Phenomena (1985)

Episode 112, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd:  Hello and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd and

Craig:  I’m Craig.

Todd:  For today’s episode, we’ve gone back to Italy for another Italian film by one of my favorite Italian horror film directors, Dario Argento. We’ve done a couple of his, at least one of his before. Right? I think we did Deep Red. Uh-huh. Maybe The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. Uh-huh. And this one is more of a straight horror film than those others. Those others were what we would call giallo pictures, which in case you haven’t heard those episodes, are a very famous detective story, the slash slasher film that was very popular during the seventies in Italy and made a bit of an impact in the US, but, they’re very stylistic. And Dario Argento is one of the directors responsible, I think, for setting some of the style of those films. And, he carries it through into the straight horror genre as well, kind of like his contemporaries of Lucio Fulci. I would say he probably he probably deals more in the horror genre than any other, and this one is called Phenomena, and this is one of his first films and only films that got up what we what you would consider proper theatrical release in the States, even though it was cut up considerably when it was released here. Interestingly enough, as we discovered when we started watching this, most of the Italian films we’ve been seeing are shot in Italian or at least maybe they’re shot in English, but then they have to redub them again in English, because they usually don’t record the sound on the set. They always recorded afterwards. In this case, the movie was shot in English, but then redubbed in Italian. So we were watching, people clearly speaking English, if you were looking at their lips, and several English a couple, you know, American actors in this. But then we’re hearing Italian come out, and we’re reading the subtitles at the bottom of the screen. That’s because we watched the uncut version. We we just, I decided that if we were gonna do this, we’re gonna do it right. We should watch the original instead of the one that was cut up for the American release. I had heard, that it was better anyway, that it made a little more sense, but it did make for a bit of a longer movie. Didn’t it, Craig?

Craig:  Yeah. How long did it

Todd:  end up being? Almost 2 hours. Almost

Craig:  Okay. I asked that. It was a trick question because I have to confess that I cheated a little bit. The version that we both had, the file type was not supported on the device I was using. So I had to go to YouTube to find it, and it’s there in its entirety. It’s like an hour and 56 minutes, but most of it is in English with the original English actors No way. Speaking their line. And the reason that I know that is because the star of the movie is Jennifer Connelly, and I love her. Like, I’ve been madly in love with her since the eighties when I first saw Labyrinth. So I I totally recognize her voice, so I know it was her. What I will say though is in the version that I watched, there were some scenes that were in Italian, and they were brief and they were kind of far between, but there were some scenes that were in Italian and I and they did not have subtitles. So you may have to fill in a couple little holes for me, here and there because I was watching Italian, and I don’t speak Italian. But I think I got the whole movie.

Todd:  That sounds like about right. It was an hour and 56 minutes for me Todd. And, I’m with you on that. I I fell in love with Jennifer Tilly, at The Rocketeer.

Craig:  That’s nice, but this is Jennifer Connelly. I’m

Todd:  sorry. You’re right. Jennifer Tilly wasn’t in the rocket in the rocketeer. Jennifer Connelly in the rocketeer was just a total babe, and she’s she’s a babe in this movie too. Much younger, though. Not much younger, but a bit younger. I read that she, got her finger bit off during this movie.

Craig:  Yeah. I read that Todd. By a monkey. Right? Okay. Because there’s a monkey. Because why wouldn’t there be? Why? But there’s a monkey. This this movie, I I had never seen it. I remember seeing the cover art, I think. You know, I think that the cover art was just, like, kind of her face, and then maybe kinda surrounded by bugs or something. I don’t remember. But I never got around to seeing it, and I was actually kinda surprised looking at the date that it was 1985 because that was, you know, kinda right in our heyday, for, you know, watching horror movies or whatever,

Clip:  but I had never seen it until today. And it’s interesting to

Craig:  me that you said that it’s so different from the giallo pictures because really to me Todd doesn’t really seem all that different. It’s still kind of a murder mystery, who done it, detective type story.

Todd:  I guess you’re right. Except in

Craig:  this one, the detectives are a 14 year old girl and her bugs.

Todd:  It has the supernatural element to it. Right? It’s kind of like I mean, I mean, to be honest, though, I mean, how many slasher movies are basically that? It’s it’s a person with no supernatural abilities who’s just wandering around killing people, and it’s up to everybody in the movie to either find out who he is or get killed. Get killed. Yeah. It’s not all that different, and some of them throw in the detective angle. Like, I was just thinking about prom night, which was basically that, but then it had a detective angle that was thrown in the last minute that made

Craig:  no sense. Well, the final the the final act of this movie was a little confusing as well.

Todd:  It was all over the place.

Craig:  Having never seen it before and watching it today, a couple of things struck me. First of all, it felt modern or at least eighties modern and compared to the seventies giallo films, and a big part of that was the music. Yeah. The soundtrack is by Goblin. Right?

Todd:  It is. Although, I mean, and they’re credited big time in the front line, and they’re and they’re you know, they do all of his pictures, but I actually read that they contributed very little to this soundtrack. I read, believe it or not, that the only contribution that Goblin made was actually the music from, dawn of the dead, which apparently plays in the background during one of the television scenes or something. And that that really striking score that we hear that sounds very goblinesque, is not by them. That’s what I read anyway.

Craig:  Well, and it it was it that doesn’t really surprise me too much because a lot of the scenes are set to what really feels like eighties contemporary rock music Yeah. Almost to a point where it seems a little bit out of place. Like, you’ll have kind of this harrowing scene where somebody’s running away from a killer or whatever, and they’ll just be like this awesome jam in the background.

Todd:  It’s like it’s like Motorhead or Iron Maiden or something, and it sounds like somebody just flipped on the radio. Right.

Craig:  I mean, it’s good music. I I liked the music, but it’s it seemed a little out of place in places. So that was one of the things that struck me. And the other thing that struck me was that it it it’s very much Argento. Now you’re much more of a fan of his than I am. I’ve seen the movies that we’ve watched together, and I’ve seen Suspiria. But this definitely has hints of Suspiria in it. You know? This this young girl, Jennifer Connelly, who her name is Jennifer in the movie too, gets sent her dad’s a famous actor. She gets sent off to this famous Swiss boarding school, and then all of it but, uh-oh, there’s a killer that’s going around and killing all these young girls. And so she has to so then it becomes a mystery who how are we gonna find out who this killer is? And that’s very kind of classic, but then there’s also an entomologist who has a monkey who is also his nurse, and and Jennifer Caudley can talk to bugs.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  There you go. I mean, that’s that’s pretty much the movie in a nutshell.

