giallo

Tenebrae (1982)

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Ironically, the more Dario Argento I consume, the more novel I find his seemingly obsessive repetition of concepts and ideas to be. When I discussed Profondo Rosso, I talked about how it represented the apotheosis of his metaphorical color pallette, a brand new story done up in the same “shades” as his other gialli but narratively perfected; Tenebrae (aka Tenebre, although this is less of a translation of the title as it is a miscommunication about promotional material from day one), released in 1982, is Argento’s first picture to be filmed in the eighties and is the definitive giallo of that decade, despite being less well known than his preceding films in that genre. Most importantly, however, this is the first time I’ve really felt that Argento had a thesis with his movie. His previous gialli ranged from good to bad, but one thing they all had in common was that they were first concerned with cinematography and mystery, with meaning and metaphor playing inconsequential roles in the overall structure. “Here’s a mystery, and it twists a lot! And everything is beautiful!” with occasional “Here’s a mystery, and there’s witches, because why not,” essentially. Here, however, Argento addresses criticism of his work and its themes as well as what he perceived to be a rise in random acts of violence in his contemporary world.

Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa, doing his best, worst, Shatnerest Shatner) is an American thriller novelist who travels to Rome to promote his latest work, Tenebrae, a book told from the point of view of a deranged serial killer who murders those he considers sexually or socially “aberrant.” He meets with his agent, Bullmer (John Saxon, here credited as “Saxson”), and attends a meet and greet with the press, including beautiful lesbian reporter Tilde (Mirella D’Angelo), an old friend who accuses his work of being misogynistic, surprising him. Also present is Channel 1 afternoon talk show host Christiano Berti (John Steiner), who stalks about quietly. Neal then reunites with his secretary Anne (Daria Nicolodi) and meets Gianni (Christian Borromeo), an intern with his publisher who will be his driver and gopher during his time in Rome. Arriving at his temporary apartment, the three meet Detectives Giermani (Giuliano Gemma) and Altieri (Carola Stanaro). It seems that, just before Neal’s arrival, a shoplifter (Ania Pieroni, who last appeared as the beautiful Mater Lachrymarum in Inferno) who bribes her way out of an arrest with the promise of sexual favors is murdered in her apartment: Elsa was slashed, with crumpled pages torn from Tenebrae stuffed in her mouth.

Tilde and her polyamorous lover Marion (Mirella Banti) are murdered by the slasher, and Berti’s intense interest in Neal’s work makes him suspicious. His landlord’s young daughter, Maria (Lara Wendel), is also murdered, after she coincidentally makes her way to the killer’s home while fleeing from a vicious dog. His time in Rome is further complicated by the apparent sudden appearance of Neal’s disturbed ex, Jane (Veronica Lario), although his glimpses of her are so transient he can’t be certain. Giermani and Neal work together to try and figure out who the killer is. Every time you think you know who the killer is, that person ends up dead. Also, the villain has recurring nightmares about being sexually humiliated and abused by a woman in red heels, then later stabbing her to death. There are quite a few twists that all work quite well in this movie, so I won’t spoil the reveal here, but suffice it to say, this is probably the best mystery plot so far, rivalling or perhaps even surpassing Profondo rosso.

As a basic plot sketch and in some of the details, there doesn’t initially seem to be anything new on display here. The protagonist is again an artist (as seen in Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Profondo rosso, and even Suspiria and Inferno), specifically a writer (as in The Bird With the Crystal Plumage and Cat o’ Nine Tails), assisted by a lady sidekick (BCP) played by Daria Nicolodi (PR). The police initially suspect him of guilt but later enlist his assistance in the investigation (BCP, PR). A death is staged using a prop knife that squirts fake blood (FFGV), and a character learns about the killer’s fascination with taking snapshots of victims (FFGV again) by discovering a photographer’s development studio (C9T, although that was actually a crime reporter’s collection of pics of dead folks). Mirrors hold clues and significance (PR, Suspiria), and, like clockwork, a character witnesses something important but struggles to resolve its relevance (BCP, C9T, and PR, with the “struggling to effectively pair partially heard dialogue with the memory of moving lips” lifted directly from Suspiria, although this is the first time that this clue is witnessed by a secondary character and not the protagonist). The killer’s descent into madness is caused by the revisitation of an earlier trauma, recalled and brought on by dark imagery (BCP). And, of course, the film ends completely abruptly once the villain is dispatched (literally all of them, even The Five Days). Hell, Neal’s apartment even has some creepy statues from the gallery in Plumage sitting in the entryway.

The mystery plot here is very polished and precise. Detective Giermani jokes with Neal that, despite solving crime during the day, he can never figure out “whodunit” in the novels he reads, name-dropping Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle as well as, to my amusement, Ed McBain (only a movie that came out in 1982 would reference good ol’ Ed so reverently, during the height of his popularity and before he all but vanished from the public consciousness). Every time I knew who the killer was, that person was slashed or axed in the very next scene, and I never saw the twist coming. There were certain points in the film that initially irritated me, but which I realized were subtly ingenious clues after I had time to let the impact of the movie marinate in my mind for a minute. The cast is great, and it’s a lot of fun to get to see Nicolodi play against type as long-suffering, vaguely smitten survivor for once.

