Tat Fung (Jackie Chan) has a dream of sailing around the world, but he’s trapped taking care of his mentally handicapped brother Dodo (director Sammo Hung). When Dodo gets involved with jewel thieves, Tat must save him one more time.
This film is against expectations. Hung plays a child in a man’s body and never fights once, while the final fight where Jackie defends him is brutal, filled with violence where Jackie usually uses comedy. And then the end of the movie blew my mind. The world of action movies rarely shows its heroes go to jail for acting above the law. It costs him his freedom and for a time, his girlfriend Jenny (Emily Chu).
This doesn’t have a lot of action for most of the film, other than the jungle violence in the open and the closing moments. Maybe they were saving everything up for the last scene where eight different stuntmen all fall from some of the highest of heights.
If I saw this in my early years of watching movies, I probably would have disliked it as all I would have wanted would be more fight scenes with Hung, Chan and Corey Yuen against bad guys James Tien, Dick Wei, Chung Fat, Phillip Ko-fei and Kao Sau-leung. But now that I’m getting old, I see the beauty in this film and why Hung made the movie that he did.
The Arrow release of Heart of Dragon has a 2K restoration from the original negative by Fortune Star, as well as two cuts: the 91-minute Hong Kong theatrical cut and the 99-minute extended Japanese cut, which has commentary by Frank Djeng and FJ DeSanto. It also has two extended featurettes made to promote the Japanese release by Shochiku; interviews with Chan, Rocky Lai, Hung and Arthur Wong; alternate English credits; a trailer; a music video; an image gallery; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sam Gilbey and an illustrated collectors’ booklet featuring new writing by Dylan Cheung and David West. You can get this movie from MVD.
You can also stream this movie on the Arrow player. Visit ARROW to start your 30-day free trial. Subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I can’t tell you how excited I am to have the 4K UHD of this movie in my collection. It’s absolutely packed with materials, including new 4K restorations of all three versions of Phenomena, including the original Italian version (116 minutes), the International cut (110 minutes) and the U.S. Creepers version (83 minutes). Plus, there are Italian, international and U.S. trailers, a U.S. radio spot and several commentary tracks. The Italian version has commentary by Troy Howarth and the international version has Argento scholar and author Derek Botelho and film historian, journalist and radio/television commentator David Del Valle. There’s also Of Flies and Maggots, a feature-length 2017 documentary produced by Arrow Films with interviews from co-writer/producer/director Dario Argento, actors Fiore Argento, Davide Marotta, Daria Nicolodi and Fiorenza Tessari, as well as co-writer Franco Ferrini, cinematographer Romano Albani, production manager Angelo Iacono, special optical effects artist Luigi Cozzi, special makeup effects artist Sergio Stivaletti, makeup artist Pier Antonio Mecacci, underwater camera operator Gianlorenzo Battaglia, and composers Claudio Simonetti and Simon Boswell. There’s also a visual essay by Arrow Films producer Michael Mackenzie comparing the different cuts of Phenomena, the “Jennifer” music video directed by Argento, a slipcover with artwork by Nick Charge and a reversible cover with the original Italian Phenomena art.
You can get it from MVD and Synapse. There’s also a limited edition box set from Synapse that has limited edition slipcase packaging designed by artist Wes Benscoter, reversible sleeve artwork, a fold-out double-sized poster, postcard-sized lobby card reproduction artcards and a collector’s booklet featuring liner notes from Mikel J. Koven, Rachael Nisbet and Leonard Jacobs.
A monkey. A girl who can talk to bugs. Donald Pleasence. All directed by Dario Argento. If you don’t immediately say to yourself, “I’m in,” you’re reading the wrong web site.
Within the first two minutes of the movie, you realize you’re watching an Argento film. A tourist misses her bus, somewhere in the Swiss countryside, before she is attacked by an unseen person and then beheaded.
