[Kill of the Week] Hacked With an Axe in Argento’s ‘Tenebrae’
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Every week, we spotlight a kill that we just can’t get enough of. This is Kill of the Week.
The discovery of Suspiria led me to dive deep into the filmography of Dario Argento in my teenage years, which of course brought a handful of gems into my world. On the heels of Suspiria and Inferno, Argento released one such gem, Tenebrae (or Tenebre, if you prefer) in 1982, an Italian Giallo film that most consider to be one of his best.
Without giving away too many plot details for those who haven’t yet seen it, Tenebrae centers on Peter Neal, an American horror writer who arrives in Italy to discover that a mysterious killer, inspired by Neal’s own books, has recently embarked on a murder spree.
Like all of Argento’s films, Tenebrae is home to some memorable sequences of bloodshed, and the one that made the biggest impression on me involves an axe and an arm. Jane, Peter Neal’s ex-wife, is brutally murdered in her home by the killer, who slams an axe through her window… then straight through her arm… and then into her back.
There’s something decidedly unrealistic about the effects work, in hindsight, but the image of Jane’s stump spewing arterial spray all over the walls of her home is one that I’ve never quite been able to get out of my head; Quentin Tarantino would tell you the same thing, I can only assume, as Kill Bill features a very similar moment of gory arm trauma.
Typical for Argento, the murder of Jane isn’t just a cool kill scene, it’s a work of art.
Before updating the video nasty Faces of Death, director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei explored the dangers of online life in tech-thriller Cam, their feature debut that was acquired by Netflix in 2018 after making waves on the festival circuit.
At the end of last year, the Netflix exclusive quietly departed from the streaming platform, left without another streaming home.
It’s not an isolated story; Mike Flanagan’s Hush also left streaming entirely for a period until it was finally picked up on both physical media and other streaming services.
While the tech-thriller currently isn’t available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, or any other platforms, that’s not a problem for Cam thanks to a very cool move by Goldhaber: the director has made his breakout film accessible to watch online for free via his website.
As his site notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like :).“
No subscriptions or fees necessary, just hit play.
Cam follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), who works as an online cam girl obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger.
Written by Mazzei, a former camgirl, it uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. It only compounds her danger when the doppelganger enters the equation in Goldhaber’s engaging thriller.
For a deep dive into the treacherous world of Cam, listen to Horror Queers’ episode on it now.
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