Todd:  I love the creativity, though. Like, I I mean, movies could get absurd, and you know me. I often, fault films for being outside of the realm of believability, but I do tend to give a pass to these Italian films because I just as I’ve said before, I just I don’t believe that the plot in these films is really meant to be followed closely. I feel like, 1st and foremost, these directors, are more concerned about imagery, almost about creating visual poems, you know, than they are about a plot. And so what we get is more in service to the style and the feeling and the image and the emotion you’re supposed to be getting as opposed to making any sort of coherent sense as to what’s actually going on. But I I but I also I love the idea, like, I mean, who in the world, this has gotta be the only film that has a monkey in it that has an entomologist who solves crimes with bugs

Craig:  and, and does it,

Todd:  you know, it solves a mystery with the help of a girl who has a psychic connection to bugs. Right? You know, it’s like one of a kind.

Craig:  It is. And and it’s funny because in talking about the plot, even when I was watching it I was thinking, Todd, this is pretty stupid. Yeah. And yet and yet ultimately I liked the movie, like, and frankly I really kind of not sure why I liked it. I did. I mean, as long as it was, and it does get a little bit slow in some places. I mean, I think that they could’ve, you know, maybe trimmed some fat here and there. But for the most part, it was intriguing and, you know, I was curious. The very first scene is this girl is, like, on a field trip or something and she gets left behind and so she, you know, they’re out in the country, so she walks to the nearest house, and, when she goes in it seems like there’s nobody there. But we see that there’s someone or something chained to the walls, and it’s trying to break the chains. And eventually it does, and then whatever it is attacks her, wraps the chains around her neck, and then chases her outside, And there’s, like, a big waterfall, and she’s kind of on a bridge or something. And I feel like she gets stabbed first. Is that right?

Todd:  She gets stabbed with a pair of scissors. It’s really again, it’s so stylishly Argento. He loves these close ups and especially of the brutality. And early on when she’s breaking free of these chains, a pair of scissors falls from a table, and it hits the floor and just like sticks in the floor, and you get the shiny bright silvery scissors right there in the foreground that he makes a big deal out of. And then as she’s being chased, you see that the killer, you never again, classic argento you never see the killer except maybe some gloved hands or maybe in an overcoat or something, which, come to think of it, doesn’t make a lot of sense in this film. But alright, anyway, it’s there, and then you just see these scissors, almost like the scissors coming after her. Once she gets cornered in the waterfall, he just stabs her repeatedly in the gut. And then this poor girl, like this is like a waterfall, I guess, you could visit, like a tourist attraction. Right. And and she’s kind of under it in kind of a cave like area, And I guess there’s a piece of glass there, like a glass window, to keep people from falling backwards. But her head goes backwards through this window, shatters the glass. It’s a very slow motion scene, and then, the next thing we see is a shot from the other end. Her head has been severed and flies off into the waterfall and down, and then we see the body being dragged away in in an upside down view of the body being dragged away. It’s just so stylish, but it’s it’s pretty brutal. Yeah. It is. This poor girl, chains around her neck, stabbed repeatedly with some scissors, pushed backwards through a piece of plate glass, and then her head gets lopped off.

Craig:  Right. And and that was, Argento’s daughter, wasn’t it? Yeah. Fiore Argento played that small role. She gets she gets, like, really high billing, but she’s only in that she’s only in that one scene. I guess that’s the perk of being the director’s daughter.

Todd:  Right.

Craig:  Right. But yeah. Okay. So then we know there’s a killer. Now it’s funny. I really kinda wish that we had seen the same version because I just don’t know. I think that we did, but you say, you know, there’s, like, the gloved hands or whatever.

Todd:  Well

Craig:  I was actually looking for that because that is so characteristic of his movies, but I didn’t see it in this. Not in

Todd:  the first scene. I’m sorry. It wasn’t in the first scene. It was in the later on. You didn’t see it at all later on?

Craig:  Yeah. Later on, yes. But much later on because I misspoke. For, I would say, the first hour of the movie well, really up until the 3rd act when we actually do see somebody in a coat. I was I was absolutely 100% certain it was the monkey. Why? Because why wouldn’t we I was absolutely sure that the monkey was the killer. Oh. But spoiler alert, it’s not. After that scene, then Jennifer Connelly arrives, and, you know, again, she’s very beautiful, but she kinda plays I mean, she’s likable, but at times, she’s also a little bit stuck up. I mean, you can tell that she’s rich. Her dad’s a famous actor, and, she goes to this school, and it’s what? The Richard Wagner International School for Girls. And it’s this big, beautiful, mansion like, and Sophie and, like, Sophie’s infatuated with her dad and, and and then she’s like telling Sophie’s just kind of talking about, oh, yeah. This is our school or whatever.

Clip:  You know, I’m really glad you’re here. I’ve always had to sleep alone. It can be very scary. Thanks for coming. I’m the one who should thank you. Don’t let me forget, I owe you a meal. You know, there’s a murderer around here, A crazy man. A maniac who kidnaps girls our age and kills them. And then he hides the bodies. Could we change the subject? I need my sleep. I’m really tired from the trip.

Todd:  Get that right out in the open.

Craig:  Oh, gosh. It’s just so funny. Like, that’s just, you know, the bathroom’s on the left. There’s a murderer who kills us.

Todd:  Just watch out. For as much as, you know, this this seems to be a real issue, especially in the grounds surrounding the school. They don’t put the school on lockdown. It’s still a pretty open campus. They have no trouble wandering around. No. There’s no security. Yeah. It’s it’s so Suspiria, though. You know? She goes, oh, yeah. Like, in Suspiria, it was this old mansion that’s a ballet school, and this is just another old mansion that’s a girl’s they’re both girls schools. But I felt like Suspiria did a better job of making me believe that this was actually a school. And Yeah. Because in this one, there’s this foyer, and the girls are milling about in it, and it all seems a little staged. It all seems a little pushed and forced like, oh, we gotta put some extras in the back of the scene, and they need to be carrying schoolbooks, and let’s have them talking in this corner and talking in this corner. But I don’t really get the sense that this would be a place where the girls would actually mill about and be talking. Right. I I was hard for me to believe that this school, just from the way that it was staged and the way that these different scenes unfolded, was actually in this this huge mansion. But but just just like Suspiria 2, as soon as she gets there, the headmistress meets her at the at the front, and she tells her, you know, this is the main house. This is where the school is. There are other houses on these grounds, but don’t go there. They’re all closed up. So instantly, you know, something’s gonna happen there too.