Fast forward a bit and we catch Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly, Labyrinth, The Rocketeer) arriving at the Richard Wagner Academy for Girls — did I tell you this is an Argento movie? The head of the school, Frau Brückner (Dario Nicolodi, Argento’s wife (at the time) and mother to his daughter Aria, who also co-wrote Suspiria and appeared in Deep Red, Inferno, Tenebreand Operaamongst other films) already sets up an air of menace. Even her roommate offers no relief, telling Jennifer how much she wishes she could have sex with the heroine’s famous actor father. At this point, Jennifer relates a horrifying story about how her mother left her — it’s a moment of pure pain in a film that hasn’t led you to expect it. That’s because it’s a true story. The true story of how Dario Argento’s mother left his family.
Jennifer tends to sleepwalk, which leads her through the school and up to the roof, where she watches a student get murdered. She wakes up, falls and runs from the murderer, ending up in the woods where she’s rescued by Inga the chimp — again, did I mention this is an Argento film? Inga works for forensic entomologist John McGregor (Pleasence). Argento was inspired by the fact that insects are often used in crime investigation to learn how old a body is and worked that into this film. McGregor learns that Jennifer can talk to the bugs.
After returning to the school, things go from bad to worse. Jennifer’s roommate is murdered and a firefly leads our sleepwalking protagonist to a glove covered by Great Sarcophagus flies, which eat decaying human flesh, which can only mean that the killer is keeping his bodies — again, Argento.
At this point, Phenomena pays tribute to Carrie, with the other students making fun of her in regard to her love of bugs. She calls a swarm of flies into the building and collapses, which leads to Frau Brückner recommending her to a home for the criminally insane. Luckily, Jennifer runs to McGregor, who gives her a bug in a glass case that she can use to track the murderer. Again, you know who. The bug leads Jennifer to the same house we saw at the beginning of the film.
Meanwhile, McGregor is killed after Inga is locked outside. True fact: the chimpanzee who played Inga, Tanga, sounds like she was uncontrollable. She ran away for an entire evening of the shoot and later, nearly bit off one of Jennifer Connelly’s fingers.
Let me see if I can sum up the craziness that ensues: Jennifer calls her father’s lawyer for help, who ends up bringing Frau Brückner back into this mess, who tries to poison Jennifer and then knocks her out with a piece of wood,. She then KOs a cop before Jennifer escapes, going through a dungeon and a basement until she falls into a pool that is packed with maggot-ridden corpses. This is the point in the film where you may want to stop eating because it gets rather intense from here on out. As Jennifer escapes that watery tomb, she hears someone crying. That someone is Frau’s son, who was born from rape. Jennifer asks him why she thinks he’s a monster, to which he turns to face her and scares the fucking shit out of her. Seriously, it’s jolting — the kid has Patau Syndrome, a real chromosomal abnormality (it’s makeup in the film, but looks quite true to life). He then chases Jennifer into a motorboat, but at the last second, she calls a swarm of flies to attack him. He falls into the water and the boat explodes and he dies and…whew.
I know this film is 32 years old, but I’m going to put in some spoiler space here because what happens next is crazy.
Jennifer reaches the shore just as her father’s lawyer arrives. All well, all good and then, out of nowhere, Frau cuts the dude’s head clean off. Plus, she’s already killed the cop and she goes absolutely shithouse.
“He was diseased, but he was my son! And you have… Why didn’t I kill you before? I killed that no-good inspector and your professor friend, to protect him! And now… I’m gonna KILL YOU TO AVENGE HIM! Why don’t you call your INSECTS! GO ON! CALL! CALL!”
At this point, Inga the chimpanzee comes out of nowhere and kills Frau dead with a razor. Keep in mind, this is not just one cut. This is a simian that knows how to get murder business done.
Jennifer and Inga hug. Roll the credits.
Phenomena was the last Argento movie to get major distribution in the U.S., thanks (or no thanks) to New Line Cinema, which played it here as Creepers. This version is 33 minutes shorter than the original and has so many scenes so shuffled, it makes little or no sense. Also, unlike other Argento films, Goblin only have two songs in this, as modern bands like Iron Maiden and Motörhead are featured.
I love this movie. It makes little to no sense at numerous times, but you don’t walk into an Italian horror film expecting narrative structure. You hope to see some crazy gore, some interesting death scenes and maggots — all things that this film more than delivers. I’m not the only fan of this flick — the Japanese video game Clock Tower is an homage to this film, even featuring a heroine named Jennifer.
