Review #1,235: 'Sleepless' (2001)

Sleepless, or to give the film its original Italian title, Non ho sonno, was a commercial success in its native country and marked the return of legendary director Dario Argento to the giallo sub-genre after a long hiatus. Essentially a slasher at heart, Sleepless does see the return of the director's popular trademarks, making this a formulaic and unsurprising serial killer movie elevated by some stylish camerawork and a thumping, energetic score. Taking place decades after Turin was left shaking following a series of killings known as 'The Dwarf Murders', it was assumed that the killer was dead after its main suspect disappeared and the crimes came to an abrupt halt. Yet when people (women) start to turn up dead in the same style as those committed back in 1983, it would seem that the one responsible is back and thirsty for more bloodshed.

A young boy, Giacomo (Stefano Dionisi), witnesses the horrific murder of his mother. The lead investigator, Moretti (Max von Sydow), promises the shell-shocked youth that he will catch the killer if it takes him the rest of his life. Fast-forward seventeen years later, and the case of The Dwarf Murders remains officially unsolved. Paying the bills by working as a waiter in restaurant, Giacomo, now living in Rome, is pulled back to Turin when his friend offers him a place to stay as the murders start to pile up. With the police clueless and familiar with the notorious murders years before, they turn to the now-retired Moretti for assistance, but his memory has deteriorated so much that he remembers little about the case. Reminded of his promise, Moretti hooks up with Giacomo in an attempt to solve the murders themselves. Is giallo novelist Vincenzo de Fabritiis, the dwarf who emerged as the prime suspect before seemingly passing away, actually alive and eager to finish the job?

With sightings of a little person made at almost every murder scene, it appears that the answer is yes. But like most of the greatest gialli, Argento's script (co-written by Franco Ferrini and Carlo Lucarelli) throws in more red-herrings than you can count and will leave you guessing until the very end. With a running time of just shy of 2 hours, Sleepless is overlong, and doesn't offer enough in the way of originality to justify the slog. It may just catch you off guard though, as Argento throws in a set-piece on an empty train with only a potential victim, a conductor and the unseen killer on board, which ranks as some of the greatest work he's ever done. With the return of Goblin on the soundtrack, the movie often feels like a return to form for the Italian filmmaker, but slasher tropes dominate while the giallo nods often feel like a side-note. This means that there is perhaps more than just a hint of misogyny, and the narrative is repetitive in nature. Still, it was the best work he had done since 1987's Opera, until he regressed again into a series of movies that varied between the mediocre to the downright terrible.


Directed by: Dario Argento
Starring: Max von Sydow, Stefano Dionisi, Chiara Caselli, Gabriele Lavia
Country: Italy

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,092: 'Trauma' (1993)

Trauma is a particularly significant horror in that it was the first film to be made by Italian genre master Dario Argento on American soil. Following a string of eye-catching, kaleidoscopic gialli and superior supernatural tales, Argento found himself at the door of Hollywood, an industry which, at the time, was struggling to churn out much in terms of originality in the horror/thriller genre. While he had employed English-speaking actors before, such as Jennifer Connelly, David Hemmings and Karl Malden, their roles were often crudely dubbed, and Trauma offered the director a chance to reach a broader audience with his unique - if obviously Hitchcockian - blend of build-up and terror.

Disappointingly, Trauma, if anything, represents the beginning of Argento's drastic career decline. The opening is full of promise, as a familiar black-gloved killer stalks a victim before killing her in a brutal and stylish fashion, here with a device which allows the victim to be garroted with relative ease. Bolstered by a POV style and traditionally great effects work by Tom Savini, it's a scene that could have easily been taken from one of Argento's native works. However, as popular as the giallo craze was, it didn't quite reach the general American audience, and so Trauma gets watered-down and peppered with horror cliches in an attempt to cast a wider audience net. While the tropes are there - an everyman (Christopher Rydell) is forced into sleuthing while dodging the police - it does little but frustrate as you realise that somewhere, deep down, there's probably a great giallo trying to get out.

So while the film has it's odd moment, the result is an incoherent, and somehow quite boring, mess of ideas and clashing styles. Starting promisingly, the story goes on to place anorexia sufferer Aura (Asia Argento, the director's then 17 year-old daughter) in the hands of illustrator David (Rydell) after her parents are murdered by the masked killer, and it is during this period that the film does nothing but lay out a string of red herrings, as well as creepily leering at Argento's youthful beauty. The final third is an exhausting conveyor belt of anti-climaxes, before the ludicrous (and not in an entertaining way) reveal that feels like it was made by a sub-par Tobe Hooper or Wes Craven arrives. While it's nowhere near the level of atrociousness that Argento would vomit out in 2009 with Giallo, Trauma feels like it was made by a once-great visionary who had tiredly given in to the producers' voices in his ear.


