Door Into Darkness: The Doll

Theories abound as to why Dario Argento decided to save The Doll for the fourth and final episode of his 1973 TV series, Door Into Darkness. Some say it’s due to the experimental nature of the story; others point out it’s the episode that Dario had the least involvement in. Me, I think they put it last because it’s a bit rubbish. Would anyone have tuned in the following week after this?

Let’s see why The Doll doesn’t really work as a mini suspense movie. Two reasons:

1. It’s padded... Boy, is it padded. If I’d had to sit through one more scene of someone walking down a street, I swear I would have flicked off the TV and gone outside to play Frisbee. With the DVD. In traffic. The Doll could easily have made a half-hour Tales of the Unexpected episode, rather than the 60-minute slog here.


2. It cheats... Boy, does it cheat! And not like the forgivably amusing, clever-clever misdirections of an M. Night Shyamalan movie, either. This story cheats so bad it gets caught cheating, lies to cover up its indiscretions, gets caught lying, then buys you a bunch of flowers to throw you off the scent... but none of that changes the fact that it cheats. Shamelessly. To the point that it barely makes sense when it’s all over.

Our story starts with that trusted cliché: the mental hospital break-out. Someone with a handheld camera and wobbly POV has escaped from the Rome Home for the Criminally Deranged to become, as Dario Argento himself puts it in his introduction, “a sick mind wandering a small town, apparently normal, in matter of fact incandescent... Its aim: to kill.”

Soon after, we’re introduced to a moustached stranger-in-town (played by Robert Hoffman) who’s checking into a local hotel along with his mysterious attaché case. While he’s out roaming the streets a little later, a redheaded fashion designer meets a sticky end when, after some enjoyably giallo-esque spooky stuff involving multicoloured mannequin heads, she’s killed by an unseen assailant.

Back on the street, Moustache Man spots another redhead (Mara Venier) in a doll shop and decides to make her acquaintance by embroiling her in a bit of unwitting shoplifting à la Twisted Nerve. Not only that, but he manages to invite himself round to her house... and that’s where the nastiness begins.

And it’s about time, too, seeing as how we’re over halfway through The Doll and much of the running time so far has been taken up by people just walking along. What follows is fairly tense – although you’ll likely find it a little hard to swallow that our heroine not only lets Creepy Moustache into her home, but quickly agrees to get changed and go to the movies with him. Still, that’s nothing compared to the ending, which is harder to swallow than a saucepan full of wasps.

As with some other gialli, the problem with The Doll isn’t the way it’s made, it’s the way the plot’s contrived. There’s plenty of intriguing camerawork and the basic idea is sound, but I’m all for renaming it “The Dull”... The Cheating, Lying Dull!

Rating: 2/5

Picture post

Here's a nice screenshot from Eyewitness that I couldn't quite shoehorn into yesterday's review:



It occurs as Roberta and her husband drive the stretch of road where Roberta claims to have witnessed the murder.

Is it me, or have the Human League based two album covers on this image?

Okay, you can go back to work now.

Door Into Darkness: Eyewitness

Well, I did promise I’d be having a look at Dario Argento’s TV anthology series Door Into Darkness, but I never said I’d be watching the episodes in order. (Please, I’m not that organised.) So here we go with episode 3 of the DVD set, which actually aired second according to some sources... Anyhow, no matter – it’s not like Lost, where as long as you watch it all in order it all makes perfect sense. No, Door Into Darkness presents four different stories, and this one’s called Eyewitness.

Straight off, let me point out that many of Eyewitness’s plot elements probably seemed a lot fresher back in 1973, before three decades’ worth of TV actresses played murder witnesses in three decades’ worth of TV movies, and subsequently found themselves in various degrees of TV movie-permitting peril. Here, it’s Marilù Tolo playing housewife Roberta Leoni, whose life is so dull and empty she spends most of her time dressing up in outfits that match her stylishly mod furnishings:



All that’s about to change, however, because soon Roberta will be on high terror alert after a woman runs out in front of her car in the middle of the night and drops down dead in the road. When Roberta gets out to help – being careful not to get any of that icky blood on her new orange flares (well, they do go lovely with the futon) – Mystery Woman turns out to have a bullet wound in her back. But that’s not all: Mystery Murderer is waiting in the bushes beside the road with a gun in his black-gloved hand... Run, Roberta, Run!