BONUS: We did a podcast all about this movie and you can hear it here:
Trip to Bangkok, Coffin Included has Jess Franco in pulp adventure mode, making a loose adaption of an Edgar Wallace story. Colonel Daniel Blimp (Howard Vernon) of the British Secret Service is in Bangkok investigating the murder of the British ambassador by a blind man. Blimp is joined by another younger singer agent played by José Llamas who can do the actual fighting because, well, Vernon is pushing 78 or so here.
While this was made in Palma de Mallorca and Benidorm for the interiors, the exteriors really are Bangkok and Singapore, as Juan Soler flew himself there and was a crew of one capturing all the establishing shots.
The killer being blind is the whole plot of a cult leader named Professor Tao, who trains the blind to murder. This is more adventure than your normal Franco sleaze, yet there is a chase scene with a nude woman who stays disrobed on screen for ten minutes, so it’s not like Jess is slowing down at all. I also like the idea that Tao is actually motivated to save the world as he saw world leaders destroy the world in a cave vision, so that’s why he started his cult of doom.
Also: Lina Romay shows up in a wheelchair for less than a few seconds and it still filled me with utter joy.
Canadian studio Emmeritus Productions may not have had much money, but they made some interesting movies, including porn-based detective story Blue Murder, Death In Hollywood, horror anthology Shock Chamber, post-apocalyptic Survival Earth, Diamon In the Rough, Body Count, Satanic conspiracy thriller Mark of the Beast, The Borrower, The Bounty Hunter, Lady Bear, Last Chance, The Hijacking of Studio 4, Niagra Strip, SOV history film The Chronicle of 1812, Fly With the Hawk, Virgin Paradise, Commando Games, Marked for Death, Price of Vengeance, Race to Midnight and The Edge.
Also, they made The Tower.
Directed and written by Jim Makichuk, the same man who created Ghostkeeper, this is a Canadian science fiction tale of the Sandawn Building, a high rise of tomorrow that has a computer running it named LOLA and man, avoid all futuristic buildings in the North-West Territory that have shopping and living amenities because I am convinced you’re either going to contract a disease that makes a sex organ grow in your armpit or you will be killed by a supercomputer.
None of this is obvious to the man who created her, Watson, who sees humans the same way she does: as sources of heat energy. So on the Friday night that LOLA loses its mind, the inhabitants of an ad agency — nuke these people from orbit — as well as Old Man Sandawn, his wife, his mistress, some criminals and a security guard and his way out of his league girlfriend who is just there to swim — all get trapped and menaced by a building.
For some reason, there’s also an exotic dancer who can barely dance who wants to sleep with Watson, but you know, it’s so cold in Canada that even their movies have padding.
This movie is worth watching not only for the worst depiction of an ad agency in a film — those marker renderings are trash — but also for an old woman who knows that a computer is trying to kill her and decides to go try on feather boas and have a mall makeover instead.
Frank Meyer was a homeless guy in real life and that’s who he is in this movie, a man who lives in the warehouse of a trucking company where he’s abused by his co-workers most of the time. He also dreams of death and man, it’s not pretty. This is a film desperate to chase away nearly everyone, starting with him smashing a kid’s head open with a pipe, running over her body with a truck and then messily devouring her brain.
Still here?
This was released by Sub Rosa in 2004 after being an underground VHS passaround film and if you’re ready for the kind of weirdness you once needed multiple mixtapes to see, this is it. The guys at the truck garage — introduced in a hilarious pause to see the names Reservoir Dogs style moment — decide to throw him a birthday party and some geeky dude interrupts it. Frank remembers that his mother told him to never lie and always tell people before he kills them. So when Frank tells someone that he’s going to cut off their head and shit down their neck, well, it’s no threat. It’s a promise that we’re going to see.
For a movie that has a man searching for love — alright, gigantic breasts — and killing women left and right, this ends with a sweetness that’s kind of heartwarming if you can get past every moment of sheer black humored piss in your drink madness. I mean, as bad as Frank can be, at least he follows up on his promises and has some cats that he loves, Herman, Frankie, Lily, Mommy and The Maltese Cat.
