The following bio was taken from the book "The Fearmakers" by John McCarthy. This book looks at some of the greatest masters of suspense and terror (i.e. Tod Browning, James Whales, Roger Corman, William Castle, Terrance Fisher, George Romero, Dario Argento, Wes Craven, John Carpenter, and many more). I highly recommend this book to all horror aficianados.

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The American version is terribly disjointed---even for an Argento film---boasting the disappearance of an entire character. Fine Goblin music is riddled with snatches of heavy metal that don't fit the mood or on-screen action, despite Argento's insistence to the contrary. The original version contains scenes of attenuated hand impalement, face slashing, and a tonsil on the end of a spear. Perhaps the American release might have benefited from some of these trimmed tidbits. On the other hand, the original also contains more Jennifer Connelly. Even with his notorious disdain for actors, Argento generally manages to elicit professional performances from them, although not so of Connelly, who stands as his weakest, most colorless protagonist ever.

Argento has also been known to get behind the careers of up-and-coming fearmakers whose talents he admires. He did so with Lamberto Bava, the son of the great stylist Mario Bava to whom Argento's own career owes a considerable debt, by producing Bava's "Demons" (1986), a gore for gore's sake extravaganza filmed in Berlin and Rome that starred another Argento apprentice, Michele Soavi. Soavi later filmed a tribute to his mentor, the documentary "Dario Argento's World of Horror", and two high-style/low-substance thrillers, "Stage Fright" and "The Church" (1989), the latter produced by Argento. Regrettably, Soavi then abandoned style as well as substance with the dreary "The Sect" (1990), a.k.a. "The Devils Daughter", which Argento wrote and produced.

Frustrated in his attempts to direct a stage version of Rigoletto (complete with vampire nobleman), Argento proceeded to make the word "opera" synonymous in the minds of his fans with visceral terror in his next film--appropriately titled "Opera" (1988). The film opens as a temperamental soprano starring in "Macbeth" gets peeved at director Ian Charleson's innovations and walks off the production. (Vanessa Redgrave was originally signed to play the part of the diva but took a similarly abrupt hike.) The diva is later knocked out of the picture entirely by a convenient accident, allowing understudy Cristina Marsillach to replace her. Two people close to Marsillach are summarily butchered, acts she is forced to witness, since the killer has tied her up and propped her eyelids open with strategically placed needles. The murderer also mashes one of Charleson's pet ravens. During the final performance of the opera, however, the remaining ravens are set loose in the house and, in an incredible "swimming crane" sequence, bloody zero in on the villain.

Released uncut in the United States as "Terror at the Opera", the film will long remain legendary among fans of gory fear films because of its now-famous scene where the murderer slices open a victim's throat to obtain some incriminating evidence that's been swallowed. The film also boasts some of the most relentlessly suspenseful sequences of Argento's career, as well as a grim backstage atmosphere and some dizzying camera work that even on the small screen may induce vertigo in viewers.

Argento's "Two Evil Eyes"(1990) remains a disappointment, however. It's an excessive inflating of two of Edgar Allan Poe's most overworked tales, "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" and "The Black Cat." George A. Romero directed the "Valdemar" story while Argento helmed the updated second segment. Harvey Keitel plays Rod Usher, a gorehound photographer who might have shot the splatter "documentary" Faces of Death if somebody else hadn't already beaten him to it. His girlfriend, Madeleine Potter, adopts the titular black cat, and it's hate at first sight for Keitel and the feline. Kietel torments the cat, throttles it to death, preserving the moment on Kodak film. Potter confronts him about this and is walled up in their apartment. Detective John Amos investigates and there's plenty more gore before the abrupt ending.

Argento is an avowed Poe fanatic who, in an introduction to an Italian printing of Poe's work, tells more about Poe than anybody would want to know. He has also paid homage to Poe in his earlier films (check out the bricked-up cadaver in "Deep Red" and the Rue Morgue-like/ razor-wielding chimp in "Phenomena" ). His Black Cat episode is lavish and full of the creeping subjective point of view camera moves his fans have come to love. Still, one wonders why such a devotee of Poe chose to undertake one of the author's most familiar, overused, and shortest stories and pad it out to a languorous sixty minutes. Argento might better have filmed one of Poe's unmined properties instead. For example, given Argento's unparalleled ability to invoke the ghoulish and sinister---not to mention his penchant for funny animal titles— picture Poe's "Hop-Frog" given the Argento treatment. The prospect of such an opus truly boggles the mind.

Recently Argento has done "Tramua", "The Stendhal Syndrome" and "The Wax Mask". None of which were up to the standards he set with his earlier films.

©1994 John McCarthy

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05/14/05 02:32 AM
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