219-451: Dario Argento ( Italian: [ˈdaːrjo arˈdʒɛnto] ; born 7 September 1940) is an Italian film director, screenwriter and producer. His influential work in the horror and giallo genres during the 1970s and 1980s has led him to being referred to as the "Master of the Thrill" and the "Master of Horror". His films as director include his "Animal Trilogy", consisting of The Bird with
438-789: A 3D remake of Deep Red , but subsequently this project was shelved due to the commercial failure of Giallo in Italian cinemas. He then announced his decision to write a new screenplay . On 4 March 2011, it was announced that Rutger Hauer had signed on to play Van Helsing in Argento's Dracula 3D , which began shooting in Budapest later in the year. It was released on 19 May 2012 to generally negative reviews. In 2021, Argento returned to acting and portrayed Lui in Gaspar Noe's 2021 psychological drama film Vortex . The film screened in
657-563: A Catholic secondary school as a teenager, Argento began working as a film critic, writing for magazines and as a columnist for the Rome-based newspaper Paese Sera While working at the newspaper, Argento also began working as a screenwriter. His most notable works were for Sergio Leone , Bernardo Bertolucci and his collaboration on the story for the Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western Once Upon
876-456: A Showtime television series, called " Jenifer ". For season two of the series, Argento directed " Pelts ", an adaption of the F. Paul Wilson short story of the same name. In 2007, Argento finished the final film of his Three Mothers trilogy, The Mother of Tears , which is set in Rome and centres on the titular "third mother", Mater Lacrimarum. Argento and Jace Anderson share writing credits for
1095-570: A VM18 rating, meaning it could not be seen legally by persons under the age of eighteen. Argento had desired a VM14 rating, both to attract a younger audience and to increase the film's chances of commercial success. Tenebrae features scenes of female homosexuality; attitudes towards homosexuality in Italy were fairly conservative at the time, and Argento said he wanted to "recount this subject freely and in an open manner, without interference or being ashamed". The VM18 rating upset him, as he believed it
1314-801: A British erotic horror film series is Hellraiser . Alien features heavy erotic imagery, with the design of the Xenomorph by H. R. Giger featuring both phallic and vaginal imagery, intended to symbolize patriarchal guilt as well as sex, rape, and pregnancy. Folk horror uses elements of folklore or other religious and cultural beliefs to instil fear in audiences. Folk horror films have featured rural settings and themes of isolation, religion and nature. Frequently cited examples are Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), The Wicker Man (1973), The Witch (2015), and Midsommar (2019). Local folklore and beliefs have been noted as being prevalent in horror films from
1533-422: A TV series called Turno di Notte , which had 15 episodes. Nine of the shows were directed by Luigi Cozzi , the other six by Lamberto Bava . Daria Nicolodi and Asia Argento starred in several of the episodes. Argento later produced and wrote the screenplays for two horror films directed by Michele Soavi, The Church (1989) and The Sect (1991). In 1990, Argento co-directed Two Evil Eyes with George Romero,
1752-586: A Time in the West in 1968. Argento began work on his directorial debut, the giallo film The Bird with the Crystal Plumage ( L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo , 1970), which was a major hit in Italy. Argento continued to concentrate largely on the giallo genre, directing two more successful thrillers, The Cat o' Nine Tails ( Il gatto a nove code , 1971) and Four Flies on Grey Velvet ( 4 mosche di velluto grigio , 1972). Along with The Bird with
1971-401: A beautiful woman in his youth." McDonagh also notes that Tenebrae expands on the themes of sexuality and transvestitism found in Argento's earlier films, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage , The Cat o' Nine Tails , Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1972), and Deep Red (1975), but believes that Tenebrae ' s "overall sensuality sets it apart from Argento's other gialli ." She says that
2190-437: A better view and witnesses Berti get hacked to death with an axe. However, Gianni is unable to see the murderer's face, and returns to Neal, only to find the novelist has been knocked unconscious on the lawn. Germani discovers that Berti was obsessed with Neal's novels, and believes the killings will stop now that Berti is dead. However, Bullmer, who is having an affair with Jane, is stabbed to death while waiting for his lover in
2409-468: A break from filmmaking after Suspiria ' s surprise success, Argento was spending time in Los Angeles, where an obsessed fan telephoned him repeatedly, to talk about Suspiria ' s influence on him. According to Argento, the calls began pleasantly enough but before long became more insistent, eventually menacing. The fan claimed that he wanted "to harm Argento in a way that reflected how much
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#17327729926952628-443: A co-production with Australia and Death Warmed Up (1984) a single production. Early features such as Melanie Read 's Trial Run (1984) where a mother is sent to remote cottage to photograph penguins and finds it habitat to haunted spirits, and Gaylene Preston's Mr. Wrong (1984) purchases a car that is haunted by its previous owner. Other films imitate American slasher and splatter films with Bridge to Nowhere (1986), and
2847-624: A compendium of set reports, interviews, and biographical detail. English sound designer , writer, and musician Heather Emmett published Sounds to Die For: Speaking the Language of Horror Film Sound , which includes the first in-depth study of the use of sound in Argento's films. In 2012, Argento was highlighted in the retrospective Argento: Il Cinema Nel Sangue at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. The retrospective celebrated
3066-478: A cracking musical score from ex-members of Goblin". Simonetti felt the score was good, but that it was only a "medium"-level success. However, it did enjoy a second wave of popularity being remixed in clubs. The album has had multiple reissues in numerous countries since its original release in 1982 on the Italian Cinevox label. The album was also released by Waxwork Records on a double LP that included
3285-423: A crime from the past committed (an accidental drowning, infidelity, a scorned lover) and a ready made group of victims (camp counselors, students, wedding parties). The genre was derided by several contemporary film critics of the era such as Ebert, and often were highly profitable in the box office. The release of Scream (1996), led to a brief revival of the slasher films for the 1990s. Other countries imitated
3504-434: A dislike for dissonance. Skin conductance responses (SCRs), heart rate (HR), and electromyographic (EMG) responses vary in response to emotional stimuli, showing higher for negative emotions in what is known as the "negative bias." When applied to dissonant music, HR decreases (as a bodily form of adaptation to harsh stimulation), SCR increases, and EMG responses in the face are higher. The typical reactions go through
3723-585: A disputed story credit during the filming of Suspiria . Nicolodi therefore only agreed to a brief appearance in Tenebrae . By her own account, she originally asked for the small role of Jane McKerrow—which ultimately went to Veronica Lario . Nicolodi was, according to Alan Jones, cast as the woman on the beach in Neal's flashback. Conversely, Thomas Rostock states that Nicolodi was never intended for that role, only that of Jane. Transgender actress Eva Robin's
3942-480: A drive-by shooting outside a local cinema, Argento reflected on the senselessness of the killings: "To kill for nothing, that is the true horror of today ... when that gesture has no meaning whatsoever it's completely repugnant, and that's the sort of atmosphere I wanted to put across in Tenebrae ." Argento reportedly offered the lead role of Peter Neal to Christopher Walken , but eventually, it went to Anthony Franciosa . Kim Newman felt that Franciosa's casting
4161-429: A few weeks, the fan found Argento and resumed his calls, issuing more threats. The director decided to return to Italy. Argento felt the escalating nature of the fan's threats were "symptomatic of that city of broken dreams" with its "celebrity stalkers and senseless crime". The second incident occurred during Argento's stay at The Beverly Hilton , where a Japanese tourist was shot dead in the hotel lobby. Later hearing of
4380-428: A good film." Shelley called these films derivative of "American films and presenting generic American material". These films included the horror film productions of Antony I. Ginnane . While Australia would have success with international films between the mid-1980s and the 2000s, less than five horror films were produced in the country between 1993 and 2000. It was only after the success of Wolf Creek (2005) that
4599-413: A gory roller-coaster ride packed with fast and furious murders" and that he "shouldn't resist what [his] hardcore audience wanted". He added that he had also become irritated that in the years since his last giallo so many other directors had made films derivative of his own genre-defining works. Argento said that Tenebrae was directly influenced by two distressing incidents that occurred in 1980. On
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#17327729926954818-483: A group of gleeful boys on a pale-white beach. The second flashback shows the vicious revenge-murder of the woman some time later. McDonagh notes that all of the fetishistic imagery of these flashbacks, combined with the sadistic details of the murder sequences in the main narrative, "set the parameters of Tenebrae ' s fetishistic and fetishicized visual vocabulary, couched in terms both ritualistic and orgiastically out of control ... Peter Neal indulges in sins of
5037-490: A half minutes without a pause, jerk or cut. If I was to be stuck on a desert island, I'd want Tenebrae just so I could watch this single shot .. The shot stands out even more with the fact that the Luma [sic] camera used was new to the industry at the time, and was bulky and not as easy to use as it is now." —Patrick McAllister, 2004 Gracey refers to the film's cinematography as "nothing short of astounding", and cites
5256-506: A jump scare in a mirror can further build tension. Tight framing and close-ups are also commonly used; these can build tension and induce anxiety by not allowing the viewer to see beyond what is around the protagonist . The interaction between horror films and their audiences is another significant aspect discussed by Rhodes. He notes that horror films often serve as a safe space for viewers to confront and process their fears. This cathartic experience can provide psychological relief and
5475-408: A lesbian journalist, is murdered at her home along with her lover Marion. Maria, the young daughter of Neal's landlord, is later hacked to death with an axe after discovering the killer's lair. Neal notices that TV interviewer Cristiano Berti has an unusually intense interest in his work. That night, Neal and his Italian assistant Gianni go to watch Berti's house. Gianni approaches the house alone to get
5694-557: A little, but knowing it was the last day of filming and her last scene to complete, Nicolodi screamed loudly and for a long time, much to Argento's and the crew's surprise. Nicolodi said the scene was her "cathartic release from the whole nightmare". Although Tenebrae was an Italian production, most of the cast spoke their dialogue in English to increase the film's chances of success in the United States. For domestic audiences,
5913-422: A lower phonation frequency range). Another study by Baliatsas et al. observed that there is a correlation between exposure to infrasound and low-frequency noises and sleep-related problems. Though most horror films keep the audio around 20–30 Hz, the noise can still be unsettling in long durations. Another technique used in horror films to provoke a response from the audience is cognitive dissonance , which
