TWO EVIL EYES (1991) Limited Edition Blu-ray
Directors: George Romero and Dario Argento
Blue Underground

George Romero and Dario Argento (and Tom Savini) take on the master Edgar Allan Poe with TWO EVIL EYES, on limited edition, three-disc Blu-ray from Blue Underground.

In Romero's "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar," Adrienne Barbeau (THE FOG) is Jessica Valdemar who makes no bones about what she is owed as the former stewardess turned soon-to-be-widow trophy wife of wealthy, older dying Ernest Valdemar (Bingo O'Malley, CREEPSHOW); however, unbeknownst to Valdemar's attorney Pike (E.G. Marshall, 12 ANGRY MEN) and faithful nurse (Romero's then-wife Christine Forrest, DAWN OF THE DEAD), Jessica is plotting with her husband's hunky physician Robert Hoffman (Ramy Zada, AFTER MIDNIGHT) who has been using hypnosis on his patient to give Pike verbal confirmation over the phone of his desire to transfer control of his estate to Jessica. When Valdemar dies before the three weeks it takes to transfer the estate is up, she and Robert hide his body in the basement freezer to preserve until the deadline; however, Valdemar died during a trance and his spirit remains in his decaying body and warns the conspiring lovers that he is not alone.

In Argento's "The Black Cat," Harvey Keitel (THE BAD LIEUTENANT) is alcoholic Roderick Usher, a Weegee-esque crime photographer whose grisly work can be found in police files and decorative coffee table books. When his New Age-y violin-teaching live-in girlfriend Anabelle (Madeleine Potter, THE BOSTONIANS) adopts a stray black cat, the beast takes an instant dislike to Usher and the feeling is mutual. The presence of the cat seems to exacerbate the cracks in their relationship, as witnessed by Anabelle's students (including DEXTER's Julie Benz) and their neighbors like Mr. Pyn (Martin Balsam, PSYCHO), and Anabelle is certain that Usher has murdered the animal when it mysteriously disappears. In his drunken delirium, Roderick has a vivid nightmare about a Witches' Sabbat in which he is executed for murdering a cat. When an identical cat appears in his life with a white mark that seems to foretell his death, he tries to kill it but Anabelle gets in the way, and… well, you know the Poe tale.

Taking two Poe tales previously adapted for Roger Corman's anthology TALES OF TERROR, TWO EVIL EYES (originally intended to have three tales with the third helmed by John Carpenter) often divides fans of both director's, and it usually divides them right down the middle. "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar" is less Romero circa CREEPSHOW than a lukewarm episode of TALES FROM THE CRYPT with an EC Comics twist. Barbeau and Zada give it their all, but the scheming couple scenario feels just as tired as the certain film noir-ish approach evident in the performances, costumes, and the more Art Deco Pittsburgh urban settings. The scoring of composer Pino Donaggio (DON'T LOOK NOW) is supportive but only comes to life during the bits with "The Others." Tom Atkins (HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH) and DAY OF THE DEAD's basket case Anthony Dileo Jr. also appear. Argento's "The Black Cat" on the other hand is generally held in high regard after OPERA as the last truly inspired work of the director when followed by TRAUMA (which was intended to also be lensed in Pittsburgh). While the latter film has undergone some rehabilitation, especially in regard to what came later, "The Black Cat" boasts a spectacularly off-the-rails performance by Keitel, but he does not carry the film. Unlike TRAUMA where the attempt to interject quirks and weirdness just seemed forced, Potter's Anabelle and particularly Sally Kirkland's witchy bartender Eleonora seem very much a part of Usher's world while Balsam's neighbor and some other "outside" characters come across as shrill and persecuting. Cinematographer Beppe Maccari (NOTHING UNDERNEATH) realizes the floor level cat POV shots with the help of Nicola Pecorini (PHENOMENA) who was one of the first owner/operators of a Steadicam rig in Italy (and got a lot of work out of it) while Tom Savini – who cameos in a sequence referencing Poe's "Berenice" – provides some gory prosthetic make-up effects as well as some more subtle animatronic work for the black cat (and some less convincing realization of its kittens) without the gore going to so overboard to derail the sustained atmosphere of the tale. While some of Argento's subsequent films like THE STENDHAL SYNDROME and SLEEPLESS have improved with age, "The Black Cat" might still be regarded as Argento's last good "horror" film to date in light of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, DRACULA 3D, MOTHER OF TEARS (and his pair of "Masters of Horror" productions).

