Tenebrae (1982)
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American author Peter Neal is in Italy for his book publicity tour. But it seems the a few too many people are dying as a result of his new book.
Peter decided there can be nothing better than to find out who is doing it so
that the “who dunnit?” mystery could actually be solved by himself: a further
publicity coup. But when his agent dies, this crime spree is going to head way
too close to home.
Overall: If I’ve found out anything about Dario Argento is how much his fans read into his horror films. I have yet to find a film of his that I like and this won’t be the first. It essentially is ahead of its own time by having a killer use a book to be the reason they are killing (think “Basic Instinct” or “Bone Collector”) and yet the reason the killer is killing, is to wipe the deviants off the earth (think “Seven”). So now that we’ve set that down, the whole Doberman Pinscher chase scene isn’t even related to those genres at all...the girl happens to be lost while the killer is stalking some hooker. So the apartment’s owners daughter antagonizes a Doberman Pinscher so much, the dog leaps over a 10 foot high wall to get her - in a short skirt and high heels she sprints down the street, across a field and fends off the dog for a minute...ends up in the killer’s backyard and house while still fending off the dog, then the killer returns home and kills her…just so the dog can no longer be part of the story. A supposed deviant is a lesbian the killer has found and yet her hooker lover’s (more of a traditional deviant than anyone) death is almost an aside...by accident. Considering the lesbian vampires films made in Italy, I doubt seriously Italians saw lesbians as bad people back then. Now had the same murders been committed in Russia, that’s another film (“Chikatilo”). You can basically predict when the murders are gonna happy because the same cheesy music comes on before each murder - it was so predictable, I figured I could take a small nap and program my brain to awake upon the music coming on. Even my girlfriend who was doing other stuff the entire time, knew when a murder would occur. So much for a murder mystery if we all know when it will happen, eh? I will admit the ending was a nice twist…and yet (spoiler) we see so little of the killer that we never truly know why they felt the need to pick on Peter Neal in the first place. There’s not enough history as to why the killer seeks to emulate Neal’s books. Ugh! By the way, "Tenebrae" means "shadows" or "darkness." Comparison: Basic Instinct meets Seven |
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