Tenebre

Italy / 1982 Directed by Dario Argento Starring Anthony Franciosa Daria Nicolodi John Saxon Color / 101 Minutes / Not Rated Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC) Anchor Bay Entertainment

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Remastered 2008 Edition

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After 1980's Inferno, the disappointing follow-up to his supernatural smash Suspiria, Dario Argento returned to the giallo murder/mystery formula with which he'd scored his initial success. The result was Tenebre (Latin for "darkness"), one of the Italian director's best works.     Popular American thriller writer Peter Neal (Franciosa) arrives in Rome for a book tour only to learn that a psychopath has taken his latest novel, Tenebre, a bit too close to heart. A young woman (sexy Ania Pieroni), her mouth stuffed with pages torn from the book, has been killed with a straight razor — the exact modus operendi of Neal's fictional villain. While Neal is being questioned by homicide detectives about possible connections to his work, he receives a chilling phone call from the killer promising more savagery to come. Inexorably, as the maniac strikes again, the mystery novelist is compelled to conduct his own private investigation into the razor killer's identity. It isn't long before Neal — whom the murderer ominously refers to as "the great corrupter" — is himself targeted for death.     Featuring masterful set-pieces and a pulsing, synthesizer-based score by Goblin, Tenebre delivers everything the discerning fan could expect from a giallo, a type of violent, bloody mystery/suspense thriller with an emphasis on bizarre psychological aberrations. The sadistic, black-gloved killer, the befuddled police, the gorgeous female victims, the wild, unexpected twists in the plot; all the chief elements are here.  Not all paths traveled by Argento with this film are the conventional ones, however. His use of bright lighting and sunlit spaces — as opposed to dark recesses selectively lit with candy-color greens, reds, and blues — is a noteworthy departure. Tenebre also has a very high body count: 11 total, including one of the goriest axe murders ever. Thwack!     Tenebre shocked me with its stunning murder sequences and surprised me with its bizarre but plausible plot twists; Goblin's score rocked me when it wasn't raising goose pimples... Anyone who digs suspense thrillers (and doesn't mind more than a bit of blood) should seek out this, the last truly great giallo.

Anchor Bay does a fine job with the Tenebre DVD, bringing this nerve-jangling shocker to American shores for the first time in uncut form. (A heavily edited version of the film was briefly released in the U.S. as Unsane in 1983.) Picture quality is very good, although the transfer is not anamorphic. Though the English Dolby 5.1 track contains a distracting amount of hiss, a hiss-less — though certainly less dynamic — 2.0 track is provided. (There's also a Dolby mono track in Italian, but sadly there are no English subtitles.)     Dario Argento and Goblin keyboardist Claudio Simonetti appear on a commentary track interviewed by a journalist Loris Corci, but the main participants are not the most comfortable with English. Argento fans will certainly appreciate this Q and A session but others may likely be turned off by the thick and occasionally difficult to understand accents. 5/03/01

UPDATE The disc reviewed here went OOP in 2004. In May 2008 Anchor Bay is releasing a remastered anamorphic edition containing a new mix of extras. This new edition will also be issued as part of the 6-disc Dario Argento Box Set.

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