6132-410: A modern setting and made other horror material which pushed the erotic content of their vampire films that was initiated by Black Sunday . In the 1980s, the older horror characters of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster rarely appeared, with vampire themed films continued often in the tradition of authors like Anne Rice where vampirism becomes a lifestyle choice rather than plague or curse. Following
6351-520: A new generation of filmmakers would continuously make horror genre films in Australia that continued into the 2010s. By 2005, New Zealand has produced around 190 feature films, with about 88% of them being made after 1976. New Zealand horror film history was described by Philip Matthews of Stuff as making "po-faced gothic and now we do horror for laughs." Among the earliest known New Zealand horror films productions are Strange Behavior (1981),
6570-475: A new genre nature taking revenge on humanity with The Birds (1963) that was expanded into a trend into the 1970s. Following the success of Willard (1971), a film about killer rats, 1972 had similar films with Stanley (1972) and an official sequel Ben (1972). Other films followed in suit such as Night of the Lepus (1972), Frogs (1972), Bug (1975), Squirm (1976) and what Muir described as
6789-524: A particular example as highlighting Argento's "passion for technical prowess and breathtaking visuals". Influenced by the penultimate shot in Antonioni's The Passenger (1975), on which Tovoli had also been the cinematographer, one of Tenebrae ' s main setpieces is the murder of the lesbian couple. To introduce the scene, Argento and Tovoli employed the use of a Louma crane to film a several minutes-long tracking shot . Owing to its extreme length,
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7008-483: A person relates to that specific cultural from then on in their life. The history of horror films was described by author Siegbert Solomon Prawer as difficult to read as a linear historical path, with the genre changing throughout the decades, based on the state of cinema , audience tastes and contemporary world events . Films prior to the 1930s , such as early German expressionist cinema and trick films , have been retrospectively described as horror films as
7227-416: A pistol when a figure leaps through her window and hacks her to death. Inspector Altieri arrives at the house and is killed with an axe to the back. Germani and Anne arrive soon afterwards and confront the murderer, who is revealed to be Neal. Upon learning the details of Berti's sadistic murder spree, Neal recovered a previously repressed memory involving his murder of a girl who sexually humiliated him when he
7446-561: A production of Verdi 's Macbeth , the production was beset by real-life misfortunes that Argento suspected were caused by the supposed traditional "curse" on the Shakespearean play. Argento's father died during its production, Vanessa Redgrave quit the project before filming began, he had problems working with his former long-time girlfriend and collaborator Daria Nicolodi on-set, and the cast and crew were plagued by several minor accidents and mishaps. In 1987–88, Argento produced
7665-626: A professional and romantic relationship with Italian actress and screenwriter Daria Nicolodi ; they met in 1974 during casting for Deep Red , and their daughter Asia Argento was born in 1975. Nicolodi co-wrote Argento's Suspiria (1977) and appeared in Argento's Deep Red (1975), Inferno (1980), Tenebrae (1982), Phenomena (1985), Opera (1987), and The Mother of Tears (2007). Argento and Nicolodi separated in 1985. An actress and director, Asia Argento's earliest screen appearances includes roles in her father's productions Demons 2 (1986) and The Church (1989) before being directed by her father in
7884-399: A public square. Gianni is haunted by the thought that he missed the importance of something he saw at Berti's house. He returns to the house and suddenly remembers that he had heard Berti confessing to his attacker: "I killed them all, I killed them all!" Before Gianni can share this detail with anyone, he is strangled to death from the back seat of his car. Jane sits at her kitchen table with
8103-522: A sense of empowerment as viewers face and overcome their anxieties in a controlled environment. The communal experience of watching horror films in theaters or discussing them in fan communities also plays a crucial role in the genre's impact and popularity.[6] Music is a key component of horror films. In Music in the Horror Film (2010), Lerner writes "music in horror film frequently makes us feel threatened and uncomfortable" and intends to intensify
8322-413: A similar problem in both seeing and not seeing the murderer at the scene of the crime, and does not realize his mistake until it is almost too late. This recurring theme, according to Douglas E. Winter , creates "a world of danger and deception, where seeing is not believing". Flanagan observes that in Tenebrae , Argento offers two characters who suffer from impaired vision. Gianni (Christian Borromeo)
8541-414: A spectacular fashion, their death hardly moving the narrative on at all. Traditional cause and effect are seemingly forgotten or actively ignored". According to James Gracey, author of a book about Argento's work, with Tenebrae Argento "explores some of his most reoccurring themes and preoccupations, such as Freudian psychology , sexual deviancy , repressed trauma, voyeurism , audience spectatorship, and
8760-401: A streaming service. He is involved in operating a horror memorabilia store located at Via dei Gracchi 260 in Rome named Profondo Rosso , after his classic film Deep Red . In the cellar is a collection of his movies. The store is managed by his long-time collaborator and friend Luigi Cozzi . He has contributed in the development of the survival horror video game Dead Space , and also in
8979-471: A synth-heavy score inspired by rock and disco music. Tenebrae was a modest success in Italy; it reached theatres with little controversy after Argento made cuts to one of the most violent scenes. However, in the United Kingdom, it was added to the infamous list of " video nasties " and banned from sale until 1999. The film's theatrical distribution in the United States was delayed until 1984 when it
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9198-472: A trick razor. Neal waits inside for Anne to return, but when she opens the door, she knocks over a metal sculpture that impales and kills Neal. A horrified Anne stands in the rain screaming. According to the film historian and critic Bill Warren , Tenebrae is a typical example of the giallo film genre: "visually extremely stylish, with imaginative, sometimes stunning cinematography", it presents "mysterious, gruesome murders, often in picturesque locations; at
9417-532: A two-step process of first orienting to the problem (the slowing of HR), then a defensive process (a stronger increase in SCR and an increase in HR). This initial response can sometimes result in a fight-or-flight response , which is the characteristic of dissonance that horror films rely on to frighten and unsettle viewers. Tenebrae (film) Tenebrae ( lit. ' "darkness" ' , also known as Tenebre )
9636-464: A two-story anthology film inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. In 1992, Argento filmed Trauma , starring his daughter Asia Argento , in Minneapolis, MN. It is largely a traditional giallo , but in an American setting. Like many of Argento's films, it contains an optical illusion witnessed by a character stumbling upon a murder, but he or she, like the audience, misinterprets the nature of
9855-399: A typical, "clichéd and remote" giallo . Neal, previously passive, begins to control what happens in his own story, which is more personal with "weight and meaning". According to Rostock, this structure allows Argento equal scope to play with the narrative while commenting upon it, all without having to deviate from the advancement of the plot. According to Kim Newman, the use of a sculpture as
10074-465: A weapon makes literal one of the themes of the film: "art that kills people". Rostock concurs, saying that as the film is a commentary on art, the only weapon that can end the narrative is art itself. According to Gracey, many have compared Argento with the character of Peter Neal, speculating that he serves as an alter-ego for the director. Gracey refers to Tenebrae as a "reflexive commentary on [the director's] earlier work." The director himself saw
10293-814: A whole was a style like film noir and not bound to certain cinematic elements like the Western or science fiction film . The term "gothic" is frequently used to describe a stylized approach to showcasing location, desire, and action in film. Contemporary views of the genre associate it with imagery of castles at hilltops and labyrinth like ancestral mansions that are in various states of disrepair. Narratives in these films often focus on an audience's fear and attraction to social change and rebellion. The genre can be applied to films as early as The Haunted Castle (1896), Frankenstein (1910) as well as to more complex iterations such as Park Chan-wook 's Stoker (2013) and Jordan Peele 's Get Out (2017). The gothic style
10512-409: A world inhabited by fewer people with the result that the remainder are wealthier and less crowded. Something has happened to make it that way but no one remembers, or wants to remember ... It isn't exactly my Blade Runner , of course, but nevertheless a step into the world of tomorrow. If you watch the film with this perspective in mind, it will become very apparent." Argento later insisted that
10731-523: A young audience featuring teenage monsters grew popular in the 1950s with several productions from American International Pictures (AIP) and productions of Herman Cohen with I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957). This led to later productions like Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957) and Frankenstein's Daughter (1958). Teen horror cycle in the 1980s often showcased explicit gore and nudity, with John Kenneth Muir described as cautionary conservative tales where most of
10950-491: Is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes . Broad elements include monsters , apocalyptic events , and religious or folk beliefs. Horror films have existed for more than a century . Early inspirations from before the development of film include folklore , religious beliefs and superstitions of different cultures, and
11169-497: Is a "widespread and engrained acceptance of supernatural forces" in many Asian cultures, and suggests this is related to animist , pantheist and karmic religious traditions, as in Buddhism and Shintoism . Although Chinese , Japanese , Thai and Korean horror has arguably received the most international attention, horror also makes up a considerable proportion of Cambodian and Malaysian cinema. Ian Olney described
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#173277299269511388-525: Is a 1982 Italian giallo film written and directed by Dario Argento . The film stars Anthony Franciosa as American author Peter Neal, who – while in Rome promoting his latest murder-mystery novel – becomes embroiled in the search for a serial killer who may have been inspired to kill by his novel. John Saxon and Daria Nicolodi co-star as Neal's agent and assistant respectively, while Giuliano Gemma and Carola Stagnaro appear as detectives investigating
11607-521: Is a film subgenre that emerged in the 1970s with films such as Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1971) and Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972), which were soon followed by the influential Black Christmas (1974). Defining the Christmas horror genre has been described as challenging, as it has generally been regarded as a sub-genre of the slasher film . Adam Rockoff, in Rue Morgue , noted that
11826-499: Is a horror film trope , where an abrupt change in image accompanied with a loud sound intends to surprise the viewer. This can also be subverted to create tension, where an audience may feel more unease and discomfort by anticipating a jump scare. Mirrors are often used in horror films to create visual depth and build tension. Shelton argues mirrors have been used so frequently in horror films that audiences have been conditioned to fear them, and subverting audience expectations of