Although this may be one of the more overlooked Argento films, it’s also one of the most influential. Although I didn’t mention it in my review, Argento is credited with being the first director to use a high-speed camera to follow the trajectory of a bullet in Four Flies; here, Argento uses several long one-shots, including one which goes around and over Marion and Tilde’s house, said to have inspired the similar scene in The Untouchables. There’s also a scene in which Detective Giermani bends over and out of the frame, revealing the killer directly behind him and perfectly silhouetted by the lawman, and Tenebrae is generally considered to be the originator of that particular image, which has been imitated and given homage innumerable times by directors like Brian De Palma and Wes Craven. This, incidentally, ties into Argento’s recurring reflection imagery, more present here than ever before. When Giermani is introduced, he stands as a mirror image of Neal, both of them flanked by their respective partners, who are of similar build and hairstyle. Two typewriters are placed side by side as if they are twins, and Neal has two reflections: Giermani, as the real-life equivalent of Neal’s fictional avatars, and the killer, as the twisted reflection of the darker parts of Neal’s own psyche that give birth to his novels.

This reflection has been the subject of no small amount of film scholarship, as has the way that Neal’s work elicits similar criticism to that of Argento’s own (in fact, the plot was partially inspired by a series of harassing phone calls that Argento received from a fan in California who threatened to exact revenge on the director for the having caused the fan emotional distress brought on by watching Suspiria). More interesting to me is the fact that so much of the film depends upon circumstance, unplanned encounters, and apparently unmotivated violence. Doomed shoplifter Elsa is accosted and assaulted by a vagrant before she arrives home, where the killer is waiting for her. Tilde’s jealousy of her (verbally abusive) lover leads to a thrown vase and the opening salvo of a domestic dispute. Maria ends up in the home of the murderer, not because she was an intended victim, but because she was fleeing heedlessly from a tireless and aggressive pitbull (after she herself antagonized the animal out of anger that it scared her). While waiting at a bench in a plaza, a character sees a fistfight break to his right and an unrelated couple arguing violently to his left just before he himself is stabbed; his slashing goes completely unnoticed by anyone until he physically grabs a person walking past. While in reality most crime is committed by an assailant the victim knows, when this is not the case, it’s simply a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Argento seems to be arguing that, in the eighties and the decades to follow, the wrong place was potentially anywhere and everywhere, and the clock was going to be stuck on the wrong time perpetually.

There’s a lot to recommend this movie. There are some things that are recycled from other movies that probably should not have been, and the sterile aesthetic of the film, which Argento has said was meant to be evocative of television procedurals, is a disappointment after the sumptuous visuals of Profondo rosso and especially Suspiria. Still, Argento reunites with (three quarters of) Goblin here, and the score is absolutely fantastic as a result; I can’t put my finger on it for certain, but I have the feeling that I’ve heard it sampled many times. Although not a perfect film, it’s a near-flawless giallo, and I highly recommend it.

When I went to rent this movie, I attempted to also rent Phenomena, planning to watch both and do two Argento reviews in the same week. Unfortunately, the fine folks at Vulcan Video informed me that it was already rented out, and was in fact already overdue. When I returned Tenebrae last night, whoever rented my favorite Argento still had it, meaning that I stood in the aisles of the video store for what felt like hours, trying to decide what to do. Should I skip Phenomena and go straight to Opera, and then double back later? Should I put the Argento retrospective on hold until I got my hands on Phenomena? Should I review a film by one of Argento’s contemporaries or apprentices? After much deliberation and hesitation, I decided to skip ahead to 2007 and watch The Mother of Tears, the long-delayed concluding chapter of the Three Mothers trilogy. So for those of you out there who were disappointed by how distant that conclusion was, congratulations. If you’re the witch who magically caused this chain of events to occur so I’d have to complete the trilogy faster, kudos to you, and please e-mail me; I will trade cash for hexes.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Inferno (1980)

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After the surprising international success of Suspiria, Twentieth Century Fox offered to help co-fund Argento’s next project, a sequel of sorts to that film titled Inferno. The conceit of Inferno (and, later, Mother of Tears) is that Helena Markos, aka Mater Suspiriorum (“The Mother of Sighs”), the villian of Suspiria, was only one of a trinity of powerful witches. According to the supporting materials, these witches use their great power to manipulate events “on a global scale.” I place those words in quotation marks because, although they appear frequently in the Argento apocrypha, neither of these stories feels global; Suspiria was a relatively confined story, as most haunted house plots are, and Inferno, despite featuring a narrative that takes place in both New York and Rome, also fails to feel like it takes place on a significantly larger scale. This isn’t meant to disparage either film, necessarily, but it does imply that Argento was shooting for something here that he doesn’t quite pull off.

