Tenebre

Rating:
Summary: Another great movie from Dario Argento
Review: "Tenebre" is an intriguing and remarkable horror film, with a murder(s) mystery and Argento's deliciously grotesque and wonderfully hideous scenes of gore and bloodshed. In the movie, there are axes in heads, heads crashing through glass, and walls painted with blood. By the film's end, you will be submerged in a complex plot, pools of blood, and more corpses than you can shake an axe or knife at. (And remember: When you see a hand delivering anonymous letters or stabbing someone, it's the hand of Dario!)

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Summary: thoughtful examination of the line between art and life
Review: Tenebre represents both the apex of Dario Argento's career and the Giallo genre itself. By taking the genre back to its roots (films like Blood and Black Lace and Argento's own Bird with the Crystal Plummage), Argento is able to propel it into whole new realms, redefining Giallo as surely as he originally defined it in 1969. Tenebre is actually one of his more tightly constructed narratives (again inviting comparisons to Bird...), yet the story is still secondary to the film's visual and emotional effectiveness. In choosing to set the film entirely in bright, modern locations, Argento creates a world more unsettling than any he has used before, here, the bright lights of modern city light are hopelessly unable to illuminate a darkness deeper and more disturbing than mere surface creepiness. He also creates an extremely contemporary, vaguely futuristic, backdrop for acts of primal, brutal violence. Indeed, this is one of his most violent films, as well as his most sexual (a noticeable deviation from the few before this one). It also poses interesting questions about creators of violent art. Does violence affect the mind, or is a tendency towards violence the product of an already disturbed mind? Argento might very well be questioning his own motives in doing what he does. That the film provides no easy answers is not a fault, due to poor writing, but a chilling reminder that there are no easy answers.

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Summary: An Argento Masterpiece Finally Uncensored!
Review: One of the director's best. An intense, brilliantly-plotted, beautifully photographed thriller that's not for the squeamish.

It's finally presented uncut for the first time and with a remixed 5.1 digital soundtrack. A must for Argento fans. The last 15 minutes are amazing. Watch out for that arm scene!

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Summary: AWESOME SUSPENSFUL THRILLER!!
Review: This was the first film of Dario Argento I had the privledge of watching and I must say I loved it. The film kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering who the killer was. Interesting, nicely paced plot, decent acting, eerie soundtrack and great killing scenes make for an amazing flick.

I was so impressed with Tenebre that I wanted to check out other Argento works as well but "Suspiria" was the only one I could find around here. So if you have the privledge of seeing any Argento films I would check them out starting with Tenebre. That's how good this movie is!!

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Summary: Anchor Bay Lies Again
Review: When I bought this piece of garbage, the back of the box said uncut, uncensored version. BULL!!!! The Dutch import version entitled SHADOWS has an additional 25 seconds of footage. Anchor Bay has done this on a number of argento releases, claiming they are uncut and they are not. Quit getting ripped off, buy an all region dvd player and order your movies from overseas distributers. It's the only way to get the movies uncut. Companies like Anchor Bay will continue to lie and rip you off.

Rating:
Summary: The second film of Dario Argento's..I watched..
Review: Where do I start? Before I watched this film I was full of hype. I had heard many great things about it. I sat down full of excitement and pressed play. The opening was really good, just like almost everything else in this movie. The only major problem I had with this movie was the ending. I hated it. I never would have guessed who the killer was. Well actually I guessed it at the begining but thought that would just be stupid if that person would murder people.
The music is so incredible! I listen to it all the time. It goes well with murder scenes. The gore in this movie is amazing! It looks so real and gross. I love how the blood comes spraying out of an arm that was chopped off! This movie was a good one but did not live up to the expectations I had for it. I enjoyed it none the less.

Rating:
Summary: More Brutal Giallo from Dario Argento
Review: I don't seem to hold Tenebre in quite as high esteem as most Argento fans appear to, but this is still a fine, highly entertaining film. While not as strong visually as the his 2 supernatural horror films just prior to this, or the following film Opera, it has easily the most satisfying plot of the 5 Argento films I've seen(Deep Red thru Opera, excepting Phenomena), and still has strong murder sequences, enjoyable music, and quite a fair bit of style in general. Thus, it is definitely worth a look.

The plot involves an American writer, Peter Neale, on a trip to Rome who becomes involved in a murder investigation when a victim is found with the pages of his latest book stuffed down her throat. Naturally the killer is obsessed with Peter, so he is both a potential victim and a potentially of great help in the investigation. This isn't the most original or exciting set up you're gonna hear, but as with all the other Argento films I've seen, the plot isn't really what matter. However, I will say that the major revelation of the film is actually fairly satisfying, and, well, cool. It is perhaps not the most likely thing in the world, but it's close enough. Some have complained that the plot is too reliant on coincidence and contrivance. Frankly, this doesn't bother me, though one scene does is a bit too unlikely.(A character is attacked by a dog, which chases her until she takes refuge in the killer's house (!)) This would bother more me, but this happening isn't utterly necessary for the continuance of the plot, so I'll forgive them. The acting is acceptable, but not remarkable. Anthony Franciosa is a bit on the bland side as the lead, but this is a fairly reasonable portrayl. John Saxon and Daria Nicolodi also give some fairly good performances, but everyone else is pretty blah. John Saxon provides the small bit of humor in the film, most of it involving his new hat. A new hat may not seem like a comedy goldmine, but it's actually kinda amusing.