Craig:  Right. Right. And and it immediately does. Well, first, this is so insignificant, but I just bring it up because it’s an interesting piece of trivia. Jennifer Connelly has a very Phoebe Cates and Gremlins moment where she tells this story about how her mom left on Christmas. Yeah. And, it’s it’s something like, you know, they were all opening presents or whatever, and then there was a phone call and her mom answered it, and the mom was like, I’ll be right there. And it turns out that was her lover on the phone, and she left and she never came back. It’s really insignificant to the plot. The only reason that I brought it up was because I I was reading that that is actually a story from Dario Argento’s childhood. Like, I guess that really happened to him. Poor guy. Geez. I know. Be

Todd:  right back.

Craig:  It’s funny. It’s just, like, kind of this random somber story. Like, I expected it to have some significance, but it doesn’t. Apparently, he just wanted to get a story out there.

Todd:  But he but he makes a big deal out of it. Yeah. Like, zooms in slowly on her face. Yeah. I’m telling it’s it takes, like, 5 minutes.

Craig:  Then the girls go to sleep, and Jennifer Connelly starts having these dreams. And it’s in these dreams where the style of Argento really shines through. It’s very surreal, there’s a lot of interesting use of color, like she finds herself running down this Todd white hallway, and it’s just real quick jump cuts between images, and she’s seeing kind of these violent images and weird things. But meanwhile, she’s also sleepwalking with her eyes open and she’s walking around the school and she ends up walking, like, up onto the roof and she walks along this ledge and I didn’t even really understand what was going on here. Like, the way that I understood it is she actually witnessed a murder. Is that correct?

Todd:  I think so. Yeah. But because she was sleepwalking, when she woke up, she didn’t remember.

Craig:  Gotcha. So she sees a girl get killed in the school.

Todd:  But it’s a cool scene because she’s going across. And and I think this is where we also is this where we’re also getting the the crazy, like, rock soundtrack going in Probably. Yeah. And I felt like because they have the TV on, it seems like all night, and he does make kind of a point of showing the TV, and at the time she falls asleep, there is a band playing on TV. I thought that the only way that this music really made sense in this scene was I thought it was carrying through into her dream from playing in the background, in the room. But yeah, she walks across the ledge and she goes out there, and it’s just randomly, you know, there’s this girl who’s been chased into this other more boarded up mansion on the property that she’s on the roof of now or along the ledge of now, And she had dreamed, I think we’re meant to think, that she had dreamed this sequence of this girl being chased by the killer, but maybe not. Maybe that was just something we saw earlier.

Craig:  I don’t know.

Todd:  But anyway, she ends up, at the top in front of a window when this girl gets this girl gets pushed through the window again. So here we have again this girl whose head goes through a plate glass window, and then she gets speared with this device. And we see that close ups of this, again, this really silvery spear, I guess, being assembled, cut in with these chase scenes, and right through the mouth, like through the back of her head out through her mouth, which of course is messed up, and Jennifer sees this, and then the girl gets pulled back in, and Jennifer starts to walk back along the ledge, and as she walks back part of the ledge falls away, and there’s this it’s it’s like a whole action scene, really, that I thought was really impressive, because a lot of it’s filmed from far away. So you can see there’s actually a person dangling there, and it just happens to catch on her clothes so that she doesn’t fall, but then, you know, it rips, but then there’s like kind of a long plant there that catches her and droops her down to the ground. So, even though she ends up falling from a high place, she doesn’t get injured. Right. She ends up in the town. Again, this is so dreamlike because you don’t really see her get from point a to point b. It’s just, like, suddenly, she’s not in front of the mansion anymore. She’s in the the street in the middle of the town. Right. Just kind of stumbling along. Yeah. And almost gets hit by cars, and she almost gets hit by 2 guys in a convertible, and you they get out, and they’re like, are you okay? Are you on drugs? What’s going on? And you think that they’re, like, helping her because they get her into the car, but she’s struggling. But then, as they’re driving down the street, from their dialogue, it sounds like they’re gonna, like, have their way with her. Did you get that impression?

Craig:  It was in Italian. Oh, it’s

Todd:  all in Italian. Well, they’re

Craig:  Yeah. The whole scene in the car was in Italian. But, yeah, I mean, it’s it’s that’s what it seemed like. They were being aggressive, and and, like, you know, not letting her go or whatever. And it seemed sinister. It didn’t seem helpful.

Todd:  Yeah. They were saying to each other, like, what do you think? Do you think she’s on drugs? Do you think we can do it? And this kind of stuff. Gotcha. So the fact that she escapes is from them is good too. This is just like parallel around every corner for this poor woman.

Craig:  Right. But she jumps out of the car, like, rolls into the forest.

Todd:  And then the monkey saves her.

Craig:  And then the monkey saves her. And it’s so funny, like well, first of all, she sits there and, like, talks to some ladybugs for a while. I say talks to. She doesn’t really talk to them, but, like, she has, like, these, like psychic communications with them or whatever and then the monkey shows up and she’s like, Oh, hello monkey. I’ll take

Todd:  your hand.

Craig:  I’ll take your hand. Where are we going? And the monkey whose name is Ingrid, I think. Right? Or Ilsa, what’s her name? Inga. Inga. Okay. Yeah. Her name is Inga, and, Inga takes her back to the, entomologist’s house. And the entomologist is John MacGregor, professor John MacGregor, and he’s a paraplegic and he’s played by Donald Pleasants of Halloween fame. And they strike up an immediate bond because he says that he’s an entomologist and she’s, like, oh, I really like bugs, and he’s, like, oh, I used to know a girl who liked bugs. She used Todd she you remind me of her. She used to come and visit me, but then she Todd coming because she got killed. The killer got her. Greta. Poor Greta. Right? But, you know, so they form this Todd, and he tells her, you know, you’ve gotta get in control of this sleepwalking. Next time you sleepwalk, you know, recognize it and tell yourself I’m sleepwalking, I have to wake up. And she’s like, oh okay, I will, but it’s not gonna be any big deal. This hasn’t happened in a long time. I don’t expect it to happen again. And, she ends up going back to the school where the horrible headmistress who has just been a bitch to her from the beginning Yeah. Like, without without any motivation. Yeah. Decides that she’s crazy. The stock

Todd:  terrible headmistress. You know? Yeah.

