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| “ | I wish I’d never written that book. | „ |
| ~ Peter Neal. |
| “ | No, no, no, no, I didn't kill the other women, I didn't KILL the other women! Hehehehehehe... Hahahahahaha... But I realized Christiano Berti was the killer. Hahahahahaha... And it didn't take me long to realize that. Hahahahahaha... The rest, Mister Germani, was like writing a book... A BOOK!! | „ |
| ~ Neal’s confession of his crimes in coincidence with Berti’s. |
Peter Neal is the main protagonist of the second half of Dario Argento's Tenebrae. A successful crime writer who harbors severe trauma and past murder as his long-buried memories comes back to light when reporter Christiano Berti becomes a serial killer, the crimes ripped from Neal's books. After Neal kills Berti, he goes on his own spree for himself before his ultimate downfall.
He was portrayed by the late Anthony Franciosa.
Biography[]
Background[]
Neal, as a youth, was promiscuous and knew a group of boys and at least one other girl who liked to flirt and have sex. On one visit to the beach, Neal partook in a tryst with the girl and several other boys with the girl surrounded by them while doing a strip tease on her knees. She kissed each of the boys, including Neal, but shamed him for having a smaller manhood than the others. Neal grew furious and struck the girl in the face. The other boys retaliated by beating him, chasing him down, and holding him on the ground, the girl spitting on him, kicking him repeatedly in the groin and shoving her red high heel in his mouth. The severe trauma and humiliation led to Neal eventually taking revenge on the girl, stalking her out and then stabbing her to death. This was a secret he kept for decades, likely even forgot, as he grew older, never being found out for the crime.
Neal later grew to be a successful writer, specializing in crime and horror with particularly graphic content and details. However, he was later horrified to find out his lover Jane McKerrow and his agent Bulmer were having an affair, feelings of betrayal eating at him despite still agreeing to a scheduled book tour in Rome, where the film starts.
Tenebrae[]
Arriving with Bulmer and his assistant Anne, he finds with his guide and bellboy Gianni his suitcase is vandalized, which was done back at JFK by McKerrow, who stalked Neal all the way to Rome. Detectives Germani and Altieri arrive at his hotel room to question him, as before he arrived, a shoplifting woman was killed in her home off his latest book, "Tenebrae", emulating the first murder by a razor and with pages detailing the murder stuffed in her mouth. Neal incredulously denies his knowledge, let alone involvement, but when he and Anne find a letter from the killer quoting his book, they contact Germani and the detectives fear a killing spree. This is only confirmed when Tilde, a journalist friend of Neal's, and Marion, her lesbian lover, are soon after slaughtered by the same killer, evoking more murders in the book. The killer later places a call to Neal, quoting his book and saying "We've only just begun". Neal realizes the killer's in a phone booth nearby his hotel, signaling to Germani, who rushes out with his revolver drawn, but the killer cuts the line before he gets there and runs.
The daughter of Neal's landlord, Maria Alboretto, is the last person to be murdered by the killer after finding the killer's lair in the house base, after failing to reach home in a hitchhiking. She runs off when the killer spots her, and when he drops his razor, he grabs an axe and stalks after her. Despite her cries for help to the nearby road and an ensuing struggle at the end of the chase, she's hacked to death. Neal had a suspicion that TV reporter, Christiano Berti, specializing in books, might be the killer, seeing signs of severe misogyny during an interview between the two and language like the killer in the letters and the phone call. When he and Gianni go to his house on a hunch, the same house Alboretto was chased from when she was killed, they get separated, and Gianni sees Berti having an axe hacked into his head, which he pulls out before he dies. Neal's later found unconscious from a blow to his head, with Gianni pulling him away to safety and calling the police. The scene is processed, and Germani believes from the lair Berti's certainly the killer and the case is closed, but Neal feels there are missing pieces, even though pictures burnt in the fireplace which are only found much later do reveal Berti's the culprit. This is confirmed when not only does McKerrow receive a package of red pumps like those of the attacking girl in the flashbacks, but Bulmer's stabbed to death in crowd of witnesses, none of them seeing the killer.
In the meantime, a budding romance blossoms between Neal and Anne, the two even sharing a passionate kiss and having sex. Neal's plane then leaves with him seemingly on it. However, when Gianni goes back to the house, he remembers the words he heard "It was me, I killed them all!". Fearing it was from Berti's killer, he then conclusively remembers Berti said those words before he died, conclusively admitting himself as the Tenberae copycat, but not answering to the new killer of Berti and Bulmer. When Gianni gets into his car, he's strangled with a cord from behind the driver's seat. McKerrow calls Anne in terror and distress, asking her to come over and waiting by her kitchen window with a pistol. The killer then suddenly smashes the window with an axe and cuts off her gun-wielding hand, breaking in as she's bleeding and hacking her to death several more times. A woman assumed to be Anne comes to the door and then comes in when there's no answer, the killer waiting in hiding. The woman's hacked in the back once, killing her almost instantly. As she's turned over by the killer to reveal she's really Altieri, Neal's revealed as the final murderer, having never flown out of Rome and killing Berti, Bulmer, Gianni, McKerrow, and Altieri. Germani and Anne arrive to see the scene in horror, hit hard by the revelation of Neal's guilt. Neal balls into a corner, recoiling over the mistake he made, denying Germani's livid accusations over Altieri's death out of rage and grief. After mumbling he didn't commit Berti's murders, Neal maniacally makes a full confession to his own crimes. He somberly gets up and walks to the center of McKerrow's living room, only to drag a razor across his throat in front of the two living characters and collapse in a puddle of blood.
The two go back to the car in the rain, and Germani reveals to Anne he found evidence of the crimes in America Neal both suffered and was guilty off, surmising on the mark McKerrow's and Bulmer's affair as well as Berti's killings stirred up flashbacks of the physical and sexual battery and resulting revenge killing, leading to Neal having a break in his sanity and embarking on his own self-preserving massacre. Neal somehow was hoping for the solace of the crimes being tied to Berti, as a still unidentified killer having murdered Berti and continued the spree after, to cover his own crimes by throwing off suspicion if tying the two sprees together with confabulations. It's suggested but never confirmed the two killers were working in collusion, but that doesn't seem likely or obvious. Germani runs back into the house, to secure the scene and use a phone, but Neal's corpse is missing. The "razor" is still on the floor, but it's revealed as a mere prop that squirts out fake blood with the push of a button. As Germani reaches for the razor, Neal's revealed right behind him and when Germani gets back up and turns, Neal kills him too with the axe. Lying in wait for Anne, he readies himself with the ax, but as she comes in, she knocks a metal sculpture over with the front door, a piece knocking off and flying into Neal's gut, impaling him to the wall. As he tries to pull himself free, to no avail, Anne screams in horror over what's happened while in the doorway in the rain. Eventually Neal slips away and dies, in front of Anne's eyes, Anne being left screaming in the rain as the film cuts to black.
Quotes[]
| “ | Can I ask you something? If someone's killed with a Smith & Wesson Revolver, do you go and interview the president of Smith & Wesson? | „ |
| ~ Neal during his questioning |
| “ | Well I was trying to build the plot the same way you're trying to figure it out, but I just have that hunch that something is missing. Tiny piece of jigsaw. Somebody who should be dead is alive, or somebody who should be alive...is already dead. | „ |
| ~ Neal during the investigation, to deter the police |
External Links[]
- Peter Neal on the Pure Evil Wiki