The plot of Tenebrae was well-used even on it's 1980 release. The main 'character' (if such a word can be used) is Peter Neal a crime writer who has recently relased a violent and bloody book by the name of 'Tenebrae' - and some murderers only gone and started copying the fictional crimes haven't they! God, I hate it when that happens! The action takes place in Rome for a reason that is never really fully explained and is even more mystifing when you take into consideration that every single character in it speaks fluent English. There is even a scene where the murderer is hiding from detection and observes two Italian plumbers in an Italian hotel unaware they are being watched and yet speaking English to one another. I get the feeling that the Italian director wanted the mouintain to come to Mohammed rather than vice versa, the only problem is I think it may have got damaged in transit.
I struggle to get my head around the aesthetics of the film as well. The only explanation I can think of is that the entire cast and crew of this film were snatched from their cradles at birth and were forced to wach crime/horror films every hour of the day without any contact with the outside world. The effect of this is that the world we see in 'Tenebrae' is as far from the world that you or I live in than Middle Earth. When one of the 'characters' is snooping around in the garden of one of the suspects in a rainstorm, a bolt of lightning is suggested through what I can only imagine is the headlights of a Fiat Punto being switched on for possibly three of four times the length of time a lighningbolt actually lasts.
The film falls into the trap of most horror/crime films from the 1980's in it's overly sexual imagery. Whilst we don't have the staples that films like 'Scream' go on to pastiche in the next decade, there are many cheeky glimpses of breast just for the sake of it. One of the murderers victim are a pair of lesbians- one of whom is in a bar with her nipple poking out at one point whilst when she gets home she really goes nuts and walks around wearing just a sheet around her waist. If I was taking this film as a piece of historical documentation I would have said that at this period of time the bra was not invented due to the sheer amount of unsupported breasts and cheeky nipple flashes - but then again we are in the eighties so I suppose I can't hold this against them too much.
Whilt knocking the actors the two primary actors aren't too awful: Anthony Franciosa, a kind of Aldi-version of Harrison Ford, does a passable impression of someone who has actually felt emotion before and then there's Giuliano Gemma, who looks and acts like a cross between Columbo and an Italian version of Alan Hansen.
This film, however, will hold pride of place in my heart as having the worst ever actor I have ever seen in anything ever - Step forward Christian Borromeo. Borromeo portrays a character called Gianni and for the majority of the film stared gormlessly around as if he had been thrust in front of the camera when he felt like he should be doing something far more important. This character's girlfriend is mauled by a dog and then found with an axe in her torso - now I have never experienced such a scenario so maybe I shouldn't judge too harshly but I am certain that in the next scene I would not be grinning inanely and leaping around like a spaniel. Borromeo can't take all the blame however. The scripting is awful - he and Neal are exploring the house of one of the suspects and could be slaughtered at any point yet it was felt necessary for him to squeal "I haven't been in another man's garden since I was six" Goodbye tension!
All-in-all it is a simply laughable film - but maybe that's not entirely bad thing. At no point did I want to stop watching but that's more down to it's camp value for any kind of legacy that it will leave on the world of film.
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