Craig:  You gotta smile. Beautiful. She’s a beautiful woman, but

Todd:  is really.

Craig:  She’s nasty.

Todd:  Yeah. Well, before they leave, they have another conversation, and he mentions the phone or fawn or something. It’s just they talk about the wind, basically. This is another visual theme that’s carrying throughout the movie. It seems like whenever something bad is going to happen or the killer is going to strike, it just gets really windy all of a sudden. And they keep talking about this place, like, they call it the Swiss. They’re in Switzerland. They talk about the wind, and, oh, it’s the wind. It’s the evil wind, and it’s like the Swiss Transylvania. And I’m not sure exactly what that means. Does that mean it’s, like, supernatural? Like I guess. Transylvania is really

Craig:  Bad things happen there. I don’t know.

Todd:  But, but that’s another thing that he makes a really good point of of zooming in on Donald Pleasence when he mentions this. And I was kind of happy they brought it up because I was noticing, you know, as the movie was going on that this wind would really pick up, whenever the killer was around and bad things were happening. It’s not something that really, I think, makes a lot of sense, but it’s just something that visually really adds something to the movie. Just it’s a poetic element to it. And and we had actually met this guy earlier in an earlier scene. He had been talking with a couple of detectives, and it looked like they had the head of the girl that we had seen earlier. This is when it sets up for us the fact that he’s into bugs. And, apparently, he’s this guy’s a a genius. This guy’s discovered all kinds of things about bugs. One of the things he’s discovered is how, supposedly anyway, according to the movie, bugs eat corpses.

Clip:  We call them the 8 squadrons of death. First comes a common fly, lays its eggs in the rotting corpse, and thus the cycle begins. Each group stays 15 days. 15 multiplied by 8, the number of the groups. Now I see. By calculating the presence and the growth of the flies or the maggots,

Todd:  you can pinpoint the exact date of death. And while she’s over there, he mentions how she’s she seems to have this connection with the flies and the bugs that are in there. So he’s playing with the bug, and it squirts him, and she touches it and he’s like, be careful. And she’s like, no, no, it won’t squirt me. She’s got like a fly on her and it’s just, you know, just walking all over her arm, which none of this, I mean, this is all pre CGI. So they had Todd be working with real except for a couple elements where they’re flying bugs, we can tell it’s animated. They had to be working with real animals here, and that in and of itself, I think, was kind of amazing that they were able to catch these moments or or cajole these bugs into getting these great shots of her interacting with them without flying away.

Craig:  Yeah. And so it’s just it’s just so funny. It’s just, like, it’s just established. Oh, bugs really like you. Oh, yeah. They always have.

Todd:  Like, okay. But Todd does make a little bit of sense later within the realm of the film. Sure. In that he reveals that part of his research that nobody believes is that he discovered that bugs actually communicate telepathically. Mhmm. And so it would stand to reason if she is, like, a telepathic type person that maybe she has a telepathic, connection to these bugs. So the movie tries to make, like, a pseudoscientific explanation for all this, but it’s really goofy. Like, you say, like, oh, wow. Here’s this girl who has a connection to bugs who happens to run into this etymologist. And Sure.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s kind of goofy, but it’s a movie. You know? Like, you you just you just accept. Okay. She has a psychic connection with bugs. Fine. Alright. But when she goes when she goes back to school, the headmistress is convinced that she’s sick, and she’s got this doctor who, you know, says that sleepwalking is often an early sign of schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder. No. It’s not. Like, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. But they they wanna give her this EKG. But it’s really weird because, like, when she’s taking an EK EKG, she starts having these flashes of memories from the night before and, like, she sees the dead girl and whatnot. And, like, when she’s getting the EKG, she’s, like, she acts like it’s shocking her. Yeah. I’m not a doctor, but I don’t think that’s how EKGs work.

Todd:  I was thinking the same thing. They just read. They don’t, they don’t do anything to you.

Craig:  But she freaks out and she, she runs you know, she’s very defiant and says I’m not crazy and, you know, I’m not high or whatever, all these other things that they accuse her of. So, she goes out and she she talks to Sophie and she’s like, look, I probably won’t sleepwalk again, but will you watch me through the night just in case? And Sophie says yes. And then Sophie immediately leaves, like, as soon as she falls asleep.

Todd:  She’s so sweet to go. Fred.

Craig:  Yeah. She’s perfect. She’s like the kids in a nightmare on Elm Street. Oh, yeah. We’ll totally watch your back.

Todd:  Except in this case, she’s sneak it out to see her boyfriend or something.

Craig:  Yeah. To get which Todd get some action over.

Todd:  I thought was one of the guys in the car. Am I mistaken?

Craig:  I don’t know. I didn’t know who he was. That’s what I’m saying. I had no idea. But anyway okay. So Sophie goes out, and then Jennifer starts to sleepwalk again. Meanwhile, Sophie’s boyfriend is like, oh, yeah. Well, I can only stop by. I’ve gotta go. And she’s like, okay. Whatever. And so then she starts getting chased by the same scary figure with the put together harpoon or whatever it is he or she has, and eventually she gets killed. And, Jennifer wakes herself up from sleepwalking, but she hears somebody scream. And so she goes out, I guess, to investigate and a firefly leads her to a glove in a tree.

Clip:  Yes.

Craig:  And so

Todd:  Oh my gosh. The sequence is so weird. The thing is, like, she goes outside, which is stupid. Right? And you’re thinking, alright, she’s gonna die too. And, of course, the wind picks up. And she doesn’t seem to be sleepwalking at this point. Right? Because she countered the locked door. The one good thing Sophie did do was lock the door like she said she would. So it seems like the locked door, like, jolts her out of it. So she’s outside. She’s totally lucid. And the this music picks up, and it’s it’s really good music. I mean, it’s this classic Argento. I I would swear Goblin wrote it, but apparently, they didn’t. Anyway, Todd pumps and it’s driving and it’s exciting. It almost feels like like chase music, but this whole scene is, like, 10 minutes long, and it’s super slow. The she’s just wandering outside very slowly stepping, looking around. This firefly comes around and starts buzzing around. She looks up and it dances around a bit and lands on her palm, and then it comes up and it starts flying away and she’s, like, slowly, it’s like slowly leading her way and so she’s slowly following it and into some bushes and I guess it’s, like, really tangled up, but then she decides she needs to stick her hand in there and so she’s carefully pushing her hand through and avoiding some thorns and pulls out this glove. I mean, the whole time, this music’s going. You know?

