Phenomena (film)

Not to be confused with Phenomenon (film).

Phenomena
Theatrical poster to the US release of Phenomena (1985)
Directed by	Dario Argento
Produced by	Angelo Jacono, Dario Argento
Written by	Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini
Starring	Jennifer Connelly Daria Nicolodi Dalila Di Lazzaro Donald Pleasence Patrick Bauchau
Music by	Claudio Simonetti Fabio Pignatelli Bill Wyman Simon Boswell (solo voice theme song Pina Magri)
Cinematography	Romano Albani
Editing by	Franco Fraticelli
Distributed by	Titanus New Line Cinema (USA, theatrical) Anchor Bay Entertainment (USA, DVD)
Release date(s)	January 31, 1985 (Italy) August 2, 1985 (USA)
Running time	110 min Edited version: 82min
Country	Italy
Language	Italian German English
Budget	$3,800,000 (estimated)

Phenomena is a 1985 Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento. An edited version of the film was released in the United States under the title Creepers.^[1]

Jennifer Connelly stars as a young girl who arrives at an eerie Swiss boarding school where the students are being butchered by a serial killer. With the help of a wheelchair user entomologist (Donald Pleasence), she discovers she has special psychic powers, and uses them to pursue the killer.

Plot

A lost tourist, Vera Grandt (Fiore Argento), is chased by an unseen assailant and beheaded in the Swiss countryside. Sometime later, her head is taken to forensic entomologist John McGregor (Donald Pleasence) by Inspector Rudolf Geiger (Patrick Bauchau) and his assistant, Kurt (Michele Soavi). McGregor estimates the time of death as eight months prior.

Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly), insect-loving daughter of a movie star, arrives at the Swiss Richard Wagner Academy for Girls, chaperoned by Frau Brückner (Daria Nicolodi), who places her with roommate Sophie (Federica Mastroianni). While sleepwalking through the academy and out onto the roof, Jennifer witnesses a student being murdered. She awakens and falls, fleeing into the village and eventually becoming lost in the woods. McGregor's chimpanzee attendant Inga (Tanga) finds her and leads her to him. Witnessing her apparent interaction with his insects, McGregor comes to believe she has a special gift for telepathy with them. After sheltering with him overnight, she returns to the academy and is subjected to a brain scan by the school doctor (Antonio Maimone) in a bid to cure her somnambulism.

Following an ilicit tryst the same night, Sophie is murdered. Sleepwalking once again, Jennifer finds herself outside the school building and is guided by a firefly to a maggot-covered glove. When other students taunt Jennifer for her connection to insects, she summons a swarm of flies which covers the entire building, then faints. Convinced that Jennifer is insane and possibly responsible for the killings, the headmistress arranges for her to be transferred to a mental hospital for the criminally insane. Jennifer flees to McGregor's home just in time to evade the transfer.

McGregor identifies the maggots as those of the Great Sarcophagus fly, which is drawn to decaying human flesh. He gives one to Jennifer in a glass case and suggests she use it to help track the murderer. Near the now abandoned house where Vera Grandt was attacked, the fly becomes agitated, leading Jennifer to discover a severed hand but she is frightened off by a real estate agent. Inspector Geiger arrives moments later and learns that the house was abandoned eight months ago. He discovers that the house belonged to Brückner, who prior to working at the school, worked at a mental institution for the criminally insane. While there, an inmate raped Brückner through the bars of his cell and suffered several permanent scars.

Later that night, McGregor is murdered in his home after Inga is distracted and locked outside. Wandering the woods, the chimpanzee discovers a straight razor in a garbage bin. With nowhere left to go, Jennifer calls her father's lawyer Morris Shapiro for help. Instead of sending cash for a plane ticket, however, he alerts Brückner, who finds Jennifer at the bank waiting for the money to be wired. Jennifer agrees to stay at Brückner's house overnight.

Once there, Brückner explains that the mirrors are all covered because they upset her son, who is profoundly mentally disabled. She then demands that Jennifer take some anti-fever pills. The girl agrees and locks herself in the bathroom for privacy, but after finding more maggots in the room, she purges the pill after realizing that Brückner was trying to poison her. Furiously and growing questionable after a fight between the two, Brückner whacks Jennifer unconscious with a piece of wood and incarcerate her in the house after abusing her for disposing the pill.

