jadavix Ask yourself: you are the star opera singer for a production of Macbeth in the West End. On opening night, a stagehand is murdered. The production continues. After the first performance, you find your bedroom invaded by a masked madman, certainly the same killer who offed the stagehand, and he ties you up, tapes your mouth closed, and attaches needles to your eyelids so you cannot close them without causing permanent blindness. "This is so you can't look away," the killer explains, before he stabs your boyfriend through the jaw, the knife going right through into his mouth, visible from the outside.You flee the scene, go to a payphone and make the most perfunctory of anonymous calls to the police about a "murder", but don't mention anything at all about the killer's elaborate treatment of you.The show goes on.Maybe the next night, or the night after that, you are with a costume designer, and basically the same thing happens. This time you are imprisoned in a glass case and the eye-needle thing has been done again. You watch the murder, get freed, and run away, not even bothering to phone the police this time. In fact, when you encounter an officer in the lobby of a hotel, you seem annoyed at his intrusion in asking you if you are alright, and of course you can't be bothered explaining any of the extraordinary nightmare you have just witnessed, and experienced, for the second time in so many days.I've heard of movies with Idiot Plots. You know, the ones where the movie would be over in a second if everyone in it wasn't an idiot. I've often heard people say that the heroines of slasher movies are always idiots. The behaviour of the heroine of "Terror at the Opera" can't even be put down to idiocy. It is so unbelievable, and so irritating, that you want to stop watching before it goes into even more imbecilic dimensions. This is more a slasher than a giallo. There is some vague nonsense about the heroine's past with the killer that isn't explored in any meaningful way. It might, possibly explain her total blase attitude to being tied up, having needles attached to her eyelids and being made to watch people brutally murdered. But then again, it might also... not. Kind of hard to explain why someone wouldn't be too bothered by it, but I digress.Of course the nonsense from her past which is barely hinted at comes up again at the end, though still making no more sense, and I was just so tired of the movie by that point. I just wanted it to end, which thankfully, it did.Argento is famously candid about the enjoyment he gets from filming beautiful women dying horribly. It would be hypocritical of any horror fan to condemn him for this. I have to say, though, that "Opera" was the first one of his movies that made me wonder if all he got into the business of filmmaking for was to shoot women getting killed. There's just not much else holding this one together.

morrison-dylan-fan Reading Alan Jones excellent book Dario Argento: The Man, the Myths & the Magic,I noticed Jones mention that despite the title being a box office disaster,that co-writer/ (along with Franco Ferrini) directing auteur Dario Argento's Opera is his last true classic,and also a coda for the final wave of the Giallo sub- genre.With having saved the movie (which came out the year I was born!) for a special occasion,I decided that I would use my birthday as the day that I would witness the last rites of the Giallo.The plot:After lead actress Mara Czekova is injured in a car accident,budding actress Betty gets her hands on the role that she has been dreaming of,when Betty's agent Mira phones up to reveal that stage director Marco has offered her the lead role in his avant-garde opera staging of Macbeth. Ignoring whispers of the production being "cursed" Betty sets her sights on following in her mums footsteps,and becoming the leading diva of the opera world.During one of the first performances,a light from the auditorium comes crashing to the ground.Checking the lighting equipment after the show,the crew discover that an usher has been ruthlessly murdered.Shaken by the experience,Betty attempts to relax with her boyfriend,after receiving some rather strange fan mail.Waiting for her boyfriend to return,Betty is grabbed by a masked stranger,who ties her up,and put needles under the eyes,so that Betty can't look away from what is taking place.Brutally killing her boyfriend,the killer reveals that after being mesmerised by her performance in the opera,that he is going to put on a deadly special show,that Betty will be unable to take her eyes off of.View on the film:For the last big budget Giallo,Dario Argento makes the genres curtain call one which concludes all the themes which he had started in his debut.After taking a look at the effect that violence has on its creators in 1982's Tenebre,the writers here turn their attention to the audience,with the writers superbly using Betty's forced viewing of the murders to slyly suggest that no matter how horrific the killings are,that the viewer is unable to turn their gaze away from the dazzling onslaught,and also showing the level of obsession that fandom can reach.Whilst the "controversial" ending does come a bit from the left-field,the writers make the coda one which sums up topic that Argento had been progressing on since his debut,where animals have a strong connection to the lead ammeter detective,due to them offering an escape route/answer to what the character is searching for.Although the title does mark the end of an era for Argento's major themes,the writers smartly make sure that the title never turns into a mere summarisation,thanks to the film offering harsh Horror lyrics with a Film Noir composition.Keeping the movie to Betty's point of view,the writers show her being dragged into a gritty Giallo word,as Betty finds her glamorous stage life being destroyed in her bullet ridden flat.Pushing Betty's nerves right to the edge,the writers create an extremely creepy atmosphere,with Betty being surrounded by a trusted group of people on the stage,whose image begins to blur,as Betty finds the killer getting literally under her skin.Ignoring all of the myths about "the Scottish play",the 15 week production turned out to be a complete nightmare,(with the disasters being….(deep breath!) 1:original studio Titanus dropping the title due to a major corporate takeover taking place.2:Dario's dad Salvatore dying a month before film.3:co-star Ian Charleson (who would tragically die from AIDS a year later) being involved in a near-fatal crash.4:Vanessa Redgrave signing on to play Mara Czekova,only to turn up to Italy asking for extra cash,which led to Redgrave taking the next flight out of Italy! 5:Dario having furious rows with star Cristina Marsillach,to the point where during a scene involving fire,Marsillach got left with burn marks,and to top it all off 6:Dario treating ex-girlfriend Daria Nicolodi with a vile that would lead to them not working together again for 20 years)yet despite all of the issues,Argento directs the title with an explosive energy.Opening with a breath taking first person tracking shot,Argento and cinematographer Ronnie Taylor unleash a paranoid atmosphere,thanks to Betty's fall into terror being matched by scattering crane shots and knife-edge tracking shots.Basking the stage in vivid, minimalist black & white,Argento and Taylor decay Betty's glamorous life with a brittle,Film Noir bleakness,as Betty finds herself trapped in a Giallo flat,with no sign of light.Whilst her shouting matches with Argento have become legendary, Cristina Marsillach gives a tremendous performance as Betty,which contrasts a diva beauty with a tomboyish attitude,as Marsillach shows Betty being desperate to stay on the acting ladder,whilst also setting her eyes on stopping the murderer from bringing the opera down on a killer note.