12045-483: Is a subgenre of horror fiction that blends sensual and sexual imagery with horrific themes for the sake of sexual arousal . Erotic horror has had influences on French and American horror cinema. The works of Jean Rollin , such as Le Viol du Vampire and Fascination , are considered quintessential erotic horror films, blending deeply sexual imagery with gore. American cinema has also featured notable erotic horror film franchises, such as Candyman . An example of
12264-463: Is a subgenre of horror film whose common themes are based on religion and focus heavily on supernatural beings, often with demons as the main antagonists that bring a sense of threat. Such films commonly use religious elements, including the crucifix or cross, holy water, the Bible, the rosary, the sign of the cross, the church, and prayer, which are forms of religious symbols and rituals used to depict
12483-468: Is a vibrant city. It is modern." Most of Tenebrae ' s location shooting was carried out in Rome's EUR business and residential district. The first flashback scene was filmed at the Capocotta beach , south of the city near Ostia . The shoplifting scene near the beginning of Tenebrae was filmed on location at department store La Rinascente , off Piazza Fiume. Bullmer's death in a public square
12702-399: Is an eyewitness to an axe-murder, but the trauma of seeing the killing causes him to disregard a vital clue. Returning to the scene of the crime, he suddenly remembers everything and is murdered before being able to tell anyone. Germani reveals that he is a big fan of the novels of Agatha Christie , Mickey Spillane , Rex Stout , and Ed McBain , but admits that he has never been able to guess
12921-428: Is applied to several films throughout the history of the horror film. This includes Universal Pictures' horror films of the 1930s, the revival of gothic horror in the 1950s and 1960s with films from Hammer, Roger Corman 's Poe-cycle, and several Italian productions. By the 1970s American and British productions often had vampire films set in a contemporary setting, such as Hammer Films had their Dracula stories set in
13140-412: Is arguably the film's most potent shock, Neal at one point really does make Germani "go away", virtually replacing him on screen "in a shot that is as schematically logical as it is logically outrageous." Earlier, Neal killed a woman who – to his and the audience's surprise – was not Anne, but Altieri. Tenebrae itself is split almost exactly into two parts. The first half belongs to the murders of Berti;
13359-403: Is easier to view films as cycles opposed to genres, suggesting the slasher film viewed as a cycle would place it in terms of how the film industry was economically and production wise, the personnel involved in their respective eras, and how the films were marketed exhibited and distributed. Mark Jancovich in an essay, declared that "there is no simple 'collective belief' as to what constitutes
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#173277299269513578-452: Is hacked to death after having her arm cut off was filmed about eight times. Argento was not satisfied with any of the takes he had, which used a type of bicycle pump to spray fake blood from the "wound" across the white wall, so the director had Corridori place an explosive squib in the prosthetic arm – a solution which apparently satisfied Argento. Much of Tenebrae takes place during daytime, or in harshly over-lit interiors. Except for
13797-421: Is in some ways as artificial and deliberate as a De Palma thriller, Tenebrae contains more likeable characters, believable relationships, and more emphasis on the erotic than can be found in any other Argento film." Gordon Sullivan of DVD Verdict wrote, " Tenebre is a straight-up giallo in the old-school tradition. It may have been filmed in 1982, but it comes straight out of the '70s tradition. We've got all
14016-562: Is particularly prominent in the cinema of Japan , Korea , and Thailand , among other countries. Despite being the subject of social and legal controversy due to their subject matter, some horror films and franchises have seen major commercial success , influenced society and spawned several popular culture icons . The Dictionary of Film Studies defines the horror film as representing "disturbing and dark subject matter, seeking to elicit responses of fear , terror , disgust , shock, suspense , and, of course, horror from their viewers." In
14235-590: Is the killer") both use such a similar plot twist to Tenebrae that Argento may have used them as partial models for his story. Kim Newman and Alan Jones suggest that the mysteries of Arthur Conan Doyle , Rex Stout , and Agatha Christie were all obvious influences on Tenebrae , and there are many references to these authors throughout the film. One example is the use of a quote from Sherlock Holmes in Conan Doyle's novel The Sign of Four (1890): "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated
14454-530: Is the light of neon, headlights, and omnipresent flashes ... Caring about shadows seemed ridiculous to me and, more than that, reassuring." Argento filmed half-empty streets and shops where he could, in an attempt to reflect a futuristic setting where a disaster had diminished significantly the population of his imaginary city. Tovoli used Kodak 5247 film stock (125 ASA speed rating) for daylight scenes, and Kodak 5293 (250 ASA) for night shoots. Tovoli rated both at 300 ASA to ensure controlled overexposure of
14673-408: Is the only director ever granted permission to shoot there. The Stendhal Syndrome was distributed in the U.S. by cult B-movie distribution company Troma Entertainment . In the early 1990s, Argento was interested in collaborating with Italian director Lucio Fulci on a horror film. Due to financial setbacks, the project was repeatedly postponed. In 1996, Argento was able to gather the funding, but
14892-477: Is unaware that he has also been followed to Rome by his embittered ex-fiancée, Jane. Just before Neal arrives in Rome, Elsa, a young kleptomaniac, is murdered with a razor by an unseen assailant. The murderer sends Neal a letter informing him that his books have inspired him to go on a killing spree. Neal is soon contacted by Police Captain Germani and his partner, Inspector Altieri. More killings take place. Tilde,
15111-479: Is very different from those the band had produced for Argento previously. The early 1980s had seen Simonetti experimenting with dance music, and he decided on a more electronic sound for Tenebrae . Simonetti described the score as an electronica /rock hybrid, with the main theme including disco elements. So it would not be difficult to accommodate Argento's preference for long takes, Simonetti, Pignatelli and Morante made sure to play each song for 3–4 minutes. Recording
15330-466: Is when someone experiences tension in themselves and is urged to relieve that tension. Dissonance is the clashing of unpleasant or harsh sounds. A study by Prete et al. identified that the ability to recognize dissonance relied on the left hemisphere of the brain, while consonance relied on the right half. There is a stronger preference for consonance; this difference is noticeable even in early stages of life. Previous musical experience also can influence
15549-608: The A Nightmare on Elm Street series, while others disassociate themselves from characters and series and focusing on genre auteur directors like Dario Argento , while others fans would deem Argento's films as too mainstream, having preferences more underground films . Andrew Tudor wrote in Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie suggested that "Genre is what we collectively believe it to be" In addition to these perspectives, Rhodes emphasizes
15768-500: The Australian Film Commission to change its focus to being a more commercial operation. This closed in 1980 as its funding was abused by investors using them as tax avoiding measures. A new development known as the 10BA tax shelter scheme was developed ushering a slew of productions, leading to what Peter Shelley, author of Australian Horror Films , suggested meant "making a profit was more important than making
15987-582: The Gothic and horror literature of authors such as Edgar Allan Poe , Bram Stoker , and Mary Shelley . From origins in silent films and German Expressionism , horror only became a codified genre after the release of Dracula (1931). Many sub-genres emerged in subsequent decades, including body horror , comedy horror , erotic horror , slasher films , splatter films , supernatural horror and psychological horror . The genre has been produced worldwide, varying in content and style between regions. Horror
16206-503: The Southeast Asia region, including Thailand and Indonesia . The found footage horror film "technique" gives the audience a first person view of the events on screen, and presents the footage as being discovered after. Horror films which are framed as being made up of "found-footage" merge the experiences of the audience and characters, which may induce suspense, shock, and bafflement. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas noted that
16425-511: The novel , play and the film's story relying on the supernatural . Newman discussed the genre in British Film Institute 's Companion to Horror where he noted that Horror films in the 1930s were easy to identify, but following that decade, "the more blurred distinctions become, and horror becomes less like a discrete genre than an effect which can be deployed within any number of narrative settings or narrative patterns". In
16644-462: The "Fear of the Demonic" features graphic accounts of satanic rites , witchcraft , exorcisms outside traditional forms of worship, as seen in films like The Exorcist (1973) or The Omen (1976). Some critics have suggested horror films can be a vessel for exploring contemporary cultural, political and social trends. Jeanne Hall, a film theorist, agrees with the use of horror films in easing
16863-413: The "turning point" in the genre with Jaws (1975), which became the highest-grossing film at that point and moved the animal attacks genres "towards a less-fantastic route" with less giant animals and more real-life creatures such as Grizzly (1976) and Night Creature (1977), Orca (1977), and Jaws 2 (1978). The film is linked with the environmental movements that became more mainstream in
17082-527: The 1940s, the horror film was viewed in different terms. Critic Siegfried Kracauer included The Lost Weekend among films described as "terror films" along with Shadow of a Doubt , The Dark Corner (1946), Gaslight (1944), Shock (1946), The Spiral Staircase (1946), The Stranger (1946) Spellbound (1945) while two years earlier, the New York Times described a new cycle of "horror" productions included Gaslight , The Woman in
17301-510: The 1960s and 1970s for horror films from Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain, as well as co-productions between these countries. Several productions, such as those in Italy, were co-productions due to the lack of international stars within the country. European horror films began developing strong cult following since the late 1990s. It is unknown when Australia's cinema first horror title may have been, with thoughts ranging from The Strangler's Grip (1912) to The Face at
17520-484: The 1970s and early 1980s such vegetarianism , animal rights movements , and organizations such as Greenpeace . Following Jaws , sharks became the most popular animal of the genre, ranging from similar such as Mako: The Jaws of Death (1976) and Great White (1981) to the Sharknado film series. James Marriott found that the genre had "lost momentum" since the 1970s while the films would still be made towards
17739-587: The 1980s , considers the film to be far inferior to Suspiria , but acknowledges that it was so "unremittingly gory" that it justified its US title of "Unsane". John Wiley Martin, although evaluating the film as a "technically mesmeric" one, felt that thematically it was a "disappointingly retrograde step" for Argento. Christopher Null of Filmcritic.com called it a "gory but not particularly effective Argento horror flick." Gary Johnson, editor of Images , complained, "Not much of Tenebre makes much sense. The plot becomes little more than an excuse for Argento to stage