Suspiria took its name from the title of an unfinished work, Suspiria de Profundis, by Thomas de Quincey, best known as the author of Confessions of an Opium Eater. Although the book was never completed, the section entitled “Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow” was, and its concept, that there are three Sorrows just as there are three Fates and three Graces, was the initial inspiration for Suspiria, although you wouldn’t know that simply from watching the movie. After all, Suspiria was a largely self-contained story, with nothing to imply that Markos was one of these three Sorrows, or that her power reached far beyond Freiberg, or that her influence did not begin and end with her coven. Even if this was always intended to be the case, an audience who is not familiar with this idea can’t help but feel that Inferno is attempting to graft new plot elements onto Suspiria retroactively, in a way that cheapens the earlier film’s nigh-perfection; Inferno feels like a cheat and a knock-off at the same time.

The film opens with Rose Elliot (Irene Miracle, who was hired for her ability to hold her breath for a long time—no kidding), a poet living in the most baroquely Old World apartment building in New York. She reads in a book titled The Three Mothers that there are three evil sisters who rule the world with tears, sorrow, and darkness, and that the book’s author, an architect and alchemist named Varelli, was hired by the sisters to build a home for each one: in Freiberg, Rome, and New York. Rose has become obsessed with the idea that the building she lives in was one such home, based on clues left in the book. She writes a letter to her brother Mark (Leigh McCloskey), a musicology student living in Rome, asking him to visit her. Mark is distracted by a beautiful woman (Anna Pieroni) in his classroom who is mouthing words at him* and loses the letter, which is collected and read by his friend Sara (Eleonora Giorgi).

After reading the letter, Sara tracks down a copy of the book but is attacked by a strange figure who recognizes the tome. Sara narrowly escapes this person and returns to her apartment building, where she asks her neighbor Carlo (Gabriele Lavia, who previously appeared in Profondo rosso as Carlo, although they cannot possibly be the same character) to stay with her while her nerves settle, only for both of them to be murdered by an unseen figure. Mark arrives at her apartment and finds their bodies, before seeing the same woman from his class leaving the area in a taxi. He calls Rose, who begs him to come to New York before she is murdered herself.

Mark arrives in New York and meets the building’s caretaker Carol (Alida Valli, previously Miss Tanner in Suspiria), elderly and infirm tenant Professor Arnold (Feodor Chaliapin Jr), Arnold’s nurse (Veronica Lazar), Rose’s rich but sickly friend and fellow tenant Elise van Adler (Daria Nicolodi, Gianna Brezzi in Profondo rosso and Argento’s wife and writing partner at the time), van Adler’s creepy butler (Leopoldo Mastelloni), and neighboring antiques dealer Kazanian (Sacha PitoËff), who sold Rose The Three Mothers in the first place. Each of these people come to a tragic end, save for the nurse, who turns out to be Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness, as revealed to Mark by Professor Arnold, who is actually the ancient Varelli. The apartment building burns to the ground (accidentally, which says more about the nonsensical nature of this plot and the irrelevance of all intentional character action than I ever could), and Mark escapes while Tenebrarum seems to be crushed by falling rubble.

Inferno is… not a very good movie. It has too many good moments in it to be a bad movie, but the overall structure leaves much to be desired and the experimental approach to narrative is rather frustrating. Like Suspiria, Inferno has an intentionally dreamlike ambience, but lacks the former’s vivid color and narrative intensity and is (somehow) an overall less coherent movie, despite the fact that there are parts of Inferno that are superior. Inferno feels like a series of vignettes, each one designed to exploit a particular fear; devoid of context, they are actually scarier, creepier, or more unsettling than analogous scenes in Suspiria, save for the fact that each one goes on just long enough that the impact is diminished, and that they are held together with a narrative so flimsy that it ultimately does a disservice to the dark imagery and mood contained within itself. Argento’s decision to forsake the previous film’s focus on witchcraft for an investigation of alchemy is ironic, given that even he could not turn the disparate, good parts of this film into a cohesive whole.

The score, composed by Keith Emerson, is particularly awful, especially when compared to Argento’s collaborations with Goblin; it features terrible rock organ music paired with Omen-esque Latin chanting, and the result is far too silly to be effectively unsettling. The sets, some of which were designed by the great Mario Bava himself, are fantastic, however. As for other elements that are effective, Rose’s underwater scene near the start of the film is a particular highlight, as is every scene with Nicolodi (who contributed to the story for this film as she had for Suspiria, but she had to fight so hard for her on-screen credit in that film that she decided not to bother to do the same here). The death of Sara and Carlo is extremely well done, as the record Sara is playing cuts in and out along with the lights as the electricity flickers. The scene in which Kazanian attempts to drown a bag of cats (evil cats which do the bidding of Tenebrarum, it should be pointed out, although it is still horrifying) only to be eaten by hundreds of rats is also well-done despite the scene’s inexplicable conclusion. If anything, “inexplicable” is the watchword here, as much of the narrative is clunky and scenes fail to flow organically from one to the next.

