Horror fans have reason to celebrate the release of George Romero and Dario Argento's Two Evil Eyes on DVD at long last. Not only is this limited edition 2 disc set to be appreciated by fans eager to increase their collection of works by these two horror auteurs, but the film itself is a neglected yet distinctly dark and creatively imagined achievement.  

Released to a cripplingly limited theatrical run in 1990, Two Evil Eyes was originally envisioned by Argento as an anthology film, to be composed of a trilogy of shorter films, each an adaptation of a short story by the Italian director's idol and inspiration Edgar Allen Poe, directed by Dario and two other well known horror filmmakers. In the end, the concept remained intact while the number of works was shortened by one, leaving Romero and Argento to formulate their particular variations of Poe in "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" and "The Black Cat" respectively.

The two directors had worked before with Argento acting as a producer on Dawn of the Dead, the second installment of Romero's epic zombie masterwork, and shared a mutual appreciation of each other's work, separated as they
were by unique tendencies of style and theme. Romero, used to working on low to nonexistent budgets and schooled in the world of commercial television, quickly developed an economic approach to storytelling, a certain formal streamlining which in no way took away from the earthy grace of his filmmaking (to me, Romero belongs in the pantheon of great director-editors for his gorgeously off kilter yet hauntingly precise editing strategies). Argento, who more often than not has far more financial freedom when shooting his films, is the more operatic of the two, stylistically baroque and lavishly perverse.

Romero is a criminally underappreciated director, both critically and commercially, although his films are finally beginning to attract attention beyond the scope of the brilliant but over exposed Night of the Living Dead. Argento may perhaps have something of the genius about him. As a director, he's operating at a far more profound level than would be readily apparent if adhering merely to the reasons for enjoying his films espoused by adoring fans of the genre. Yet whatever their differences, both directors are united in one thing above all others, each is a genuine auteur and therefore a member of a vanishing breed of cinematic artist.

If the short films which make up the substance of Two Evil Eyes are not necessarily the finest examples of their directors' art, they are certainly fascinating -- if for no other reason than they provide vivid crystallizations or abstracts of Argento and Romero's fundamental thematic interests while being, as literary adaptations, ultimately indebted to Poe's own particular fascinations. Romero's contribution, "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," concerns the much younger wife (a wonderfully up-to-form Adrienne Barbeau) of an elderly rich industrialist who, along with her lover, an unscrupulous doctor, attempts to collect on her ailing husband's estate by
hypnotizing him into signing over everything to her. The trick backfires, and the husband, Valdemar, dies while in a trance and, as a result, is locked into a sleeping limbo between the land of the living and the dead.

Because of his suspension, a "doorway" is left opened through which "they," the terrible agents of that shadowy underworld Valdemar continually references in frightened tones, cross over to exact a terrible revenge. On the surface, the film recalls Romero's zombie trilogy with the image of a
rotting Valdemar, returned from death, stalking the corridors of his mansion, but on a deeper level the short can be seen to develop Romero's preoccupation with the all too human hunger of greed and materialistic obsession and its eventual ruination of the heart.

Romero's critiques are pointedly focused on the capitalist corruption of a decaying American society, and if such ruminations in "M. Valdemar" are necessarily less epically or graphically symbolized as in the zombie trilogy, they stem from the same deep suspicion of a culture which has
bought and sold itself into a kind of slow motion Armageddon. 

It is, therefore, no shock that in the closing moments of his film Romero should feature the zombified form of one of the principle characters reaching out imploringly for help which can never come, surrounded by piles of blood-soaked money: this is the cost of losing your soul, the director seems to be saying, this is the price to be paid for becoming less than human, and that loss need not have anything to do with some darkly envisioned supernatural realm but is an all to common condition of what may be called, in some deeply cynical sense, the "real world." 

Argento's "The Black Cat" is as equally revelatory of its director's particular interests, especially where those interests intersect with Poe's own, namely madness, obsession and
murder, and their disturbing ties to a certain manic thirst for the terribly perverse creative expression of both.

An already unstable crime scene photographer (Harvey Keitel) develops an antagonistic relationship with his girlfriend's new pet cat and, after murdering it in a brutal yet artistically charged photographic ritual, finds himself going mad, haunted by the demonic spirit of the tormented beast. Yet, as in many of Argento's films, what is ultimately taking place is an
unearthing of some inner corruption rather than merely the persecution of an individual by otherworldly forces; it is appropriate, therefore, that Argento should have given the photographer the name of another of Poe's protagonists, Roderick Usher, he whose "heart is a suspended lute, whenever one touches it, it resounds." One of the implications to be found in this epigraph to Poe's story "The Fall of the House of Usher" is that Usher is in part responding to some external stimuli in the course of his madness, but that his  
reaction is inseparably linked to an inner store of dementia which waits to be released regardless of external circumstances. 

Keitel's Usher is cursed with a certain oversensitivity but lacks the refinement of Poe's original, his madness having more of a savage character, and yet the depths of that bestial violence is hidden beneath a grim facade of seeming indifference; his heart strings resound with a discordant shriek. Both Poe and Argento's Roderick Usher share a certain morbid creativity when driven to express, and thereby release, fragments of the madness within them, and this is familiar territory for Argento, whose murders and monsters are overwhelmed by a need to transform their acts of violence into the set pieces of a theater of cruelty.

Released by Blue Underground, the Two Evil Eyes DVD   features a bonus disc, apparently a limited edition, which contains several interesting, if somewhat too brief, interviews with Argento, Romero, special effects guru Tom Savini and Adrienne Barbeau. The little vignettes are entertaining
viewing, particularly a guided tour around Savini's home and workshop, the informality of which provides the majority of the piece's charm.

Unfortunately, there aren't any commentary tracks, and the interviews are not terribly substantive. What is of the utmost importance, though, is the beautifully restored film itself.  Having only seen it on a now out of print videotape copy, I was pleasantly shocked at how startling the upgrade was; Blue Underground is to be commended for their efforts at making this overlooked film available once again.