This was directed, written, produced, edited and shot by Escalpo Don Balde who is really Steve Ballot. Frank starts by telling us that this is a story of love and evil and man, he wasn’t lying. It’s not a road that many will want to travel, but it’s Herschell Gordon Lewis, John Waters and more than anything Bloodsucking Freaks, a movie that you’ll rush to shut off the moment anyone walks in the room excapt that you’re an adult now.
Ballot told Film Threat that the movie was made with his family: “My family had a warehouse business with forklifts, tractor-trailers, truck drivers, warehouse workers and a 133,000 square foot building. I could use all that. There was a former homeless man that the company adopted and let live in the back room. He would be the star. I had a 5-year-old niece that was the cutest little kid in the world. I would start the movie with her. My pot dealer was a classic Brooklyn tough guy. I could use him too. And like John Waters before me, I could cast the movie with weirdos I met on the street. So I started shooting with my $1100 consumer JVC SVHSC camera on the weekends. I shot about forty SVHSC tapes over a four year period, and then spent about six months editing it together with two VCRs.”
You read that right. The little girl that dies in the beginning is his niece.
I can’t even imagine the rest of the footage that didn’t make it into this movie.
The reissued art for this movie could totally be an Aircel comic.
James R. Buick, who directed Bikers Versus the Undead and co-wrote it with Diane Chapman, was a one and done filmmaker, gifting us with only this lone shot on video effort.
Somewhere outside of Phoenix, a man named Speed (Jerry Anderson) — who even gets his own theme song over the credits — has created a formula called Agent Live that turns everyone — including a dog! — into zombies. Well, the goal was something that killed bikers and didn’t harm normal people — maybe using the formula of the American Motorcycle Association, “99% of the motorcycling public are law-abiding; there are 1% who are not.” — but it backfires and turns everyone into zombies and does nothing to said bikers, who we assume have rates of alcohol and hard drugs in their system — this is not a knock, but a bit of praise — and they aren’t impacted. Or as Lemmy once said, “I never said speed was a good idea for you. I said that I liked it.”
What’s really surprising in this is that the fight scenes are so big, like a cast of thousands all battling out there in the desert and if you enjoyed the biker scenes in Dawn of the Dead, logic says that you will enjoy a full-length film with the same idea. I’m also impressed that someone was convinced to do a full body burn stunt in this movie, but then again, in 1985 video stores were dying for product and this helps the movie stand out. Sure, a lot of it is too dark to see and the quality of nearly every shot is bad and the soundtrack is distorted, but if you’ve come this far in your shot on video journey, you know, why not go all the way? And who decided that organized crime and conservative politics were the real enemy, not the zombies? The latter just makes me sad because all the bikers I knew who used to pound it out with my aunt and her friends used to despise authority and hate cops so much that they would climb up and tear down gigantic flags and what do you do with a huge hundred foot Stars and Bars? But anyways, those same guys that were public nuisances and named speed 7 and 14 after the truck stop in Ohio where I used to get great burgers and strawberry shortcake in a dirty coffee mug from the meanest waitress ever are now all in on yelling about Brandon and maybe they should go back and watch this and concentrate on getting ready for the real troubles and by that, I mean the inevitable zombie apocalypse.
Also: Major points to the biker who earns his blue wings by making sweet love to a zombified girl down by the fire.
Director and writer Joe Zaso was on a tear in the mid 80s and early 90s, making Screambook, this movie and It’s Only a Movie, all three filled with moments of the typical SOV moments that keep normal people from enjoying these, such as long stretches where nothing happens, lighting that can charitably be referred to as murky and no regard at all for keeping the audience entertained at times unless they know when to entertain themselves. Unlike so many other SOV films, Zaso also has talent and there are stretches of his films that feel so close to being great.
Unlike the first movie, this is not all made with teenagers with the lead and it kind of gets away from slavishly wanting to be Creepshow. Then again, Zaso was just 15 when he made this.