This is perhaps best evinced in Rome: Sara, inspired by Rose’s letter, goes to an unidentified building for some reason. There, in a library, she finds the copy of The Three Mothers, and then descends into the building’s basement for some reason, rather than checking the book out or coming back the next day. She somehow finds a room where, like, potions are being made, and she tries to communicate with the misshapen person tending the pots for some reason. Apparently she knew that this library would be the place to find this book, and that this library was also (maybe) the home of the third sister, somehow? It’s creepy and effectively unnerving, but it doesn’t hold up to even the most passive narrative scrutiny, which is the best description of the film as a whole as well. There are elements here that work very well, but this is more of a clip show of ideas Argento couldn’t put anywhere else than a movie. If you do choose to check it out, make sure to rent/buy the Blue Underground DVD release, which features Italian audio and English subtitles, as well as interviews with Argento, Miracle, and assistant director Lamberto Bava, son of Mario.

*I can’t decide if this is an effective misdirection or the vestigial remnant of a cut subplot. If you know how Argento works, this first seems like one of his giallo trademarks–the misunderstood early clue that is later explained, much like the unheard words said by Pat at the beginning of Suspiria. Even if you’ve never seen an Argento movie before, the focus on and attention paid to these unheard words seems like a clue. Regardless, nothing ever comes of it, and this character does not reappear after Mark leaves Rome, although it can be inferred that she might be Mater Lachrymarum. We’ve got nearly three decades of Argento movies to get through before we reach Mother of Tears, though, so I wouldn’t expect an answer soon.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Suspiria (1977)

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I first became aware of Dario Argento during my freshman year of college. At the time, television channel Bravo was still transitioning from the arts-oriented channel that it was when it was first incepted into the reality-TV landfill that it is now; I was visiting home and caught the re-airing of their 2004 miniseries 100 Scariest Movie Moments. It’s a smart list, even if the ascending algorithm of fright is contentious (I adore Nightmare on Elm Street, but scarier than Jacob’s Ladder or Rosemary’s Baby? Please.), and it was from that list that I learned the name “Suspiria.” It ranked relatively high, coming in at number 24, and was the second-highest rated non-domestic feature on the roster (Japan’s Audition claimed the number 11 spot), which also included thrillers like Deliverance and Night of the Hunter, films that wouldn’t normally fall under the banner of “horror” per se.

Thus, I didn’t begin my journey into the Dario Argento oeuvre with his earliest work, I started with Suspiria. In fact, before beginning this project, I had not seen Argento’s films that preceded this, his most well-known picture. I Netflix’d the DVD of Crystal Plumage sometime in 2008, but never got around to watching it before sending it back, a casualty in my mad, gluttonous rush to consume every episode of Veronica Mars. The other films of his that I did uncover and watch, like Phenomena and Opera, all came from the middle of his career, after he had forsaken pure giallo and before he moved on to making the mediocre miscellanea of his later career. And, at the risk of sounding cliche, Suspiria was a revelation to me then and a revelation to me now.

The story follows young American ballet student Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper), who has been accepted to a prestigious dance academy in the Black Forest of Germany. She arrives during a torrential downpour, and makes her way to the school just in time to see another young student flee into the woods, screaming about secrets. This same young woman is later murdered, brutally, and the friend with whom she took refuge is also killed. The following morning, Suzy meets school’s vice-directress, Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett in her final film role), and dance instructor Miss Tanner (Alida Valli), who appear to be strict but matronly. She also befriends Sarah (Stefania Casini), who was friends with the murdered girl and continues her investigation into the strange goings-on about the academy. Strange events begin to happen: Sarah experiences an unusual fainting spell that forces her to relocate to the school’s dormitories from an off-campus apartment, maggots rain from the ceiling after having infiltrated “spoiled food” being kept in the attic, and disoriented bats fly into open windows while faithful service dogs turn on their owners. It’s hard to describe the film’s plot without it sounding like a standard haunted house movie, but it’s so, so much more than that.

What is a movie? Or, perhaps a better question, what should a movie be? In the West, we have been trained to have certain expectations of films, to be receptive to a particular cinematic style with a mostly-linear structure, to recognize certain constants and feel secure in them. As a comparison, think about how you were first introduced to poetry as a student: poems were words arranged in a particular pattern, with meter and rhyme. You were likely given something palatable to read, something not too dissimilar from nursery rhymes, with an easily-identifiable structure. Then, you were introduced to something completely different, something that wasn’t recognizable as a “poem” within the limited context that you were taught. Films are much the same, as studios make the majority of their money from regurgitating the same kind of mediocre pablum over and over again across all genres: Meg Ryan is a relatable career-oriented everywoman who doesn’t realize that there’s something missing from her life, every superhero has to learn the hard way that with great power blah blah (I won’t even bother finishing that thought because you’re already ahead of me), and every generation has a raunchy sex comedy to mislead them about the birds and the bees. But sometimes, a movie comes along that doesn’t just repeat the same ABAB CDCD EE rhyme scheme of other movies you’ve seen before. Auteurs earn their credibility by taking the same things we’ve seen over and over again and tearing them to pieces, or forsaking them altogether, or using them in a transcendent way by playing with or manipulating audience expectation.

