TWO EVIL EYES (1990)
3-Disc Limited Edition 4K Remaster
Label: Blue Underground
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 120 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 7.1, 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
Directors: George A. Romero, Dario Argento
Cast: Bingo O'Malley, Adrienne Barbeau, Ramy Zada, E.G. Marshall, Christine Forest, Tom Atkins, Harvey Keitel, John Amos, Martin Balsam, Kim Hunter
Two-parter fright anthology Two Evil Eyes (1990) pairs legends of horror George A. Romero (Dawn of the Dead) and Dario Argento (Suspiria), with each adapting a story by seminal horror writer Edgar Allan Poe, each with ghoulish special effects by Tom Savini (Dawn of the Dead) and a gorgeous score from Pino Donnagio (Don't Look Now). By 1990 when this was made I feel that both of these directors were looking at the most vibrant part of their careers in the rear view mirror, but this anthology film offers up some late era chills for fans of both directors, even if it's what I consider to be a minor entry in both the directors careers.
Romero opens the anthology with ‘The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar’, a spooky tale about a terminally ill older man named Ernest Valdemar (Bingo O'Malley, Creepshow) who is being kept alive well beyond his expiration date by his money-grubbing, younger wife Jessica (Adrienne Barbeau, The Fog). Jessica is banging her husband's personal physician, Dr. Hoffman (Ramy Zada, After Midnight), the duplicitous cheaters have conspired to keep the terminally ill man in a weird state of hypnosis, feeding into a plot to pull the wool over Valdemar's lawyers eyes, played by E.G. Marshall (Creepshow). In this state of hypnosis Valdemar verbally authorizes his lawyer over the phone to liquidate his assets into cash and deposit them into his wife's account. However, there's a stipulation in the will that states that if the old man croaks before the money is transferred that the agreement will be terminated and she will get nothing, so when the old man keel's over prematurely it puts the pair into a bit of a bind. What to do? They place the old man's corpse in a freezer in the basement with a plan to thaw out his body once the money has been deposited, only then will they properly declare him dead.
It's a convoluted plan but it gets stranger yet when Valdemar's voice can be heard echoing throughout the house, emanating from the basement. When they open the freezer he's still frozen solid and still seemingly very dead, but it turns out that because he was in a state of hypnosis when he died his soul has been trapped in a void between life and death. This new wrinkle intrigues the scientific brain of the doctor who investigates further, but Valdemar's wife is scared witless by the whole ordeal, and with good reason.
This story is a good and proper chiller, but it does run a bit long, making it a slow burn, but it also gives the story a little room to breath and work up a good head of steam before things get weirder. The cast in this one are a bunch of Romero familiars, it was great to see Adrienne Barbeau reunited with her Creepshow co-stars E.G. Marshall, and Tom Atkins (Night of the Creeps), the latter of whom shows up as a detective investigating the bizarre case at the end of the piece.
It may not be top tier Romero but it's some of the best stuff he did from this point on in my opinion. It's a well-lensed with a terrific looking old stone house with a cool spiral staircase, plus it's great to see Romero playing with a sub-genre he didn't often play in, though there's still an element of the undead. We get some vengeful spirits and supernatural happenings in this one, and I dug the oddball hypnosis element, though I did think that the doc using hypnosis on himself was a bit weird. For the gore-fans we also get Tom Savini creations, including a cool-looking frozen undead and a gruesome death by digital metronome, which is the bloodiest part of Romero's segment.
Dario Argento tackles Edgar Allan Poe's classic tale 'The Black Cat' starring Harvey Keitel (Blue Collar) as Rod Usher, his name an homage to another Poe story 'The Fall of the House of Usher'. Rod is beret-wearing crime-scene photographer who gets a little too into his work. The film opens on a macabre crime scene of a woman cut in half by a swinging bladed pendulum, another homage to the Poe classic, 'The Pit and the Pendulum'. Right from the get-go you see that the photographer has a curious fascination with death, and throughout the film he is seemingly driven a mad by the arrival of a stray black cat that his violinist gal pal Annabel (Madeleine Potter, The Bostonians) has brought into their home.
