Dismember the Alamo 2024: Four Mystery Horror Movies at the Alamo Drafthouse.
U.S. Theatrical Cut, aka Creepers, aka What The FUCK is Going On?!
“Please! I’m a foreigner and I’m lost!” Please! I’ve seen Phenomena and I’m lost!
Argento movies already make little sense, so how could it behoove the American distributors to recut, reshuffle, and make his serial killer/etymological horror even MORE incomprehensible? Besides, you never call on the girl with the massive Bee Gees shirt. You just don’t.
Drop the luminous Jennifer Connelly into the “Swiss Transylvania,” I’m gonna watch, but only if there’s some semblance of logic or at least plausibility, which this version is practically devoid of. Characters and events are alluded to, but never seen. Even some of the cuts aren’t clean, with teeny frames of a cut shot still popping up. Despite a reduced runtime, Creepers lacks urgency and as I happened to watch the uncut Italian version a few years ago at a horror fest, I can attest the original’s pacing is smoother and more effective.
Daria Nicolodi gets a fun, showy role as usual, though she has little to do. Watching Connelly get taunted as the bug version of Carrie by her bitchy school mates isn’t without some drama; though I too might make fun of somebody who wants to plaster their walls with posters of their movie star father. Weird. Pleasence has a sage sweetness and he clearly relishes discussing maggoty larvae and their desire to feast upon corpses. The easy back-and-forth between him and Connelly makes one wish the film were more about the two of them rather than a wandering detective who doesn’t really matter and nonsensical sleepwalking sequences which just act as springboards for visually dynamic set pieces. “That fly is your magic wand.” Don’t…don’t you wanna keep looking for Michael Myers?
Argento’s disdain for plot manifests itself in what must have been a massive budget for wind machines and he goes for the gusto in typically artful fashion. Still, his adoration of hard rock and metal is only occasionally effective, with its use during a presumably somber removal of a dead body being especially inappropriate. The real highlight is Inga the chimp, who not only rides atop a moving car, but is deadly with a razor blade as well. Much like Tenebrae, the ending is wicked, blood-soaked fun, but the lack of thought or reason in this version makes it laughably ridiculous and only occasionally exciting.
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