All this is a roundabout way of saying that movies which forego some element of cinema in order to exalt another aspect of film can be a worthwhile endeavor, and that putting narrative consistency on the backburner in order to focus on aesthetics or mood doesn’t necessarily make a film less successful than the median anymore than ee cummings was a lesser poet than Robert Browning. Suspiria is a movie that does just this, by honing in on atmosphere and tone rather than plot, and the film is well-served by this attention to detail. That’s not to say that the plot is irrelevant (this isn’t The Five Days, after all), but color and immersion are much more important here than they are in a lot of other films from the same period (or today). Contemporary critics took issue with the film’s plot structure, apparently failing to realize that Suspiria is intentionally dreamlike, influenced by fairy tales and nightmares more than monomyth. Even the opening narration, which others consider to be out of place and somewhat silly, contributes to the film by acting as a kind of horror-tinged “once upon a time.”

Daria Nicolodi, who has a co-writer credit on the film, stated that she based her contribution on stories her grandmother had told her as a child, like the misadventures of Lewis Carroll’s Alice and, supposedly, the elder woman’s discovery that the faculty of a school she attended was secretly into occultism. Argento has claimed that this story is false, but I prefer her whimsical lie to his pragmatic honesty, as it’s a fun and intriguing fiction that’s better than the truth; that’s one of the things art is for, in my opinion. Argento has also said that he initially wanted the film to star adolescents, but that this was quickly nixed (watch that first murder scene and imagine that the victim is twelve years old, and you can see why this change was necessary); to maintain that viewpoint, the set was designed with all doorknobs at eye level so that the subconscious recognizes the actors as being smaller and more childlike. This kind of set detail, along with the omnipresence of bright, vivid colors, contributes to the film’s overall surreal ambiance. It’s a movie that’s experienced and felt more than it is one which is interpreted, and it’s all the better for it.

This is perhaps best encapsulated by the experience of the main character, Suzy. Suzy spends a great deal of her screentime being sedated each night while the heavy-lifting of the mystery is largely performed by others around her. Pat, the girl who flees the school in the opening, kept notes about the faculty’s suspicious behavior and practices; Sarah listens to the steps being taken by the teachers at night and records them so Suzy can use this information to discover the coven later; Suzy’s disappearance leads Sarah to Dr. Mendel (Udo Kier, of all people), who introduces her to exposition-laden Professor Milius (Rudolf Schundler). Suzy is a character who is acted upon more often than she is one who has agency, but isn’t that so often the case with dreams? In another movie, this would be a detraction, but here it’s actually a feature. If you haven’t seen this movie already, what are you doing here? Stop whatever you’re doing and go watch it, right now.

Additional notes:

  • I can’t believe I didn’t address this above, but this was prog-rock band Goblin’s second time collaborating with Argento, and the movie’s score is absolutely phenomenal. Anchor Bay’s DVD release of Suspiria includes a copy of the soundtrack, which has long been out of print but must be heard. It’s like the apotheosis of what a horror film score should be, at once delicate and disquieting, unsettling but eerily beautiful and vaguely mystical. Halloween’s may be the best-known horror score, but Suspiria‘s is technically and thematically superior and one of the best scores of all time.
  • When I first saw this movie, I had never seen any previous Argento films, so I didn’t know what his recurring motifs were. Although this is not a giallo film in the strictest sense of the word (obviously, the “mystery” here is much less important than visuals and mood), his trope of a character witnessing something at the beginning of the film that they struggle to comprehend is present here. As in Deep Red, a mirror holds an important clue and plays a key role in the resolution of an investigation. Most amusing to me, however, was the fact that Suzy’s ultimate defeat of the evil coven queen requires her to use a crystal-handed dagger that is part of a sculpture of a peacock, presumably the same genus as titular Bird with the Crystal Plumage.
  • He doesn’t factor into the film all that much, but Suzy’s love interest Mark (Miguel Bosé) is a total babe. Yowza.
  • A minor quibble: Why do the witches even care to bring Suzy into the school in the first place? In a more standard Hollywood film, they would probably be looking to use her in some way (see: Rosemary’s Baby) or convince her to join the coven, but there’s no real reason given or explored here, further adding to the dreamlike atmosphere. We never get an answer, but if this frustrates you, you may be missing the point.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Profondo rosso (aka Deep Red, 1975)

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Released in 1975, Profondo rosso (Deep Red) is considered by many to be not only Dario Argento’s greatest work, but also the highest example of the giallo form. Although I still think that Suspiria is probably a superior film, and Phenomena is my personal favorite, it’s not hard to see why Deep Red was the recipient of such wide international critical acclaim (including being the first of Argento’s films to garner an audience in Asia, especially Japan), or why that popularity is so enduring, even forty years later.

Following the commercial and critical failure of the mediocre period dramedy The Five Days, Argento returned to the genre that had always served him well, revisiting many of his older ideas. Notably, memory often plays a key role in giallo narratives in general and Argento’s films in particular; specifically, vital details are witnessed by a character or characters but are forgotten by these witnesses because of their apparent irrelevance. Both The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and The Cat o’ Nine Tails featured protagonists who realize that seen or overheard clues contain minute details or discrepancies that, after much struggling to recall and decipher, ultimately reveal the identity of the killer. In Plumage, Sam Dalmas was repeatedly told by the police inspector that he must have seen some clue about the murderous assailant while trapped in the gallery entryway, and Dalmas spends the rest of the film experiencing brief flashbacks to the attack while trying to track down the murderer. Here, Marcus Daly (David Hemmings) also witnesses something when he tries to save the life of Helga Ulmann (Macha Meril), and he recognizes immediately that he has seen something significant but forgotten that will assist him in his investigation.