17958-479: The 1990s teen horror cycle, Alexandra West described the general trend of these films is often looked down upon by critics, journals, and fans as being too glossy, trendy, and sleek to be considered worthwhile horror films. Horror films in Asia have been noted as being inspired by national, cultural or religious folklore , particularly beliefs in ghosts or spirits. In Asian Horror , Andy Richards writes that there
18177-466: The American mystery film Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), especially the scene of Eva Robin's wearing white while kneeling in the sand, which is a direct reference to Elizabeth Taylor in that film. Critics have identified various major themes in Tenebrae . In interviews conducted during the film's production, the usually somewhat reticent Argento offered his candid views on the thematic content of
18396-554: The American slasher film revival, such as South Korea's early 2000s cycle with Bloody Beach (2000), Nightmare (2000) and The Record (2000). Supernatural horror films integrate supernatural elements , such as the afterlife , spirit possession and religion into the horror genre. Teen horror is a horror subgenre that victimizes teenagers while usually promoting strong, anti-conformity teenage leads, appealing to young generations. This subgenre often depicts themes of sex, under-aged drinking, and gore. Horror films aimed
18615-406: The Crystal Plumage (1970), The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971) and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971); his " Three Mothers " trilogy, consisting of Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980) and The Mother of Tears (2007); and his stand-alone films Deep Red (1975), Tenebrae (1982), Phenomena (1985) and Opera (1987). He co-wrote the screenplay for Sergio Leone 's Once Upon a Time in
18834-467: The Crystal Plumage , these three films are frequently referred to as Argento's "Animal Trilogy". The director then turned his attention away from giallo movies, filming two Italian TV dramas and a period comedy, The Five Days ( Le cinque giornate , 1973). Argento returned to thrillers with Deep Red (1975), frequently cited by many critics as the best giallo ever made. The film made Argento known internationally and inspired other directors to work in
19053-462: The Dead (1978), Tim Lucas felt it "... so fused to the fabric of the picture that Tenebrae might be termed ... a giallo musicale ; that is, a giallo in which the soundtrack transcends mere accompaniment to occupy the same plane as the action and characters." Writers David Kerekes and David Slater were also favorable to the score; writing that the film "bristles with arresting imagery and
19272-520: The European release and was missing nearly all the film's violence, which effectively rendered the many horror sequences incomprehensible. Also, certain scenes that established the characters and their relationships were excised, making the film's narrative difficult to follow. This version of Tenebrae received nearly unanimously negative reviews. Tenebrae has been released on home media in many different versions in numerous territories. In 1983, when
19491-563: The Latin-American market employing Mexican actors, Mexican horror films were produced throughout the 1930s and 1940s, often reflecting on the overarching theme of science vs. religion conflict . Ushered by the release of El vampiro , the Mexploitation horror film era started in 1957, with films characterised by their low production values and camp appeal, often featuring vampires, wrestlers, and Aztec mummies. A key figure in
19710-501: The Living Dead led to an increase of violence and erotic scenes within the genre. The 1970s would expand on these themes with films that would delve into gorier pictures, as well as films that were near or straight pornographic hybrids. Genre cycles in this era include the natural horror film , and the rise of slasher films which would expand in the early 1980s . Towards the 1990s, postmodernism entered horror, while some of
19929-547: The Mexican horror scene (particularly in Germán Robles -starred vampire films) was producer Abel Salazar . The late 1960s saw the advent of the prominence of Carlos Enrique Taboada as an standout Mexican horror filmmaker, with films such as Hasta el viento tiene miedo (1967), El libro de piedra (1968), Más negro que la noche (1975) or Veneno para las hadas (1984). Mexican horror cinema has been noted for
20148-591: The Premiere section at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim for his performance. In 2022, Argento directed Dark Glasses , in his first directorial work since the 2012 film Dracula 3D. In 2014, Argento was slated to direct The Sandman , which had Iggy Pop attached to star and a script by David Tully. The film successfully raised over $ 195,000 from over 1,000 backers on Indiegogo in December 2014. However, filming has not commenced as of 2023, and
20367-402: The Rome of Tenebrae as unlike the one showed on television and in films, with none of the usual historical landmarks. Newman and Alan Jones agreed that this was a deliberate choice made by Argento, as some of his previous films had utilized so much of recognisable Italy. Argento himself said he had wanted to show Italy was not just a museum piece; Newman said it was Argento's way of saying, "Rome
20586-455: The Rome police, which earned a mixed reception; some fans appreciated the techno music score composed by ex-Goblin member Claudio Simonetti , but felt the film was too mainstream, with little of Argento's usual flourish. In the 2005 TV broadcast of Argento's Do You Like Hitchcock? , the director paid homage to Alfred Hitchcock after decades of being compared to him by critics. Later that year, he directed an episode of Masters of Horror ,
20805-551: The UK the posters had to be recalled after the London Underground refused to run them. New posters were issued that replaced the image of the wound and blood with a red ribbon. A similar change was made to the soundtrack sleeve. In the United States the film remained unseen until 1984, when Bedford Entertainment briefly released a heavily edited version under the title Unsane . It was approximately ten minutes shorter than
21024-473: The United Kingdom, the film was shorn of five seconds from the arm severing scene by the British Board of Film Classification before its theatrical release, on 19 May 1983. The advertising campaign for Tenebrae featured posters and a soundtrack sleeve depicting a woman with her throat cut, blood dripping from the wound. According to Jones, who worked for Tenebrae ' s distributor at the time, in
21243-420: The United States it was titled Unsane in its initial – heavily edited – incarnation. The Italian rock band Goblin had provided the scores for two of Argento's previous films, Deep Red (1975) and Suspiria (1977), but the director had employed English composer Keith Emerson for his foray outside of the giallo subgenre, 1980's Inferno . Goblin had disbanded that year, but in 1982 Argento asked three of
21462-519: The VHS edition was released in the United Kingdom, it was short by about four seconds. However, the film soon found itself included in a list of thirty-nine so-called " video nasties " that were successfully prosecuted and banned from sale in UK video stores under the Video Recordings Act 1984 . Deemed harmful to audiences, "video nasties" were strongly criticized for their violent content by
21681-401: The West (1968) and served as George A. Romero 's script consultant on Dawn of the Dead (1978), for which he also composed the soundtrack with his long-time collaborators Goblin . Argento was born in Rome , the son of Sicilian film producer and executive Salvatore Argento (1914–1987) and Brazilian photographer Elda Luxardo (1915–2013), who was of Italian ancestry. While still attending
21900-580: The Window (1919) while stories featuring ghosts would appear in Guyra Ghost Mystery (1921). By 1913, the more prolific era of Australian cinema ended with production not returning with heavy input of government finance in the 1970s. It took until the 1970s for Australia to develop sound film with television films that eventually received theatrical release with Dead Easy (1970) and Night of Fear (1973). The Cars That Ate Paris (1974)
22119-603: The Window (1944), Dark Waters (1944), Laura and Phantom Lady (1944). Mark Jancovich wrote in The Shifting Definitions of Genre: Essays on Labeling Films, Television Shows and Media (2008) that the term was virtually synonymous with mystery as a generic term, not being limited to films concerned with the strange, eerie and uncanny. Various writings on genre from Altman, Lawrence Alloway ( Violent America: The Movies 1946-1964 (1971)) and Peter Hutchings ( Approaches to Popular Film (1995)) implied it
22338-415: The acknowledged master of the genre, to the point where he felt confident enough to be openly self-referential to his own past, referencing the "reckless driving humor" from The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971) and the hero from The Bird with the Crystal Plumage . The scene in which Veronica Lario 's character, Jane, returns home directly references The Bird with the Crystal Plumage with its large sculpture in
22557-401: The actors' similar build while they were stood, one behind the other in front of him. "The crane shot ... should be one of the most memorable moments in cinema ... The shot begins outside the lower apartment window, moves up to the second floor window, up and over the roof of the building, down the other side and to a window on the opposite side of the building. The shot lasts two and
22776-427: The atmosphere created in imagery and themes. Dissonance , atonality and experiments with timbre are typical characteristics used by composers in horror film music. In the book Dark Dreams , author Charles Derry conceived horror films as focusing on three broad themes : the horror of personality , horror of Armageddon and the horror of the demonic . The horror of personality derives from monsters being at
22995-401: The audio and video problems. Additional corrections were made to the transfer and released by Synapse Films in 2016, as a steelbook edition limited to 3000 copies. The Arrow & Synapse DVD and Blu-ray releases are "completely uncut". Tenebrae has since become regarded as among Argento's best films by many fans and critics, with some calling it his last great film. AllMovie refers to
23214-518: The ban lasted until 1999, when Tenebrae was legally released on videotape with one second of footage removed in addition to the previously censored five (the BBFC-censored footage was uploaded as a video file, viewable on the distributors (Nouveax Pictures) website, in a clear signal of changing times). In 2003, the BBFC reclassified the film and passed it without any cuts. In Germany, the release
23433-439: The band's former members – Claudio Simonetti , Fabio Pignatelli , and Massimo Morante – to work on Tenebrae . Owing to their history together, Simonetti felt it appropriate that Argento's return to giallo films should use the core members of Goblin. The resulting synth -driven score was credited to "Simonetti-Pignatelli-Morante", as Goblin's former drummer owned the rights to use the band's name. Tenebrae ' s score
23652-572: The biblical account of the Massacre of the Innocents and more recently in works such as E. T. A. Hoffmann's " The Nutcracker and the Mouse King " (1816) and Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843). Although ghosts have largely been replaced by serial killers, Christmas horror creates an outlet through which to explore "a modern reinvention of the Christmas ghost story". Erotic horror
23871-560: The biggest hits of the decade included films from Japan with the success of Ring (1998). Horror is a malleable genre and often can be altered to accommodate other genre types such as science fiction , making some films difficult to categorize. A genre that emerged in the 1970s, body horror films focus on the process of a bodily transformation. In these films, the body is either engulfed by some larger process or heading towards fragmentation and collapse. The focus can be on apocalyptic implication of an entire society being overtaken, but
