A general rule of thumb in continental movies is that the prettier the actress, the looser her grip on sanity - if this has any basis in reality, it's worth remembering the next time you contemplate a holiday romance. In any case, Euro-psychos form a distinct sub-class: the classic example is Beatrice Dalle in Betty Blue, a nose ahead of Isabelle Adjani, whose career almost seems to be based on psychopathy, and there's barely an actress in France
who hasn't been warped at some point. While the French generally concentrate on femme fatales, with a healthy dose of revenge, the Italians, probably thanks to the influence of Argento and his crew, seem to prefer the supernatural aspects.
This sub-genre allows the director almost to completely dispense with the plot, in favour of scriptual hand-waving about "the occult". Only the Italians could possibly make a film about killer phones, such as Dial: Help. Jenny (Lewis) is a model who dials a wrong number and somehow - handwave, handwave - taps into a source of energy, which (understandably) decides to fancy her. It starts offing anyone it perceives as a threat or who is nasty to Jenny (I'm not sure which category her goldfish, who also get it, fall into) in a variety of interesting ways, most notably the mugger shot by high-velocity coins fired from the reject slot of a coin box.
Very little of this film makes any sense at all, yet the whole thing is really quite enjoyable. The improvement over the annoying plotlessness of Argento is that once you accept the premise - admittedly silly - of an intelligent, insane telephone number, the rest of the film is plausible, at least by comparison. Argento piles idiocy upon idiocy until even my disbelief can no longer be suspended. As for the female psycho, Charlotte Lewis starts off okay, but by the end is seriously cracking up. The final proof of this is her decision to dress up in stockings, suspenders and a black basque, purely to roll around in the bath for five minutes. While this casts doubts on her character's sanity, it proves that director Deodato knows how many beans make five. The entire scene is completely gratuitous, adds nothing to the story, and is quite, quite wonderful.
B+
