Movie Review: Tenebrae (1982)
As is the tradition with Italian films of this period, Tenebrae has a few different titles. There’s Tenebre, the title on the poster here, and it was also released in the English speaking world as Unsane.
Tenebrae marks a return to the giallo genre for legendary horror director Lucio Fulci. He had tremendous success in the early- to mid-’70s with this genre, which might be described as the prototype for the American slasher movie, but with more of a focus on mystery. However, he is perhaps best known today for his supernatural horror film, 1977’s Suspiria.
Argento is also known for his impeccable shot composition, attention to color, and unique music scores. All that of course is on display here, in the story of successful horror writer Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) who has come to Rome to find that murders inspired by his latest novel are occurring.
When at the airport in New York, he leaves his bag behind shortly while he takes a phone call, and then finds that it’s gone missing. He finds it, but not in the place where it had been, with someone having taken it to tamper with it. He boards the plane not thinking anything more of it, though we see that he’s being followed and watched.
In Rome, we follow Elsa (Ania Pieroni), a young woman caught shoplifting Neal’s latest novel, Tenebre. When released, she is attacked outside her apartment building by a homeless man, but is able to get inside. There, she’s murdered with a straight razor, the unseen assailant stuffing pages from Neal’s book into her mouth. The killer takes photos of the body after she’s dead.
When Neal arrives in Rome, he meets a bunch of journalists and reporters. One, Tilde (Mirella D’Angelo), a beautiful lesbian woman, accuses him of being sexist. Finding it difficult to respond, his agent, Bullmer (the always reliable John Saxon, A Nightmare on Elm Street), promises to schedule a time for her to meet with him. Neal eventually finds that his luggage has been sabotaged, although not much comes of this.
A detective (Giuliano Gemma) meets with Neal and informs him of the murder, also giving him a letter from the killer. He then gets a phone call that they believe has come from just outside the building, but when Neal mentions the murder, the killer takes off, knowing that police must have showed up.
After a strange but beautiful scene showing a woman in red shoes sexually humiliating a largely unseen man on a beach in front of three other men, we cut to Tilde and her lover, Marion (Mirella Banti), who has agreed to take a man home, much to Tilde’s chagrin. Tilde comes home later, upset with Marion, who taunts her over how great the man was in bed. She picks up a scissors and mutters to herself, “One day,” before looking out the window in frustration. The camera follows her outside, and slowly movesupstairs to Marion’s room, where she’s playing a record, then up to the roof, then down to the other side of the building, where someone is breaking in. It’s a very long, impressive, and unsettling shot, and one of the most memorable things in the movie.
We hear whispering, and Tilde is killed with the razor, alerting Marion, who still hasn’t put any clothes on. She sees Tilde’s body, and ends up getting her throat slit, with the killer taking photos of both bodies when theya re done.
The next morning, Maria (Lara Wendel), the landlord’s daughter, goes to Neal’s room to fix the water heater. She tells him that she’s a fan of his books, which he is delighted to hear. As she leaves, his assistant, Anne (Daria Nicolodi, Inferno) arrives. The killer silently slips another letter under Neal’s door, and when he discovers it, he runs out looking for whoever delivered it. He eventually opens it to find a note in Latin: “Sic transit gloria Lesbii,” which translates to “So passes the glory of Lesbos.” Neal then gets a call telling him who was killed.
Neal has a conversation with a television interviewer, Christiano Berti (John Steiner), who has an intense intrest in his work. He’s particularly drawn to what Tenebre has to say about sexual perversion and its effects on society, which Neal rejects, saying that the gay character is not written as a deviant, but is presented as perfectly happy.
As he goes on TV for the interview, the Detective arrives, talking briefly with Bullmer, before eventually talking with Neal outside.
While back at the apartment, Neal laments that he ever wrote the novel. He then sees someone driving by that he thinks is Jane, his ex-wife, who we recognize as the woman from the airport. He calls her home in New York and thinks that maybe she’s been the killer after he’s unable to reach her.
At night, the killer goes to pick up a prostitute who they have a bunch of photographs of, but they soon realize that they left their keys back at whatever building they were hiding out in.
Maria wanders alone outside and comes to a fence that holds a vicious dog that eventually gets out and chases her. She fights back and climbs the fence to what she hopes is safety. She comes to a home, calling for help, but gets attacked again by the dog, though she’s able to sneak inside due to the keys that the killer had left behind.
She finds photos of the killings as well as a bunch of cut out letters that the killer had been using to compose the letters to Neal. She takes some evidence and looks for a way out that won’t get her killed by the guard dog. She finds a phone, but then the killer shows up and chases her, eventually killing her with an axe.
The next day, Neal and the Detective go over the latest letter, which laments her death as necessary for the killer to continue. The killer says that their goal is to kill corrupted people, and eventually the corrupter himself: Neal. The Detctive tells him to stay in the apartment as much as possible. Neal naturally suspects the TV interviewer, finding that he lives only three blocks away. He decides to keep this information from the police, however, wanting instead to find the evidence to solve it himself.
At night, Anne spots Jane across the street and goes back inside. Neal and his young Italian assistant, Gianni (Christian Borromeo) sneak into Christiano Berti’s yard, and we of course recognize the house as the one featured in the previous scene with Maria. When the lights go on in the house, Gianni goes in for a closer look, but then the lights go off, alerting Berti to somebody else’s presence. He then gets killed with an axe to the head, and Gianni runs back to Neal to find that he had been hit in the head with a rock. As they get back to the car, Gianni admits that he didn’t really see anything other than the axe.