24090-524: The centre of the plot, such Frankenstein's monster whose psychology makes them perform unspeakable horrific acts ranging from rapes , mutilations and sadistic killings. Other key works of this form are Alfred Hitchcock 's Psycho , which feature psychotic murderers without the make-up of a monster. The second 'Armageddon' group delves on the fear of large-scale destruction , which ranges from science fiction works but also of natural events , such as Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). The last group of
24309-502: The chapter "The American Nightmare: Horror in the 70s" from Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (2002), film critic Robin Wood declared that the commonality between horror films is that "normality is threatened by the monster." This was further expanded upon by The Philosophy of Horror, or Parodoxes of the Heart by Noël Carroll who added that "repulsion must be pleasurable, as evidenced by
24528-417: The character falls to the floor. After a back-and-forth between Argento and Italian censors (at the time a panel of judges), the scene was first trimmed from showing an "immense" spray to a small one, then a smaller one still. For TV broadcasts, the scene was cut to insignificance in the 1990s, when Lario married future Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi . According to Alan Jones, Berlusconi "did not want
24747-409: The comparatively normal Maria only because she inadvertently discovers his twisted compulsion. His "moral crusade" is inspired by – and in his mind given credibility by – Neal's novel. Neal's own motivations for becoming a killer are revealed in "Freudian flashbacks". As summarized by McDonagh, these flashbacks "expose how the misogyny evident in his books actually stems from being sexually humiliated by
24966-453: The complete score by Goblin in 2018. Tenebrae had a wide theatrical release throughout Italy and mainland Europe, something Argento very much needed after having suffered major distribution problems with his previous film, Inferno . Released on 27 October 1982, Tenebrae saw modest success at the box office in Italy and Europe, but it did not perform as well as some of Argento's previous films. In Italy, Tenebrae had been released with
25185-477: The confrontation scene "essentially autobiographical", and refuting these accusations Argento said that his films were instead an attempt to tackle his dark side, to "let it speak". With Tenebrae in particular, he felt he was making a joke or playing a game with his critics, creating a front or mystique about himself. Rostock also believes Argento is having fun and sending up this perception. Newman agrees that Argento used Tenebrae to address his own public image,
25404-483: The core pleasures of detective fiction: being outwitted, wrong-footed, led up the garden path". Dyer believes that the degree of lighting used in the film is unsurpassed. Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine said that Tenebrae "is a riveting defense of auteur theory, ripe with self-reflexive discourse and various moral conflicts. It's both a riveting horror film and an architect's worst nightmare." Keith Phipps of The A.V. Club noted "... Argento makes some points about
25623-408: The crane itself had to be imported from France. According to Gracey, the camera performs "aerial gymnastics", scaling the victims' house in "one seamless take, navigating walls, roofs, and peering in through windows, in a set piece that effortlessly exposes the penetrability of a seemingly secure home". Newman and Jones said that although this type of crane shot became commonplace later, at the time it
25842-503: The crime. This cinematic sleight-of-hand is one of Argento's recurring motifs. His 1996 film The Stendhal Syndrome , in which a policewoman (played by Argento's daughter, Asia ) who suffers from Stendhal syndrome is trapped by a serial killer in an abandoned warehouse, was the first Italian film to use computer-generated imagery . Moreover, the film's opening scene was shot in Florence at Italy's famed Uffizi Gallery . Argento
26061-498: The director filmed none of the historical landmarks that usually featured in films set in Rome. Employing director of photography Luciano Tovoli , Argento also intended that the film simulate the stark, realistic lighting featured in television police shows at the time; production designer Giuseppe Bassan created supporting environments that were cold and austere, with sharp angles and modernistic spaces. Several former members of Italian rock band Goblin provided Tenebrae ' s music,
26280-464: The director on "Hollywood politics", so when Inferno was not well-received upon release, Argento put the Three Mothers trilogy on hold. Inferno also flopped commercially. According to James Gracey, Argento – under pressure and feeling "the need to once again defy expectations" – returned to the giallo genre and began work on Tenebrae . Argento later stated that he wanted to "put on film
26499-418: The director to make sure their shared scenes "were an ordeal to endure". The charged atmosphere culminated with Argento reportedly telling Franciosa, "leave my woman alone!" Nicolodi said she channelled her frustrations with the situation into her character's last scene in the film, where Anne stands in the rain and screams repeatedly, continuing over the film's end credits. She had been directed to scream only
26718-420: The director's additional comment, "... I dreamed an imaginary city in which the most amazing things happen", she notes that the film's "fictive space couldn't be less 'real'", with its "vast unpopulated boulevards, piazzas that look like nothing more than suburban American malls, hard-edged Bauhaus apartment buildings, anonymous clubs, and parking garages." The EUR district of Rome, where much of Tenebrae
26937-403: The director's work had affected him", and that because the director had "ruined his life", he in turn wanted to ruin Argento's. Although no violence came of the threat, Argento said he found the experience understandably terrifying and felt unable to write. At the advice of his producers, Argento fled to the coastal city of Santa Monica, where he felt safe enough to resume writing. However, after
27156-470: The dubbing of the Dr. Kyne character in the Italian version of the game. He is acting as an artistic director on Clod Studio's upcoming video game Dreadful Bond . Between 1968 and 1972, Argento was married to Marisa Casale, the great-granddaughter of Italian composer, pianist and conductor Alfredo Casella . Argento and Casale had one child, actress and costume designer Fiore Argento (born in 1970). Argento had
27375-563: The early films of Peter Jackson who combined splatter films with comedy with Bad Taste (1988) and Braindead (1992) which has the largest following of the mentioned films. Film producer Ant Timpson had an influence curating New Zealand horror films, creating the Incredibly Strange Film Festival in the 1990s and producing his own horror films over the 2010s including The ABCs of Death (2012), Deathgasm (2015), and Housebound (2014). Timpson noted
27594-410: The emergence of sub-genres like splatter films and torture porn. In a study by Jacob Shelton, the many ways that audience members are manipulated through horror films was investigated in detail. Negative space is one such method that can play a part in inducing a reaction, causing one's eyes to remotely rest on anything in the frame – a wall, or the empty black void in the shadows. The jump scare
27813-408: The end, the identity of the murderer is disclosed in a scene destined to terrify and surprise." These narrative and visual strategies had been introduced years before Argento made his first thriller, 1970's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage —most critics point to Mario Bava 's The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) as the original giallo . By the time Argento made Tenebrae , he had become
28032-482: The entrance hallway. Warren and Alan Jones cite a scene where a character is killed in a public square as evoking the work of Alfred Hitchcock ; Thomas Rostock agrees that the editing of the sequence is in a Hitchcockian vein, while the lighting is more influenced by Michelangelo Antonioni . The film critic and author Maitland McDonagh argues that Argento's influences for Tenebrae were far broader than just his own films or previous Italian thrillers. She refers to
28251-433: The environment reminds them of particular scenes. A 2021 study suggested horror films that explore grief can provide psychological benefits to the bereaved, with the genre well suited to representing grief through its genre conventions. In a study by Medes et al., prolonged exposure to infrasound and low-frequency noise (<500 Hz) in long durations has an effect on vocal range (i.e. longer exposure tends to form
28470-536: The evolution of the horror genre through various cultural and historical contexts. He discusses the impact of socio-political factors on the genre , such as the influence of World War I and II, the Great Depression , and the Cold War , which shaped the themes and narratives of horror films. For instance, the anxieties of the post-war era manifested in horror films as fears of invasion , contamination, and
28689-565: The fetishisation of violence and death." Water is often associated visually with Neal. In almost all his scenes his appearance is followed or accompanied by a shot of water. Later, this device is used repeatedly as a clue to the ultimate killer's identity – Neal himself. According to Argento expert Thomas Rostock, Tenebrae is filled with rhyming imagery that relates to the film's exploration of "the dual nature of [the] two active murderers" using doubles, inversions, reflections and "re-reflections". Every major character has at least one double, and
28908-474: The film as "one of Dario Argento's best thrillers". In her 1994 book on the director, Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento, Maitland McDonagh maintains that Tenebrae is "in many respects ... the finest film that Argento has ever made." Richard Dyer, writing for the Directory of World Cinema: Italy , describes the film as a "tease", one which is "perhaps the apotheosis of one of
29127-422: The film be set in the near future and wanted the lighting to help create a "cold, stark and semi-futuristic look". Argento explained that this approach was also an attempt to imitate what he saw as the "realistic manner of lighting" used in television police shows. The director explained that he was adopting "a modern style of photography, deliberately breaking with the legacy of German Expressionism . Today's light
29346-433: The film in the same light, claiming it was a reaction to accusations that "[he] was a misogynist ... a criminal ... a murderer." Argento resolved to include all these aspects of his previous films into Tenebrae . A scene in which the character of Tilde criticizes Neal's books as "sexist", featuring "women as victims, cyphers, male heroes [and] macho bullshit" echoes criticisms of Argento's own work. Kim Newman calls
29565-426: The film is described as being "about human perversion and its effects on society". Male and female sexual deviancy is a central theme, with the victims being sexually liberated women who the first killer – conservative TV presenter Cristiano Berti – refers to as "filthy, slimy perverts". The first victim is a sexually promiscuous shoplifter, and his next two are the lesbian reporter and her bisexual lover. Berti murders
29784-579: The film is shown in closeup as being Tenebrae . In a lengthy interview with Argento conducted by Martin Coxhead that appeared in two issues of Fangoria in 1983 and 1984, the title was always referred to as "Tenebrae". Early on in production, the film was referred to as Under the Eyes of the Assassin , which was later used as one of the poster taglines. In Japan, the film was released as Shadows , and in
30003-451: The film was dubbed into Italian. The English-language dub retained Franciosa's, Saxon's and Steiner's natural voices. However, Nicolodi's voice was dubbed by Theresa Russell , Giuliano Gemma's was dubbed by David Graham , and most of the female voices were dubbed by Adrienne Posta . Michele Soavi – frequent Argento collaborator, second assistant director on Tenebrae and later a noted director in his own right – acted alongside Robin's in