Luckily, there’s a diner nearby and Roberta has soon ordered a nice cup of coffee. Oh, and summoned the police. But when she takes the detective back to the scene of the crime, the body has disappeared – along with any trace of blood and, indeed, anything out of the ordinary. Has Roberta imagined it all? The police and her husband (Riccardo Salvino – sort of a better-looking version of Dario Argento, although with the same tombstone forehead and lanky hair) seem to think so, but we’re left in no doubt when a cutaway reveals someone suspiciously burning a pile of bloodstained clothes...

Ah, sweet, naïve, innocent Eyewitness, you had me gripped up until about this point, when you decided to turn into a decidedly mediocre stalker thriller. Roberta returns home to the now-ubiquitous ominous phone calls and half-hearted attempts on her life, while events slow-burn to a rather predictable conclusion. I know it’s not your fault, Eyewitness. You were probably once the hottest thing since open plan interiors:


But now you’re more like this clock – dated and slightly pointless:


I mean, can you tell the time on that? Anyway, the plot of Eyewitness has become so standard that it really doesn’t offer much in the way of suspense or excitement any longer, despite the fact that it’s well staged and particularly nicely scored (by Giorgio Gaslini – Deep Red). I don’t want to make it sound like it’s a worthless waste of time – I’d recommend it unreservedly to giallo/Argento fans – but time hasn’t left Eyewitness with much to remark upon. Except, of course, those fabulous interiors.

Rating: 2/5

Aenigma

Would you look at that DVD cover for Lucio Fulci’s Aenigma? And they wonder why Italian horror hasn’t made it big in the UK. There’s just something about snails crawling all over a person’s lips that many people just don’t find very, well... appealing. Anyhoo, I certainly found the film itself pretty appealing, largely thanks to that hilarious Italian-to-English script translation that peps up many a Euro-horror outing. And Aenigma really takes some beating in that respect. Read on, slugface!

“Put on your make-up, your eyes are blue enough, tonight is special for you... You’re gonna see that dream come true...” So intones the delightful synth-pop number that opens this late entry in Fulci’s career. But if any dreams are coming true tonight, they certainly won’t be those of Kathy (played by Milijana Zirojevic), a bullied student at St. Mary’s College, Boston (played by the Yugoslavian countryside). Poor Kathy ends up under the wheels of a speeding car when a prank pulled by her classmates – in league with her not-terribly-professional gym teacher – goes tragically wrong.

Of course, Kathy’s still alive and, if not quite kicking, then at least comatose in a hospital bed surrounded by heart monitors (I counted at least three) and under the supervision of dishy Dr Anderson. From here, her spirit flies up out of her body to whoosh away over a model of the hospital and take possession of Eva, a new student just arriving at St. Mary’s. There’s barely time to unpack her collection of spandex bodystockings before Eva/Kathy is off on a vengeful supernatural killing spree (talk about getting off on the wrong foot!). And, before long, Kathy’s former frenemies are dying in all kinds of hilarious mysterious ways – including suffocation by snails whilst inexplicably paralysed; strangulation by one’s own reflection; and, most cruelly of all, terrorism via a poster of Tom Cruise... What an aenigma! as they say in Italy. Or possibly Yugoslavia.

Lucio Fulci was that most paradoxical of things: a director who was as likely to copycat the latest trend in American cinema as he was to create something staggeringly original – often at the same time. Aenigma, however, finds him doing something he’d almost never be accused of anywhere else – namely, aping that other Italian fave, Dario Argento. It’s not just the girls’ school setting or telepathy-with-invertebrates plot thread (Phenomena anyone?) but the whole style of the thing – with its floaty camerawork and close-quarters bitching – that recalls Argento. (Although, to be fair, Dario never did quite match the pure Fulci-envisaged terror that is... snails! Snails on your face!)