Tim Kidner "Like sticking pins in your eyes" - indeed. Whether it's teeth, testicles, fingernails or eyes, when it comes to mutilation of sensitive and delicate (& vital!) body organs, actual ones at that and not prosthetic ones, then one can feel REALLY uncomfortable!The young stand-in opera singer has pins taped to her eye sockets, if she closes them, the pins embed into her eyes. As she's watching utterly brutal acts of death and massacre, at the hands of a masked mad-man, she may really want to.From its outset, with the Moulin Rouge sort of Italian opera house theatrics and Edgar Allen Poe metaphoric ravens, that look on menacingly, the Kubrick-styled swirling camera that swishes and floats add to the Arty high of grandiosity. This is a delicious mix of superb visuals and utter shocks. Knives that skewer up through the chin and through to the roof of the mouth, YES! Ravens feasting on posh patron's eyeballs, TICK!The version I saw was on The Horror Channel and was in its original Italian, with subtitles. Subtitles aren't always such a good thing for horror as they can can take too long to read and diminish the visuals. However, the spirit and passion is maintained here by being in Italian. The sound quality was extremely good, too.I would probably have bought the DVD on the strength of how good the film was, but, frankly, I couldn't physically watch it again; an honour which must say how effective a horror it is.

Samiam3 With increasing fame comes an increase in budget and investors. Opera feels like the most expensive production from Dario Argento up until that time, although it's still not a budget feature. Of course, money is not all that important. Dario has everything he needs to work his magic, and in the end, (despite a plot that feels more blatantly silly than the rest of his work) Opera turns out to be a very good piece of work, Maybe not his best but certainly his most energetic. Betty is a young opera singer, who is about to make her debut with Macbeth. She is nervous and lacks self confidence, but on aria is all it takes to make her a star. But fame may prove to be a bit more than she can handle, when she discovers that she has a stalker, who is killing everyone she knows.Argento's camera work in Opera is among his best. Nobody composes shots like this today, in part because they draw attention to themselves and their duration interferes with story telling. Argento makes it work nicely. His camera sweeps through the sets almost flawlessly. One of his trademarks of course it to linger in a room, long after a person has walked out of it. This re-directs the viewers attention, causing us to start looking around for what the camera wants us to see. It is almost a form of visual dramatic irony. (Remember the shot of the eye in the closet from Deep Red).Opera is the closet that Dario Argento has come to presenting a climax, even though it is weird and strangely predicable. All of his previous movies seem to end on rushed notes, with someone dying which is followed by a reaction shot, and then the credits. Opera contains what feels like a more solid book ending, the kind you might be hoping for.Another trade mark of Dario Argento, is his scoring decisions. Not Unlike John Carpenter, music usually comes in the form of two or three simple licks rather than an official score. Argento seems to have taste for American rock, as he has recruited renowned musician/producer Brian Eno do write a lick that will go well with a chase scene (or two, or three). Frankly, I think it sounds like too much like 1980's metal for a film that is about Opera. Nobody seems to regard this as one of Dario's best, but Opera may in fact deserve a bit more credit than it has gotten. Sure the plot is a bit flimsy and the dialogue is so-so, but the film has exceptional style and it amounts to a sufficiently weird and wonderful little horror/thriller.