As per usual, I've been slothing it up to the hilt the past few days. So that, combined with my recent membership with Netflix means more movie watching than normal. This blog brings forth the description of two good'n's, I tell you.
First...Snakes On A Plane. You know it's loaded with cheese. I know it is loaded with cheese. Snakes On A Plane is the greatest kind of cheese. It's the equivalent of eating an entire crate of Velveeta and not getting sick at the end. I can't think of a title in recent history that has been so blunt. When I first saw the title, I thought it was metaphorical. I was thinking maybe "untrustworthy men who inhabit a small farming community" or something along those lines. Instead, it actually was literal snakes on an airplane. There can be nothing more straight forward than that but even knowing that, it still had the potential to just suck oh so bad. In my opinion, it was the exact opposite. Snakes On A Plane rocked in that "don't feel like using my brain" sort of manner. If you are looking for intellectual stimulation, this movie fails miserably. If you just want to see a bunch of people die in hilarious ways, this is perfect. I really don't know what else to say. There are no intricate plot points, no complex character developments, no mysteries to solve, no brilliant dialogue. Just a plethora of dead bodies, babies crying and people dying. There's even another classic Samuel L. Jackson moment!! I learned in my earliest game development classes that the key to any story is three-fold: get your main character(s) up the tree, hit them with everything you can while they are stuck in the tree and finally, have them figure out how to get down the tree alive. Snakes On A Plane gets the passengers "up the tree", blasts off on them with hilarioous results and the few remaining survivors live to go surfing. Perfect.
Next...Phenomena. I'm getting ever closer to having seen the entire Dario Argento catalog of work. Phenomena seems to be somewhat of a weird entry as it gets closer to the end of his run of "classic" movies but seems to be mentioned less often than others like Deep Red, Suspiria and Tenebre. Since my hunt for a copy of Phenomena has been a complete failure to this point, I added it near the top of my rental que. The basic Argento plot points are all here: mysterious killer on the loose, young girls getting whomped, protagonist girl searches for killer. While it might seem a bit formulaic to some, Dario Argento is a wiz at taking these basic framework settings and going into different directions every time. In Phenomena, the basic framework is even loose at best. Of all of his movies that I've seen, the first 5 minutes of Phenomena are by far the best and possibly creepiest I've seen. I won't ruin it because it's probably also the best opening 5 minutes in horror movie history, certainly as memorable as the opening of Night Of The Living Dead. Anyway, the girl is Jennifer Corvino, daughter of a famous American actor and new student at an all-girls boarding school in what's been called "The Swiss Transylvania". While there, she discovers that she has telekinetic powers and can effectively communicate with animals, mainly insects. Not to make it sound that she has conversations with them over coffee but more that she can attract them and control their behavior. This is pretty integral to the plot as Donald Pleasance's character explains throughout the movie how his studies of insects has taught him of their own telekinesis and has helped him determine the time of death after the body has been discovered. While the movie calms down some in the middle, the last 20-25 minutes are probably the best in Argento history, maybe even Italian horror history (so far as I've seen). Daria Niccolodi plays the "Mommy Dearest" role to near-perfection and without giving it away, the final 10 minutes were completely unexpected and quite gory. So many amazingly memorable moments throughout this movie, it's hard to write this much without giving them all away. Phenomena just has to be seen. This might be my new favorite of Dario Argento's films.
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