Ask yourself: if you were the star opera singer for a production of Macbeth in the West End, how would you handle the following situation: 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 her lack of reaction to such a thing, 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.
In fact, I am quite certain that Argento went into this project with one idea only: the needles taped to the eyelids thing. And this isn't even that good of an idea! It makes the idiot who made those stupid Human Centipede movies seem like a wellspring of creativity by comparison.
"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 her lack of reaction to such a thing, 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.
In fact, I am quite certain that Argento went into this project with one idea only: the needles taped to the eyelids thing. And this isn't even that good of an idea! It makes the idiot who made those stupid Human Centipede movies seem like a wellspring of creativity by comparison.