Deep Red

I read in a Reel.com review of Blowup that Dario Argento, who was a film critic at the time of Blowup, was upset by the invasion of the two teenage girls while David Hemmings is assembling the narrative of his photographs. He apparently thought it was indicative of Antonioni's inability to keep the plot moving. Which really seems to me like it was kind of the point of that scene, but whatever. The Reel.com review said something about Deep Red, which also stars David Hemmings, being Argento's response or corrective to Blowup. I think that negatively influenced my viewing of the film at first. I kept looking for parallels, or things that might seem to be directed at Blowup. Frankly, if this was meant to in some way one-up Blowup, it's a complete failure.

There are a lot of weird things in the movie, though. The Blue Bar: was it supposed to look like that famous painting of the Hollywood bar at night, the one with Marilyn Monroe and James Dean? I don't know enough about that painting, but the bar looked so much like it that it seems like the painting must either have been painted of the exact bar used in the film, or it was meant to look like that. I couldn't figure out what the point of the reference was there, though.

About the only thing that really seemed like a nod at all to Blowup was the way David Hemmings sees for just one second the murder-lady in the window when he walks into psychic-lady's house, but Argento lets it go by quickly and Hemmings is never really sure what he saw until the very end. That was easily the best thing about the movie, even though Argento almost ruined it with the flashback when Hemmings is investigating the apartment again. The flashback completely eliminated the question mark in the viewer's mind about what Hemmings saw.

The parts that were meant to be scary really worked, unless the violence was supposed to be scary. Especially the weird little robot thing that floats toward the professor before he gets killed. It was one of the most legitimately creepy things I've seen in a movie, especially because it seemed completely out of place. And then when it turns out not to be supernatural but to be a robot thing, well, that's not an explanation of why it's there. Also, the scene when David Hemmings sets the flashlight on the table and then hacks his way into the walled-in room, with the darkness behind the hole because of how bright the light immediately on this side of the hole is, was really creepy. Even the pulled back shot of Hemmings looking into the room with rotted corpse in the middle of his flashlight light was creepy.

At least in this movie, Argento obviously had some fascination with random things from the world being dangerous. Hemmings' little scare on the outside of the old house, when the facade starts crumbling beneath him was the first instance I can think of it, and it really was bad. It just seemed like random suspense for no reason, and the fact that it was because Hemmings had just stupidly decided to scale the side of the building without a ladder or anything made it even dumber. I mean, it was kind of funny, but completely out of the place for the movie. Then Carlo gets hooked by a passing garbage truck, is dragged through the streets until he's nearly dead, and has his head smooshed by a random passing car. All of which was actually pretty funny, I thought, but I wasn't sure that Argento meant it to be for laughs. And the final scene with murder-lady, Carlo's mom, who gets her necklace caught in the elevator which then beheads her. So anticlimactic from a plot point of view. And, really, the shot of her head being severed was kind of hilarious.

The murder scenes were easily the most compelling scenes in the movie, which was kind of the opposite of Belly of the Black Tarantula, in which the scenes with the investigator and his wife were most enjoyable to watch. The domestic scenes in this between Hemmings and reporter-chick were not especially compelling. There was this weird kind of slapstick thing going on with reporter-chick's car, and their conversations about chauvinism and feminism were really stupid. And the arm-wrestling scene? It's possible that was in there to make you think reporter-chick might be the killer, since she was demonstrating her strength. But overall, their romance seemed to come out of nowhere and Argento either didn't care enough to bother with it or really had no idea how to develop that kind of thing. It as interesting to the extent that reporter-chick seemed to be invading from some other movie every time she was on-screen. Then Argento seems to pretty much forget about her after she gets stabbed. Clearly, the relationship between Hemmings and reporter-chick was not as important as the amount of screen time it got.

Almost forgot: the conversation between Hemmings and Carlo about what Hemmings saw also seemed to in some way be a nod to Blowup. Was having it come out of Carlo's drunk ass meant to be mocking Blowup pretensions? It was all one shot, with Hemmings on the far left and Carlo on the far right, and most of the middle of the shot taken up by the statue of some reclining god. Really, it was almost a good shot. I wonder now if knowing who that god was would have added anything to it?

The other weirdest shot: Hemmings and reporter-chick walking down the hallway of the school. They kept looking at each other in a way that seemed like it was being kind of pointed out, especially reporter-chick, but it was unclear what the significance of it was. I actually really liked that. It was intriguing and not confusing in a bad way.