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Tenebrae is, in reality, two movies (or mysteries) for the price of one.

In one movie it seems that Argento is trying to distance the artist from the effect his art has on society. The writer (Franciosa) is accused of sexism, but he excuses himself saying those are his novels, in reality he personally supported equal rights.
Art (or the artist) is seen as a corruptor, but only by the killer (who is himself an aberrant human being.) The killer is inspired by the novels to go after sinners, perverts or those presenting deviant behavior, (a thief, a prostitute, a lesbian couple, etc.) a la Se7en.
Is Argento justifying the ultra-violent imagery of his movies?

But then, we get the second movie and, suddenly, all of this discussion goes to pot. Still, Argento manages images of bloody poetry.

Has nothing to do with the Mother of Darkness (Mater Tenebrae.)

Argento at his most Hitchcockian, and I mean that in a good way (this is not just a De Palma plagiarist type movie,) not only in the psychoanalytical (albeit somewhat capricious) 'mystery' but in the romantic interplay between Hemmings and Niccolodi. 

Reminiscent also of Antonioni's Blow-up: the casting of Hemmings as the problematic witness to a murder is no accident. This is probably one of Argento's most mainstream films. Not that it's a bad thing, because it's also one of the most focused and 'logical.' We still get the pseudo science psychic connection between insects (which we will hear again in Phenomena,) but, hey, Alfred also touched upon psychics (a light touch at that) in his last work Family Plot.

I liked it quite a bit, even if I'm not sure the version I saw is the best one (I saw the one with multiple alternating languages.)

The automaton is quite reminiscent of the mutant child in Phenomena too.

One of the Masters Of Horror episodes.

Here is Argento, dealing once again with deformed, psychotic people (also see Phenomena.)
More Hitchcock influenced music, and the story is highly reminiscent of Sturgeon's Bianca's Hands even if it is actually based on some other story, which I've never read.
A Frankenstein quote and a sex scene much like the one in Splice, which work even if I do not quite understand why.
The suspense and creep factor diminish as the story goes on, but It's pretty high there at the start. At points it actually feels like a comedy.

The end is, of course, utterly predictable once you see the beginning, even if you don't know exactly where you will be traveling along.

This is really a murder mystery, not so much a horror film, but due to a pseudo-scientific revelation it becomes a sort of science fiction. Now, most reviewers point out that the murderer acts due to a defective gene, but in an attempt to bring it into the SF genre I will treat it differently.
What if the gene is not defective, but a logical evolutionary development that results in the survival of the human race? (Shades of Quatermass?)
What is we are not merely talking about an XYY, but more of a genetic pattern that gives us the 'killer instinct?
And what if some humans still have inherited from our ancestors, but other have had it bred out via either selective breeding, natural selection or whatever other processes have produce both Homo Sapiens Domesticus and Homo Sapiens Lupus? Let us assume the wrong laguage is being used.

Anyway, we have a neat little mystery with some unconventional elements well worthy of Argento or Hitchcock. A blind witness to a discussion suspects murder when one of the overheard people ends up dead. The blind man (Karl Malden) is a puzzle fan, and has a girl companion/friend. But he refuses to go to the cops, so instead he teams up with a reporter (James Franciscus) to figure out the mystery. A couple of very funny scenes involve the reporter being terrorized by both a barber and a recklessly driving woman.

My copy of the movie is one of those dollar DVDs I picked up at Halloween a couple of years ago, which made for an inferior watching experience, so if you get a good quality, complete copy, your rating is bound to be higher. My previous screening was from an equally crappy VHS a decade and a half ago.

Another almost atypical Argento film, but we still get bugs, seeds inside corpses (spoiler: and a pregnant heroine at the end,) etc.  The identity of the psycho is obvious from the first, but it does not detract from the film's disturbing quality. Quite a straightforward story and better than I expected. I almost thought this would be something along the line of a TZ episode, seeing as to how the gimmick is summed up so quickly and easily.

Hazy smoky* photography is no substitute for what Argento does best, which is bright gelatin color lighting and artistic sets. The bland leads and their weak chemistry don't help either. We do get cheap psychology ('I saw it on Phil Donahue') and references to Hitchcock with the neighbor Peeping Tom kid (Rear Window,) possibly the obsession from Vertigo and a (fake?) medium (Family Plot) bugs and animals, in this case butterflies and a bunch of geckos reenacting hunter prey scenarios present Bunuelian motifs, plus another Argentian homunculus. Water is again a motif, lots of rain and a series of murders every time it rains, with even a scene in which artificial rain is generated to help with a murder.



*He even tries to do the smoke in outside daylight scenes!

davlghry wrote:

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...Thanks to Herman's above mini-reviews I've decided to give him another spin...

I apologize for the super fast 'telegraph' reviews, but my intent was basically to type up quick impressions upon seeing these again. I know they are not the most coherent things I've written here, but I don't think I can really do the proper essays these films deserve unless I were to devote quite a bit more time, plus additional time revising them. As it is I saw a bunch of typos I'd missed before. For those looking for more depth, try Broken Mirrors, Broken Minds or VideoWatchdog magazine.