30222-400: The film was set in an imaginary city, fifteen years in the future and that the disaster the city's inhabitants were striving to forget was an atomic bomb blast. Despite Argento's claim, Maitland McDonagh observed that this vaguely science-fictional concept "isn't apparent at all" and that no critics at the time noted the underlying futuristic theme in their reviews of the theatrical release of
30441-460: The film where Neal boards his flight to Rome was filmed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Giuseppe Bassan – a frequent Argento collaborator – was the film's production designer. The surroundings are given a bleached, "merciless" look, made from marble and stone façades, shiny metallic sculptures, with steel, water and glass surfaces. Some of the homes – specifically those of
30660-568: The film's sexual content and abundant nudity make it "the first of Argento's films to have an overtly erotic aspect", and further notes that " Tenebrae is fraught with free-floating anxiety that is specifically sexual in nature." Gracey notes that in several scenes the victims gaze directly into the camera, which demonstrates Argento's "preoccupation with voyeurism and spectacle". McDonagh noted that two sexually charged flashbacks are key to understanding Tenebrae . These distinct but strongly related memory fragments are introduced repeatedly throughout
30879-406: The film, usually immediately following a murder sequence. Although the flashbacks are never fully explained, the first one reveals a beautiful young woman's sexual humiliation of a teenage boy, presumed to be Peter Neal. The young woman is mostly topless during this first sequence, and she humiliates the young man by jamming the heel of one of her shiny red shoes into his mouth while he is held down by
31098-404: The film. The film critic and author Kim Newman countered that in avoiding a more recognisable Rome in favour of suburbia, Argento had succeeded in giving some parts of the film an almost futuristic sheen. Argento biographer Alan Jones agreed that Argento's intention did come across in these scenes, and Newman cites the on-screen use of a videophone as an attempt by Argento to place Tenebrae in
31317-418: The film. A DVD German release by Raptor was also missing about one-and-a-half seconds of material. In June 2011, Arrow Films issued a special edition on DVD, but although the image quality was far better than in previous DVD releases, this version was "heavily lambasted" for carrying a transfer of the film that had visible noise and "distorted audio". In 2013, Arrow released a Blu-ray edition that corrected
31536-513: The film. As biographer Maitland McDonagh noted in Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento , "Argento has never been more articulate and/or analytical than he was on the subject of Tenebrae ." Film scholar William Hope considers the film to be devoid of classical narrative progression and states that the characters "lack a narrative function or purpose, existing only to be killed in
31755-541: The film. Asia Argento was cast as the lead player, along with her mother and frequent Argento collaborator Daria Nicolodi in a supporting role. Udo Kier , who appeared in Argento's Suspiria , and Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, who appeared in three of his previous films, both have pivotal roles in the final Mothers chapter. On 26 June 2009, Giallo premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival . The following month, he announced that he had started working on
31974-429: The filmmaker's return to the giallo subgenre, which he had helped popularize in the 1970s. Argento was inspired by a series of incidents which saw an obsessed fan telephone the director to criticize him for the damaging psychological effects of his previous work. The telephone calls culminated in death threats towards Argento, who channelled the experience into the writing of Tenebrae . The director also wanted to explore
32193-538: The films Trauma (1993), The Stendahl Syndrome (1996), The Phantom of the Opera (1998), The Mother of Tears (2007), and Dracula 3D (2012). Maitland McDonagh wrote about Argento in her book Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento (1991). Argento is also the subject of Art of Darkness , a collection of critical essays, reviews, promotional stills, and poster art edited by Chris Gallant. British journalist Alan Jones published Profondo Argento ,
32412-589: The films stated if you partook in such vices such as drugs or sex, your punishment of death would be handed out. Prior to Scream , there were no popular teen horror films in the early 1990s. After the financial success of Scream , teen horror films became increasingly reflexive and self-aware until the end of the 1990s with films like I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and non-slasher The Faculty (1998). The genre lost prominence as teen films dealt with threats with more realism in films like Donnie Darko (2001) and Crazy/Beautiful (2001). In her book on
32631-624: The films' narrative thrust. Most obviously is the blind Franco Arno ( Karl Malden ) in The Cat o' Nine Tails , who must use his heightened aural sense in combination with visual clues supplied to him by his niece to solve a mystery. In The Bird with the Crystal Plumage , Sam Dalmas ( Tony Musante ) witnesses a murder attempt but admits to the police that something seems to be "missing"; as the film's surprise ending makes clear, he did not "miss" anything, but simply misinterpreted what happened in front of his eyes. In Deep Red , Marcus ( David Hemmings ) has
32850-514: The finale and some night scenes, the entire movie is shot with clear, cold light permeating the surroundings. The lighting and camerawork used in Andrzej Żuławski 's Possession (1981) was an influence on the film's look. Although tenebr(a)e means "darkness" or "shadows" in Latin , Argento ordered cinematographer Luciano Tovoli to use as much bright light as possible. The director intended that
33069-407: The first half of the movie transitions into the second is punctuated by the rising score and camera pan to an ostensibly meaningless point of reflected light on an ornament. According to Rostock, the meaning behind this movement is clear: it marks the spot when Berti's spree ends and Neal's rampage begins. Argento uses the shift in focus to comment on the shaping of the film itself, until that moment
33288-405: The flesh and Tenebrae revels in them, inviting the spectator to join in; in fact, it dares the viewer not to do so." The protagonists in Argento's giallo films almost always suffer from vision impairment of some kind. It is these characters' chronic inability to find the missing pieces of a puzzle. The puzzle being the solution of a murder (or series of murders) that generally provides much of
33507-613: The focus is generally upon an individual and their sense of identity, primarily them watching their own body change. The earliest appearance of the sub-genre was the work of director David Cronenberg , specifically with early films like Shivers (1975). Mark Jancovich of the University of Manchester declared that the transformation scenes in the genre provoke fear and repulsion, but also pleasure and excitement such as in The Thing (1982) and The Fly (1986). Christmas horror
33726-501: The frame with their doppelgängers – one such is the first meeting of Peter Neal and Anne with Detectives Germani and Altieri. McDonagh notes that Argento emphasizes the doubling between Neal and Germani: "Germani ... is made to reflect Neal even as Neal appropriates his role as investigator ... the detective/writer and the writer/detective each belittles his other half, as though by being demeaned this inverted reflection could be made to go away." McDonagh also observes that, in what
33945-521: The genre among viewers (ahead of South Korea), according to a 2016 research. In a study done by Uri Hasson et al., brain waves were observed via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This study used the inter-subject correlation analysis (ISC) method of determining results. It was shown that audience members tend to focus on certain facets in a particular scene simultaneously and tend to sit as still as possible while watching horror films. In another study done by John Greene & Glenn Sparks, it
34164-431: The genre continuously evolves, incorporating elements from other genres and responding to contemporary societal fears and anxieties. This adaptability is evident in the various sub-genres that have emerged over the years, such as psychological horror, body horror, and found footage horror, each addressing different aspects of human fear and the unknown. Rhodes also explores the role of censorship and regulation in shaping
34383-597: The genre did not become a codified genre until the release of Dracula (1931). Dracula was a box office success, leading to Universal and several other American film studios to develop and popularise horror films well into the 1940s . By the 1950s , horror would often be made with science fiction themes, and towards the end of the decade horror was a more common genre of international productions. The 1960s saw further developments, with material based on contemporary works instead of classical literature. The release of films like Psycho , Black Sunday and Night of
34602-579: The genre's popularity." Prior to the release of Dracula (1931), historian Gary Don Rhodes explained that the idea and terminology of horror film did not exist yet as a codified genre , although critics used the term "horror" to describe films in reviews prior to Dracula ' s release. "Horror" was a term used to describe a variety of meanings. In 1913, Moving Picture World defined "horrors" as showcasing "striped convicts, murderous Indians, grinning 'black-handers', homicidal drunkards" Some titles that suggest horror such as The Hand of Horror (1914)
34821-436: The genre. John Carpenter has frequently referred to the influence Argento's early work had on Halloween (1978). Argento's next film was Suspiria (1977), a supernatural horror. Argento planned for Suspiria to be the first of a trilogy about "The Three Mothers", three ancient witches residing in three different modern cities. The second film of the trilogy was 1980's Inferno . The Mother of Tears (2007) concluded
35040-412: The grimy status it gained through its association with the whole debacle." Kim Newman agreed that Tenebrae ' s reputation as a "video nasty" was unwarranted, saying that none of the on-screen deaths are as gory or lingering as those in Argento's previous films. He also believed Tenebrae would eventually be remembered on its own merits, rather than as part of the "video nasties" list. Nevertheless,
35259-500: The horror film have feelings similar to happiness or joy felt with friends, but intensified. Alternatively, audience members with negative feedback regarding the film would typically feel emotions they would normally associate with negative experiences in their life. Only about 10% of the American population enjoy the physiological rush felt immediately after watching horror films. The population that does not enjoy horror films could experience emotional fallout similar to that of PTSD if
35478-485: The horror films of Europe were often more erotic and "just plain stranger" than their British and American counter-parts. European horror films (generally referred to as Euro Horror) draw from distinctly European cultural sources, including surrealism , romanticism , decadent tradition , early 20th century pulp-literature , film serials , and erotic comics . In comparison to the narrative logic in American genre films, these films focused on imagery, excessiveness, and
35697-515: The horror genre" between both fans and critics of the genre. Jancovich found that disagreements existed from audiences who wanted to distinguish themselves. This ranged from fans of different genres who may view a film like Alien (1979) as belonging to science fiction , and horror fan bases dismissing it as being inauthentic to either genre. Further debates exist among fans of the genre with personal definitions of "true" horror films, such as fans who embrace cult figures like Freddy Kruger of
