A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Friday, October 16, 2026

Two Evil Eyes (George A. Romero, Dario Argento, 1990)

Adrienne Barbeau in Two Evil Eyes ("The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar") 
Harvey Keitel in Two Evil Eyes ("The Black Cat")
Cast of "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Waldemar": Adrienne Barbeau, Ramy Zada, Bingo O'Malley, Jeff Howell, E.G. Marshall, Chuck Aber, Tom Atkins. Cast of "The Black Cat": Harvey Keitel, Madeleine Potter, John Amos, Sally Kirkland, Kim Hunter, Holter Graham, Martin Balsam, Jonathan Adams, Julie Benz. Screenplay: George A. Romero, Peter Kober ("The Facts in the Case of Mr. Waldemar"); Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini ("The Black Cat"), based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Cinematography: Peter Reniers ("The Facts in the Case of Mr. Waldemar), Giuseppe Maccari ("The Black Cat"). Production design: Cletus Anderson. Film editing: Pasquale Buba. Music: Pino Donaggio. 
The title Two Evil Eyes seems intended to suggest that its two directors, George A. Romero and Dario Argento, have different visions when trained on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and they do. Romero takes a straightforward approach to updating one of Poe's less familiar tales as "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Waldemar." Argento's is a stylistic embroidering on "The Black Cat," loaded with allusions to other Poe stories. Neither is a particularly memorable addition to the corpus of either director's work, but devotees of their films will find much to like in both. 


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