Craig:  And it’s like I’m waiting

Todd:  for the killer to jump out and get her. Yeah. You know? It just doesn’t. And showed up. She finds the glove. She looks at it. The wind stops and she walks back inside. It turns out that the glove had some maggots on it.

Craig:  Well, and it gets a little bit jumbled here because I feel like they were trying they wanted to get several scenes in, and it they just kinda seemed like they had to wedge them in. Like, she goes and she talks to the entomologist again and, you know, again, they just kinda have a discussion about how the bugs like you or whatever and and maybe they can help you or whatever. But then we go back to the school and the girls and the headmistress are, like, plotting against Jennifer, like, the headmistress wants to plant a girl in her room to keep an eye on her. And one of the girls grabs a letter that she had written to her dad, and in the letter it says, you know, they think that maybe I have multiple personalities, and I think maybe I do too because my new personality can talk to bugs or something. And they they start teasing her about this and they’re like pretending to be bugs and then they start chanting, we worship you. We worship you. And she breaks away and she’s facing them as a group. The wind starts to blow and the light changes on her face, right? She somehow psychically calls an enormous swarm of flies that then descend on the school and are, like, covering every single window and

Todd:  That shuts them up real quick.

Craig:  Yeah. Right. And and so then somehow, I don’t know how it works. I I I feel like they try to sedate her or they do sedate her or something, and they’re gonna send her to the loony bin. Like, we’re gonna send her to the crazy farm or something.

Todd:  She faints, after this whole spell. And when she wakes up, she’s got an IV in her arm. Yep.

Craig:  But the headmistress leaves a nurse keep an eye on her, the nurse falls asleep, she escapes and she goes back to the entomologist and this is where the detective work begins because the entomologist tells her, okay, that larva that you brought me from the glove is a very specific type of larva, the sarcophagus. The grand Larva. Yeah. The great sarcophagus lava. He’s got one of the flies that comes from this larvae and he’s like, it’s time to get the 2 greatest known detectives ever on the case. He’s like, maybe I should say unknown. And she’s like, what? And he’s like, well the detectives are you and the fly. We’re gonna be partners. You’re gonna be partners and the fly is gonna lead you to the dead Todd. And she’s like, Well, but I don’t even know where to start. And he’s like, Well, we know where this one girl was where her body was found. So the killer is probably around there.

Clip:  When you get near to the killer’s house, you’ll know about it soon enough because the sarcophagus will go crazy and head straight for the dead bodies. All you have to do is follow it and come straight back. Do you feel up to it? Yeah.

Todd:  So he sends her and his fly out alone.

Craig:  Yeah. This 14 year old girl to go and a fly to go find the killer.

Todd:  Right. Right. The killer of 14 year old girls. Yes. Right. He helps her up to that point. And then he sets her loose. Elise’s fly is not trying to make love to her. The earlier true. The the with the earlier scene when they establish a psychic connection, it’s just it’s just this really creepy creepy scene toward the beginning of the movie when they first meet when the fly is all oh, the some bug is crawling all over her, and he’s like, oh, it’s making a sound that, that’s unusual. Like, this is this is the mating sound. She’s like, oh.

Clip:  And then

Todd:  he’s like, well, that’s really strange because it’s not mating season. She’s, like, oh, yeah. He’s, like, you’re really having an effect on this bug. She’s, like, yeah, I guess I am. He’s, like, no, like, you’re really exciting him. He’s really excited by you. And I’m thinking, where is this going? Like, okay. We get it. Oh, gosh. Yeah.

Craig:  So they’re on the bus. You’re right. They’re on the bus. The the 14 year old girl in the fly take a bus trip, and they, she gets into a fight with some lady on the bus about having the window open or something totally random and, but then, Donald Pleasants had told her the fly will start to freak out when you’re close. So you’ll know when you’re close because the fly will start to freak out. So the fly starts to freak out, so she gets off the bus and she lets the fly out, and the fly starts leading her, and it leads her to the house from the beginning of the movie that the first girl had been killed at. Well, she she goes and she investigates the house and she doesn’t really find anything, but when she’s, like, standing on a stool or something trying to pull down some documents off of a shelf, the leg of the stool breaks a hole in the floor. But immediately then after that, the groundskeeper or, like, the real estate agent who’s representing this house shows up and kicks her out. And and he’s like, nobody lives here. Nobody’s lived here since 8 months ago when the former tenants left. And so she leaves, but we see the, fly fly down into that hole in the floorboard, and we see that there are body parts down there. So she definitely was on the right track. She just didn’t quite get there. Now, this is still

Todd:  a pretty tense scene though because we expect there’s gonna be something there.

Craig:  Oh, yeah.

Todd:  Yeah. And in fact, there’s a car that we saw in a few shots earlier that seems to be trailing her, but he doesn’t make a big deal out of it. Like, you kind of think, oh, well, maybe the car just turned behind the bus at some point. But then while she’s in there, you see a shot of the car blocking the driveway out the window. So there’s somebody there, and then it zooms in ominously on the tailpipe of this car. And I really like what Argento does here visually, because up to this point, he’s been showing us a lot of these ominous silvery things. Right? The spear and the scissors at the beginning, all glinting and silvery all in close-up. And so when he zooms in on the tailpipe of this car, it’s just polished bright silver, you know, like a sports car. Mhmm. And it gives you this just a subconscious feeling like, oh, no. You know, she’s in danger here. But I think it just turns out to be the the car of the real estate agent.

Craig:  No. It’s it’s the detective. Oh, it’s the detective who comes after

Todd:  him. Okay.

Craig:  Yeah. Because the detective, after she leaves, the detective comes and talks to the real estate guy. And he’s like, well, who lived here, you know, last? And the guy’s like, oh, I can’t tell you that. It’s confidential. And that’s kinda all we get Well out of that.

Todd:  I think he gets the important bit of information though that the last tenant was in there about 8 months ago.