Directed by: Dario Argento
Starring: Christopher Rydell, Asia Argento, Piper Laurie, Frederic Forrest, Brad Dourif
Country: Italy/USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #522: 'Giallo' (2009)

In Turin, Italy, beautiful young model Celine (Elsa Pataky) is kidnapped by a taxi driver, who takes her to his torture chamber where a previous victim still lies half-dead. Celine was on her way to meet her sister Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner), who eventually suspects foul play. With the police unwilling to help, she turns to Italian-American detective Enzo (Adrien Brody), who is deep into an investigation that stretches way back, involving many missing girls who turn up tortured and murdered at seemingly random spots.

Former master of horror Dario Argento has been in deep decline since his 1970's heyday. Even his own fanboys admit that the visionary has lost his touch, and his films no longer have the gliding beauty he injected into the likes of Deep Red (1975), Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980). Thankfully (or should I say hopefully?), it would seem that Argento must be on the ascension, as Giallo, his homage to the sub-genre that prevailed in the 60's and 70's, must surely signal rock-bottom. He surely cannot produce anything so confusingly dire, or he should simply pack his bags and stop making movies. It beggars belief how the man that created some of the most elegant horror movies ever made can fail to raise even a moment of inspiration, and at times seems to parody the genre rather than showing any real love for it.

After being promoted as being something of a return to form for the auteur and a return to director's roots, Giallo was given a very limited release (I believe it went straight-to-DVD here in the UK) after a verbal slamming from audiences and critics alike. The most famous thing to come out of it was Adrien Brody's law-suit against the producers, claiming he had yet to be paid, and tried to halt any releases of the film until he was given what he was owed. Well, judging from his performance here, the Oscar-winner doesn't deserve a dime, sleep-walking through his role and bringing no life to his thinly-written, cliché-ridden character. Any attempts to blur the lines between his miserable detective and the sadistic killer comes across as laughable, and the 'big reveal' that explains his back-story is just plain silly.

For a film marketing itself as a giallo, the film lacks anything resembling the visual class or the sleazy atmosphere of the best of the genre, with Argento's camera glides feeling more like the director's futile attempts to polish a turd. It instead has more in common with that popular, ugly sub-genre of the modern age - torture porn. We see a girl's lips cut off with scissors, and a particularly nasty hammer-to-the-skull moment, cheap tricks that are more akin to the likes of Eli Roth's Hostel (2005) and its countless imitators. The killer looks like he's wandered in from the set of Joe D'Amato's Anthropophagus (1980), and is one of many plot devices that confuse and defy logic. Depressing then, seeing a once-great director stoop so low, but maybe his ambitious Dracula 3D (2012) will see a return to form.


Directed by: Dario Argento
Starring: Adrien Brody, Emmanuelle Seigner, Elsa Pataky
Country: USA/UK/Spain/Italy

Rating: *

Tom Gillespie

Review #506: 'Two Evil Eyes' (1990)

Originally conceived as a quartet of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, by George A. Romero, Dario Argento, John Carpenter and Wes Craven, the previous due were to be the only contributors to the double bill film Two Evil Eyes. Modernising (and in Argento's case merging a variety of Poe's themes) two stories, 'The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar' and 'The Black Cat', Romero and Argento tackle similar themes about guilt and morality. In the first story, Romero's, Jessica (Adrienne Barbeau) is the wife of an older, rich, dying man, as she attempts to gain all of his wealth before his demise. Using her doctor/lover, Dr Hoffman (Ramy Zada), they hypnotise him, so they are able to embezzle the cash. However, when Valdemar dies, and they put him into a freezer, his disembodied voice can still be heard, a spirit trapped between two worlds.

In Argento's piece, Harvey Keitel plays a crime scene photographer, Rod Usher, who has also published a book of questionable ethics, involving (along with photos of mutilations of women from real-life crime scenes) some apparent shots of a black cat being tortured, a cat owned by his live-in girlfriend, Annabel (Madeleine Potter). After an argument, he kills her and conceals her body behind a dry wall fronted with a bookshelf. In dreams and in life, Rod is tortured by the presence of the black cat, who may possess spiritual powers. Fundamental to both of these narratives is that element of overwhelming guilt. Both characters are tormented, whether psychologically or supernaturally. This is a theme that permeates a lot of Poe's horror writing, for example in one of his most famous short stories, 'The Tell-tale Heart', the protagonist receives a visit from the police, and the trap door where a dead body is concealed, pulsates as the narrator's anguish and paranoia envelops him.