The lighting and set-design is probably the most conventional of the Argento films I've seen. Here Argento uses an odd tactic that doesn't quite work: He has pretty much the entire film be extremely bright. Much of the time this just looks odd, particularly when you have outdoor nights cenes which are perfectly well-lit and bright. Not a huge problem, but it is bit odd. There's still some great camera work, however. There are lots of great, slow prowling shots of the killer's lair and his handiwork and so on. The much famed scene of the where the camera crawls up one side of an apartment building, viewing the seen to be victims, and coming down the other side to show the killer entering a window is quite cool. (though not as exciting as most people make it out to be) I'm more fond of the close-up of the killer cutting thru the light bulb, the distant over head shots from inside his/her house, and one shot used just prior to the final murder which I don`t wish to spoil. The murder scenes are generally good, sometimes excellent. The first one is the best. The misdirection used may seem obvious in retrospect but it works at the time, and the way they shoot the deathblow is just great. (It shows a close-up of the victim with half of her head taking up the left half of the screen , cuts to a shot of the razor extended and shows it slice out of the frame, cuts to a bloody piece of paper falling out of her mouth, cuts backs to the original shot, as her face slowly falls to her left. I don't know how that sounds on paper, but trust me, it's great.) Argento has a reputation for using extreme violence, which is sort of deserved and sort of not deserved. Other than the much famed arm-stump-spewing-blood-all-over-the-wall-scene and the killer's death, nothing here is really that bloody, though it's all very brutal and harsh, and the camera rarely shies away from the violence. (And it really starts piling up the bodies by the end. Far moreso than I would've imagined at the start of the film.) Despite the frequent comparisons to slasher films, the death scenes in Tenebre are generally more about the way they are shot and staged than extreme gore or novel method of death. The only scene that doesn't work that well is the first ax murder. The slow perspective shot of the victim running away doesn't work all that well, and the actual blows are far from convincing

Goblin, minus their drummer, are back to do the soundtrack again., and it's got another synth-jazz-rock with some more ambient stuff thrown in. Although I didn't care for it all the first time around, and it is rather dated in many ways, I've grown to really like the soundtrack. The more atmospheric stuff is best, though I've grown to like the peppier jazzier stuff too. (Though it sometimes seems a bit too light hearted for the scene)

Well, that's it. If you haven't seen any Argento films you should see Suspiria first, simply because it is the best that I've seen. And if you haven't seen any of his giallo films Deep Red might be a better start, as it is often regarded as the definitive film of the genre. (though I, personally, prefer Opera and Tenebre) If you like those, you should definitely check this out. (Actually if you don't like Suspiria you may want to check the giallo out anyway, as they aren't similar at all, but, ya know, whatever.)


Rating:
Summary: one of the best argento films i have ever seen
Review: Dario Argento is not known for directing movies with good acting or great stories but what he is good at is making great horror films or murder and suspence, what Italians like to call giallo. The story is about a writer who's book gets bad reviews by critics and gets scalded by people who have read it.
As soon as the murders keep pilling up people get suspiciuos and the writer becomes a suspect because of the violence in the book is described in detail. This film has got the best death scenes ever , its realy sick and twisted and disturbing which i really like. So if you like this film then I recomend that you watch these other films by Argento susperia, deep red, phenomena, standahl syndrome and inferno. I have recently bought the uncut dvd from amazon.co.uk so I'm not sure if this one has the same features or if its different, you should get the uncut dvd which has the axe scene.............

Rating:
Summary: Phenomenal effort
Review: After seeing Dario Argento's 1982 (it is '82, not '87) film "Tenebrae," I have moved into the final phases of seeing his entire body of work. It was easy to claim ignorance of many of this Italian director's films until a few years ago because it was difficult to find them anywhere, let alone in an uncut form. Fortunately, DVD arrived on the scene and eager film fans with dollars to spend inspired numerous companies to start churning out any movie they could get their hands on. It wasn't too long before practically every Argento film arrived on store shelves, many of them in uncut, unrated formats. Unfortunately, most viewers have likely never heard of Dario Argento. These days more people know about the director's beautiful daughter Asia than the horror maestro himself. What a shame. Argento's films, at least the ones I have seen, are masterpieces of style injected with truly cringe inducing violence. For a few years in the 1980s and 1990s, Argento drifted away from his tried and true giallo formula, only recently returning to some semblance of form with "The Stendhal Syndrome" and "Sleepless." "Tenebrae" was Argento's first "return" to the giallo genre, after he strayed into the supernaturally themed "Suspiria" and "Inferno."