The relationship with his Annabel begins to sour after the felines arrival, leading to Rod hitting the bottle and eventually strangling the black cat, going so far as to photographing the crime, and then using the image of the strangled cat on the cover of his new photography book, which is how Annabel discovers that he's killed her beloved cat. She confronts him about it which leads to Rod losing his shit, killing her with a meat cleaver, and then concealing her corpse behind a wall inside his apartment. If you're familiar with the story you know that the black cat returns to ruin his well-laid plans, with some horrific special effects from Tom Savini, who himself turns up in a scene as a grave-robbing lover of dentistry.
Keitel is an actor who never seems anything subtley, he's both intense and a bit over-the-top here, but it works for the character and the film, though the scene of him shrieking "It's fucking cat! Meow! Meow!" always makes me giggle. The special effects are a bit more abundant in the Argento tale than with the Romero, with Savini creating several memorable crime scene corpses, including an homage to Cannibal Holocaust (1980) that would make Vlad the Impaler proud. this scene happens in a surreal dream sequence that finds Rod swept back into medieval times, it's a bit out of place here but I enjoyed it for the strangeness and gruesome imagery. On the whole this mini-film doesn't really have the vintage artful eye feel of Argento's early gialli, but it is attractively shot with some fluid camera movement.
Be on the lookout for John Amos (The Beastmaster) as an allergy-riddled detective investigating Annabel's disappearance and Martin Balsam (The Stone Killer) and Kim Hunter (Bad Ronald) as an elderly couple who live in the same apartment building as Rod.
I've always thought there should have been some sort of wrap-around story that brought the pair of stories together, maybe an appearance of Keitel's crime scene photographer in Romero's story, something to bridge the gap at least, but there's nothing, and the film's are so disparate in style and tone that watching one run into the other is a bit jarring. Of the pair I prefer Romero's supernatural chiller, it breathes a little better for me, and the tone is more in line with my preferences as a horror fan. I think it holds up a bit better than Argento's tale, which is a story that has been told many times over in cinema and a bit better at that, though perhaps not as gruesomely.
Audio/Video: Two Evil Eyes (1990) arrives on three-disc limited edition Blu-ray from Blue Underground with a new 4K scam of the original camera negative framed in 1.78:1 widescreen in 1080p HD. The source looks fantastic with nary a blemish in sight, grain had a nice velvety veneer and colors look solid throughout. There's an improved clarity and depth to the image, with gorgeous finely resolved details in clothing textures, facial close-ups and the gruesome special effects, it's just a real pleaser of a presentation. Comparing it to the region B release from 88 Films right away I noticed the Blue Underground disc has a warmer color-grading, that in some scenes a rather significant. I don't have the previous Blue Underground Blu-ray to compare it to, and I cannot say which is truer to the theatrical, but I found this new 4K restoration to be the superior release. To see Blue Underground vs. 88 Films images side by side see the screen captures below in this review.
Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 and 7.1, though I found myself preferring the original stereo mix, which seems more robust and direct, the 7.1 to my ears sounded a bit thin by comparison. Everything is nicely balanced with the Pino Donaggio (Carrie) score coming through with excellent fidelity, dialogue is always crisp and clean, optional English subtitles are provided.
Blue Underground come through with a wealth of extras both new and archival, with disc one having a new audio commentary with Troy Howarth, author of 'Murder By Design: The Unsane Cinema of Dario Argento'. It's another excellent Howarth commentary loaded with production notes, facts and trivia about the film. Also on the first disc we get a theatrical trailer for the film and a photo gallery of international posters, lobby cards, home video releases and original artwork images from artist Enzo Sciotti.
