Two Evil Eyes

Toronto International Film Festival Program Guide
1990

Two Evil Eyes
Dario Argento, George A. Romero
Italy/USA, 1990, 105 minutes
Colour/35mm
Production Company: Gruppo Bema/ADC Productions
Executive Producer: Claudio Argento, Dario Argento
Producer: Achille Manzotti
Screenplay: George A. Romero (first episode), Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini (second episode)
Cinematography: Peter Reniers
Editor: Pasquale Buba
Art Director: Cletus Anderson
Music: Pino Donaggio
Principal Cast: Adrienne Barbeau, E.G. Marshall, Harvey Keitel, Madeleine Potter, Ramy Zada, Martin Balsam

Since the release of Night of the Living Dead in 1968, George A. Romero has been at the forefront of the American horror scene. Dario Argento holds a similarly exalted position in Europe as a director and producer of stylistically lush genre classics. They have been friends and collaborators since the early seventies when Argento produced Romero’s Day of the Dead, but have not worked together again until now.

Two Edgar Allen Poe short stories are updated, to give them a modern flavour, while retaining the author’s unique sense of the macabre. Romero’s selection of The Truth about the Valdemar Case is a gracious tribute to Poe for his contribution to the zombie concept. Dying Valdemar is being bilked by his young, tartish wife and her handsome doctor friend. The old man is kept hypnotized and forced to instruct the lawyers to fork over a chunk of his cash. But he dies while under hypnosis, trapped in a kind of purgatory. His bereaved wife needs another week to get his money freed up, and so puts him in the freezer, which only exacerbates his preserved condition. Things get tricky when old Valdemar speaks up.

Argento’s The Black Cat attacks the concept of human/animal interaction. Harvey Keitel, in a masterful performance of controlled sleaze, plays a sadistic photographer of violent crime. His lover takes in a stray black cat. He loathes the cat, and murders it in front of his camera so he can complete his new book. When his lover finds out, she becomes hysterical, and he murders her.

Both films refer constantly to other Poe stories, playing with his often overused concepts in innovative ways. But it is the complementary visions of two explosive directors that makes Two Evil Eyes a success purely on its own terms.
—Noah Cowan