The copy on YouTube starts with glorious tracking static and that blue screen that always showed up when you dubbed something, along with the kind of blocky type that was all that was possible for when you made a movie yourself. It follows that up by showing King Video, an old mom and pop with a magical blue color scheme and white swinging adult room doors.
Follow that with a young couple deciding to rent Ants for the evening and you have a place that I would like to live inside. When they get to the front counter, they discover that they’re about to be waited on by either a clown, a mime or a demon. I’d say juggalo but this was 1985 and Shaggy was 11 and Violent J was 13 at the time. And you know, guys.
She also scream laugh talks everything she says like Margaret Hamilton mainlining helium and offers them a copy of Screamtape 2. I imagine that this was how Zaso got people to watch his movie, just hiding in a video store like a cackling demon.
“Till Death Do Us Part” starts with an entire family all smoking and drinking as they learn that one of their number has a secret past, not that you’ll be able to hear much of the dialogue through the recorded through the camera mic and sounds of cars rolling through the streets all around them. Yet in the midst off this is a very video era Andy Milligan feel, as this story is about a family that absolutely hates one another and isn’t shy about letting everyone know about it. Unlike Milligan, some of that screaming is because you need to be heard over the truck mufflers blasting away mere feet away and the way too loud library score. There’s also a Sweeney Todd-reference apron-wearing woman dealing with a husband whose voice is more distorted than a doom band who she cuts and then appears outside a play whose stage door is totally the one to the living room. Yes, Elizabeth Welcher is killing all over the place and yeah, the camera is shaky, but what 15-year-old has a movie with “It Had to Be You” on the soundtrack? An awesome one, that’s who.
Also: wood paneling everywhere, monologues all over the place and a zombie ending that you’ll see from the first few minutes, not that Screambook didn’t also have a straight-up cover of “Father’s Day” from Creepshow. This one does too, but instead of a cake, the old lady’s head on a plate with an apple in it, kind of like the poster for Tales That Witness Madness.
“Silversweets” starts at a funeral for Amanda, who died from lung cancer, so all of these old ladies all talk about women who “smoked and smoked their brains out.” I may have heard the exact same speech from my wife about how much she loves to smoke and how no one will change her.
Anyways, this lady has a husband named Brewster who is a monster — but pronounced mahn-stah — and he runs her life like an army sergeant. It feels like Zaso branched out here from Romero and watched either Terry-Thomas in Vault of Horror or the antismoking moments in Cat’s Eye. He tosses her cigarettes and forces her to stay home to watch sub-Rockette footage on TV while strange music plays on the soundtrack. She goes to the basement to sneak a smoke and a furry arm attacks her to a music cue from The Time Machine plays and Fluffy pretty much emerges from his wooden carton except its so dark you can barely see him and instead you get closeups of plates on the wall like a good Italian house should have.
I totally love how this one ends with a nice old man cooking a nice meal for a monster and the camera fixating on a light fixture.
“Birthday Wishes” is very similar to “It’s a Good Life” from Twilight Zone: The Movie in that a young kid named Michael who gets powers that his entire family is powerless to stop. The kid in this gets his from Shana, a holy man, when he asks for the power of revenge over his family and friends. He gets chanted over and he is given the gift, the power of revenge and is only asked that he never gets angry and must be cautious.
Then Michael goes off at his birthday party, canceling all the guests, setting his sister on fire, making his father throw up blood, forcing another relative to shoot himself and becoming zombified. I mean, if someone made a cake for me that looked that flat, I would go off as well and I don’t have reality-destroying abilities. I really love the bald old man that pulls a gun at this birthday party. Who comes packing to a pre-teen party?
By the end, the entire house has turned against Michael’s mother as we get some effective stills of each room and her bathed in green light. Oh yeah — there’s also a zombie arm chasing her. Dig that lattice in the dining room.
For everyone who keeps making movies they say feel like the 80s, I want you to watch this segment. See how beige and dingy everything looks? That’s what the 1985 really looked like.
“A Grave Matter” is about a series of murders and oh man, this old guy in this one has a Frank Rizzo voice which makes me beyond happy. A reporter keeps going back to a funeral home to learn if he’s the killer while the waitress that he fired goes back to find her glasses and she gets killed and then we come back to the newspaper the reporter works for and man, the exposition before she tries to go behind a curtain.
Everyone in this has such rich New York accents by the way.
Finally, back to the video store and our mime — well, she does talk plenty — before recommending another movie that’ll really make someone scream.
Also: That guy who snuck into the adult section? John Zaso, Joe’s dad, who also did the effects.
Screambook 2 is, well, it’s fun. It’s not great but there are enough moments and talkent shining through that you make it through.
You can watch this on YouTube where Zaso has posted several of his films.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this movie as Creepers — in 35mm! — on Tuesday, Jan. 31 at 8:00 PM at the The Majestic Tempe 7 in Tempe, AZ. CV’s Jim Branscome in person will be in person (tickets here).For more information, visit Cinematic Void.
A monkey. A girl who can talk to bugs. Donald Pleasence. All directed by Dario Argento. If you don’t immediately say to yourself, “I’m in,” you’re reading the wrong web site.
Within the first two minutes of the movie, you realize you’re watching an Argento film. A tourist misses her bus, somewhere in the Swiss countryside, before she is attacked by an unseen person and then beheaded.
Fast forward a bit and we catch Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly, Labyrinth, The Rocketeer) arriving at the Richard Wagner Academy for Girls — did I tell you this is an Argento movie? The head of the school, Frau Brückner (Dario Nicolodi, Argento’s wife (at the time) and mother to his daughter Aria, who also co-wrote Suspiria and appeared in Deep Red, Inferno, Tenebreand Operaamongst other films) already sets up an air of menace. Even her roommate offers no relief, telling Jennifer how much she wishes she could have sex with the heroine’s famous actor father. At this point, Jennifer relates a horrifying story about how her mother left her — it’s a moment of pure pain in a film that hasn’t led you to expect it. That’s because it’s a true story. The true story of how Dario Argento’s mother left his family.
Jennifer tends to sleepwalk, which leads her through the school and up to the roof, where she watches a student get murdered. She wakes up, falls and runs from the murderer, ending up in the woods where she’s rescued by Inga the chimp — again, did I mention this is an Argento film? Inga works for forensic entomologist John McGregor (Pleasence). Argento was inspired by the fact that insects are often used in crime investigation to learn how old a body is and worked that into this film. McGregor learns that Jennifer can talk to the bugs.
After returning to the school, things go from bad to worse. Jennifer’s roommate is murdered and a firefly leads our sleepwalking protagonist to a glove covered by Great Sarcophagus flies, which eat decaying human flesh, which can only mean that the killer is keeping his bodies — again, Argento.
At this point, Phenomena pays tribute to Carrie, with the other students making fun of her in regards to her love of bugs. She calls a swarm of flies into the building and collapses, which leads to Frau Brückner recommending her to a home for the criminally insane. Luckily, Jennifer runs to McGregor, who gives her a bug in a glass case that she can use to track the murderer. Again, you know who. The bug leads Jennifer to the same house we saw at the beginning of the film.
Meanwhile, McGregor is killed after Inga is locked outside. True fact: the chimpanzee who played Inga, Tanga, sounds like she was uncontrollable. She ran away for an entire evening of the shoot and later, nearly bit off one of Jennifer Connelly’s fingers.
Let me see if I can sum up the craziness that ensues: Jennifer calls her father’s lawyer for help, who ends up bringing Frau Brückner back into this mess, who tries to poison Jennifer and then knocks her out with a piece of wood,. She then KOs a cop before Jennifer escapes, going through a dungeon and a basement until she falls into a pool that is packed with maggot-ridden corpses. This is the point in the film where you may want to stop eating, because it gets rather intense from here on out. As Jennifer escapes that watery tomb, she hears someone crying. That someone is Frau’s son, who was born from a rape. Jennifer asks him why she thinks he’s a monster, to which he turns to face her and scares the fucking shit out of her. Seriously, it’s jolting — the kid has Patau Syndrome, a real chromosomal abnormality (it’s makeup in the film, but looks quite true to life). He then chases Jennifer into a motorboat, but at the last second, she calls a swarm of flies to attack him. He falls into the water and the boat explodes and he dies and…whew.