Craig:  Yes. Right. Right. Which makes sense with the timeline. So then we get this weird scene where Inge, the monkey, is outside the entomologist’s house and she’s like distracted by a kite in a tree. Mhmm. I didn’t know if this was something intentional, like, somebody put that there to distract her. I did so. Okay. So so somebody put that there to distract her. And so she’s messing with it. And while she’s messing with it, somebody goes into the house and closes and locks the door behind them. And Inga goes to the door and starts pounding on it, and she’s kinda freaking out. And then she goes to a window, and and she’s pounding on the window, and she starts breaking into the window like she’s breaking the the blinds or whatever, and then she’s kinda trying to break in. Meanwhile, the entomologist is coming down his stair lift in his wheelchair, and we see finally somebody actually in like a trench coat and gloves and they Todd the, they stop the chair lift and then they Todd it again. And when he comes down, he gets impaled with that, spear. I guess then the killer flees. Inga gets inside and she’s obviously sad at first, but then she’s mad. And so she runs outside and the killer’s driving away and she attacks the car.

Todd:  Yeah. I thought this I thought this is really a touching scene though. I did too. Yeah. Right? Because as Inga’s outside and she sees the door close in the front of the house, it’s like she realizes she’s been tricked, and she’s running up there and desperately trying to get in the house, and she’s breaking through a window in the door and reaching in. So she can see as she’s trying to get in the house, she sees, what she can’t stop in front of her. This whole scene unfold and this guy gets killed. And yeah, when she gets in there, she just goes up to him and pokes him and just looks immediately. It’s just really sad.

Craig:  It was sad. It was sad. I I agree. And I was, you know, I was kind of rooting for her when she got mad and she attacks the car but the killer kind of like swerves the car around so she gets thrown off. But then she goes walking through the forest, Inga the monkey, and she finds a trash can, and she digs through it for about 5 seconds before she finds a straight razor. And then she’s ready to go. So that’s

Todd:  so random. No.

Clip:  And the

Craig:  rash Okay.

Todd:  A very silvery, you know, straight razor.

Craig:  Yep. Yep. Sharp, you know, because you would find I mean, who doesn’t just throw their straight razors away? You know, you’re like, you’re hiking in the woods. You’re shaving. You’re done. You know? With it. It’s beautiful.

Todd:  You clean it off very nicely, and then you throw it away. Didn’t Jennifer actually see this happen? Wasn’t Jennifer around to kind of I don’t

Craig:  think so. Okay.

Todd:  I thought she I don’t think so. Alright.

Craig:  Maybe I Because Jennifer is in Todd, and she wants to get the heck out of there. She’s on the phone with her dad’s manager or financial manager or something, and she wants to leave. And she’s like, I’m serious. I want out of here. I’m not going back to that school. Somebody is trying to kill me. You gotta get me out of here. Wire me some money. And I guess he says he will. So she goes to the bank and and checks and no money has been wired and, so she waits and, you know, she checks in every once in a while, but no money comes through. And eventually, this lady shows up. Now we’ve seen this lady before. She I I think that she’s like the headmistress’s assistant or something.

Todd:  Yes. Or teacher at the school or something. Yeah.

Craig:  Right. She’s just kind of this homely lady who’s just kind of been around in the background, in all of the school scenes. But we’ve never really I mean, she’s not been any kind of significant character at all.

Todd:  Not at all.

Craig:  But she shows up.

Clip:  Your father’s attorney, mister Shapiro, called us from New York. He was very worried about you and extremely angry with us for, let’s say, losing you. What a bastard. He sounded very reasonable on the phone. He spoke to me and only calmed down when I told him I would come for you myself. He said I would find you here. I’m not going back to that school. Of course not. He said you want to go back to American media. Is that true? Yes. Well, he authorized me to buy you a ticket and give you some money.

Craig:  So she right. So she takes her home and immediately starts acting really, really weird. Yeah. All the mirrors in her house are covered up. And Jennifer’s like, why? And she’s like, because I don’t live here alone. I told you that. I have a small son and he’s very sick. And seeing his reflection upsets him. Sometimes I think he’s driving me crazy. Like, just out of nowhere and apropos of nothing.

Todd:  Yeah. Well, it’s just that I mean, she’s so shady and all

Craig:  of a sudden I’m like, are you serious? Like, we’ve gotten this far into the movie and we really have never even met this woman before and now all of a sudden she’s acting all weird and Craig. And, like, she looks at Jennifer Connelly and she’s like, oh, you don’t look good. You have a fever. And Jennifer’s like, no. I don’t. And she’s like, yes. You do. I’m gonna go I’m gonna go get you some medicine. So she goes and gets these pills and she’s like, here take these pills. And Jennifer is like, I don’t want to. She’s like, take the pills.

Todd:  They fight about the pills. And finally, she’s like, fine. I’ll take your pills. And I’m thinking, she’s really not gonna take those pills, is she? She gets Right. She’s she’s, like, she goes into the bathroom, and she and the woman’s like, what are you doing in there? And she’s like, I’m going in to take your pills. She’s like, well, why are you closing the door? She just closes the door and locks it, and I’m thinking, okay. She’s going in the bathroom to pretend that she’s taking the pills, but she’s not actually gonna take the pills because this woman, it clearly wants too badly for her to take these pills, and she takes a pill.

Craig:  Right. Like, what?

Todd:  I know. You’re right. This is where the movie totally goes off the rails. It really goes off the rails here.

Craig:  It’s it’s bizarre. So she takes the pill, and then as soon as she’s taken the pill, then she starts to see maggots everywhere. Like, there’s maggots in the sink, and there’s maggots on the towel and there’s maggots on the wall, and then immediately she starts to get really sick and she’s like, the pill is poison. So she so she barfs it up, and then she runs out and she tries to call somebody, but the lady hits her in the head. Yeah. And then somebody arrives and, like, rings the doorbell, and this woman goes around the house pushing all these buttons and, like, this house is like a fortress.

Todd:  It’s like I was gonna lock down.

