scenes, and the usual Argento messy dream-logic narrative that bugs (no Phenomena pun intended) some viewers but is fine and dandy with me.

First things first, the cut of Phenomena I watched is the 110-minute version (the "international cut") that finally supplanted the butchered (though it has its defenders) 83-minute Creepers version when DVDs hit the scene, and it's the version you'll find most often on streaming services. There is yet another cut (Argento's preferred version, also called the "integral cut") that runs six minutes longer. That cut was initially released only in Italy and extends some of the murder sequences, with additional dialogue in a few other scenes. Synapse released a Blu-ray with all three versions in 2019.

How to describe a movie that includes serial murder, entomology, telepathic human-insect connections, an all-girls' boarding school in Switzerland named after Wagner, sleepwalking, unseen movie star dads, Jennifer Connelly, Donald Pleasence, Daria Nicolodi, Patrick Bauchau, a chimpanzee, a creepy doll, an insane asylum, severe deformities, a boat explosion, two beheadings, an incredible Bee Gees t-shirt, a single line of voice-over narration, and a score that includes contributions from Goblin, Fabio Pignatelli, Iron Maiden, Motörhead, Claudio Simonetti, Andi Sex Gang, and the Stones' Bill Wyman? To paraphrase Sandwiches of History, let's give it a go.

Phenomena is the simple story of a teenage girl from the United States, Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly), sent to an elite international girls' boarding school in Switzerland by her movie star father. Jennifer has a telepathic connection to insects and can summon them at will, and she's afflicted with a serious sleepwalking problem. Meanwhile, a serial killer is on the loose in the countryside near the school, murdering teenage girls. Two detectives, Geiger and Kurt, are on the case (played by veteran international character actor Patrick Bauchau and future horror director Michele Soavi), assisted by the wheelchair-bound entomologist and professor John McGregor (Donald Pleasence), whose expertise on insects is helping to pinpoint the date and time of death of the killer's victims.

McGregor is assisted by his pet chimpanzee, Inga (played by real chimp Tanga, which is mildly unsettling if you've seen Nope). After Inga rescues Jennifer during a sleepwalking episode in which she wanders into one of the serial killer's murders and is also nearly assaulted by a couple of teenage Eurotrash jerks, bug-loving Jennifer befriends bug-loving McGregor, and the two hatch a plan to catch the killer with the help of their beloved bugs. As is the case with most Argento films, a whole lot of other shit happens, in grand and occasionally baffling style.

The then-14-year-old Connelly really carries Phenomena, giving the audience an identifiable center that all the crazy elements can spin around. She's a worldly, determined, and feisty kid, but she's got that authentic teenage mix of naivete, innocence, insecurity, and confidence that can't be faked. She's not a 28-year-old pretending to be a high school kid. She also gets to do some wild shit, like summoning insects while being brightly lit while her hair ripples in the wind. Her performance was trashed by U.S. critics in '85, but that may have more to do with the choppiness of the 83-minute cut, the still-prevalent in the '80s Italian practice of dubbing in all the dialogue and sound after the completion of filming, and mainstream critics' general condescension toward horror and any film with an unconventional approach to plot. Middlebrow jokers. 

It's always a pleasure to see Donald Pleasence, and he's got genuine chemistry with the chimp. You can't fake chimp chemistry. It's there or it isn't. ("That's what you get for not hailing to the chimp!") It's also always a pleasure to see the late, great Daria Nicolodi, but her and Argento's relationship was on the rocks during filming. They broke up shortly after the film was released, with Nicolodi calling Phenomena reactionary because of its depiction of people with disabilities and vowing never to work with Argento again. They eventually patched up some of their differences, and Nicolodi appeared in Argento's Mother of Tears in 2007. They were reportedly on good terms at the time of her death in 2020, but I don't know any of these people personally, so who knows? I do know that this is the only Argento/Nicolodi film where Nicolodi has unflattering hair and wardrobe (and terrible glasses). Not sure if the character was written that way or if it's an act of passive aggression from Argento. (I'm trying to stir up some TMZ-style gossip about two people, one dead and one 81 years old, on the set of a 37-year-old movie.)

You know you're going to be in good hands when Argento drops a spectacular opening scene. Using both the natural beauty and ominous foreboding of the isolated Swiss countryside, he kills off his daughter Fiore (who mostly works behind the camera as a production designer), here playing a tourist who misses her bus and wanders to the wrong place for help. Argento has orchestrated some of the most stunningly beautiful murder scenes in film history, and this is one of his best. (Any time you see the black-gloved hands of a killer in an Argento film, you're seeing Argento's hands.)

The ensuing film is almost as stylish, and Argento presides over a lot of eye- and ear-popping visual and aural biz, making the most of wind machines, spotlights, a smorgasbord of music, and a camera that knows when and where to move to keep up with the wild turns of the narrative. Yeah, there are occasional brief lulls and plot holes and goofy lines of dialogue, but this is mostly a thrillingly strange and compelling movie, with concluding scenes that begin at over the top and keep shooting upward from there. I'm not going to pretend Phenomena is the equal of Suspiria, but it's pretty damn satisfying.