PHENOMENA

1985

Written and Directed by Dario Argento

A.K.A. Creepers (Sorry, no joke this time)

Plot We open on scenic Swizterland, where a teenaged girl gets left behind on a field trip. Lost, the foriegn girl wanders into a nearby house, hoping to find help. Instead, she finds an unseen monster, who breaks out of its chains, chases the girl through a waterfall, and into a plate glass window, killing her. Incidentally, my one-year-old son thought this sequence was awesome. Roll opening credits Enter Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly!), the daughter of a famous American actor, sent to the famous Swiss school for girls, the Wagner Academy. On the way, her icy headmistress (Daria Niccolodi, this is an Argento film, after all) witnesses the odd phenomena (get the title? HA!) ofa bee landing on Jennifer's hand pleasantly. "All bugs just like me, and he'd never sting me" she explains cryptically, while we clearly can see that yes indeed, this bee is stinging her. Oops. Once at the school, her French roommate informs her that there has been some murders of young girls in the area, and she's glad she has a roommate now (not to mention one with a famous dad) Meanwhile, we meet Prof. John McGregor (Donald Pleasance!), a Scottish forensic entymologist called in to work on the cases. He speaks with a thick brogue, uses a wheelchair, lives in a ultra-mod art deco home, and best of all, has a helper chimpanzee! That night, Jennifer goes sleepwalking and half-witnesses the killer in action, before wantering into town and nearly getting run over by two college boys. They try to help her, but she's still in a trance, resulting in her getting thrown from the car into the woods, where she's discovered by Chimpy, who takes her back to the lab. John takes a liking to her, comparing her to his now deceased daughter. The bugs in his lab take a liking to her too. He then sends her home, after giving her advice of trying to wake herself whenever she thinks she's sleepwalking. The next day, the not-at-all-suspiciously-icy headmistress is distressed that Jennifer managed to leave the grounds at all in the night (I wonder why...) and the staff soon hook electrodes to her brain, which seems to accomplish nothing. That night, her roommate sneaks out to see her boyfriend, and borrows Jennifer's coat. After he leaves, the killer comes out of the bushes and attacks her, obviously confusing her for our lead. The real Jennifer, meanwhile, is sleepwalking again, but wakes herself up in mid-stride. (Wow, that should be the treatment for ALL somnambulists, it works so well!) When she notices that Frenchy is gone, she wanders outside. There, she almost gives up hope of finding her, but then a firefly suddenly appears and magically leads her to a bloody glove. (Wha-a-a?) When she gets inside, she discovers it to be covered in maggots! Ew! The next day, she relays her story to John, who theorizes her blow to the head falling out of the car granted her ESP. Also, all insects have ESP. (Again, Wha-a-a?) Now she can apparently communicate with them. Those maggots from the glove belong to a species of fly called "The Great Sarcophogus" and only congregate and propagate on corpses. So the killer must keep in contact with the body parts. (Again, Eww!) The Sarcophogus can trace death for miles, so he proposes that she take the fly and find the killer, in a scheme that would only occur in a giallo. When she does, the bug takes her to the house from the beginning that's now for sale. She gets caught and chewed out by the realtor and sent off. A pan of the camera reveals maggoty body parts strewn below the floorboards, however. Can't the realtor smell the rot himself? No wonder the nice cabin hasn't been sold... When she gets back to the school, it turns out that snoops read her diary and found out her story with the bugs, and now the girls all start teasing her. In her "Carrie"-esque fury, she ends up summoning about a thousand bugs to the window before passing out. When she awakens, she's treated as crazy by the headmistress and strapped to a medical table with IV's in her. (A. didn't she just prove she can control bugs? and B. how is an IV going to help hysteria?) Eventually her nurse falls asleep, and she escapes in what can only be described as a Max Fleischer-esque bit of hamfisted tomfoolery at keeping quiet. There's even a cuckoo-clock gag. When she finally makes it to John's house, she discovers that he's been killed while riding the awesomest stair-climber ever. The next morning, while deeply distraught, she tries to get plane tickets home. Her dad's ratfink agent instead calls up the headmistress, who finds her and has her spend the night at her heavily fortified home before catching the morning flight. Pay no attention to the fact that her mirror's are covered, she has a diseased son who is scared by them. Luckily he's in his room and won't be seen by Jennifer (riiight...) Also, she has some terrible fever, according to the headmistress, so she should take these pills she has. If you haven't guessed who the killer is so far, then shame on you. This is easily one of Argento's kookiest films (which is saying a lot) yet it's probably also one of his easiest to approach for an American. He starts of with a routine that plays out very much like his prior masterpiece, "Susperia", but quickly turns it into a hybrid of Carrie and Willard, despite the Giallo setting. The last twenty or so minutes, by the way, are so crazy that they make up for every bit of foot dragging that leads up to them, especially what my friend Cliffie, over at Cliffie's Notes calls "The most metal ending EVER." Having bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest on the soundtrack doesn't hurt the big steaming matza ball of crazy either. NOTE: If you see this under the title "Creepers" at the vidya store, don't get it. The U.S. edit apparently cuts out almost 45 minutes of runtime from the film. I really can't figure out how they could have done such an insane thing, but then again, this film IS insane...

Rating I give Phenomena: Four and a Half Rotting Shambling Corpses out of Five.

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