Back at the apartment, Anne tries in vain to convince Neal to go to the police, and then to go back to New York. The two of them eventually kiss, and possibly sleep together.
We then get another scene of that woman from the beach, either a flashback or a dream, or something like that. This time, she is at a patio setting, and is stabbed multiple times in the gut.
The next day, Neal is meeting with Bullmer. Bullmer wants him to stay, though, knowing that this publicity trip to Rome is important for a potential book deal. He suggests getting a different hotel and having Peter lay low for a while. When Neal leaves, it’s revealed that Bullmer is having an affair with his client’s ex-wife, Jane, who had been hiding behind a door.
Gianni drops Neal off at the house of the murdered Berti, and he meets with the Detective. They find notes that Berti had kept on Neal, following him obsessively. The Detective asks Neal to leave town to stay safe.
We then see Jane finding a gift left for her. She opens it, revealing the same red shoes we had seen on the woman in those two disconnected scenes.
In the next scene, Bullmer is just sort of waiting at a public squre until he’s stabbed multiple times in the torso. As he’s on the ground, we see those red shoes approaching the body, noticing, and then walking away.
Gianni shows up at the apartment to say goodbye to Neal, mentioning that he knows there’s another piece of the puzzle that he saw, but he can’t remember it.
After we see a plane take off, Gianni shows up at Berti’s house to do some investigating. Standing where he had been the night before, he’s able to remember hearing Berti say, “I killed them, I killed them all!” Gianni then goes back to his car to find that his keys are missing. He gets strangled from behind with a rope. The killer then takes the axe which had been hidden on a tree.
Jane calls Anne, distraught, and says that she did something bad. With Anne on the way, Jane waits by her window with a gun. The axe comes through the window and cuts off her forearm, spraying blood all throughout the room. The killer then continues to strike her with the axe, killing her.
We get another glimpse of the woman in red shoes getting stabbed, this time showing the killer take the shoes after she’s dead.
Someone shows up, and before she can even see what’s wrong, she gets killed from behind with the axe. The person carrying the axe walks over to her body, and the camera pans up to reveal that it’s Peter Neal, who drops the axe in surprise. When Detective Giermani and Anne enter, Neal sees that he has killed the female Detective (Carola Stagnaro), who had in her previous scene, been talking with a Philippine woman who claimed to know about Bullmer.
Detective Giermani pulls a gun and explains that the dead detective had learned of Bullmer’s affair with Jane. Neal protests and says that he did not kill the other women, which Detective Giermani already knew, saying it would have been impossible. Neal then admits that he knew Berti had been the killer right away. He then slits his own throat with the razor.
In his car, Giermani explains to Anne that he got a fax from Interpol saying that when he was a teenager on Rhode Island, Neal had been accused of a brutal murder of a girl. There wasn’t enough evidence, so it was never taken to trial. Giermani believes that it was him, it haunted him for the rest of his life, and was covered in his latest book. He says that Neal learned that he could cover up any humiliation through violently murdering people.
Giermani then leaves Anne in the car and goes back into the house to find that Neal’s body isn’t there, and finding fake blood. As he bends down, we see Neal standing right behind him in an immensely creepy shot, and he kills Giermani with the axe. As he falls, some weird modern art sculpture thing gets pushed up against the door, the noise of which alerts Anne.
Anne leaves the car and heads to the door, which she struggles to get open due to the statue. Neal approaches with the axe, and when she’s finally able to get the door open, a part of the statue goes through Neal, pinning him to the wall and killing him while Anne screams in horror.
I was all about to say that the ending was very unsatisfying when Giermani was explaining the whole thing to Anne, but that of course wasn’t the ending. The moment in which Giermani bends down to reveal that Neal had been standing behind him is a truly remarkable shot, and the scariest part of the movie. This movie definitely has a few shots that stand out as very well done, as can be expected for an Argento movie.
It’s a thrilling mystery, but at a certain point, it became predictable. I guess there are really two mysteries here, with two different killers, and each one became predictable at a certain point. I also think the script didn’t do a great job of explaining why Neal kept information from the police. Obviously, he ends up being the killer, so we understand it by the end, but it wasn’t really believable at the time, considering characters around him like Gianni and Anne knew what he was doing. Even before Neal meets Berti, he receives that second letter, the Latin one, and the film doesn’t show or imply him telling the police about it.
Really the first time you meet Berti, you kind of know he has something to do with it all. And I knew Neal was involved once Gianni was killed, given that he had recently mentioned to Neal that he knew there was something else he witnessed that he was trying to remember. So, really, the scene in which we officially find out there are two killers is when we figure out who the second killer is, which is disappointing.
Despite the predictability of the mystery, the movie is still incredibly well made, with some wonderful scenes of tension. It also helps that this movie is a hell of a lot gorier than American movies of this period, if you’re into that kind of thing. Jane’s death was incredible. Sure, the severed arm wasn’t the best effect, but there was so much blood, it almost felt like Evil Dead II.
As a psychological character study, which I think this film tries to be at least a little, it doesn’t really succeed. As a mystery, it’s pretty predictable, though admittedly the twist that there are two murderers for separate reasons is pretty interesting. It succeeds most completely as a horror movie. And it’s definitely a visual treat, with outstanding cinematography by Luciano Tovoli (Suspiria, Titus).
Rating: 8/10
