Tenebre is the story of American crime novelist Peter Neal promoting his book in Rome while there is a serial killer on the loose who is murdering women in the same way people are murdered in his latest book, Tenebrae. The police somewhat inadvertantly ask for his help in solving the crime, and with the help of his assistants, he investigates as the killer starts closing in on his circle of friends.
I first saw Tenebre about 7 years ago when Anchor Bay released it in the same DVD set as Deep Red. I adored Deep Red (and still do), but the angry young feminist I was at the time abhorred Tenebre just because it introduced a lesbian couple only to kill them off almost immediately. Somewhat more mellowed out and watching it last night, that wasn’t exactly the case. One half of the lesbian couple was given somewhat of a small backstory, so I guess it makes some sense in the scheme of the movie why she was murdered. Honestly, a lot of characters and actors were completely wasted in this movie. John Saxon especially, with Daria Nicolodi being a close second just about. For a chunk of the film, the story does come off as extremely sexist what with all women being brutally murdered, but at the same time, the film does seem to be making some sort of weak attempt to provide social commentary on the victimization of women. It just never seems to make it there. In the end, there are 6 women dead and 5 men dead, all from extremely violent deaths. Admittedly, straight razors freak me out, so I kept my head turned for a lot of deaths in this film.
Like Deep Red, Tenebre is a good mystery, but (somewhat) unlike Deep Red, there seems to be a lot more filler shots in this film. The lesbians, for example, lived in a extremely well designed (and ahead of its time) house. At least 3 minutes of the film, during which Goblin’s awesome theme song is played, is devoted to partially showing the women through the windows of the house, but also showing really tight close-ups of the roofing tile and the side of the building. It makes no sense at all, and I don’t think they were all POV shots, considering the killer ultimately makes his entrance through a first floor window.
Much to my surprise, Tenebre was made in 1982, making me inadvertantly break my rule established after watching Inferno of ” watching no Dario Argento movies made after 1980″. I always thought that this was made after Deep Red and Suspiria, but before Inferno. While Tenebre does have some good bits and again, is a good mystery, a lot of it just comes off as lazy. I haven’t done much research on it, so I don’t know if there are multiple versions floating about, but the version Netflix sent me was not the Anchor Bay edition, but one by Westlake Entertainment. The quality of the DVD was terrible, and probably taken off some old VHS copy of the movie - shaky, you could see the video lines, and at one point the words “VIDEO CALIBRATION” were on the screen over a scene for 5 seconds. I tried to get a screenshot of it, but nothing is working right now.




