Dario Argento

James Gracey

• Publisher: Kamera Books
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781842433188
• eBook ISBN: 9781842433973
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Películas y vídeos

The stylistic and bloody excesses of the films of Dario Argento are instantly recognizable—his films lock violent deaths in a twisted embrace with an almost sexual beauty. Narrative and logic are often lost in a constant bombardment of atmosphere, technical mastery, and provocative imagery. Setting the tone with earlier gialli films such as The Animal Trilogy and Deep Red, Argento has steadily pushed the boundaries; through his elaborately gothic fairytales Suspiria and Inferno, right up to his more recent contributions to Showtime's Masters of Horror series and the conclusion of his Three Mothers trilogy, Mother of Tears: The Third Mother. Along the way, his prowling camera work, pounding scores, and stylistic bloodshed have only gained in intensity and opulence. Argento continues to create inimitable and feverishly violent films with a level of artistry rarely seen in horror films. His high profile and mastery of the genre is confirmed with his role as producer on celebrated classics such as George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead and Lamberto Bava's Demons.

BLOOD, SEX & TEARS

‘Who wants to eat the girl?’

Jenifer (2005)

Directed by: Dario Argento

Screenplay by: Steven Weber

Based on a short story by: Bruce Jones

Music by: Claudio Simonetti

Cinematography: Attila Szalay

Edited by: Marshall Harvey

Production Designer: David Fischer

Cast: Steven Weber (Frank Spivey), Carrie Anne Fleming (Jenifer), Brenda James (Ruby), Harris Allan (Pete), Beau Starr (Chief Charlie), Julia Arkos (Ann Wilkerson), Cynthia Garris (Rose)

Synopsis

Detective Frank Spivey rescues a young woman from being murdered by a crazed man. Appalled by the woman’s deformity, he takes pity on her and takes her in. Her presence, however, has horrific effects on the rest of his family and soon Frank is plunged into a nightmare of obsession, addiction and lust, as Jenifer becomes the centre of his world.

Background

Mick Garris created Masters of Horror to showcase the work of relatively new genre directors alongside those who inspired them – revealing the latter to be just as raw and relevant now as in their heydays. Each filmmaker was promised free rein and no limitations – the whole point was to go as over-the-top in terms of screen violence and horror as they desired. Argento was keen to get involved when he heard who else was taking part in the project: John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Joe Dante and John Landis, to name a few. These were directors whom Argento had wanted to be identified with when he made the likes of Two Evil Eyes and Trauma. He got his wish, though his legions of fans would argue he is still in a league of his own!

Jenifer itself is based on a story from the comic Creepy and adapted for the screen by Steven Weber, who also stars. Argento made a few changes to the script to tailor it to his own taste. Initial preparation for Jenifer was carried out largely by email between Argento and the show’s creators. He was still in Rome putting the finishing touches to Do You Like Hitchcock? Not really accustomed to making films this way, Argento apparently enjoyed the process and claimed it left no room for unpleasant surprises. Details of actors and locations were emailed back and forth until the director was satisfied he was able to make the film he wanted to make.

Despite the language barrier, Argento was still able to convey what he wanted for the film, much as he did on Two Evil Eyes and Trauma. He and Steven Weber even forged a close friendship during filming, going as far as discussing whether they would fall for someone like Jenifer in real life. Their conclusion? Yes, apparently they would!

Comments

Argento was one of only two directors in the series to actually take full advantage of the creative freedom the project offered, Takashi Miike being the other – and his episode was never broadcast as it was deemed so explicit. As a result, Argento’s was the only episode with cuts imposed, the producers feeling that some of the imagery was simply too extreme. Two shots depicting Jenifer performing oral sex were removed.

Argento claimed that he wanted to make a ‘beautiful’ movie and was attracted to the story because of its powerful and disturbing sexuality. Essentially a subversion of Beauty and the Beast, Jenifer marks the beginning of a new phase in Argento’s career. This film and those which followed, Pelts, Mother of Tears and Giallo demonstrate the director’s preoccupation with abhorrent sexuality and carnality. Argento has seemingly discovered a whole new way to shock and provoke people, and he lenses it so elegantly that it is just as disturbing as the violence still evident in his work of this new era.