Nevertheless, Fulci comes into his own here with a fantastic sequence set in an empty museum at midnight. Severed limbs fall from paintings, statues come to murderous life... you could almost be watching The House by the Cemetery (in fact, if you switch this off and swap DVDs, you really could be watching The House by the Cemetery, which might not be an entirely bad idea). The scene is classic Fulci, and by far the least goofy scare sequence in this relatively light-hearted piece.

In terms of sheer entertainment, however, the film simply flies by, feeling half the length of even some arguably better lesser Fulci efforts like Manhattan Baby. Its blend of eighties silliness and off-the-wall nastiness make Aenigma prime late-night viewing for Italian horror fans. As for the script, it’s rather aenchanting too. Here are some of my favouritest quotes:

• Doctor: How does a young girl who’s braindead experience a violent emotion?

• Student: We can spend the night together tomorrow... Love! Oh lovely!
  Doctor: That’s enough. My lips are numb and my patients are waiting.

• Coroner (examining body): These macho types never know when to stop... It was the same with the man who invented jogging.

• Girl: Give me the address again.
  Friend: Number 28, the second on the right. It’s hard to miss... he’s got a picture of the Incredible Hulk on the door.
  Girl: That’s a good start.

• Student: Fred... he’s dead!

• Doctor: There’s something strange about that girl. She has a total recall of another person’s memories...

• Gym student (to teacher): I may have a fat ass, but if you slap it one more time, I’ll slap your face!

Rating: 3/5

Doorway to Dario

Oh, how bittersweet... Gorezone reports that Dario Argento’s 1970s TV anthology series Door Into Darkness is coming to region 1 DVD in February 2008, courtesy of NoShame. That’s great news for Argento fans, of course, but bad news for snobs like me who sought out the out-of-print, hard-to-find and now soon-to-be-less-valuable German release from a couple of years ago.

Still, I can take some consolation from the fact that lazy buyers of the easily-available new set will be stuck with an even less flattering caricature of the famous director on the cover:

Me, I’ll be laughing it up with my incomprehensible German-language slipcase and the accompanying 16-page booklet I can’t actually read. Not to mention a bunch of walking skeletons that seem to have wondered in off the cover of Army of Darkness:

Look out for indignant reviews of each of the four Door Into Darkness episodes soon!

All the Colors of the Dark

Colour me confused. Not because I couldn’t follow the plot of this 1972 giallo (often a challenge for me where the genre’s concerned, I’ll admit) but because, in this case, I could. All the Colors of the Dark is a surprisingly straightforward and simply plotted thriller, which is both refreshing and a little ordinary as a result.

Things get underway with a hideously pantomimed nightmare sequence I wasn’t sure whether to take seriously or not. A man in drag cackles at the camera, giant turquoise eyes peer out of the screen, a naked woman smears blood on her belly... And they say you can never relieve your college days. All of this is taking place in the diseased imagination of Jane Harrison (Edwige Fenech), a troubled Londoner still recovering from the loss of her unborn child in a car accident some months ago.

It seems that these and other gruesome images flash into Jane’s mind whenever her fiancé Richard (George Hilton) tries to make love to her. He responds by mixing her up strange “vitamin drinks” that look like inky water, while she in turn becomes progressively more unbalanced. It’s a vicious circle, really, and no one’s having much fun except the man in drag.

Soon, Jane’s nightmares start to come to life as she finds herself repeatedly menaced by a blue-eyed man wielding a stiletto (that’s wielding, not wearing – we’ve moved on from the man in drag). At the park, on the train, even in her own apartment building, nowhere is safe – and one particularly good suspense sequence finds Jane inadvertently locked out of her flat, waiting for a slowly approaching lift as her stalker ascends the staircase below.

So far, so giallo, but things take a turn for the supernatural when Jane makes friends with Mary (Marina Malfatti), a neighbour – and predatory lesbian, natch – who inducts her into a satanic cult as a means of curing her nightmares. From here on in, nothing and no one can be trusted, as events get even stranger and the true motives of Jane’s friends and family are shockingly revealed!