Given scant theatrical release by Taurus Entertainment, TWO EVIL EYES was easier to see on Media Home Entertainment VHS and Image Entertainment laserdisc until 2003 when Blue Underground put out a limited edition DVD with Dolby Digital 5.1 EX and DTS 6.1 remixes and a second disc of extras – leftover copies were packed with the two-disc of Gary Sherman's DEAD & BURIED in 2005 when the reissued a single disc version – which was upgraded to Blu-ray in 2009 with redundant DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD 7.1 tracks and a Dolby Digital 5.1 EX track, followed by a Region B-locked U.K. edition from 88 Films which utilized the same master and the 7.1 track along with a stereo Italian track, English subtitles, with its own extras in a critical piece by author Kim Newman and an interview with assistant director Luigi Cozzi and actress Caroline Munro (who starred in Cozzi's STARCRASH and THE BLACK CAT). Blue Underground's 2019 Blu-ray features a 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen transfer from a brand new 4K scan of the 35mm camera negative. The original master was good to start with, and the new transfer does not immediately impress with the orange on black titles and prologue shots, but even under the credits opticals for the Romero tale there is a new sense of depth and weight to the panning establishing shot and the cat POV shots, and the image is overall significantly brighter than before with pinker skin tones (even the living characters looked as pale as Valdemar on the older transfer), and the brightness calls attention to the production design of the Argento segment. The new Blu-ray carries over the older DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track while also including a lossless 2.0 track; however, one is uncertain whether the 2.0 is just a downmix of the 7.1 track rather than the original Dolby Stereo track since both are missing a line of dialogue that was also missing from the earlier editions but was definitely present on the Media VHS.

Disc one consists of the feature, a poster & still gallery, the film's theatrical trailer (1:28), as well as a new audio commentary by film historian Troy Howarth who makes a case against criticisms that the film is lacking in style compared to Argento's earlier films while conceding that the two stories do not mesh well together. He does have some nice things to say about the Romero segment but also is of the opinion that the setup is too drawn out and it does not really get interesting until the last twenty to fifteen minutes or so while also noting that the Argento segment is one of the few films in his filmography in which characterization takes as much precedence as visual style. He covers the development of the project, including the potential involvement of Clive Barker, John Carpenter, Stephen King, and Wes Craven, Argento's desire initially to adapt "The Pit and the Pendulum" set in a South American dictatorship, and Romero's desire to a sociopolitical AIDS parable adaptation of "The Masque of the Red Death" focusing on the haves and the have-nots (which he would explore instead in LAND OF THE DEAD). The track occasionally meanders into tangents but it is nice to have someone champion one of the first Argento films I was old enough to see as a new release.

The first few extras on the second disc are ported over from the previous Blue Underground DVD and Blu-ray editions. In "Two Masters' Eyes" (29:32), interviews with Argento and Romero contrast the influence of Poe on their work (lesser for Romero), their feelings about short-form storytelling (Romero having experience in it from his television commercial and industrial filmmaking days), and their feelings about their respective shoots and casts. Special make-up effects supervisor Savini discusses the challenges that each episode brought effects-wise along with his cameo in the Argento episode, and there are also brief comments from executive producer Claudio Argento as well as some on the set video in which Argento's then fourteen-year-old daughter Asia is present and discusses her own love of Poe and her father's approach to the material. In "Savini's EFX" (12:08), Savini also discusses the effects work as "experiments" using new materials and finding ways to meet the demands of the directors (we also get a look at the animatronic oversized cat puppet that was not used in the film since its movements were good but the overall look was very much a "puppet" even quickly glimpsed. "At Home with Tom Savini" (15:42) is an unrelated personal tour of Savini's home while "Adrienne Barbeau on George Romero" (4:35) is an interview extract shot by Roy Frumkes for the revised version of DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD. The Barbeau footage was not used in the documentary but it is included here, with the actress discussing how she came to trust Romero as a director on CREEPSHOW in shaping her bigger-than-life bitch character.