I know this film is 32 years old, but I’m going to put in some spoiler space here because what happens next is crazy.
Jennifer reaches the shore just as her father’s lawyer arrives. All well, all good and then, out of nowhere, Frau cuts the dude’s head clean off. Plus, she’s already killed the cop and she goes absolutely shithouse.
“He was diseased, but he was my son! And you have… Why didn’t I kill you before? I killed that no-good inspector and your professor friend, to protect him! And now… I’m gonna KILL YOU TO AVENGE HIM! Why don’t you call your INSECTS! GO ON! CALL! CALL!”
At this point, Inga the chimpanzee comes out of nowhere and kills Frau dead with a razor. Keep in mind, this is not just one cut. This is a simian that knows how to get murder business done.
Jennifer and Inga hug. Roll the credits.
Phenomena was the last Argento movie to get major distribution in the U.S., thanks (or no thanks) to New Line Cinema, which played it here as Creepers. This version is 33 minutes shorter than the original and has so many scenes so shuffled, it makes little or no sense. Also, unlike other Argento films, Goblin only have two songs in this, as modern bands like Iron Maiden and Motörhead are featured.
I actually kind of love this movie. It makes little to no sense at numerous times, but you don’t walk into an Italian horror film expecting narrative structure. You hope to see some crazy gore, some interesting death scenes and maggots — all things that this film more than delivers. I’m not the only fan of this flick — the Japanese video game Clock Tower is an homage to this film, even featuring a heroine named Jennifer.
BONUS: We did a podcast all about this movie and you can hear it here:
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this movie on Monday, January 9 at 7:00 PM at the Los Feliz 3 in Los Angeles (tickets here). For more information, visit Cinematic Void.
David Warbeck plays Craig, who has recently married Joanna, a woman crippled by mental and physical issues. Well, she’s in a wheelchair, but still comes to him to learn fencing and archery, so she’s trying to stay active.
That said, there’s something horrible that’s happened in her past, but guess what? Something horrible is happening now too. That’s because after Craig gets that ring, he plans on killing her for her riches.
That horrifying event, by the way, was when a faceless priest tried to give our heroine a doll and then decided to take things a little too far. As he chased her, she fell down the steps and broke her back, which is why she’s in a wheelchair now. And as for the priest, he may be dead or he may be the person who is dressed in vestments and carrying the doll from her childhood.
Also: there’s a good chance that if Craig churns some butter with her, she’ll have a heart attack when her body relives the abuse. I can promise you that there was no mental health counselor or expert on this film to verify this diagnosis.
If the house that is so cursed looks familiar, that’s because Phantom of Death and Body Puzzle were both shot there. Also, if your ears hear something they have before, that’s because Francesco De Masi decided to reuse some of his theme for The New York Ripper and thought that no one would notice.
Also known as Monster of the Deep and Hydra, this movie is somehow from 1985 with a very 1955 concept: an American bomber drops a bomb into the ocean to keep it out of Russian hands and releases an ancient prehistoric monster. That beast destroys the ship of Captain Pedro Fontán (Timothy Bottoms) and his first mate Lemaris (Jared Martin), who refuses to tell anyone of the monster and cost Pedro his ship. While all that drama is happening, Margaret Roberts (Taryn Power) watches her friend Jill (Carole James) get eaten by the sea serpent and goes insane, but Pedro believes her and decides to break her loose because, well, look who am I to try and tell director and writer Amando de Ossorio how to make a movie? Oh, I didn’t to ruin the secret, I mean Gregory Greens.
Ray Milland also plays a marine biologist, Jack Taylor shows up because it’s a Spanish horror movie and then everyone just lets the Nessie swim off like no harm no foul. But hey — this has a giant water warm with big eyes headbutting a helicopter and if that doesn’t make you smile, I have no real clue what will. You know how you will know that de Ossorio directed this? The monster screams every time it appears.
Director Leon Klimovsky shows up and somewhere along the line, you realize this is more Jaws than Godzilla. It’s so ridiculous that you can’t help but love it. I mean, most of the monster footage is a hand puppet. That’s pretty great.
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