Phenomena (film)
Encyclopedia
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 , the game called Clock Tower (video game)
that was released in 1995 for snes , was loosely based on Phenomena.
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.
), 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.
in water and adding liquid chocolate and essence of mint.
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.
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.
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 http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/catalog/soundtrackdetail.php?movieid=2281.
Cinema of Italy
The history of Italian cinema began just a few months after the Lumière brothers had patented their Cinematographe, when Pope Leo XIII was filmed for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera.-Early years:...
horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
directed by Dario Argento
Dario Argento
Dario Argento is an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his work in the horror film genre, particularly in the subgenre known as giallo, and for his influence on modern horror and slasher movies....
. An edited version of the film was released in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
under the title Creepers , the game called Clock Tower (video game)
Clock Tower (video game)
is the first installment of the stealth-based survival horror adventure game series Clock Tower created by Human Entertainment for the Super Famicom. The game was published by Human Entertainment and was released in Japan in 1995. It was then re-released in Japan in 1997, when it was ported to the...
that was released in 1995 for snes , was loosely based on Phenomena.
Jennifer Connelly
Jennifer Connelly
Jennifer Lynn Connelly is an American film actress, who began her career as a child model. She appeared in magazine, newspaper and television advertising, before making her motion picture debut in the 1984 crime film Once Upon a Time in America...
stars as a young girl who arrives at an eerie Swiss
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
boarding school where the students are being butchered by a serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
. With the help of a wheelchair user entomologist
Entomology
Entomology is the scientific study of insects, a branch of arthropodology...
(Donald Pleasence
Donald Pleasence
Sir Donald Henry Pleasence, OBE, was a British actor who gained more than 200 screen credits during a career which spanned over four decades...
), she discovers she has special psychic powers, and uses them to pursue the killer.
Plot
A lost tourist, Vera Grandt (Fiore ArgentoFiore Argento
- Biography :Eldest daughter of the famous director Dario Argento and Marisa Casale, restorer, a stained glass art as well as "master glassmaker"....
), 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
Donald Pleasence
Sir Donald Henry Pleasence, OBE, was a British actor who gained more than 200 screen credits during a career which spanned over four decades...
) by Inspector Rudolf Geiger (Patrick Bauchau
Patrick Bauchau
Patrick Nicolas Jean Sixte Ghislain Bauchau is a Belgian actor.-Early life:Bauchau was born in Brussels, the son of Mary , a Russian-born school administrator and publisher, and Henry Bauchau, a school administrator, publisher, writer, and psychoanalyst who served as an officer in the Belgian...
) and his assistant, Kurt (Michele Soavi
Michele Soavi
Michele Soavi, sometimes known as Michael Soavi is an Italian filmmaker.-Career:Michele Soavi was born in Milan. As a teenager, Soavi enrolled in creative arts classes and developed into a talented actor. He took acting lessons at Milan's Fersen Studios, but his greatest talent was working behind...
). McGregor estimates the time of death as eight months prior.
Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly
Jennifer Connelly
Jennifer Lynn Connelly is an American film actress, who began her career as a child model. She appeared in magazine, newspaper and television advertising, before making her motion picture debut in the 1984 crime film Once Upon a Time in America...
), insect
Insect
Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...
-loving daughter of a movie star, arrives at the Swiss Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
Academy for Girls, chaperoned by Frau Brückner (Daria Nicolodi
Daria Nicolodi
Daria Nicolodi is an Italian actress and screenwriter.- Early life and career :Daria Nicolodi was born in Florence on June 19, 1950. Her father was a Florentine lawyer and her mother, Fulvia, was a scholar of ancient languages. Her maternal grandfather was composer Alfredo Casella...
), 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
Chimpanzee
Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...
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
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
with them. After sheltering with him overnight, she returns to the academy and is subjected to a brain scan
Electroencephalography
Electroencephalography is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp. EEG measures voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current flows within the neurons of the brain...
