Italian Horror

Tenebre

The Beyond

Greetings, my gutsy readers, and welcome to October! No matter how long the heat persists, and no matter how many shitty horror sequels are released, I’ll always love the month of October. I love it, not just because I celebrate my birthday during this month, but because there is an encouragement (obligation?) to watch horror movies during this time. I obviously never tire of watching horror movies but as a veteran horror-movie watcher, there are always subgenres that I like more than others, subgenres that I avoid almost entirely, and subgenres that, no matter how much I try, I never feel a strong connection to. One of those subgenres is Italian Horror which, I know just sounds xenophobic, but let me explain. Italian horror films—particularly the most beloved ones made from the 1960s-1980s—are all dubbed. Most films produced by Italian filmmakers, particularly horror filmmakers, were filmed without sound so that any actor could speak whatever their preferred language was, and then voiceovers would be added in during the editing stage. (See here for a more in-depth history of dubbing in Italian cinema.) As a lover of foreign films of all varieties, I’m quite used to and fond of subtitles, so dubbed films are never my first choice. Italian horror film dubbing is notoriously obvious, as it was typically done by Italian-speaking actors speaking English. I have seen many excellent Italian horror films like Deep Red and Suspiria—just to name my favorite Argentos—but they’ll never be as scary to this critic due to the goofy-sounding dub playing throughout. I love to hear a good, blood-curdling scream, but to see a blood-curdling scream not match up with one’s open mouth? Or a mumbled lip reading that results in overracted, ridiculous audio? That bothers me! I wish it didn’t, I wish I could put up with some silly-sounding, attemptedly-American accents, but to me it sounds downright cacophonous. Within giallo—otherwise known as yellow, otherwise known as crime/thriller stories, otherwise known as Spaghetti Slashers—this practice of dubbing was so common place, it is often impossible to find subtitled versions of any of them. I know that this isn’t a very cool stance to take, because generally horror / slasher movie fans appreciate these films, and you can trace the history of horror-filmmaking-styles back to these dubbed Italian thrillers. (Even last week’s Joan Crawford Slasher Berserk! was heavily influenced by the style of giallo films.) I just never jump at the opportunity to watch a dubbed film, from any country, within any genre—but tonight I am forcing myself to cross two Italian, dubbed horror movies off of my list. Up first was a project by the king of giallo Dario Argento, a favorite among Italian slasher cinema: his 1982 film Tenebre. After the international success of his 1977 film Suspiria, his next film, Inferno, was less successful. In addition to being a commercial flop, Argento developed a fraught relationship with the film’s co-producer at 20th Century Fox—turning him off from the world of Hollywood filmmaking and all of its petty politics. Feeling pressure to create another hit, Argento embarked upon Tenebre—a project he described as “a gory roller-coaster ride packed with fast and furious murders”, which is fairly accurate. Tenebre follows an American crime fiction novelist named Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) who arrives in Rome to promote his latest book (titled Tenebre) just in time to become ensconced in a brutal murder mystery. There’s a killer on the streets of Rome who is copying the murders committed in Peter’s novel, and not only is this writer in danger, but every beautiful Italian and American person in his vicinity is a suspect. Peter experiences odd things before he even arrives in Rome, and starts to receive cryptic, threatening phone calls from a distinctly feminine-sounding, menacing voice. Argento himself received a series of threatening phone calls criticizing him for the damaging psychological effects of his previous work(s), which inspired him make this film, and honestly just seems like a slap in the face to his devoted crank caller, but I digress. John Saxon (of Nightmare on Elm Street fame) plays Peter’s agent, and urges him to stay in Rome to promote his book, despite the fact that a new gruesome murder occurs seemingly every day. This distinctly-feminine threat is a trademark of many of Argento’s films, and Tenebre presented an entire cast of gorgeous, suspicious women who all have viable motives. The aesthetic elements of this Italian-American extravaganza were unsurprisingly immaculate—the fashion and architecture and furniture and people were all dazzling. And as each of these vicious, increasingly-creative slashings took place, the synth-soaked melodies of Argento’s longtime musical collaborator Goblin blared in the background. I was sufficiently-riveted by Tenebre, and as with all Argento affairs, I did not predict who the killer was, I just felt incredibly distracted by the vocal asymmetry—even though I desperately tried not to be! There are plenty of other apects of Tenebre that I could hyperfixate on—the meta-commentary on sexist male writers while reliable 1980s tits are on display, the ambiguous morals of a main character who is neither hard nor easy to root for, the orange-tinted blood that gushed out of each victim—but I really focused on the dubbing in this