35916-521: The horror genre. The enforcement of the Hays Code in the 1930s and subsequent rating systems influenced the depiction of violence and sexuality in horror films. This regulation often pushed filmmakers to find creative ways to imply horror elements without explicit content, leading to a focus on atmosphere, suggestion, and psychological horror. The relaxation of censorship in the late 20th century allowed for more graphic and explicit horror, contributing to
36135-462: The identity of the killer in any of the books. He is similarly unable to solve the real mystery until the last corpses are piled at his feet – he cannot see Peter Neal for what he really is. In an interview that appeared in Cinefantastique , Argento noted that the film was intended as near- science fiction , taking place "about five or more years in the future ... Tenebrae occurs in
36354-489: The impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" A variation of this quote is delivered many times in Tenebrae . Another reference is the dog attack: as something of a non sequitur , the scene is thought by Newman to be a likely nod to Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–1902). Neal is seen to be reading this novel in an early scene. The imagery in the beach flashback references
36573-511: The influence of the Argento family on filmmaking in Italy and around the world. It highlighted Dario's contribution, as well as that of his father (Salvatore), brother (Claudio), ex-wife (Daria Nicolodi) and daughter (Asia). With the exceptions of The Stendhal Syndrome and Sleepless , all of Argento's films since the "golden age" of the 1970s and 1980s have been generally poorly received by critics and fans alike, including Argento scholars such as Maitland McDonagh. Fangoria wrote in 2010, "over
36792-474: The intersection of art, reality, and personality, but the director's stunning trademark setpieces, presented here in a fully restored version, provide the real reason to watch." Almar Haflidason, in a review for BBC Online , opined, "Sadistically beautiful and viciously exciting, welcome to true terror with Dario Argento's shockingly relentless Tenebrae ." Tim Lucas in Video Watchdog said, "Though it
37011-434: The irrational. Between the mid-1950s and the mid-1980s, European horror films emerged from countries like Italy, Spain and France, and were shown in the United States predominantly at drive-in theatre and grindhouse theaters. As producers and distributors all over the world were interested in horror films, regardless of their origin, changes started occurring in European low-budget filmmaking that allowed for productions in
37230-422: The last decade, standards have slipped. For a filmmaker who was always so precise in his construction and cutting, his later films such as The Phantom of the Opera and The Card Player are sloppy, stitched together so carelessly that they leak vital fluid. Gradually, the kaleidoscopic style that once characterized his films has slowly blanched away." Acting roles Acting roles Horror film Horror
37449-494: The latter horror entries from New Zealand are all humorous films like What We Do in the Shadows (2014) with Jonathan King , director of Black Sheep (2006) and The Tattooist (2007) stating "I'd love to see a genuinely scary New Zealand film but I don't know if New Zealand audiences – or the funding bodies – are keen." After the 1931 release of a US-produced Spanish-language version of Dracula by George Melford for
37668-439: The lesbian couple and the first killer – are "cold, austere, brutalist" slabs of granite, and many of the interior shots feature plain white backgrounds, with characters' wearing pale-coloured clothes against them – better, Newman felt, to contrast the blood once the violence started. The studio-set scenes were filmed at Elios Studios in Rome, unlike Argento's previous films in the city, which he had filmed at Incir De Paolis. He
37887-402: The maniacal killer (about whom we learn very little, itself unusual for Argento) to the eminently likeable hero, surely the film's boldest stroke." While noting that the device is "striking", McDonagh comments that this transmission of guilt occurs between two dark doubles who are severely "warped" individuals. She suggests that "Neal and Berti ... act as mirrors to one another, each twisting
38106-462: The mashup of classic gothic and romantic themes and characters with autochthonous features of the Mexican culture such as the Ranchería setting, the colonial past or the myth of La Llorona (shared with other Hispanic-American nations). Horror has proven to be a dependable genre at the Mexican box office in the 21st-century, with Mexico ranking as having the world's largest relative popularity of
38325-411: The murder sequences. And these are some of the bloodiest murders of Argento's career." In 2004, Tim Lucas re-evaluated the film and found that some of his earlier enthusiasm had dimmed considerably, noting that, " Tenebre is beginning to suffer from the cheap 16 mm-like softness of Luciano Tovoli's cinematography, its sometimes over-storyboarded violence (the first two murders in particular look stilted),
38544-518: The murders. John Steiner , Veronica Lario , and Mirella D'Angelo also feature in minor roles. The film has been described as exploring themes of dualism and sexual aberration, and has strong metafictional elements; some commentators consider Tenebrae to be a direct reaction by Argento to criticism of his previous work, most especially his depictions of murders of women. After Argento had experimented with pure supernatural horror with 1977's Suspiria and 1980's Inferno , Tenebrae represented
38763-420: The near future. While rejecting this thematic concern as unrealized by Argento, McDonagh noted that the result of the director's experiment is a strange "architectural landscape" that becomes the "key element in differentiating Tenebrae from Argento's earlier gialli ." Argento's use of unusual architectural space and so-called visual "hyper-realism" results in an enormously fake looking environment. Seizing on
38982-457: The negative during filming, for the benefit of under-developing in the lab and less colour loss. The ultimate aim was for the images to be "crystal clear", and the night scenes to be awash with light. Film scholar Richard Dyer highlights several intelligent devices used by Argento in the editing of the film, noting that interpolated sequences are sometimes punctuated by "shots of pills and the sound of running water." Steffen Hantke believes that
39201-422: The notion that someone who creates art as "sick and twisted" as his, must himself be sick and twisted. With Tenebrae ' s reveal that the author is the killer, Newman argues that Argento is saying, "What if I were?" As in many of Argento's films, which apparently tend to eroticize the murder of beautiful women, gender, sexuality, and power are major issues foregrounded by the film. The fictional novel within
39420-427: The popularity of sites like YouTube in 2006 sparked a taste for amateur media, leading to the production of further films in the found footage horror genre later in the 2000s including the particularly financially successful Paranormal Activity (2007). In their book Gothic film , Richard J. McRoy and Richard J. Hand stated that "Gothic" can be argued as a very loose subgenre of horror, but argued that "Gothic" as
39639-434: The press, social commentators and various religious organizations. Speculating in 2011, Thomas Rostock said that the higher-than-usual murder count for an Argento film was partially responsible, while James Gracey believed it was perhaps "the highly sexualized presentation of its violent content". He went on to say, "Of all the titles placed on the video nasty list, Tenebrae is perhaps the most misunderstood and undeserving of
39858-554: The process of understanding issues by making use of their optical elements. The use of horror films can help audiences understand international prior historical events occurs, for example, to depict the horrors of the Vietnam War , the Holocaust , the worldwide AIDS epidemic or post-9/11 pessimism. In many occurrences, the manipulation of horror presents cultural definitions that are not accurate, yet set an example to which
40077-418: The project producers have not updated the film's status to backers since August 2017. Italian director Luca Guadagnino helmed Suspiria (2018), a remake of Argento's 1977 film. The American screenplay is based on the original script Argento wrote with Daria Nicolodi, his former long-term partner. In 2019, Argento announced that he was developing a female-led serial movie, consisting of eight episodes, for
40296-418: The public seeing [Lario] so explicitly murdered, even if it was in a film by his country's premier horror expert". For a few years, it was impossible to legally see the uncensored version of the film in Italy, as prints were withdrawn altogether. A later DVD release did become available, with the scene restored. Averaging a murder every ten minutes, Tenebrae ranks as one of Argento's most violent films. In
40515-425: The reflection into a warped parody of the other." Berti's obsession with Neal's fiction compels him to commit murder in homage to the writer, while Neal seems to think that his own violent acts are simply part of some kind of "elaborate fiction". When the bloody Neal is confronted by Germani immediately after having killed numerous people, Neal screams at him, "It was like a book ... a book!" The moment in which
40734-430: The release of Francis Ford Coppola 's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), a small wave of high-budgeted gothic horror romance films were released in the 1990s. Also described as "eco-horror", the natural horror film is a subgenre "featuring nature running amok in the form of mutated beasts, carnivorous insects, and normally harmless animals or plants turned into cold-blooded killers." In 1963, Alfred Hitchcock defined
40953-601: The role required little energy or imagination, but liked the novelty of playing neither killer nor victim. Newman and Alan Jones agreed that Nicolodi had very little character to play, as written. Newman added that this lack of character stretched to all the Italians in the film, and that only the American characters had discernible personalities. Nicolodi later claimed that although filming began well enough, Argento became angry when she and Franciosa bonded over playwright Tennessee Williams and their experience in theatre, leading
41172-641: The score, Simonetti used the Roland Jupiter-8 , Roland Vocoder Plus and Minimoog synthesizers, as well as a piano, electric piano, the Oberheim DMX drum machine, the Roland TR-808 drum machine, and Roland MC-4 music sequencer. Pignatelli played bass and fretless guitar, while Morante played electric and acoustic guitar. While the soundtrack is not as well regarded as Goblin's earlier scores for Deep Red , Suspiria , or Dawn of
41391-491: The second flashback scene. Another of Argento's collaborators, Fulvio Mingozzi cameoed as a hotel porter. In common with several other Argento films, close-ups of the killer's gloved hands were Argento's own. In the film's Italian-language dub, Argento also provided the opening voice-over, reading aloud descriptions of murderous actions from Neal's fictitious novel, Tenebrae . Filming began on 3 May 1982 and took ten weeks shot mostly on location in Rome. Kim Newman described
41610-525: The second in his planned Three Mothers trilogy of supernatural horror films, Argento was expected to move straight into production of its concluding chapter. The first in the trilogy, Suspiria (1977), had turned the director into what Alan Jones called "a horror superstar", but Inferno had proven a difficult follow-up. Argento had become unwell while writing the film, and his ill health continued into filming. In addition, Argento's relationship with Inferno ' s co-producer 20th Century Fox had soured
41829-463: The second to those of Neal. The two are set up as mirrors of one another. Berti's killings with a razor are clinical, with "lingering sexualized aggressiveness", whereas Neal's (with an axe) are crimes of passion committed for personal reasons or out of necessity; they are swift and to the point. Kevin Lyons observes, "The plot revolves around the audacious and quite unexpected transference of guilt from