'The Black Cat' is the better of the two short films. Romero's feels at times like a macabre daytime soap opera. The Dallas iconography of dazzlingly bright-coloured decor, and immense shoulder pads, the garish face paint of the ruling classes. That said, as with many of Romero's films, he infuses the film with social commentary, coming out of the 1980's processing of our consumerist indulgence: The ethic of greed. Argento makes a more stylish attempt, which has heightened paranoia, one which is elevated largely due to a series of suspicious characters. Tom Savini's by now obligatory horror effects are also superior in the latter tale of terror. But, as with all horror films of the early 1990's, this (and they) loses something as they are consumed by television aesthetics, perhaps a project that would have benefited from being made ten years previously. The overall film experience is dampened by these production values, and the atmosphere is stilted, with little, or no sense of terror or impending horror. The definitive film adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe are still those beautiful Roger Corman productions of the early 1960's, and Two Evil Eyes is best suited to Poe/Romero/Argento purists.


Directed by: Dario Argento, George A. Romero
Starring: Adrienne Barbeau, E.G. Marshall, Harvey Keitel, Madeleine Potter
Country: Italy/USA

Rating: **

Marc Ivamy

Review #246: 'The Cat o' Nine Tails' (1971)

Blind, retired journalist Franco (Karl Malden) is walking with his niece when he overhears a man in a car talking about blackmail. Pretending to tie his shoe, he gets his niece to describe the man in the car. That same night, a research facility is broken into and a security guard is knocked unconscious. Reporter Carlo (James Franciscus) begins the investigation, bumping into Franco along the way who has taken a personal interest. They learn that apparently nothing was stolen from the break-in. Dr. Calabresi (Carlo Alighiero) knows what was taken, but before he can do anything about it, he is pushed in front of a moving train. Carlo and Franco begin their own investigation, but find themselves hampered by a killer who will stop at nothing to protect the truth from being uncovered.

Argento's second feature, made in between his excellent debut The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970) and the bollocks-but-enjoyable Four Flies On Grey Velvet (1971), The Cat O' Nine Tails is the second in his 'animal' trilogy, and one of his personal least favourites. It wouldn't be until four years later when Argento would properly find his stride, making the phenomenal Deep Red (1975) and following it with three of his finest films, including two of the most memorable horrors ever made, Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980). However, Cat does include some enjoyable set-pieces, if sadly they lack Argento's usual Hitchcock-esque masterful touch.

The plot of the film, which includes something about a breakthrough in XXY chromosome research, is one of Argento's silliest, most confusing, and least interesting. It never really hits top gear until the last fifteen to twenty minutes when the plot finally comes together. The film is also disappointingly gore-light. This would of course not be a problem if the rest of the film was involving enough, but it fleshes out a rather simplistic story with no excitement or intrigue. However, Franciscus and Malden are good value, and the final death, one of Argento's most squirm-inducing, will send shivers down your spine. It's still head and shoulders above the majority of giallo's that came out around the same time, but knowing what Argento is capable of, this is a minor work.


Directed by: Dario Argento
Starring: James Franciscus, Karl Malden, Catherine Spaak
Country: Italy/France/West Germany

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #85: 'Phenomena' (1985)

Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly), a strange girl with the ability to somehow communicate with insects, is taken to a Swiss boarding school where her strange powers begin to alienate her. When a string of murders take place, she befriends Scottish inspect expert John McGregor (Donald Pleasence) who becomes fascinated with her and begins to use her in his investigations. Jennifer also suffers from sleepwalking, and one night she unwittingly witnesses the brutal murder of her friend. As the murders increase with apparently no leads, Jennifer slowly begins to uncover the strange and complex truth behind them, as she finds it impossible to leave the school.

This is one of horror master Dario Argento's weirdest films. At time it feels like an extended filler episode of The X-Files, as coincidences stack up and supernatural elements dominate with no explanation. The murders take place with typical Argento style and flair, the killer wearing the trademark black gloves. Unfortunately the film lacks the quality of his previous classics, namely Suspiria (1977), Deep Red (1975) and Inferno (1980). The insect idea is an interesting one, but it's seemingly lumped in with the serial killer plotline for no reason and just for the sake of giving the story a direction to go in. However the film went up in my estimations as the climax kicks in, getting more gloriously weird as the minutes roll by, and it has the most fucked-up revelation since Don't Look Now (1973). Don't expect classic Argento, but watch for the ending alone and for an early strong performance by the astonishingly beautiful Jennifer Connelly.

Directed by: Dario Argento

Starring: Jennifer Connelly, Donald Pleasence, Daria Nicolodi

Country: Italy

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie