Tenebrae

Director:  Dario Argento
Year Released:  1982
Rating:  1.0

One of Argento's most insufferable pictures, a giallo about a famous novelist who visits Rome on a publicity tour for his newest book and becomes involved in some strange murder investigation. The acting, dialogue and plotting seem infinitely worse than Deep Red or Inferno, and while those were frustratingly illogical, this actually goes one step farther and becomes intolerably idiotic, expending too much energy to seem clever - Argento deals with some of the problems by using self-criticism, having the actors slyly discuss 'cutting out the details of detective work and leaving in the juicy bits' and about 'guessing who the killer is by page thirty-something' – and ending up just cheap and lazy.

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