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
Straight razor
A straight razor is a razor with a blade that can fold into its handle. They are also called open razors and cut-throat razors.Although straight razors were once the principal method of manual shaving, they have been largely overshadowed by the safety razor, incorporating a disposable blade...
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
Patau syndrome
Patau syndrome, also known as trisomy 13 and trisomy D, is a chromosomal abnormality, a syndrome in which a patient has an additional chromosome 13 due to a nondisjunction of chromosomes during meiosis. Some are caused by Robertsonian translocations...
. 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 ConnellyJennifer ConnellyJennifer Lynn Connelly is an American film actress, who began her career as a child model. She appeared in magazine, newspaper and television advertising, before making her motion picture debut in the 1984 crime film Once Upon a Time in America...
— Jennifer Corvino - Daria NicolodiDaria NicolodiDaria Nicolodi is an Italian actress and screenwriter.- Early life and career :Daria Nicolodi was born in Florence on June 19, 1950. Her father was a Florentine lawyer and her mother, Fulvia, was a scholar of ancient languages. Her maternal grandfather was composer Alfredo Casella...
— Frau Brückner - Dalila Di Lazzaro — Headmistress
- Patrick BauchauPatrick BauchauPatrick Nicolas Jean Sixte Ghislain Bauchau is a Belgian actor.-Early life:Bauchau was born in Brussels, the son of Mary , a Russian-born school administrator and publisher, and Henry Bauchau, a school administrator, publisher, writer, and psychoanalyst who served as an officer in the Belgian...
— Inspector Rudolf Geiger - Donald PleasenceDonald PleasenceSir Donald Henry Pleasence, OBE, was a British actor who gained more than 200 screen credits during a career which spanned over four decades...
— Professor John McGregor - Fiore ArgentoFiore Argento- Biography :Eldest daughter of the famous director Dario Argento and Marisa Casale, restorer, a stained glass art as well as "master glassmaker"....
— Vera Brandt - Federica Mastroianni — Sophie
- Fiorenza Tessari — Gisela Sulzer
- Mario Donatone — Morris Shapiro
- Francesca Ottaviani — Nurse
- Michele SoaviMichele SoaviMichele Soavi, sometimes known as Michael Soavi is an Italian filmmaker.-Career:Michele Soavi was born in Milan. As a teenager, Soavi enrolled in creative arts classes and developed into a talented actor. He took acting lessons at Milan's Fersen Studios, but his greatest talent was working behind...
— Kurt, Geiger's Assistant - Franco Trevisi — Real Estate Agent
Production
The larvae were created by placing vermiculiteVermiculite
Vermiculite is a natural mineral that expands with the application of heat. The expansion process is called exfoliation and it is routinely accomplished in purpose-designed commercial furnaces. Vermiculite is formed by weathering or hydrothermal alteration of biotite or phlogopite...
in water and adding liquid chocolate and essence of mint.
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.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.
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 GoblinGoblin (band)
Goblin are an Italian progressive rock band known for their soundtracks for Dario Argento films ....
and Simon Boswell
Simon Boswell
Simon Boswell is a BAFTA nominated British film score composer, conductor, producer and musician, with more than 90 credits to his name. He is known for combining mainly electronic elements with orchestral.-Biography:...
, providing some of his earliest film scoring work. Songs by Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden are an English heavy metal band from Leyton in east London, formed in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. Since their inception, the band's discography has grown to include a total of thirty-six albums: fifteen studio albums; eleven live albums; four EPs; and six...
, Motörhead, Bill Wyman
Bill Wyman
Bill Wyman is an English musician best known as the bass guitarist for the English rock and roll band the Rolling Stones from 1962 until 1992. Since 1997, he has recorded and toured with his own band, Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings...
and Andi Sexgang
Andi Sexgang
Andi Sexgang was vocalist of the band Sex Gang Children who were a prominent act in the Gothic rock movement of the 1980s, his band played once at the infamous Batcave club...
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 http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/catalog/soundtrackdetail.php?movieid=2281.