Style/Technical

Cinematographer Attila Szalay was one of three directors of photography on the series. He and Argento wanted to create a comic-book feel, faithful to the origins of the script. The heavily stylised and atmospheric lighting reveals enough of the horrific images of cannibalistic sexuality to pack a real punch.

A few trademark Argento flashes occur in Jenifer, namely in the violent attacks and deranged sexuality. When Argento approached Carrie Anne Fleming to play the titular character, the actress grasped the opportunity, completely losing herself in the part and shedding all inhibitions. She was aided by terrific make-up effects, courtesy of the KNB EFX group, rendering her completely unrecognisable.

Digital effects were wisely kept to a minimum. Greg Nicotero was responsible for enhancing Jenifer’s ghoulish appearance after her make-up had been applied. In post-production he digitally enlarged her eyes to shocking effect. When we do see her whole face, it is chilling to the core.

At first, Argento offers us only glimpses of the horror lurking beneath her blonde waves; a curled lip here, a soulless and dark eye there.

Although Argento has often ‘sexualised’ violence in his films, capturing it stylishly and unflinchingly, Jenifer seems to be the logical culmination of the ideas of violence and sexuality he has incorporated into his work. Steven Weber described Jenifer as ‘gritty, bloody, horror porn’ – a term that could arguably be applied to much of Argento’s output. In saying that, his work is still more considered and opulent than the current spate of ‘horror-porn’ films such as the Saw (2004) and Hostel (2005) series.

Themes

Duality in characters has always been an interest of Argento’s. In films such as Deep Red, Phenomena and Trauma, the duality of mother/ murderer is inherent, and it resurfaces in Giallo with Enzo and Yellow. Like those disturbed characters, Jenifer is at times also presented in a sympathetic light – she is to be pitied as much as feared.

In Jenifer, Argento aims for the more visceral angle, presenting Jenifer to us as a beauty/beast hybrid. While her face is a distorted and demonic snarl, her body is voluptuous and desirable. She oozes a strange and savage sexuality that seemingly enraptures the males in her vicinity. As awful as some of the acts she commits are, there is also something oddly childlike and naïve about her – she whimpers and sobs in the corner of Frank’s bedroom, and when she slaughters his cat she offers it to him as a gift, a token of her love for him, further highlighting her monstrous/childlike personality.

An interesting parallel is drawn between her and Frankenstein’s Monster in a darkly amusing parody of the infamous scene in Frank enstein (1931) where the Monster regards a little girl with dangerous curiosity.

Throughout the course of the film, various characters comment on Jenifer’s morbid duality. An orderly at the hospital where Jenifer is interned comments, ‘How’d you get that head on that body?’

Unlike many of Argento’s characters, Jenifer seems to exist almost without a past. No one knows where she came from or who she is. Argento described her as being an alien, but Fleming and Weber saw her more as a feral outcast, instinctual and raw and wholly incapable of living within civilised society. Her ambiguity adds to the horror and pity she generates.

The abhorrent sexuality Argento has been exploring in his recent work is fully evident in Jenifer. As mentioned, there were a couple of shots cut from the final film that depicted Jenifer performing oral sex on Frank and biting Rose’s son’s penis off. Argento was interested in the idea of a woman with a monstrous mouth performing pleasurable acts on a man. This notion has distinct connotations of the ‘vagina dentata’ – a concept explored more thoroughly, yet for morbid laughs, in Teeth (2008) – and is linked to the idea of women as castrators, disempowering men. The shot involving Rose’s son is another example of the violence inflicted on children in Argento’s work. The young girls of Phenomena, the toddlers in Mother of Tears, and, of course, the little girl who meets a ghastly end when confronted by Jenifer in her backyard, prove no one is safe in an Argento movie – not even the young.

Verdict

Argento claims that Jenifer is unique in his body of work as it is his only love story. In what is basically a made-for-TV movie, Jenifer really pushes boundaries in terms of what is acceptable primetime viewing. Not merely an interesting footnote in Argento’s oeuvre, but a fully realised and haunting fairytale that will linger in the mind long after viewing. Jenifer is one of the nastiest and most memorable instalments of the whole Masters of Horror series.

