Phenomena [4K UHD]

Studio: Synapse Films

Mar 16, 2022 Web Exclusive By Austin Trunick

In the grand scheme of the writer-producer-director’s filmography, 1985’s Phenomena is largely considered to be Secondary Argento—even film historian Mikel J. Koven’s booklet essay in this loaded home video edition of the film admits as much. It’s no Suspiria (but what is?) or Deep Red, and most rankings place it beneath most of Dario Argento’s earlier giallos. The common complaints are usually that it doesn’t make a ton of sense, it’s too long, or it’s too gross.

Of the three, the first complaint is the hardest one to argue against: this is a movie where sleepwalking Jennifer Connelly investigates a series of murders at an all-girls school using her psychic link with insects, getting help along the way from wheelchair-bound bug expert Donald Pleasence and his highly-intelligent helper chimp. (Also, there are those moments where it essentially turns into Motorhead and Iron Maiden music videos.) Yes, Phenomena feels like a wacky mish-mash of ideas compared to Argento’s more artful thrillers and supernatural horror films. Even in its longest cut, it can feel like certain elements of the story were left out. The other two criticisms, though, are more subjective. Let’s explore.

Teenage Jennifer Corvino (Connelly) arrives in Sweden, having been shipped there from the United States, where her father is a world-famous Hollywood actor who’s too busy to look after her himself. In a very Suspiria-esque setup, she’s enrolled at the Richard Wagner Academy for Girls, which is overseen by a cold headmistress and the very creepy Frau Bruckner (Daria Nicolodi). Unfortunately for Jennifer, her new school is smack dab in the spookiest region of the Swedish Alps, which has recently seen a large number of disappearances among girls exactly her age. The cases have stumped the local police, whose only leads are the occasional body part that is so badly decomposed they have to consult the town’s resident forensic entomologist, Professor McGregor (Pleasence), to study the embedded maggots so that they can pinpoint the date of death. Jennifer finds herself roped deeper into the mystery when she sleepwalks into McGregor’s back yard, and is led into his home by his helper chimp, Inga; when the good doctor discovers that the girl can telepathically commune with bugs, he realizes she may be able to help them find the anonymous killer.

Phenomena’s tepid reputation may be partially due to the heavily-truncated form in which it was released in the United States—and was most widely available here for its first fifteen years of existence. New Line Cinema picked up the U.S. distribution rights to the film and re-cut their own version, removing more than half an hour of footage and retitling it “Creepers.” While the longest, 116-minute cut already didn’t make a spectacular amount of sense, this 83-minute version moves at lightning speed and explains even less of what’s going on. While it still looks great and retains the same general storyline, it should be obvious that removing over a quarter of any film’s running time will do a serious number on a movie’s pacing and overall feel. This strange decision wasn’t reversed until the early DVD era, when Anchor Bay made the 110-minute English-language version available to American fans of Italian horror.

The biggest thing lost from the Creepers version is much of the slow burn that is the original’s first half. After a semi-famous opening in which Argento’s daughter, Fiore, is pursued by an unseen killer and has her head smashed through a window in super-slow motion, Phenomena settles in and takes its time letting the audience get to know the characters. This is good, because it casts suspicion on everyone from the schoolteachers to the adorable chimp, Inga—but those hoping for an active heroine are forced to wait while Jennifer literally sleepwalks through the first hour’s significant plot developments. As a tradeoff, though, we get a lot of nice interaction between Connelly and Pleasence’s eccentric character, quite a bit of excellent Argento atmosphere-building, and several smaller, weird touches, like Jennifer scarfing down a jar of baby food. Once the second half kicks in and Jennifer takes matters into her own hands, the movie transforms from a slow, spooky, and rather odd piece of horror cinema, into a runaway locative bound for crazytown. It’s almost all action and terror from that moment onward, with the latter part of the film having been largely left intact across all of its versions.

It’s easy to see how Phenomena could be viewed as an outlier, or even a disappointment to anyone coming to it already having worked their way through Argento’s more famous films. Ideas were recycled from his earlier works, and the story seems to operate with heavy doses of dream logic. But, not everyone comes to Phenomena as Argento fans already; my personal introduction to Italian horror was my video store’s faded, big box VHS edition of Fulci’s Zombie. This led to me working my way through other Italian zombie flicks from directors like Bruno Mattei, Umberto Lenzi, and Andrea Bianchi, and the rest of Fulci’s horror canon, before stumbling onto Demons—which acted as my backdoor entry into Argento’s work. (With its use of heavy metal music, Phenomena feels at times more stylistically linked with Demons—which he produced the same year—than his own prior films.) This is all to say that Phenomena may seem pretty wacky compared to Suspiria or his more Hitchcockian thrillers, but if you’re coming at it as a fan of something like The Beyond (1981) or House by the Cemetery (1981), then this movie is really not going to seem that weird to you.

For all of its goofiness, I love Phenomena—probably because of its nuttier qualities. It may not be among Argento’s masterpieces, but if you’re on the fence about it, it’s at least worthy of revisiting.

Synapse’s new 4K UHD release of Phenomena is, like their UHD edition of Suspiria, stunning to behold. Everything is brighter, crisper, and more colorful thanks to the UHD, and you get so much more detail in everything from the rolling, green foothills of the Swedish Alps to the writhing maggots devouring the film’s many dismembered corpse parts. (Three versions of the film are on offer: the 116-minute Italian cut, the 110-minute English version, and the 83-minute Creepers version.) It also sounds fantastic, with DTS-HD 5.1 mixes available alongside several other audio options, including more vintage-sounding mono and stereo tracks, and a rare alternate mix that uses different music cues and sound effects.

Spread across two UHD discs, the extras are wonderfully generous and insightful. The centerpiece for many will be Of Flies and Maggots, a feature-length documentary about the making of the movie which includes interviews with quite a few of the principal players. There are some funny moments in here, such as Argento suggesting that the main reason Phenomena exists is because he got way into bugs for a little while, and a story about the local police being alerted when somebody found one of the production’s realistic prop heads washed up on a riverbank. It’s a really great feature, and a must-see if you missed it on the prior Blu-ray release. You’ll also find multiple commentaries, promotional materials such as a fully scanned Japanese pressbook, radio spots, and trailers, and a music video. Another documentary, titled The Three Sarcophagi, carefully details the finer differences between the movie’s various cuts, going so far as to show scenes side-by-side to illustrate where edits as small as a few frames were made.

Synapse’s Phenomena UHD comes housed in a heavy-duty slipcase featuring newly-created artwork by Wes Benscoter, and is stuffed with more limited edition extras. In addition to the full-sized, double-sided poster and miniature lobby card reproductions, there’s a hefty, illustrated booklet with essays by Koven (who quotes Stephen King on the art involved in grossing people out, and applies that to Argento’s film), Rachael Nisbet (looking at the fashions designed for the film by none other than Giorgio Armani), and Leonard Jacobs (who connects Phenomena with Argento’s next film, Opera.) These all provide even further context for a film that genuinely benefits from it.

Even among Argento or Italo horror fans, Phenomena may not be everyone’s cup of espresso, but its quirks are worth exploring. Fans of the movie will want this set, as the film’s truly never looked better; providing three significantly different cuts ensures this release will appeal to fans both nostalgic for the U.S. Creepers cut, and those who want to see the movie the way Argento intended it. For anyone on the fence about the movie, the insightful extra features may help you reassess your feelings on it. In any case, it is a very limited edition and will sell out before long, so if our hearty recommendation is enough to sway you—you’d better jump on this one fast.

(mvdshop.com/products/phenomena-4k-uhd-limited-edition-4k-ultra-hd )

Comments