Or perhaps not so shockingly, since All the Colors of the Dark doesn’t really go in for the genre’s usual twists and mysteries, other than the central issue of whether the traumatising set pieces Jane puts herself through are real or imagined. Instead, it concentrates on building an atmosphere of nightmarish paranoia similar to Rosemary’s Baby and, for the most part, pulls it off. It’s only in the final third, when the film starts chucking in all kinds of new ideas (premonitions, previously unmentioned inheritances) that it starts to feel forced. Even so, it all makes enough sense and ties up neatly.

Director Sergio Martino was in the midst of an amazing run when he shot this film hot on the heels of The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail, but it’s the following year’s Torso that I think shows him at his best. Now that’s a scary movie! All the Colors of the Dark has plenty going for it (not least of which is that fantastic title) but remains a pretty tame option stacked up against its mostly more outrageous contemporaries.

Rating: 3/5

In the Spider’s Web

You show me a scary movie, and I’ll show you a movie that would be even scarier if it was full of spiders!

Jaws, you say? Okay then, how about when Chrissie goes swimming at the beginning... What if, instead of just getting deep-throated by a giant great white shark, she looks up in the middle of being munched in half and discovers that – aieeeee! – there’s a spider in her hair! Yes, not only is she being mangled beyond all recognition betwixt the powerful jaws of the ocean’s greatest predator, but there’s a massive spider all, like, tangled and stuff in her fringe... Eeeewww!

Or what about The Exorcist? So... Regan’s head is spinning round and round and suddenly she starts to spew – but instead of mushy peas, out comes... spiders! And spider eggs! And they’re all totally hatching as they fly out into the priest’s face! OMG, I’m giving myself a panic attack!

Well, anyway, I think I’ve made my point. And the makers of the new TV movie In the Spider’s Web must’ve agreed, because it looks like they saw the movie Paradise Lost and decided that what it really needed was less credible actors and more CGI tarantulas. (If any of my many American readers are wondering what Paradise Lost is, it’s what we Brits renamed last year’s Josh Duhamel-starring slasher movie, Turistas, because we don’t go in for those foreigny-foreign titles here.)

In Paradise Lost, a group of good-looking kids get lost in the jungle and end up having their organs harvested for sale on the black market. In the Spider’s Web is not dissimilar: A slightly less good-looking group of kids and their guide are trudging through the jungle when one, Geraldine, is bitten by a spider and falls ill. Her fellow travellers quickly fashion a stretcher from bamboo stalks tied together with vines (at least I think they do because they suddenly have one in the next scene) and decide that, since town is too far to trek, they’ll have to carry her to a mysterious nearby village, reputedly lorded over by an American doctor, in the hope that he can help.

The American doctor turns out to be a grizzled-looking Lance Henriksen decked out in crusty yellow nail extensions (at least, I hope they were). And help he does, mixing up a spider juice potion inside his hut... His hut shaped like a giant spider! Dr Henriksen explains that Geraldine has been bitten by a Bolivian Baja spider “unlike any other spider on earth”. Cue various shots of him pretending to handle a tarantula, while a few hastily inserted close-ups show a spider in someone else’s hands. Poor Lance must be a little arachnophobic – not that I blame him – and TV movie paycheques obviously only go so far. Don’t expect to see him in the next series of I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! with his lips around a witchetty grub.

Anyway, Geraldine’s condition is now stable thanks to an injection of pure spider blood, so the others decide to leave her there while they head off to town to bring back some doctors who don’t have claws. Two of them discover a spooky-looking cave – a cave shaped like a giant spider! – and head inside. Bad idea... Haven’t they noticed that the spider motif obviously spells trouble? Soon, the entire group find themselves caught up in nefarious plot involving organ-harvesting, swarms of tarantulas, and a villain whose face is hidden behind a mask of spider silk!

