But from here, it’s not so much downhill as a plunge from the top of a tower block in terms of quality.Īmerican student Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly) arrives at an exclusive Swiss academy for girls, where she struggles to fit in due to her sleepwalking habit – and possibly her clumsily explained love of insects. This is stylishly done, with atmospheric music and a sense of drama – even if the final moments of death are needlessly slow-mo’d, something that hints at the idea that Argento had started believing his own publicity and the excessively gushing praise about his innovative techniques (be fair: would that slow, pointless and visually clumsy crane shot around the house in Tenebrae have seemed anything more than empty time-wasting if you hadn’t been repeatedly told what a ground-breaking technical moment it was?). The film actually starts out well, with a young girl left behind by a coach party in the Swiss countryside, who then stumbles upon a deserted house and meets a sticky end. Not only is it awful – quite extraordinarily so – but at nearly two hours, it’s needlessly bloated.

But a subsequent viewing of the full-length version revealed it to be no better and watching Phenomena again now, I can only think that this film could only be improved by judicious editing (though I’m not sitting through Creepers again to find out). Of course, at the time you don’t realise that this is the end – I recall hoping this was a one-off aberration and was quick to blame the awfulness as much on the UK/US Creepers cut – which, in addition to having a ludicrously cheesy title, chopped out lots of footage. I’d argue otherwise, and pinpoint the stage in his career where he shifted from being one of my favourite directors to becoming something of a joke as being the release of Phenomena. One great source of debate amongst horror film fans is questioning when, exactly, did Dario Argento go off the rails (and even the most dedicated fan must surely admit that it’s ‘when’, not ‘if’)? At what point did his films stop being great and become crashingly, continually awful? Some filmmakers have a gradual decline from their glory days, and many Argento fans would have it that their hero did likewise. The artistic beginning of the end for Dario Argento.

Argento phenomena