Two Evil Eyes
Originally released in 1990, Two Evil Eyes is – loosely speaking – a collaboration between George Romero and Dario Argento. Each director made an adaptation of an Edgar Allen Poe story and these two shorter films were brought together in this anthology.
Romero’s entry, The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar focusses on Jessica Valdemar (Adrienne Barbeau), a trophy wife who is determined to wring every last penny out of her almost dead husband (Bingo O’Malley). In this, she is aided by Robert Hoffman (Ramy Zada), a doctor who she is stringing along with promises of sex and wealth, and who is hypnotising Mr. Valdemar to ensure that he liquidates his investments and signs all of his money over to his wife before he dies.
Things start to go awry when the very ill Mr. Valdemar shuffles off his mortal coil a couple of weeks before everything is signed, sealed and delivered. So they put the body on ice – literally. And then things go really wrong.
Mr. Valdemar was under hypnosis when he died which has left him stranded between the realities of the living and the dead. And there are other entities out there that would like to use him as a portal to pass through to the world of the living…
The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar is very much a psychological thriller and one that takes full advantage of the rising tension between Jessica Valdemar and Dr. Hoffman. The rising tension in this film is palpable and a testament to the fact that George Romero is very good indeed when it comes to developing complex and interesting characters, and finding actors who are capable of bringing them to life.
Both Adrienne Barbeau and Ramy Zada deliver incredibly strong performances and generate a real empathy for their characters. And this, more than anything else, is what keeps you on the edge of your seat right up to the point where the film should have ended.
The Black Cat – Argento’s segment – is a very different beast indeed. The film opens with some very striking imagery and – if you weren’t sure where the inspiration came from – our protagonist (Harvey Keitel) is named Roderick Usher. Usher is a photographer with a macabre obsession that has led to his specialising in crime photography.
All seems fine until Usher’s girlfriend, Annabel (Madeleine Potter) introduces a black cat into the household. Usher and the cat don’t get on – to say the least – and, when he tries to move beyond his crime photography roots, the cat becomes a victim.
Consequence is piled upon reaction as the film progresses and User steadily goes to pieces. And here. Argento manages to engender a real sense of claustrophobia as well as striking us with some genuinely shocking imagery.
He’s on less firm ground when it comes to maintaining some consistency for either the characters or the plot – people often appear to do things for no reason other than the requirements of the script – but Keitel is a strong enough actor to hold this together as the film builds to it’s final shock reveal and inevitable climax.
Both Romero and Argento are icons of the horror genre and, if nothing else, putting their films back to back in this manner is a fascinating exercise in comparing the strengths of each. It helps immensely that both films in the anthology are solid entries in the respective directors’ oeuvres.
Monday 25 Feb 2008 | Paul Pritchard | Horror