I happen to think "Tenebrae" may well be the best Argento film I have seen, even better than his first wave of gialli. It's the story of Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa), a popular writer of disturbing novels who travels to Italy to promote his latest thriller. Unfortunately for Neal, and more so for several other people, a killer decides to imitate the murders laid out in the author's most recent book. It isn't too long before the local police, in the form of Detective Germani (Giuliano Gemma), make the connection between the homicides and Neal's book. With his assistant Anna (Daria Nicolodi), book agent Bullmer (John Saxon), and a young man named Gianni (Christian Borromeo) standing by his side, the popular novelist soon joins the investigation into these grisly crimes. And grisly they are as only Dario Argento can make them. We see throat slashings, stabbings, a hand liberated from a wrist, and other gooey surprises shot in the sort of alarming, extreme close up that is a trademark of this director's brand of cinematic carnage. "Tenebrae" constitutes one of Argento's most disturbingly violent escapades into the giallo genre. It is, fortunately, one of his most coherent films as well.

Neal continues to promote his book even as he helps the police in the hunt for the killer. He faces a slew of protests about the supposedly misogynistic, ultra violent content of his novels from an angry female protestor and from a smarmy television critic on one of those face-to-face talk shows. Both of Neal's critics perish horribly soon after (surprise, surprise), thus throwing some suspicion on the author himself as a prime suspect. Of course, many others could very well be the ones putting on the black gloves. The only real clue we get from Argento, if you can call it that, is a weird flashback of a young woman tormenting a boy with her red-heeled shoes. As creepy carnival style music plays throughout the flashback, we then see the focus shift to the killer stepping out from behind a hedgerow to stab the woman. What this memory means, and why we see it from the perspective of the killer, soon emerges as "Tenebrae" draws to its ultra shocking conclusion. And the conclusion is shocking, containing some of the most graphic gore I've seen as well as a truly gasp worthy revelation I won't elaborate on here except to say other films ("Nightmares in a Damaged Brain" comes to mind) have used it to great effect. "Tenebrae" is a real treat for the horror fan.

Apparently, "Tenebrae" came about after a crazed fan stalked Dario Argento. Whatever the impetus for making this film, the result is one of the director's most entertaining excursions into the realms of horror. Aside from the graphic gore, we also get the requisite Argento photographic style. Check out that crane shot of the outside of the apartment building, a shot that runs on forever while building the suspense up to a fever pitch. Then there's the great chase scene with the dog, and the murder of the television critic that we see through the windows of his house. Argento truly achieves a masterful vision of mayhem with "Tenebrae." The performances, although dubbed in spots, are darn effective too. Franciosa does a great job playing the happy go lucky Peter Neal, and it's always great to see John Saxon in another horror film (even if he does spend a lot of time messing around with that confounded hat!). "Tenebrae" also ratchets up the suspense by employing yet another mesmerizing synthesizer score from Goblin. The music heard doing those flashback sequences ranks as one of the eeriest bits of music I've ever heard in a horror movie. Yes sir, "Tenebrae" worked on nearly every level for this genre fan.

Dario Argento would go on to make several non-giallo films after "Tenebrae" ("Phenomena" starring a young Jennifer Connolly among them) before heading back to his roots again. None of his recent black-gloved nightmare thrillers, however, can match the pounding intensity of this movie. Extras on the DVD include a commentary track, an alternate end credits music piece, and a couple of behind the scenes looks at the film. Less here than on other discs, perhaps, but the movie is so good you won't care. I'm starting to get a little sad since I'm running out of Argento films to watch for the first time. Nonetheless, I now know I can always come back to "Tenebrae" when I want to see the best Dario Argento has to offer.










Rating:
Summary: Argento's On A Roll
Review: Argento takes a break from the supernatural to return to his giallo roots. Many fans consider this one of his best and I'd agree with that. As I said before, it's a return to giallo, so the plot isn't 100% original, but it has some original ideas put into it. Plus, with the way Argento films his movies, does it really matter what it's all about? Tenebre is an awesome whodunit slasher flick that actually manages to keep you in the dark about the killer's identity. It's also got some of his most stylishly orchestrated murder scenes(you know which one I mean in particular). I've noticed upon repeated viewing that alot of modern so called "horror" films have freely borrowed from this film. That's an old story coz most Italian horror films have had their ideas stolen for modern horror. But, no matter how young and pretty you make the cast or how much you MTV it up for today's AD&D audience, no one can get close to Italy's style. And it's probably impossible to get anywhere near Argento's in particular. This leaves me totally flabbergasted by the rumors of a Suspiria remake! Think about that for a second, will ya-THERE ARE RUMORS THAT SUSPIRIA IS GONNA BE REMADE BY AN AMERICAN STUDIO!!!