I always feel a bit weird in art galleries - sort of instantly tired and in need of a cigarette - but it's nothing compared to what the gorgeous Asia Argento has to endure in The Stendhal Syndrome.
She may be a hard-boiled policewoman, but every time she sets eyes on an Old Master, she goes distinctly wobbly and experiences full-blown hallucinations (including diving into Brueghel's Fall Of Icarus and kissing a weird-looking fish). It's probably fair to say that only Dario Argento would make a movie combining a skewed meditation on the power of art with the story of a hunt for a vicious serial rapist and killer (he might also be the only dad who'd put his own daughter through two extremely brutal rape scenes, but families can be odd).
While The Stendhal Syndrome isn't one of Argento's best films, it does contain some flashes of trademark brilliance, particularly in the dream-like opening, set in Florence's Uffizi. Ultimately, it's lovely to look at but hard to make much sense of, failing to unite all of its ambitious ideas in any really satisfactory way. But who cares? Arrow Films' release is most welcome, despite suffering from some slight cuts and a lack of any extras.
Argento, of course, was instrumental in getting George A Romero's career out of the doldrums with Dawn Of The Dead, serving as the film's co-producer. Dawn seems to get re-released on DVD with alarming regularity; this version is Romero's preferred theatrical cut, accompanied by director/producer commentaries and an excellent full-length documentary. Interviews with Romero, Mrs Romero, cast members and completely mad make-up guru Tom Savini make it quite clear that this was one of the most enjoyable film shoots of all time, a touchingly home-grown affair with friends, family and most of the inhabitants of Pittsburgh queuing up to play zombies and get their brains splattered over the mall. This apocalyptic tale of the shopping dead is still the best of the trilogy, balancing its seminal, head-exploding ferocity with black humour and Romero's distinctive sociological savvy.
Not all of Argento's collaborators fared so well. Take Luigi Cozzi, who helped out with the writing of Four Flies On Grey Velvet and the special effects on Phenomena, as well as handling the second unit work on The Stendhal Syndrome and Two Evil Eyes. A stalwart Argento team player then, but what happened when he was let loose on his own? Well, 'Exhibit A' must be Contamination, directed by Cozzi under the name of Lewis Coates, and now working its extra-terrestrial evil on DVD.
It tells the bizarre tale of Latin American coffee growers smuggling deadly alien eggs that explode corrosive green gunk over any unwary soul who stumbles upon them. Like many Italian genre pieces, the film borrows shamelessly from elsewhere; its opening is ripped-off from Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters, the rest is an attempt to cash in on the success of Alien, complete with wonderfully low-rent attempts at replicating that film's Giger-inspired sets on a budget of a few lire. Other reasons to love it include lots of exploding people, the presence of the balding, can-do hero of legendary 70s TV show Survivors, Ian McCulloch (who, presumably, knew quite a lot about surviving hideous pandemics), and a climactic confrontation with one of cinema's most risible bug-eyed monsters; the Alien queen it ain't.
The Stendhal Syndrome and Dawn Of The Dead are available from Arrowfilms.co.uk
Contamination is available from Anchorbay.co.uk
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