If you watch enough Argento films, you start to notice a pattern. For instance, the protagonist is always an artist or writer of some kind: Sam Dalmas, the author struggling with writer’s block; Cat‘s Carlo Giordani is a reporter, and Arno is a retired reporter making a living as a designer; Flies‘s Roberto is a drummer. Here, Marcus is a piano teacher. In Cat and Flies, a character (Bianca in the former and private investigator Arrosio in the latter) deduces the identity of the killer and tells another character over the phone that they will reveal this information at a later time and date, only to be killed before being able to pass this information along; in Deep Red, this happens twice–Helga deduces who the killer is and tells someone over the phone that she wants to make sure the information is brought to light before she leaves Rome and Dr. Giordani unsuccessfully attempts to phone Daly after he learns the killer’s identity from a note left by the most recent victim. In both cases, the characters are immediately killed.

I don’t bring up these repeated patterns because I think there’s something inherently wrong with this practice. I recently unpacked a box of old documents and stumbled across a small trove of sketches and drawings I had done about eight years ago, and many of them were individual pages covered in a single image repeated over and over–birds in flight, open mouths–as I had attempted to master the creation of a particular image by drawing it over and over. I was doing then what Argento did with his early giallo pictures, producing variations on a theme in order to perfect it. Although this runs the risk of becoming repetitive, Argento deftly reuses the same devices in ways that manage to stave off the staleness and apparent creative stagnation that permeates the work of other directors whose body of work orbits or exhibits the same images and ideas over and over again (compare to the regurgitated adulation of the military and simplistic patriotism filtered through blue/orange color correction of Michael Bay, for instance, or the tiresome recycling of the deification of family coherence in latter-day Spielberg).

In addition to polishing already successful elements of other films, Argento reuses ideas that didn’t work before. I mentioned in my review of Cat that I felt that film’s straightforward detective narrative, in contrast with the more eccentric paths that Plumage took in its route to the final frame, was somewhat detrimental to the overall feature, as its focus on the mystery itself overshadowed the cinematic and psychological elements that make Argento such a notable auteur. Cat was followed, of course, by Flies, which unsuccessfully attempted to merge the two, featuring a mystery narrative that doesn’t make much sense and could not have been solved by the audience at the same time as the characters, as well as experimental editing techniques that were more disruptive than helpful. As with Cat, the investigation in Deep Red is straightforward but manages to be more captivating because of the more well-constructed mystery, coupled with Argento’s unique talent for artistic gore effects and unsettling and discomfiting imagery. Perhaps more importantly, this is the first instance in which the revelation of the killer’s identity can be solved by the audience along with the protagonists (not counting Flies, in which the killer’s identity was made obvious early on as a result of a flaw in the film’s design rather than deliberately), as we collect clues alongside Daly.

There is a well-developed romance here as well, which works in the film’s favor (even if this subplot was cut from the original US release for reasons unknown). In Plumage, the romance between Giulia and Sam has already solidified, and the only conflict between them comes from her growing frustration with his obsession with the string of murders. In both Cat and Flies, there are insubstantial love scenes: Giordani and Terzi’s was likely crafted simply to throw some last-minute suspicion her way, and Roberto’s pointless adulterous dalliance with Dalia seems to exist purely for titillation. But, just as Arno and Giordani worked as a team in Cat, Deep Red also features a reporter sidekick, Gianna, portrayed by longtime Argento collaborator and partner (romantically and creatively) Daria Nicolodi. Unlike other women from Argento’s stock of female characters, she is earnest, forthright, and professional while also being light-hearted and serving as the film’s much-needed comic relief. Like Roberto in Flies, Daly is a bit of a misogynist; here, however, the film paints him as being clearly in the wrong, and his occasional sexism towards the affable and likable journalist is shown to be completely unfounded. He declares that men are more inherently intellectual, but she deduces the importance of clues before he does; he pompously declares that women are delicate and fragile, but she beats him at arm wrestling and, later, pulls his body from a burning house. It’s rare to see a romantic subplot treated this well in a contemporary film, much less one that’s four decades old. This is also a huge step forward for Argento with regards to sexual politics, and it’s important to note that his next few films center around multidimensional female protagonists, with great success.

Deep Red is the apotheosis of many of Argento’s tropes, but it also reflects his growth as a director and the instigation of newer concepts that would become part of his repertoire in the films that followed. His new focus on developing women characters is cited above, but this was also Argento’s first of many collaborations with prog-rock legends Goblin, who composed most of the score for the film after Argento was dissatisfied with Giorgio Gaslini’s initial composition (although some of Gaslini’s tracks are still present in the final score). This was also the film on which Argento and Nicolodi met; the year later, she would give birth to daughter Asia Argento, who has starred in several of Argento’s later films and become a director in her own right. Nicolodi also has a co-writing credit on Argento’s other opus, Suspiria, and she would later star in four of his other classics: Inferno, Tenebrae, Phenomena, and Opera. The two had parted ways by the time of Opera‘s production in 1987, and both have cited difficulty working together on that film, but they reunited in 2007 to work on Mother of Tears, the long-delayed concluding chapter in a thematic trilogy that began with Suspiria and continued through Inferno.

