Our Dario Argento retrospective enters the 2000s, and, frankly, things have not improved.
In the fourth instalment of our five-part journey through Argento's theatrical and TV filmography, Steven and Sean tackle Sleepless (2001), The Card Player (2004) and Do You Like Hitchcock? (2005), before turning to Argento's two contributions to Mick Garris' Masters of Horror: Jennifer (2005) and Pelts (2006).
By this stage, the golden era is very much behind him, and neither Steven nor Sean find much here to get excited about. Sleepless arrives armed with Argento's familiar bag of tricks; elaborate murders, red herrings and a killer hiding in plain sight, but undermines itself with moronic characters, staggeringly poor performances and a red herring involving a dwarf serial-killer that has to be seen to be believed.
Then there's The Card Player, which looks suspiciously like it was shot on a broadcast television camera and appears to have been constructed around a simple filmmaking principle: if in doubt, show someone looking at a computer screen. Repeatedly.
Do You Like Hitchcock? fares little better, or, as Sean christens it, “Do You Like Shitcock?” With an utterly unlikeable protagonist, laughable Hitchcock references, Argento's increasingly distracting self-inserts and one of the most bafflingly stupid escape sequences we've ever encountered, there's plenty for us to sink our teeth into.
Thankfully, the Masters of Horror episodes Jennifer and Pelts provide a modest recovery. Neither represents a return to Argento's glory days, but both deliver what we're here for: nasty little horror stories, inventive premises, memorable gore and enough gruesome imagery to remind us that the old bastard still knows his way around a splatter set-piece.
So, come for the Argento retrospective, stay for the increasingly savage lambasting. The gloves are still black. The plots are increasingly questionable. And somewhere, somehow, someone is probably still looking at a computer screen.
