Review-"Phenomena" (Dario Argento)

So Zombie introduced me to the great Dario Argento with "Profondo Rosso" (1975) which I enjoyed but, honestly didn't get. The plot was so confounded and I had not yet become accustomed to the fact that with Argento, lets face it, plot is not the point. It took me a few movies ("Suspiria," "Do You Like Hitchcock") to get the tone of Argento and now I have found my personal favorite.

"Phenomena" (1985) is completely over the top and I love it. Set near a Swiss boarding school the film features a nubile (and frighteningly only 15-yeard old) Jennifer Connelly as Jennifer Corvino, the daughter of a famous actor.Unbeknownst to Jennifer someone is killing young girls near the school but when her French, chain-smoking roommate Sophie goes missing Jennifer becomes concerned. At some point in the film, with the help of the Scottish (yes, in Switzerland) entomologist Prof. John McGregor, (who conveniently is working with authorities on the disappearance of another girl who used to work with him) Jennifer realizes that she can communicate with insects (oh and she also sleepwalkes.) McGregor is confined to a wheelchair and has a pet monkey, Inga, that serves as a sort of nurse and butler... keep this monkey in mind my friends!

After many outrageous scenes, such as when Jennifer calls down a swarm of insects to scare her taunting school-mates or when she is led to the recently deserted house of the killer by a Sarcophagus Fly or gets imprisoned at school for being supposedly insane (or...the list goes on), Jennifer decides she has had enough and would like to go home.

A lady from the school, Frau Brückner, comes to get her, saying that it has all been arranged and Jennifer is to come with her until the morning when she will take her to the airport. We all know this is a bad idea but Jennifer goes none the less. This is the point at which the viewer begins to feel slightly like they are watching an episode of Scooby-Doo as it becomes obvious that the Frau, one of the first characters introduced in the movie is the killer. She tries to poison Jennifer who is too smart but does manage to kill the inspector who had come to her "rescue." At one point, Jennifer falls in a vat of bodies, maggots, and goop that was so revolting I literally gagged. The nearly final twist comes when the Frau's hideously disfigured son chases Jennifer from the house after she tried to console him (his back was turned of course) seemingly in an attempt to eat her.

The movie climaxes with Jennifer in a very "Camp Crystal Lake-ish" boat trying to beat back the cannibal-goblin boy into the water before she again calls on her insect friends who EAT HIS FACE, (yes, he gets even uglier) and leaving him to drown in the water. On the shore, an exhausted Jennifer is met by her fathers attorney who is promptly decapitated by a not-dead-yet Frau Bruckner with a piece of sheet metal! As Bruckner stands over Jennifer with the sheet metal at her throat the most exciting ending of cinematic history is about to occur...wait for it....THE MONKEY SAVES THE DAY! Yes, remember Inga? Well at some point in the story a distraught Inga (oh yea, I forgot to tell you McGregor dies too) finds a straight razor in a trashcan and just happens to hold onto it while searching for Jennifer and then finds her and slices the Frau repeatedly in the back! Yes, you are not hallucinating, and I am not lying guys. Insects, Jennifer Connelly and a monkey with a straight razor, all hail Dario Argento!

*P.S. I am 100% serious about this, I was so excited I got up and high-fived my television set.