Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa), an American mystery writer, arrives in Rome at the request of his literary agent (John Saxon) in order to promote his latest work: TENEBRAE. Someone pesters him with disturbing phone calls, threatening to carry out murders in homage to the author. Thus begins a chain of murders that, by their mode, connect to Peter Neal's story.
Interviewed by Cristiano Berti (John Steiner), a journalist, about the motivations and distinctions between deviant and perverse behavior, about common morality, and about concepts bordering on psychiatric pathology, Neal understands that there is a great elective affinity between him and the journalist. It will not take him long to realize that Berti, a paranoid woman-obsessed (he had already killed a kleptomaniac and two lesbians by accompanying the murders with learned Latin quotations), could potentially be the sadistic killer. Unfortunately, before him, to discover the atrocious truth will be Anna (Lara Wendel), a young girl who, in order to escape the pursuit of a Doberman, takes refuge in the mansion of the murderous madman. In the studio, decked out with horrific photographs (the killer portrayed the mutilated bodies of his victims, in a kind of morbid fetishism) and newspaper articles, the young girl will find a gruesome end.
Neal, knowing of the ongoing affair between his wife (Veronica Lario) and her literary agent, orchestrates a diabolical plan: he eliminates Cristiano Berti, the real murderer, and commits two murders by applying the same modus operandi, in order to pin the killing of his wife and lover on the same hand. But something doesn't add up, and the inspector (Giuliano Gemma) traces the identity of the murderer after receiving a fax from Neal's hometown that points to the writer as the likely killer of a local young woman (Eva Robins).
Going to the house rented by his wife (who in the meantime has warned Ann, Neal's current cohabitant), the inspector finds Peter Neal waiting for him, who, in a twist ending, kills him with a hatchet after he has dispossessed his wife with the same weapon. The providential arrival of Ann (Daria Nicolodi), who removes a modern sculpture to enter the house, will be fatal to the writer. The statue pours down on the writer and, with its sharp points, pierces him through and through.
Dario Argento's masterpiece, both in form and content, DARKNESS (1982) is a crime film with strong splatter coloring. Tenebre, which chronologically follows the trilogy (yet to be concluded in its third chapter) that began with Suspiria and continued with Inferno, actually refers, in its titling, to the dark darkness of the human soul which, with the occult mystery, has little to do with it. Yet the meanderings of human psychology, even when catalogued and confined in restrictive categories, show themselves to be at times, more frightening than any witchcraft.
Review by Undying1