In the Spider’s Web is a Sci-Fi Channel premiere that, like last year’s Abominable and Mammoth, is quite a lot of fun. It’s no Arachnophobia, which as far as I’m concerned still rules the web when it comes to killer-spider thrills, but gets more done in its running time than Spiders and Spiders II put together – probably because it manages to mix in elements of slasher movies, Indiana Jones, the aforementioned Paradise Lost, and most any monster movie you can think of. That’s as well as having characters reference Apocalypse Now and Gorillas in the Mist without actually mentioning the titles of either.

I’m not crazy about the use of CGI when actual spiders are scary enough, but the film has its fair share of real tarantulas and gives the computerized ones some amusing things to do. Even more amusing is the “mix two real tarantulas with five plastic ones” technique, pioneered by Lucio Fulci in The Beyond... although the “mix two real actors with five plastic ones” technique is less successful.

I’m still giving In the Spider’s Web my recommendation, though. It’s not scary in the way that finding an actual spider in your bedroom is scary, but finding the DVD in your player wouldn’t be a nasty surprise either.

Rating: 3/5

Twisted Nerve

Twisted Nerve, ladies and gentlemen... or, how did they have the NERVE in 1968 to make a film so TWISTED?

Actually, the title comes from an uncredited snatch of poetry quoted in the film that goes thusly: “No puppet master pulls the strings on high / A twisted nerve, a ganglion gone awry / Predestinates the sinner or the saint”. The notion is, of course, that one’s character and actions can all be traced back to one’s genetic makeup. That’s not a particularly controversial opinion in itself... unless, as here in Twisted Nerve: the Movie, it’s suggested that the mentally ill and their siblings are predestined to be psychopathic murderers.

The main character is Martin Durney (played by the baby-faced Hywel Bennet), a twenty-something university drop-out who’s doted upon by his mother but despised by his stepfather, who regards him as a useless layabout. His brother, who’s been safely packed off to an institution, is what the film calls a “mongol”, but whom we might describe today as a person with Down’s syndrome.

One day, while visiting a toy shop, Martin commits an act of shoplifting that alters his life in two ways. Firstly, he ends up being kicked out of the family mansion in London. Secondly, he meets Susan Harper (Hayley Mills), a guest house owner’s daughter with whom he becomes infatuated. So infatuated, in fact, that it’s not long before he shows up on her doorstep, posing as a mentally handicapped man left with nowhere else to stay by his holidaying father.

Hmm... None of this sounds as downright twisted as it comes across in the film. Try to think along the lines of The Talented Mr. Ripley (published a decade prior to the release of this film and likely an influence) which also features a main character who switches between identities to get what he wants. But then add in the fact that Martin exploits the sympathies of people genuinely concerned for the welfare of someone with learning difficulties, and you’re a little closer to understanding his unsettling motives.

Twisted Nerve builds a lot of suspense on its foundations of truths concealed and trouble brewing. And I mean a lot. Many reviewers seem to have found it tedious and slow, but there’s so much danger bubbling beneath the surface of every situation, every conversation, that I couldn’t look away. Granted, at nearly two hours, there’s a lot of conversation, but Roy Boulting and Leo Marks’s dialogue is dynamite ready to blow – multilayered, full of tension and acid wit.

And the unease is reflected in the sixties London setting too. It’s a fascinating time period, bristling with underlying tension between rigidly defined social classes, races, sexes, age groups – all drawn into conflict here, whether it’s the doctors who constantly refer to an Indian student as “the maharajah”, or the trouble Susan attracts simply because of her attractiveness.

I think Hitchcock would’ve enjoyed this immensely. He’d certainly poach two cast members – the excellent Billie Whitelaw and Barry Foster – for his similar but even more gruelling and repugnant London-set suspenser, Frenzy, a few years later. As in Frenzy, it’s not long in Twisted Nerve before someone winds up dead but, where Hitchcock achieved a morbid, almost casual sense of horror, everything’s a little more shock-horror here. But, when you’ve got the shocks and you’ve got the horror, who’s complaining?

Rating: 4/5