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goreledger
Year
1985
Country
Italy
Runtime
116 min

Also released as

  • Creepers
  • Fainomena
  • Fenomina
  • Fenómena
  • 페노미나
  • 페노메나
  • Dario Argento's Phenomena
  • 神话

Phenomena

Phenomena is a 1985 Italian creature feature directed by Dario Argento.

Jennifer Connelly communicates with insects at a Swiss boarding school, and there is a chimpanzee with a razor.

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Argento's strangest film, which is a considerable claim. A girl with a telepathic connection to insects arrives at a school near a lake where students are being murdered, and works with an entomologist in a wheelchair.

Donald Pleasence plays the entomologist with a Scottish accent. The chimpanzee is his assistant. There is a pit.

The plot is deranged even by Argento's standards, and the film is carried entirely by the photography, the Swiss locations and a soundtrack that alternates Goblin with Iron Maiden and Motörhead.

Connelly was fourteen and had just made Once Upon a Time in America.

It was released in America as Creepers, cut by nearly half an hour, which removed most of the connective tissue and made it incomprehensible rather than merely strange.

The last twenty minutes are the most purely insane sequence in Italian horror.

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Trailer

The sleeves

The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.

poster
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