Phenomena (1985) is an Italian horror / giallo film by Dario Argento and stars a young Jennifer Connelly in her first lead role. Jennifer plays a sleepwalking, psychic girl named “Jennifer” who is sent to a Swiss boarding school where a serial killer is on the loose.
A local “forensic entomologist” played by Donald Pleasence (Dr. Loomis from Halloween) helps Jennifer to learn more about her unique telepathic ability to communicate with insects. This power helps her to track down the killer.
Before watching the movie, I read up on it and was excited to see that Iron Maiden songs are used in the film. [And, speaking of music, the year after Jennifer Connelly starred in Phenomena, she recorded two Japanese pop songs for release in Japanese markets. She didn’t speak a word of Japanese, so the lyrics were written out phonetically for her to sing.]
Typical of other Argento films, Phenomena is bonkers. The horror is gruesome, including Jennifer nearly drowning in a pool of sewage and maggot-infested corpses. And if you have never been afraid of chimpanzees before, you will be after watching Pleasence’s monkey go apesh*t on someone with a straight razor.
Like a lot of giallo flicks, this one takes time to build up and finishes with a wild, explosive ending. It was fun watching this movie. I look forward to experiencing it again when I’ve got some more giallo’s under my belt.
4.0 out of 5.0 skulls 💀💀💀💀
PLOT SUMMARY (SPOILERS)
After missing a bus in the Swiss countryside, a 14-year-old Danish tourist, Vera Brandt, tries looking for help. She comes across a home and is attacked by a stranger, who proceeds to behead her with scissors.
Eight months later, Jennifer Corvino, the American daughter of a famous actor, arrives at the Swiss Richard Wagner Academy for Girls, chaperoned by Frau Brückner, who places her with roommate Sophie. While sleepwalking through the academy and out onto the roof, Jennifer witnesses a student being murdered. She awakens and falls, fleeing and becoming lost in the woods. Forensic entomologist John McGregor’s chimpanzee, Inga, 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. Inspector Rudolf Geiger is on the case alongside McGregor. Back at the academy, the headmistress has Jennifer medically tested via EEG for her sleepwalking. The procedure makes Jennifer uneasy when she gets brief visions of the previous night’s events.
Following a tryst the same night, Sophie is murdered and Jennifer sleepwalks again. When she goes outside, a firefly leads her to a maggot-infested glove. The next day, she shows it to McGregor, who identifies the maggots as Great Sarcophagus flies, which are drawn to decaying human flesh. He theorises that the killer has been keeping his victims close to him post-mortem, unintentionally collecting the larvae on himself whilst physically interacting with the victims. They are dealing with a psychopath.
Later, when the other students taunt Jennifer for her connection to insects, she summons a swarm of flies that covers the entire building, then faints. Convinced that Jennifer is “diabolic” and possibly responsible for the killings, the headmistress arranges for her to be transferred to a mental hospital. Jennifer flees to McGregor’s home. He gives her a glass case with a Great Sarcophagus fly and suggests she use it to track the murderer. The fly leads her to the same house Vera had found earlier and Geiger talks with the real estate agent.
That night, McGregor is murdered in his home. With nowhere left to go, Jennifer calls her father’s lawyer Morris Shapiro for help. He alerts Brückner, who offers to let the girl stay at her house overnight. Brückner insists that Jennifer take pills before she goes to bed; when she does so, she becomes sick and assuming that the pills were poisonous, coughs them up. She attempts to call Morris but is knocked unconscious by Brückner. Geiger arrives and is attacked by Brückner.
After waking, Jennifer engineers her escape through a large hole in the floor that leads into a basement. There, she falls in a pool infested with maggots and dead bodies. Geiger is in the room, above Jennifer, struggling to free himself from chains attached to his wrists. Brückner taunts Jennifer, but Geiger frees himself and furiously beats Brückner long enough to let Jennifer escape.
Jennifer passes a room from which she hears sobbing. She finds Brückner’s son, who has a hideously deformed face; the result of a rape when Brückner was in a psychiatric asylum. He chases Jennifer onto a motorboat and tries to kill her, but she summons a swarm of flies that attack him, causing him to fall into the water. Jennifer is also forced to jump into the water as the motorboat explodes, whereupon the child grabs her, but he is eventually killed. Jennifer reaches the shore just as Morris appears. An severely injured and disfigured Brückner decapitates him from behind with a metal sheet and then leans over Jennifer, threatening her with the same fate before madly confessing that she murdered McGregor and Geiger out of fear that harm would have befallen her and her son. A wrathful Inga attacks Brückner and brutally kills her with a straight-razor in retribution for her beloved master.
With the ordeal over, Jennifer and Inga embrace.