Meanwhile, Inspector Geiger arrives after learning that Brückner was the tenant of the house where Vera Grandt was attacked and that she had become pregnant as a result of her rape. Shortly afterward, he can be heard screaming as Jennifer engineers her escape through a large hole in the floor that leads through a tunnel to a dungeon. Geiger, disfigured and chained to the wall, grabs at her and she tumbles into a pool full of decaying, maggot-infested corpses. Brückner appears and attempts to finish them off, but Geiger frees himself and holds her off long enough to allow Jennifer to escape.

In the basement, Jennifer finds Brückner's son, Patua (Davide Marotta), with a hideously deformed face. He chases Jennifer onto a motorboat and attempts to kill her, but she summons a swarm of flies that attack him. They eat away large portions of his flesh before causing him to drown in the lake. Swimming ashore, she is greeted by Morris Shapiro (Mario Donatone), who has arrived in response to her earlier phone calls. Before he can rescue her, Brückner appears out of the darkness and decapitates him. Brückner exposed that her son was the one killing the school girls and that she killed McGregor in order to try and stop the girl's investigation. Infuriated at Jennifer for her son’s murder, she tries to decapitate Jennifer while gloating that her insect friends will not reach her in time to save her. Suddenly McGregor's chimpanzee Inga attacks Brückner and kills her with the razor she found earlier. Avenging her owner's murder, Jennifer craddles the chimpanzee as the film ends.

Cast

• Jennifer Connelly — Jennifer Corvino
• Daria Nicolodi — Frau Brückner
• Dalila Di Lazzaro — Headmistress
• Patrick Bauchau — Inspector Rudolf Geiger
• Donald Pleasence — Professor John McGregor
• Fiore Argento — Vera Brandt
• Federica Mastroianni — Sophie
• Fiorenza Tessari — Gisela Sulzer
• Mario Donatone — Morris Shapiro
• Francesca Ottaviani — Nurse
• Michele Soavi — Kurt, Geiger's Assistant
• Franco Trevisi — Real Estate Agent

Production

The larvae were created by placing vermiculite in water and adding liquid chocolate and essence of mint.^[2]

Distribution

For its U.S. release, Phenomena was retitled as Creepers by New Line Cinema and heavily edited to remove nearly thirty minutes of footage. The murder sequences were shortened by several seconds to remove gore, a sequence where the second victim is spotted and chased by the killer was removed, and two lengthy scenes (which make up the bulk of the missing footage) involving Jennifer Connelly's character telling her roommate the story about how her mother abandoned the family on Christmas Day (as Argento's own mother had done) and her character receiving a brain scan after the second murder were removed for the purposes of speeding up the flow of the film. The film was a Box Office hit in Italy gaining 515.034 Admissions, and grossed €203,657 in Spain.^{[citation needed]}

The film was released in the summer of 1985 to American theaters and drive-ins from New Line Cinema.

Anchor Bay released the film to DVD in 1999; restoring the film's proper name and restoring all missing scenes from the original US release. The original cut (or Integral cut) of the film is available in Europe, on Region 2 DVD. The Integral cut (or Integral Hard, as it is known in Japan) never existed in English, but only in the dubbed Italian version, and adds only a few seconds of cut footage to some scenes, mostly of B roll material.^[3]

On March 7th, 2011 the movie, Phenomena was released on Blu-ray, by film company arrow. There are many special features on the disc such as "The making of Phenomena" and interviews from the director and cast, excluding Jennifer Connelly.

Soundtrack

The film's soundtrack features original music by Goblin and Simon Boswell, providing some of his earliest film scoring work. Songs by Iron Maiden, Motörhead, Bill Wyman and Andi Sexgang are also featured. The solo soprano voice in the theme song Phenomena and also in Jennifer's Friend and The Wind is Pina Magri.

There have been several soundtrack albums released with different track listings [1].

References

1. ^ NYC’s Scary Movies 3 gets Red; free tickets to AMERICAN WEREWOLF w/Landis!
2. ^ Dario Argento's Worlfd of Horror
3. ^ Video Watchdog #50.

External links

• Phenomena at the Internet Movie Database
• Phenomena at AllRovi