Craig:  Yeah. All these, like, steel walls, like, drop down over the windows and stuff. Like, what

Todd:  is going on? It’s so funny though. Like, it it just watching this scene just made me so angry because, like, this woman is is is, like, pounding on the door. What are you doing in there? What are you doing there? You’re taking the pills, aren’t you? You’re taking the pills, aren’t you? And don’t lock the door. Come out. And so she comes out. The woman goes rushes into the bathroom, and Jennifer Connelly, who at this point you would think would be running out of the house Right. Sees a telephone and decides to run to the phone instead to make a phone call. Her back totally to this crazy lady, Mhmm. Then, like you said, you know, comes up trying to wrestle the phone away from her. Don’t call anybody. I have a rule. You can’t call anybody in my house. I need to call. No, you’re not gonna call. Again, so she throws her down into the dining room or whatever, and then turns her back on her to try to make that phone call again. Like, are you serious? Which is why the lady comes up behind her and knocks her out. Yeah. It’s so bad. It’s so bad.

Craig:  It it’s it is. It’s pretty stupid. And then so then the lady I don’t even her name’s Bruckner or something. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. She goes outside and the detective’s out there and he’s, like, asking some questions and they’re just walking along together and we don’t really know what’s going on. Meanwhile, Jennifer’s in the house and, she runs all around and everything’s locked, but she finds this one door that has, like, a grate above it, that she can open. And and she stands up on a chair and she looks through there and there’s a phone in there. So she gets some kind of pole, I don’t even know what that was.

Todd:  Some kind of pole thing? Like, so convenient that she was able to find this extend a pole, right, which she did

Clip:  with a

Craig:  hook at the end. And she picks up the phone, and this takes a good 5 minutes of her messing with the phone. And and she finally gets it almost all the way up, and then she drops it, and it falls to the floor and it falls into this hole in the floor that seems like it must be, like, 20 feet deep because the phone just keeps going and going and going. And pulls the cord taut. Right. Pulls the cord taut. As it okay. So then she well, she hears a scream. She hears a man scream. So she decides that she’s gonna crawl through that window thing, and she does. And, she starts to pull the phone out, but then she hears another scream or she hears the lady come in. And so she crawls down in the hole, and this hole is not even deep. Like, it just runs parallel to the ground. So it doesn’t make any sense that it would have fallen all the way in there. It’s it’s like a tunnel. Yeah. And so she’s crawling through this tunnel and she eventually finds the phone and

Todd:  And she stops at the tunnel to make the phone call. Right. This is a tunnel that she’s, like, crawling through. The phone is in the middle of it, you know, by now, I guess. It shows she stops there to make the call. I’m sorry. That was funny. That was funny.

Craig:  It was funny, and and she doesn’t I don’t even remember why she doesn’t make the call, but, like, we see behind her these bloody arms come in behind her, and they grab her and pull her out. And I was thinking it was probably gonna be the son or whatever the mom was keeping there, but it wasn’t. It’s the detective, and he’s all cut up like the the woman has beaten him and I don’t know what all she did to him, but he looks a mess. But of course Jennifer’s scared so she’s kind of fighting him and when she gets away from him, she falls backward into this huge vat of bodies and slime and maggots. Like, it’s just it’s so gross.

Todd:  It’s just flopping around in there. It’s the most disgusting pit you could possibly imagine. And I’ve seen disgusting pits in horror movies, but I think this one has to kinda take the cake. And she doesn’t just like, oh, and kinda stand up. Like, she’s, like, drowning in it. She’s, like, flopping around. She’s, like, having trouble getting out. She’s falling back into it. I mean, it’s it’s, like, it’s so torturous. It’s almost funny. It’s almost like the Bruce Campbell treatment on this poor girl.

Craig:  Yeah. Oh, it is. It really is, and it’s so nasty. And so Bruckner, the woman comes in and just kind of stands there and maniacally laughs. Meanwhile, the detective behind her is trying to get out of his chains, but he his hand won’t fit through. So he he breaks his hand so he can get his hand out, and he he gets a Todd of the woman and gets her down and he’s, like, beating her and then he’s throttling her, and Jennifer gets out of the pit and runs away. And she ends up in that dream hall. It’s not all bright and lit like it wasn’t her dream, but it’s definitely the hallway from her dream. And she’s running through there and she hears crying and she looks in one of the rooms and there’s a little boy standing in the corner with his back to her and she’s like, it’s okay. Everything’s gonna be okay. And he’s like, go away. And she’s like, I know your mommy was bad, but it’s gonna be okay now. And the boy turns around and he is completely hideously disfigured in the face like really really gross. Yeah. Like, beyond young Jason Voorhees gross. Yes. And apparently, his appearance is based on some actual disorder. It’s like a chromosomal disorder, which when I read that I was like, oh, that’s awful. You know, like, this is one of those things that you wouldn’t wish on anybody. I mean it was just terrible. So she runs away and she runs out of a tunnel and then she’s on a lake. So, she jumps in a boat and starts the boat and starts to go away on the boat and the disfigured son comes running down the dock and jumps into the boat and is like attacking her and he’s got that spear thing, and he’s like jabbing it at her. So once again, she calls her friends the bugs, and the bugs swarm the kid and like, I guess they’re biting him or something. So he like starts ripping his face off, and then he falls into the water, presumably dead. In this whole scuffle, the gas tank had been punctured by the spear. So when Jennifer goes to try to start the engine, it catches on fire, and she realizes that it’s going to explode. So she jumps into the water. It does explode. We get lots of underwater shots here, which you and I are both fans of underwater from, you know, photography. And it it’s good here.

Todd:  It is. You know, it’s cool. The lighting is amazing.

Craig:  The lighting is really good and Jennifer Connelly is swimming you know underwater and there’s fire above her, and it really is pretty stunning to look at. And she surfaces a couple of times, but she’s I guess swimming to shore and eventually her ankle gets grabbed and it’s the disfigured kid and they struggle underwater, but she gets away.

Todd:  It’s it’s another one of those, like, movie physics moments where this this kid who’s also underwater, who’s like half her size could possibly be yanking her around. Like, he’s got nothing to pull her against. Right.

Craig:  Well and she’s screaming and screaming and screaming, like, underwater. Underwater, man. Endless supply of oxygen under there. But eventually she gets away from him and I get I think he like catches on fire, surrounded by fire or something. He’s out of the picture. So you think the movie’s over, she comes walking up out of the water, you know, in her whole white outfit, and you know, she ascends out of the water and, she’s walking up and and a car approaches and a guy jumps out and she’s like, oh, yay. And it’s her it’s Morris, her dad’s business agent. And you think this is the end. He’s gonna grab her and put her in the car and they’re gonna drive away and everything’s gonna be fine. But instead, as he approaches from behind, somebody chops his head off. Just out of freaking nowhere.