This film is one of the quintessential works on Argento’s CV, representing the codification and perfection of the elements that made up his prior canon while introducing and inducting collaborators who would be part of his think tank through the next, best stage of his directing career. Avoid any VHS copies you may find, as they will be missing most of the subplot of Gianna and Daly. To avoid accidentally viewing a truncated version of the film, I would also recommend avoiding any DVD released by Blue Underground, as they released two pressings, one of the uncut film and an “Uncensored English Version” that is missing the same scenes as the original US release. Your best bet is to track down Anchor Bay’s release, which features English and Italian audio and subtitles.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

4 mosche di veluto grigio (aka Four Flies on Grey Velvet, 1971)

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onestar

No matter how you slice it–no pun intended–4 mosche di veluto grigio (Four Flies on Grey Velvet) is a weird, sloppy mess, even for a Dario Argento film. The final part of Argento’s so-called animal trilogy, Flies was released just ten months after The Cat o’ Nine Tails, and the movie follows a horribly unlikable protagonist who is being stalked and harassed by a killer in a mask. Oh, also, the protagonist is a killer. Well, not really. I should explain, and I will try. Be warned: this review is chock full of spoilers, but it will save you the trouble of sitting through this stinker.

As the film opens, a drummer in a standard early seventies rock band, Roberto (Michael Brandon), realizes that he is being followed by a cloaked man. After practice, he follows the man to an abandoned opera house, where an altercation ensues and Robert stabs the man with his own knife. Roberto is then photographed standing over the man’s body with the knife. The following day, he receives the stabbed man’s identification in the mail. Then he and his bandmates have a party! Roberto goes to change a record, and finds a photograph taken during the previous night’s incident between two albums. He remains completely unaffected, either by the fact that he killed someone or that he’s getting the I Know What You Did Last NIGHT treatment. He finally tells his wife, Nina (Mimsy Farmer), what happened after he is nearly strangled in their living room in the middle of the night; she is understandably disturbed, but he mansplains her down. Do you like the main character yet?

Roberto’s maid (Maria Fabbri) places a phone call that reveals she knows who the blackmailer is and wants a piece of the action. She waits to rendezvous with them in a park, but gets locked in and killed after dark. It is then revealed that the man Roberto “killed” is still alive, and he and the blackmailer/killer conspired to make Roberto appear to be a murderer, for no initially apparent reason, although there is an eventual explanation. Is it ever explained how he and the killer know each other, or why he would be amenable to such a thing? Nope! After the maid is found dead, Nina tells Roberto she’s leaving town, like a sensible person would after multiple break-ins and a murder, but Roberto is mildly interested in seeing what happens next. I say “mildly interested,” because, compared to the level of intensity and interest displayed by Sam Dalmas in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Carlo Giordani in the aforementioned Cat, he seems to be completely apathetic to the danger to his own life, and only invested in saving his life insofar as hiring a preening, effeminate private eye, who takes the case mostly because he finds Roberto cute.

The private eye, Arrosio (Jean-Pierre Marielle) is one of the film’s saving graces, and a film that followed him solving the crime would have been a much more interesting endeavor than what does end up on screen. Before he is killed in a subway restroom, Arrosio tracks down information about a former mental patient who was considered by the staff to have been a “maniac” but was “completely cured.” At this point in the film, the killer, or the killer’s sex, becomes pretty obvious; the killer’s whispering voice does little to disguise the fact that she is a woman, and the way that the head psychiatrist at the asylum insistently refers to “the patient” in order to avoid using gendered pronouns is stilted and obvious. I guessed this twist so early in the film that I initially assumed it was the maid, before she ended up dead before the end of Act I. You might guess that the killer is Dalia (Francine Racette), Nina’s cousin, especially after she seems to hear the killer’s madness mantra–a man’s voice saying things like “I wanted a boy, not a weakling!” and “I never want to see you cry!” It’s also worth noting that fewer than sixty seconds pass between Nina’s goodbye and Roberto’s seduction of Dalia. What a class act!

Alas, Dalia is herself killed. The police want to run a ridiculous forensic test: using a laser projected through Dalia’s eye to render an image of the last thing she saw before she died. You may remember such a test from Fringe, or even failed Will Smith vehicle Wild, Wild West. It’s completely absurd, and the science is even more dubious than Cat’s XYY gene nonsense, but it’s also the clue that breaks the case and the explanation of the title: Dalia saw four flies in a line. That night, Roberto waits in the dark with a loaded gun and almost shoots Nina when she comes home. As Roberto begs her to leave, he realizes that her giant ugly necklace has a fly in the medallion, and that Dalia’s last vision was of the necklace rocking back and forth. Nina then gives a rant-filled monologue about how her stepfather wanted a son and tried to raise her as one, but put her in an asylum when his beatings failed to turn her into a boy (shocker); by the time she was released, he was already dead, so she sought out someone like him upon whom she could heap all her vengeance, and Roberto fit the bill. She is scared away, jumps in Roberto’s car, and speeds into the back of a large truck, dying instantaneously. End credits.

