Revenge of the Revenant Review 17: The one George Romero and Dario Argento made from Edgar Allen Poe

 

Title: Two Evil Eyes

What Year?: 1990

Classification: Unnatural Experiment

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

One thing that’s made this feature different from others is that there hasn’t been a lot of “random” in my choices. For the most part, the movies I have chosen are ones I thought of well in advance; also, most of them are in my personal collection, so I never had to beat the clock on a rental. This time, I have another exception to prove the rule, a film I would have been inclined to set aside if I had thought of it earlier, but happens to have come up in my queue when I didn’t have anything else lined up. It also happens to be from a creative team that would have come up much earlier, except that their other work was good and influential enough to qualify as “mainstream” by zombie-movie standards. It’s all the more fitting that this is quite possibly the most unusual undead to come up even by the standards of this feature. Here is Two Evil Eyes, a collaboration by the team that made Dawn of the Dead, supposedly based on Poe.

Our story begins with several shots of a historic house and a memorial to Edgar Allen Poe, melodramatically credited as the founder of the horror genre. We promptly go to what proves to be the first of two segments, centered on the wife of a dying millionaire who’s clearly not feeling much grief. In fact, she and her lover have hypnotized her husband to make him sign over his fortune, but things go awry when he dies while in a trance, only to continue talking to them. He soon reveals that there are “others” on the spiritual plane who are closing in on him, and he doesn’t seem unhappy with the possibility that they might cross over into our world. After the grim end of their saga, we get a new tale of a photographer who works with the police while nursing his own artistic ambitions. But behind the scenes, he has a troubled relationship with his live-in girlfriend, and a growing obsession with a black cat she takes in as a stray. As he goes downhill, he begins to experience dark visions of his future, increasingly centered on the cat.

Two Evil Eyes was an anthology film by George Romero and Dario Argento, based on the stories “The Case of M. Valdemar” and “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe. Each of the distinguished filmmakers directed a segment based on one story, with Romero handling the first tale. The first segment cast Adrienne Barbeau of Creepshow and Swamp Thing as Mrs. Valdemar, with TV actor Ramy Zada as her lover Dr. Hoffman, while the second half starred Harvey Keitel of From Dusk Till Dawn as the photographer Roderick Ussher. Tom Atkins of Lethal Weapon and Night of the Creeps also appears in the first segment. Information on the production and release is limited, though its budget is reported at $9 million against a box office of only $325,000. The disastrously low take clearly indicates a limited theatrical release, which may have been intended as a springboard for more profitable home video distribution.

My own experience with this movie start with a digital rental during my epic rides to work, without any advance knowledge beyond the involvement of Romero and Argento. What has been striking with hindsight is that I have never run across a review or any mention of it spontaneously since then. Even searches done for this review turned up only a very modest number of results from people who had anything to say about it.  In these terms, this may be the most truly obscure movie I’ve covered here, which I find entirely inexplicable given the level of talent involved. As we will see, this isn’t anyone’s idea of a classic, but on paper, it clearly “should” at least have attracted a certain level of notoriety. Unfortunately, it’s not hard to see why many people who have encountered it prefer to ignore it.

The obvious problem from the start is simply the common fate of anthologies. While a few in the horror genre in particular have become accepted “classics”, including Romero’s Creepshow, many more have been neglected or forgotten. A further predictable problem is that with only two segments, there’s no room for one or two good ones to redeem the rest as in many otherwise uneven or forgettable anthology features. Finally, there is the disparate personalities of the two filmmakers, which was already a source of friction back in Dawn of the Dead. The result here is two pieces that repeatedly go in different if not opposite directions. The first half is an exercise in disciplined, linear storytelling with good, realistic camera work. The second is a luridly vibrant descent into madness, complete with the usual choppy editing and jumbled imagery that the Italians in particular bring to the horror genre. It shouldn’t be necessary to say which is better, yet there can be no doubt that Romero’s contribution will be easier for zombie movie fans to accept, not just for its subject matter but for the deceptively traditional narrative style that set his foundational films apart from more typical horror fare then and since.