Todd:  It’s so it it it the movie up to this point, this last, you know, 20 minutes has just been utterly cuckoo. Yeah. This is just the icing on the cuckoo cake.

Craig:  Oh, but it gets even better because okay. So it’s it’s it’s Bruckner who, at this point, I had just started calling Mrs. Voorhees because it’s so close in story. But it’s her and she’s like, you know, you killed my son and I had to kill all those people to try to protect him, but you’re Snoopy and so I had to kill your friends and whatever. And, so she attacks Jennifer and she has her down on the ground and she’s strangling her, I think. And she’s like, go ahead and call your bugs now, just you try. And it’s looking like all is lost, but then from behind somebody slits Bruckner’s throat and she falls down and it’s Inga. With her straight with her straight razor.

Todd:  I honestly I didn’t see that coming because, first of all, I in a movie where a lot doesn’t really make sense, I really didn’t put together why the monkey was getting a straight razor. My fault. But then I totally forgot about him by this point. I mean, you know, almost 30 minutes or 40 minutes has passed, you know, since he got his mother. So, I that came out as a shock. I thought she was gonna call her sex again.

Craig:  I did too, but I liked that it was Inga. And so then Inga and Jennifer have a nice little reunion, and this is the scene where Jennifer Connelly got bit. I guess apparently the, the monkey kept, like, turning around so that its back was to the camera, And, Argento didn’t want to film the monkey’s butt, you know, for that whole scene. So An

Todd:  ugly butt.

Craig:  He told yeah. He told Jennifer to put her hand on the monkey to try to stop it from turning around. Well, that pissed the monkey off and it bit her finger off. And they had to take her to the hospital, yeah, and reattach it, but they did successfully reattach it. But then I guess the monkey was hostile towards her throughout the rest of the movie, which which would be kind of scary as an actress to have a hot dog monkey after you. Jeez. Especially such a young actress, but, you know, you suffer for your craft.

Todd:  Lose a finger. Lose a friend. And that’s it. I mean, that’s the end of the movie. And I gotta say, like

Craig:  I said, it sounds so silly and it is so silly, but there was something about it and I don’t know what it is. I think maybe a lot of it is

Todd:  Jennifer Tilly just because I

Craig:  like her so much. Jennifer Jennifer, I did it too. Jennifer Connelly. Right. Just because I do like Jennifer Tilly too. But Jennifer Connelly, I just like her so much. Even though she’s kinda bratty in some of this and even though her acting is certainly not Oscar worthy. I mean, she’s obviously very young, but she’s just got a presence and she’s got a charm and she’s so strikingly beautiful in such a unique way.

Clip:  She’s not

Craig:  a chore. She’s just fun fun to watch, and I liked the monkey.

Todd:  It’s always impressive. Like, this movie is pretty ambitious, actually, when you think about it. I mean, when you’re writing the script and you’re thinking about what you’re gonna have to film later, that you put a chimpanzee in this film and then a bunch of bugs that are, you know, flies and things that are gonna have to do all this stuff. It’s pretty ballsy, and he pulls it off really without a problem.

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  It is pretty ballsy. I mean, there were some pretty impressive things that they did like that scene where the flies, attack the kid at the end. I guess that they brought in like thousands and thousands of fly larvae and they just waited for them to hatch. And when they all hatched they immediately called the actor to set, got him into costume and makeup. The the kid was played by a little person by the way, And they covered him in like glucose solution so that the flies would be attracted to him, and so he really was swarmed by all these real live flies. And once they had the footage, they got them all off of them, and they just released them out into the town. And apparently, like, these flies were a pest for the town for, like, the next several weeks. But, you know, that kind of thing, that’s that’s pretty ambitious in the days before CGI when you had to go practical and, it looked good and, I don’t know. I I think that this is a movie that would probably be polarizing. I think that some people are really gonna appreciate its kind of unique charm and other people are just gonna think it’s really stupid.

Todd:  Yeah. I think part of why I like it so much is I just thought it was beautiful to watch. I mean Yeah. We already talked about how nice it is to watch, Jennifer, but, honestly, the cinematography is gorgeous. Every scene just and and our gender just has this way. You know, when you watch horror movies, you get used to seeing a lot of dark and grungy and, you know, scenes that aren’t really crafted, that aren’t well lit, and things like that. In this, there are colors, and it’s well lit, and it’s just crisp and clean, and it just it looks like it was shot yesterday, you know, by a guy who really cared about every image he was putting up on the screen. That’s one of the reasons I just I just enjoy watching his movies so much that I’m willing to overlook the ridiculousness of so much of it because, like I said, I just don’t think he cares about the plot.

Craig:  I I totally agree with you, and the more of his movies that I see, the more that I appreciate his craft. I mean, he’s really skilled at what he does, and it is, you know, it it’s artful, and that reads very much on the screen. I really like it. Apparently, in 2001, there were talks of doing a sequel to this movie, but Argento couldn’t do it. I guess it conflicted with the contract that he was under with whatever studio he was with, and so, it never happened, which is probably okay. But anyway, we’ll probably not be seeing Phenomena 2 anytime in the near future. But, you

Todd:  know, it’s it’s an interesting little movie.

Craig:  I’m I’m glad we watched it, you know. It’s it’s kind of odd and different and different than the things that we’ve been watching lately, so I I had a good time.

Todd:  Yeah. I did too. I’d I’d recommend this movie, but you gotta it feels really long. Just there are moments at which it’s really feel slow, and so you’ve gotta watch it at a moment where you’re in the mood for that kind of movie. You’re not gonna be impatient, Yeah.

Craig:  Don’t watch

Clip:  it when you’re when it’s, you know, I don’t know, coming on midnight, and you you gotta finish watching this film

Todd:  for a podcast. Yeah. That was my mistake. Yeah. Well, thank you again for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. You can find us on Google Play, iTunes, and Stitcher, anywhere your favorite podcasts are. You can also find us on Facebook where we have a page there. Like us there. Share this with a friend. Please let us know what you think of the podcast, what films you’d like us to see next. And also, if you visit our website, which is linked from there as well, you can see some written reviews of horror movies too that we post every Thursday. Until next time. I’m Todd. And I’m Craig with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.