Disc two contains the bulk of extras, beginning with the half-hour archival 'Two Masters' Eyes', interviews with Dario Argento, George Romero, Special Make-Up Effects Supervisor Tom Savini, Executive Producer Claudio Argento, and Asia Argento. Other archival extras include the 13-min 'Savini's EFX', a behind-the-scenes look at the film's special make-up effects, a 5-min interview with Adrienne Barbeau, plus the 16-min 'At Home With Tom Savini', a guided tour of Savini's home.
New stuff begins with the 13-min 'Before I Wake' interview with star Ramy Zada who speaks about getting into acting, auditioning for several Romero films before finally
landing a role in this one, and the pleasure of working alongside Adrienne Barbeau.
Actress Madeline Potter shows up for the 17-min 'Behind The Wall' discussing being cast in Argento's tale, offering some insights into her character, and commenting on the genius of Argento. In the 16-min 'One Maestro And Two Masters' composer Pino Donaggio speaks about working with Brian De Palma and the opportunities that afforded him, scoring this film and it's nod to Bernard Herman's Psycho score, working with Romero and Argento, and the differences between working in America versus Italy. We also get a 16-min interview with Co-Writer Franco Ferrini, 27-min with Assistant Director Luigi Cozzi, 14-min with Special Make-Up Assistant Everett Burrell, and 9-min with Costume Designer Barbara Anderson.
The third disc in the set is a 21-track CD of the original motion picture soundtrack by Pino Donaggio. This three-disc set arrives in a clear oversized Blu-ray keepcase with a reversible sleeve of artwork, inside there's a 20-page booklet with new writings on the film from Michael Gingold, plus cast and crew credits, and a track list for the CD soundtrack. This also comes with a cool-looking limited edition 3D lenticular slipcover with different artwork than the reversible sleeve.
Blu-ray Comparison:
Top: Blue Underground Blu-ray (Region A) )
Bottom: 88 Films (Region B) Blu-ray
Special Features:
Disc 1 (Blu-ray) Feature Film + Extras:
- NEW! Audio Commentary with Troy Howarth, Author of Murder By Design: The Unsane Cinema of Dario Argento
- Theatrical Trailer (2 min)
- Poster & Still Gallery
Disc 2 (Blu-ray) Extras:
- Two Masters' Eyes - Interviews with Directors Dario Argento & George Romero, Special Make-Up Effects Supervisor Tom Savini, Executive Producer Claudio Argento, and Asia Argento (30 min) HD
- Savini's EFX - A Behind-the-Scenes look at the film's Special Make-Up Effects (13 min) HD
- At Home With Tom Savini - A Personal Tour of Tom Savini's Home (16 min)
- Adrienne Barbeau on George Romero (5 min)
- NEW! Before I Wake - Interview with Star Ramy Zada (13 min) HD
- NEW! Behind The Wall - Interview with Star Madeleine Potter (17 min)
- NEW! One Maestro And Two Masters - Interview with Composer Pino Donaggio (16 min)
- NEW! Rewriting Poe - Interview with Co-Writer Franco Ferrini (16 min
- NEW! The Cat Who Wouldn't Die - Interview with Assistant Director Luigi Cozzi
- NEW! Two Evil Brothers - Interview with Special Make-Up Assistant Everett Burrell (14 min)
- NEW! Working With George - Interview with Costume Designer Barbara Anderson (9 min)
Disc 3 (CD):
- TWO EVIL EYES Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Pino Donaggio
- BONUS! Collectible Booklet with new essay by Michael Gingold
Two Evil Eyes (1999) might not be the best stuff for either Argento or Romero, but it is what I consider to be the best stuff of their late-era careers, offering enough macabre delights and supernatural frights to give it a recommend. This new 3-disc limited edition release from Blue Underground is easily the definitive version of the film for both it's fantastic restoration and hours of extras, making this an essential item for anyone looking to complete their Dario Argento and George A. Romero collections.