42048-408: The senselessness of killings he had seen and heard about while staying in Los Angeles in 1980, and his feeling at the time that true horror came from those who wanted "to kill for nothing". Shot on location in Rome and at Elios Studios, Tenebrae utilized mostly modern-looking locations and sets, allowing Argento to realize his vision that the film reflects a near-future with a diminished population;
42267-410: The shock cuts in the latter part of the film are among cinema's "most brutal and stylized", and exhibit a degree of abstract expressionism. Film scholar Leon Hunt argues that the devices and themes utilized by Argento in the making of Tenebrae make it as much an example of art cinema as anything else. The initial murders are shot in a "clipped montage style", which is later revealed to be reflecting
42486-405: The shot added nothing to the film's plot, but called it "meaninglessly brilliant". Some European publicity materials for the film, including posters and lobby card sets, advertised the film as Tenebre , and the 1999 Anchor Bay DVD release uses that same title. However, on the print itself, during the opening credits, the title is clearly Tenebrae . In addition, the title of Neal's latest book in
42705-419: The strong narrative in the film as an example of "the most paranoid excesses of film noir ." McDonagh suggests that Fritz Lang 's Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956) ("in which a man convicted of murder on false evidence ... is in fact guilty of the murder") and Roy William Neill 's Black Angel (1946) ("in which a man who tries to clear a murder suspect does so at the cost of learning that he himself
42924-549: The sub-genre sits within a trend of holiday-themed slasher films, alongside films such as My Bloody Valentine (1981) and April Fool's Day (1986). Others take a broader view that Christmas horror is not limited to the slasher genre, noting how it evolved from the English Christmas tradition of telling ghost stories. Christmas in literature has historically included elements of "darkness"—fright, misery, death and decay—tracing its literary antecedents as far back as
43143-424: The theme extends to objects, locations, actions, and events – major and minor. The doubling or mirroring of incidents and objects includes telephone booths, aircraft, homeless men, otherwise-meaningless public brawls in the background, car accidents, typewriters (literally side-by-side), keys, handkerchief, hands caught in doors and the characters themselves. Rostock cites several scenes where characters are set up in
43362-491: The tracking shot ended up being the most difficult and complex part of the production to complete. It required a maze of scaffolding to be built around the outside of the home. Argento captured all the footage he needed in two takes, but insisted on filming ten more. The scene, which lasts for two-and-a-half minutes on-screen, took three days to shoot. It marked the first time the Louma crane had been used in an Italian production;
43581-563: The trilogy. In 1978, Argento collaborated with George A. Romero on Dawn of the Dead , earning a producer credit and also providing soundtrack work for the zombie film. Argento oversaw the European release of the film, where it was titled Zombi , which was much shorter and featured more of the score written and performed by Goblin . After Inferno , Argento returned to the more conventional giallo style with Tenebrae (1982). He then attempted to combine giallo and supernatural fantasy in 1985's Phenomena , also known as Creepers , which
43800-424: The turn of the millennium. Bill Gibron of PopMatters declared a mixed definition of the psychological horror film, ranging from definitions of anything that created a sense of disquiet or apprehension to a film where an audience's mind makes up what was not directly displayed visually. Gibron concluded it as a "clouded gray area between all out splatter and a trip through a cinematic dark ride." Religious horror
44019-402: The unknown, reflecting the collective psyche of the time. Rhodes also highlights the significance of technological advancements, such as the advent of sound in cinema, which revolutionized the horror genre by enhancing its ability to evoke fear and suspense through auditory effects. Moreover, the horror genre's flexibility and adaptability are crucial to its enduring popularity. As Rhodes notes,
44238-407: The use of a camera by the first killer to record the scene. Giuliano Gemma later said that Argento fostered an improvisational atmosphere on set. One example he gave was the scene where his character bends to pick up some evidence from the floor, only to reveal Neal behind him having perfectly matched his position relative to the camera. This moment was not scripted but resulted from Argento's noticing
44457-584: The use of faith to defeat evil. The slasher film is a horror subgenre which involves a killer murdering a group of people (often teenagers), usually by use of bladed tools. In his book on the genre, author Adam Rockoff wrote that these villains represented a "rogue genre" of films that are "tough, problematic, and fiercely individualistic." Following the financial success of Friday the 13th (1980), at least 20 other slasher films appeared in 1980 alone. These films usually revolved around three properties: unique social settings (campgrounds, schools, holidays) and
44676-486: The usual suspects, including a writer for a main character, lots of killer-cam point of view, some crazily over the top kills, and approximately seventy-two twists before all is revealed ... For fans of Argento's earlier giallo , this is a must-see." Not all the recent critical reaction to Tenebrae has been positive. Geoff Andrew of Time Out thought that the film was "unpleasant even by contemporary horror standards". John Kenneth Muir, author of Horror Films of
44895-414: Was "truly ground-breaking" in the way the camera seemingly crawled over the walls and up the building – not quite from the killer's viewpoint. Patrick McAllister of Scifilm said the sequence should be considered "one of the most memorable moments in cinema". According to McAllister, Tenebrae ' s distributor begged Argento to cut the shot down because it was "meaningless". Newman and Jones agreed that
45114-418: Was a melodrama about a thief who steals from his own sister. During the silent era, the term horror was used to describe everything from "battle scenes" in war films to tales of drug addiction. Rhodes concluded that the term "horror film" or "horror movie" was not used in early cinema. The mystery film genre was in vogue and early information on Dracula being promoted as a mystery film was common, despite
45333-421: Was a result of the sexual diversity on display rather than the film's violence. One of the film's most excessively violent scenes features the death of Neal's ex-wife, Jane (played by Veronica Lario ). This scene was one which suffered the most from cuts when the film was first released in Italy. The original scene featured Jane's arm being cut off at the elbow; blood sprays from the wound onto white walls until
45552-476: Was a youth in Rhode Island . The memory tormented Neal and inflamed his previously repressed lust for blood, driving him insane. Surrounded, Neal sees that he cannot escape and slits his throat in front of Germani and Anne. Finding the telephone out of order, they go outside to report the incident from the car radio. Germani returns to the house, where he is murdered by Neal, who had faked his own death using
45771-452: Was filmed, was built in preparation for the 1942 World's Fair and intended by then-Prime Minister of Italy Benito Mussolini to be a celebration of twenty years of fascism . Rostock believes that Argento used this location as an attempt to realize his theme of an imaginary city; the district gives a glimpse of a future Rome that never was, showing the city how it might have looked had fascism not fallen. After completing Inferno (1980),
45990-421: Was fortunate, as he was capable of bringing more to the role than the script asked of him. He also believed that if Walken had been cast, it would have been more obvious that he was the killer. According to Jones and Daria Nicolodi , the relationship between Franciosa and Argento was a fractious one. In addition, Nicolodi and Argento were romantically involved at the time, but their relationship had suffered over
46209-445: Was found that the audience tends to experience the excitation transfer process (ETP) which causes a physiological arousal in audience members. The ETP refers to the feelings experienced immediately after an emotion-arousing experience, such as watching a horror film. In this case, audience members' heart rate, blood pressure and respiration all increased while watching films with violence. Audience members with positive feedback regarding
46428-423: Was later hired to play the woman on the beach. When the American actress who had been hired to play Anne dropped out just before the start of principal photography, Argento convinced Nicolodi to take on this larger role. Nicolodi found Anne to have a different personality than her own, and much preferred the characters she had played for Argento previously, who she said had much more personality than Anne. She said
46647-414: Was not able to use Elios, as the director Michelangelo Antonioni , of whom he was a huge fan, was using the studio to film Identification of a Woman (1982) at the time. The design and creation of Tenebrae ' s special effects were supervised by Giovanni Corridori, who – with his brother Tonino – had a near-monopoly on special effects in the Italian film industry at the time. The scene in which Jane
46866-577: Was one of Jennifer Connelly 's earliest movies. Phenomena also showed Argento's predilection for using new technology, as evidenced by the film's several prowling Steadicam shots. Both films received a lukewarm reception upon their release (although each has been positively reappraised since). Argento subsequently took a break from directing to write two screenplays for Mario Bava 's son, Lamberto Bava : Dèmoni (1985) and Dèmoni 2 (1986). Opera followed in 1987. Set in Parma 's Regio Theatre during
47085-467: Was released in a heavily censored version under the title Unsane , which received a mostly negative critical reception. The original version later became widely available for reappraisal, and has come to be considered one of Argento's best films by many fans and critics. Peter Neal, an American writer of violent horror novels, visits Italy to promote his latest work, Tenebrae . He is accompanied by his literary agent, Bullmer, and his assistant, Anne. Neal
47304-411: Was shot at a shopping precinct called " Le Terrazze " in Rome's Casal Palocco residential neighbourhood. The scene in which Neal's landlord's daughter is killed was filmed outside the home of an architect – and friend of Argento – Sandro Petti, switching to studio shots for her initial entrance into the house and back to Petti's house for the confrontation with the killer. The scene at the beginning of
47523-551: Was strongly cut, and reportedly seized by the authorities. The film has since been released on DVD in the US, mostly uncut save for approximately twenty seconds of extraneous material. Tenebrae received an initial DVD release in March 1999 from Anchor Bay Entertainment , with a re-release in May 2008. The Anchor Bay release, though presented as "uncut" was not the fully restored version of
47742-483: Was the first Australian horror production made for theatrical release. 1970s Australian art cinema was funded by state film corporations, who considered them more culturally acceptable than local exploitation films ( Ozploitation ), which was part of the Australian phenomenon called the cultural cringe . The greater success of genre films like Mad Max (1979), The Last Wave (1977) and Patrick (1978) led to
47961-439: Was unable at that point to collaborate with Fulci who died in March of that year. The film was later directed by Sergio Stivaletti as Wax Mask , with Argento and Fulci both receiving co-screenwriting credits. Argento later directed 1998's The Phantom of the Opera and 2001's Sleepless . In 2004, Argento directed The Card Player , a giallo about a killer whose murders are conducted during Internet poker matches with
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