In addition to the old extras, Blue Underground has produced nearly two hours of new content. In "Before I Wake" (14:03), actor Zada recalls auditioning for Romero for several projects before landing TWO EVIL EYES, the importance for himself and Barbeau in establishing a believable relationship for the film, and the ordeal of the make-up effects. In "Behind the Wall" (16:09), actress Potter recalls her misgivings about the content of the script but being charmed by Argento and seeing that he was indeed an artist who shared with her a love of Poe's works. She reveals that her character was constantly evolving in the rewriting and that Argento trusted her to pick her own wardrobe, although she also admits that she understood Keitel's process less on the set than when she saw the film, although she also reveals that she refuses to watch the ending even though she admired the film's effects. In "One Maestro and Two Masters" (15:12), composer Donaggio reveals that Argento wanted to listen to the music before shooting while Romero provided temp tracks (Argento would temp track the workprint of TRAUMA but that may have been more for the producers and distributors than Donaggio), and contrasts his approaches to scoring the tales, favoring orchestra for Romero and electronics for Argento (the score was recorded in Sofia with the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra where he also did TRAUMA).

In "Rewriting Poe" (13:37), screenwriter Franco Ferrini (PHENOMENA) discusses Poe as the first writer he started reading after outgrowing comic books, leading him to Henry James, Kafka, and more macabre authors, following the same path as Argento as a reader. This, he claims, is the reason that he and Argento decided to incorporate other Argento tales into their adaptation of "The Black Cat" (he says as his housecat jumps up onto the back of his armchair), referencing Weegee in Keitel's character, as well as other elements included like the nightmare sequence (as a nod to Nathaniel Hawthorne), and the bit parts for Balsam and Hunter. In "The Cat Who Wouldn't Die" (26:33), with assistant director Luigi Cozzi also discusses his discover of Poe, the film adaptations, and Poe's influence on detective fiction and the giallo genre. He suggests that Argento brought himself and brother Claudio Argento onto the production so he would not feel so isolated working alone in the United States, and replacing original assistant director Michele Soavi (THE CHURCH) who had an asthma attack, and at the time Cozzi was working with filmmaker Luca Verdone (SILENT LOVE) on the outline of what would become Soavi's THE SECT. He recall the shoot, contrasts American and Roman crews, and working with Keitel. He also provides some remarks about the Romero segment but oddly not his own feature adaptation of THE BLACK CAT which was actually an unofficial continuation of Argento's "Three Mothers" series.

In "Two Evil Brothers" (13:52), special make-up effects assistant Everett Burrell (Savini's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD) recalls his relationship with Romero and Savini starting on DAY OF THE DEAD through John Vulich (THE DARK HALF), being a fan of Argento before Savini asked him to work on TWO EVIL EYES, heading up Savini's workshop, body-casting the stripper for the "photo realistic" pendulum victim (and his unfortunate experience developing the photos of the shoot at a local mall), the Valdemar episode make-up, the kittens, and the big effects gags including the metronome bit, working with Keitel, and his memories of the late Romero. Finally, "Working with George" (9:15) is an interview with costume designer Barbara Anderson (MONKEY SHINES) who first worked with Romero along with her production designer husband Cletus Anderson on KNIGHTRIDERS at a time when the scope of the production was such that it was suggested that Romero might be better off with a professional production designer rather than his regular circle of technicians pitching in. She also provides brief remarks on DAY OF THE DEAD, CREEPSHOW, and THE DARK HALF and speaks more favorably of the Romero segment of the film because Keitel was so difficult. The third disc is the CD debut of the Donaggio's score (21 tracks; 57:32) which had previously only been available as an Italian LP and CD-R bootlegs from it, and the booklet "The Facts in the Case of Two Evil Eyes" by Michael Gingold is also included in the case along with a reversible cover while slipcover is holographic. (Eric Cotenas)

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