movie. I appreciated the boldness of Tenebre, and how each slaying was a bigger slay than the last, but it fell victim to some bizarrely-bad line readings that came not exclusively from the Italian-speaking actors, but the English-speaking ones as well. And I know that the horror genre is no stranger to absurd dialogue and atrocious line-readings, but when there are genuinely fun, freaky ingredients to a horror film, the unintended goofiness can take me, personally, out of it. One defining quality of giallo is a lack of a supernatural element and an emphasis upon manmade gore which would, technically, make this next film non-giallo—but there was a bit of the supernatural and the manmade macabre in Lucio Fulci’s 1981 classic: The Beyond. The Beyond begins in New Orleans in 1927, where a sepia filter captures the mysterious and spooky happenings at a hotel one night. A blonde woman is reading a cryptic passage from a book titled “Eibon” in one room, an artist is painting a ghoulish scene in another, and an angry mob is forming elsewhere to capture and kill this painter on the suspicion that he’s been practicing black magic. This hotel, as it would turn out, was built on one of the seventh entrances to hell, and when the lynch mob violently kills this artist, they unknowingly open a door that they cannot close. We then jump forward in time to 1981, where a young, blonde New Yorker named Liza arrives in New Orleans to claim her inheritance: this horribly cursed hotel. Almost immediately, I was regretting all of my shit-talking of Argento and his dubbing, because The Beyond goes beyond the bad, forced American accents—even with a mostly English-speaking cast, not a single one of them could do a Southern accent but nevertheless, they insisted. However, my audio sensitivity anxiety dissolved just as quickly as it appeared, because within the first 5 minutes of The Beyond, we’re provided with some truly stomach-turning, eye-popping violence and gore. While Liza and her staff of groundskeepers and maids try to fix this establishment up, some bizarre happenings begin to take place—the worst of which being the near-death experience of a painter that falls off the scaffolding, the strangest of which being the return of that same, mysterious blonde girl that we met in the flashback. A plumber investigates a leak in the basement, and the body of the slain artist from the 1920s is found just as the plumber is attacked and killed by some kind of ghoul. While Liza is driving down the never-ending Lake Pontchartrain bridge, she sees a girl and her dog standing in the middle of the road, as if waiting for Liza’s arrival. Liza picks her up and learns that her name is Emily, she is blind, and has only bad news to deliver. Emily warns Liza that re-opening this hotel would disturb the hellish forces living just beneath its basement floorboards, but Liza—a girl failure flop who’s multiple job paths have led her nowhere—claims that this hotel is her last chance to make a real living. Meanwhile, at a creepy ass hospital where the injured housepainter is being delivered, the autopsies of this plumber and this decades-old corpse take place. But these dead bodies are far from lifeless, as the wife of the dead plumber learns the hard way. When Liza learns of all of this death and tragedy and mystery—that has occurred only within one day of owning this hotel—Emily tells her that the consequences have already begun and she must leave before it is too late. But a handsome doctor who’s been helping Liza is skeptical, and has yet to see this all-knowing Emily with his own eyes. Throughout the course of The Beyond’s tight 88-minute runtime, some of the most shocking, disturbing, and entertaining deaths occur—including, but not limited to: acid being poured on a woman’s face, a swarm of tarantulas ripping apart a man’s face, a loose nail stabbing woman in the back of the head which results in her eye being gouged out, and shattering glass flying at a face. (Fulci loves to fuck with a face.) I was pretty blown away by the special effects and makeup of The Beyond, considering the decade in which it was made, and just in general. Tenebre may have had large, expensive set pieces that spanned multiple cities and familiar American actors, but its orange blood and quick editing made the violence too haphazard to be fully enjoyed. What The Beyond lacked in household names and impressive sets, it made up for in blood and guts and gloriously gross gore—which made me fall in love with it. The blood looked like actual blood, the victims seemed reasonably frightened, and no matter how many bodies began to pile up, I never grew bored of this film’s dedication to creatively killing its cast. The Beyond does, of course, feature a few unintentionally-funny moments, but not nearly as many as Tenebre. I loved how much the effects were prioritized here—it made an otherwise silly supernatural horror genuinely suspenseful and thoroughly freaky. The trippy visual elements were never too heavy-handed, and the mystery of this haunted hotel just continues to unfold, right up til the very last frame. To be candid, I wasn’t the most stoked to watch either of tonight’s features, but I was so pleasantly surprised by The Beyond, that it gave me a greater appreciation for this era and region of horror—bad lip reading and all. Thanks for reading along, boos and ghouls, let’s meet back here next week for more cinematic spooks. Ciao!