Pelts (2006)

Directed by: Dario Argento

Screenplay by: Matt Venne

Based on a short story by: F Paul Wilson

Music by: Claudio Simonetti

Cinematographer: Attila Szalay

Edited by: Marshall Harvey

Production Designer: David Fischer

Cast: Meat Loaf Aday (Jake Feldman), Ellen Ewusie (Shana), John Saxon (Jeb Jameson), Brenda McDonald (Mother Mayter), Link Baker (Lou Chinaski), Elise Lew (Sue Chin Yao), Michal Suchánek (Larry Jameson)

Synopsis

Luckless furrier Jake acquires a strange collection of racoon pelts from Jeb Jameson. He plans to fashion them into a coat and present it to Shana, an exotic dancer he is in love with. However, all who come into contact with the mystical furs meet horrible demises, all of which are self-inflicted. When Jake finally presents the finished coat to Shana, he has a few other things he’d like to offer her, including his own skin.

Background

Based on a short story by F Paul Wilson and adapted for the screen by Matt Venne, Pelts is a gleefully sadistic little tale of greed, lust and dangerous desire. Argento was attracted to the strange story of people driven to insanity and self-mutilation by their obsessions and vanity.

Comments

Argento’s second offering to the Masters of Horror series was described by its creator Mick Garris as the season’s ‘wet episode’. Argento enthusiastically drenches almost every scene in blood and sinew.

When Argento approached Meat Loaf to play the role of Jake, the actor took the part on his daughter’s insistence, as she was a huge fan of the director.

Strangely for an Argento film, there seems to be a definite political undertone examining animal-rights issues. The atrocities inflicted on the racoons are revisited on the humans involved in each stage of the transformation of the hides into a coat, playfully linking vanity and fashion with pain and death.

Pelts also marked the reunion of Argento and his Tenebrae star John Saxon, a stalwart of the genre.

Style/Technical

As with Jenifer, Argento also creates a distinct comic-book feel with Pelts, from the comic font of the titles to the set design and limited colour scheme. The lurid lighting of the strip club and Shana’s apartment recall the candy colours of Suspiria and Inferno.

The ruins where Jeb and Larry find the racoons were lit from the sides to create a magical and mysterious atmosphere quite akin to that conjured in Phenomena. Created by production designer David Fischer, they exemplify the film’s lyrical visual flair.

Another startling set piece is the fur factory where the hides are treated and transformed into a coat. Filming took place inside a real fur factory and the creepy atmosphere seeps off the screen. Argento also throws in a cheeky reference to his giallo films in the scene where the furrier dons black leather gloves and wields a glinting knife to skin the racoons.

Argento laces the tale with imagery of cages and snares, not only those that trap the racoons, but also the ones suggested by the way he frames the characters in certain scenes, highlighting their self-inflicted entrapment as a result of their desire to obtain the unobtainable. This is most notable in the scene with Shana and Jake in the elevator during the film’s climax and in that of the seamstress who sews shut her own eyes (a cruel reversal of Betty’s torture in Opera), nose and mouth, suffocating to death.

In what also appears to be a reference to Opera, Jeb and Larry are reflected in the eyes of a racoon, much in the same way that various characters were reflected in the eyes of the ravens in Opera, conjuring notions of voyeurism and forbidden glances.

The special effects are a mixture of prosthetics and make-up with digital enhancement, provided again by the KNB EFX group, and are incredibly visceral and ef...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• Table of Contents
• INTRODUCTION: SYMPHONIES IN RED
• THE ANIMAL TRILOGY
• DARKNESS & MILAN
• BLOOD RUNS DEEP
• ITALIAN GOTHIC
• RETURN TO YELLOW
• DARK DIASPORA
• AESTHETICS OF BLOOD
• THE NEO-ANIMAL TRILOGY
• BLOOD, SEX & TEARS
• ARTISTIC ARTERIES: ARGENTO’S WORK AS PRODUCER
• SADISTIC SCRIPTS: ARGENTO’S WORK AS WRITER
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• REFERENCES
• Copyright
• Plates