Needless to say, it is Mr. Valdemar (played by veteran Bingo O’Malley) who will be of most interest for this review. Following good form for a “character zombie” story (compare Life After Beth), we get a good sense of his character before he comes back as undead. In the process, we also get an unflattering picture of Mrs. Valdemar, which may prove especially off-putting to those who already take issue with Romero’s portrayals of women, and her problematic relationship with Hoffman, an old boyfriend she left behind for a whirlwind romance with the businessman. Visually, Mr. Valdemar looks practically undead even before his demise, while after a spell in the freezer, he’s easily one of the grodiest revenants on record. The drawback is that up to the very end, he doesn’t do anything but talk (in keeping with the original story), so there’s no rampage action here. What we do get is a good “psychological horror” vibe that might have sustained the story without the more explicitly supernatural developments later. More impressively, the story brings out the stratum of existential horror already present in authentic zombie folklore, a terror of becoming undead at least as much as being attacked by them. That subtext continues when he finally gets on his feet, accusing rather than aggressive as his widow tries frantically to de-animate him, and then rises to unnerving heights as we see the fates of the other characters.

Now is where I would normally be wrapping this up, but I feel I must say something about the remaining segment. As I have already indicated above, this is the kind of material that doesn’t connect with me regardless of overall merit. Still, it gets off to a strong start, particularly with a grisly but thoroughly tongue-in-cheek opening sequence where the police discover the Pit and the Pendulum reenacted. The almost garish imagery and style of this scene continues to supply the better moments not only of the segment but the movie as a whole, along with Keitel’s predictably good performance. There’s even whiffs of revenant lore in a dream sequence where Ussher is accused and tried with the victim-to-be as a witness. It’s fascinating, up to a point, especially for the potential insights into Argento’s contributions to Dawn of the Dead. However, its good points must be weighed against the usual jarring narrative leaps and uneven dialogue, pacing that extends the movie easily 15 minutes more than needed, and liberties with the source material that specifically make the main character much less sympathetic. On the last issue, the script goes so far as to make what Poe leaves as an ambiguous or possibly accidental death into clearly premeditated murder without the title cat even present. At this point, to me, the tragedy of the original story becomes simply a mechanical execution, effectively portrayed but no longer engaging.

That still leaves me without a “one scene”, and I must say there is truly just one sequence that has kept  me coming back to this movie. At the tail end of the first segment, we find Dr. Hoffman sleeping, uneasily or otherwise, surrounded by money, while a prominently featured metronome ticks away. Lightning flashes, but he does not stir, until a rising wind blows the doors to the outside (possibly a balcony!) open. The next flash reveals a swarm of literally faceless figures who disappear again as the light fades, obviously the Lovecraftian “others” the late Mr. Valdemar has hinted at. The wind rises, scattering the money in a familiar Romero motif. The next few flashes show the figures drawing nearer to the bed, possibly in greater numbers. I have on several occasions tried pausing to get a better look, and never made out more than leotard-style suits that turn up frequently in surrealist films. More elaborate costumes wouldn’t have mattered; the eerie atmosphere and unsettlingly steady camerawork already convey a perfect air of menace. Of course, there’s no doubt of the outcome, but again, it wouldn’t matter (and indeed might be better) if it wasn’t shown at all. It’s a truly perfect scene from a master, disappointing only because we never really saw another like it.

In closing, I must reiterate, this movie is absolutely a mess, average at face value and entirely disappointing for those involved. Still, it is at least as good as plenty of far better known and praised films, including other works by the same filmmakers. Above all, it is genuinely entertaining to watch, on exactly the level where such “prestige” projects routinely sink under their own pretensions. It should serve as a further reminder that when creative minds have free reign, even the missteps can be far more fascinating than any number of corporate-polished offerings. Long live the kings of zombie movies!