This is a bad movie. The most compelling imagery in the film occurs in Roberto’s recurring nightmare about being beheaded in a public square, apparently based upon a story he overhears at a party. So much of the plot is frontloaded with absurdity that by the time an explanation is given, you can hardly bring yourself to care. The tone of the film is inconsistent not only with Argento’s other works but within itself as well. There are times when it seems Argento was going for mild comedy, such as the recurring joke about one of Roberto’s neighbors consistently receiving a different neighbor’s misdelivered pornography, or the pranks and jokes of the two recurring homeless men with whom Roberto is friends (for some reason). Intentionally comedic or not, it doesn’t work. That Nina is the killer is apparent from pretty early on, and her motivation is telegraphed with far too many voiceovers and rotating shots of a padded room. Although the mask Nina wears is delightfully creepy, I wish Argento would have saved it for use in a better film. There are some editing choices that seem to be trying to be avantgarde (notably, people disappear from where they were standing in a park, again “for some reason”), but ultimately have no in-story justification. The only thing really novel about Flies is that a female victim, the maid, dies offscreen for once.

Considered by some to be a hard-to-find gem, I cannot in good conscience suggest that you spend your time trying to track down this movie or view it. The 2009 DVD released by MYA Communications restores the two minutes of Nina’s speech that were cut from previous U.S. releases, but I can’t recommend it, either. Although viewers have the option of viewing the film in English or Italian, there are no subtitles on the disc at all, save for the parts of Nina’s speech which were never dubbed into English due to being cut (the restored footage is in the original Italian). Unlike some of Argento’s other films, in which insert shots of printed text were shot in additional languages for easier international release, all onscreen text is in Italian as well, and there aren’t even translations of these in subtitle form either; as a result, the taunting notes that the killer leaves for Roberto are completely meaningless if you, like me, are unfamiliar with Argento’s native tongue.

Overall, I can only suggest skipping this film. If you are a completist like I am, you’ll probably find yourself watching this as part of the Argento oeuvre at some point. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo (aka The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, 1970)

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fourhalfstar

The trailer for L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo, better known in the U.S. as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, explicitly references Alfred Hitchcock, who supposedly said that Dario Argento, “That Italian fellow,” was beginning to make him nervous. Plumage was the first film directed by Argento, who was already relatively well known as a screenwriter, and the reference to the Master of Suspense in the film’s advertising is well placed, as the traces of Hitchcock’s influence are all over this film like fingerprints at a murder scene; this is not a criticism, per se, but it is nonetheless true. Specifically, I found myself thinking of Psycho from the film’s first onscreen murder, which featured no flesh to blade contact and instead focused on slashing motions and splashes of blood. The connection to that most well known of Hitchcock’s works moved from subtext to text at the film’s conclusion, which featured a voice-over from a mental health professional explaining the psychological motivations of the killer, just as the 1960 film had used an expert to explicate Norman Bates’s madness.

If one must steal, it’s smartest to steal from the best, and Argento’s homages did not end with Hitchcock, as he also lifted the appearance of the killer in Plumage from fellow Italian horror master Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace. I mention all this not to imply that Plumage is a retread of other, better films; in fact, Plumage would be an excellent movie at any point in a filmmaker’s career, and the fact that it was Argento’s first feature is, frankly, astounding. There is a lavish attention to detail in composition, color, and framing that is already on display in this freshman effort, and although he would refine this palette over the course of his career (at least until his latter day works, which leave much to be desired), there is a rawness, a viscerality, to those elements here that works in the film’s favor. Plumage is just as much a precursor for and inspiration of the slasher genre as Psycho, precognitions of a style and type that were freshly emerging from the depths of the subconscious and which would be codified a few years later in John Carpenter’s Halloween. And, to a modern audience, Plumage has something that neither of those films has: a surprise ending that hasn’t bled into the mainstream via pop-cultural osmosis, meaning that you, dear reader, are much more likely to find a surprise here.

The film follows handsome American Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante, most recognizable to a modern audience as Nino Schibetta from the first season of Oz) as he prepares to return home from Rome, where a series of young women have been murdered, to New York with his model girlfriend, Giulia (Suzy Kendall). Walking home from collecting his paycheck for a completed project, he passes an art gallery wherein he witnesses a struggle between Monica Ranieri (Eva Renzi) and a figure clad in a dark latex jacket and hat. She is stabbed, and Sam is trapped in a glass enclosure when he attempts to help. The police arrive, and suspicion is cast on both Sam and Monica’s husband, gallery owner Alberto (Umberto Raho); Inspector Morosini (Enrico Maria Salerno) initially confiscates Sam’s passport, but eventually realizes that he is innocent when Sam becomes obsessed with finding the killer. Sam’s investigation leads to being stalked, objectified by an aging antiques dealer, attacked by a former boxer with a heroin habit, and fed cat meat by a mad hermit painter, but he eventually finds the truth… in a surprising place.

There are some moments in the film that are distinctly odd or unsettling when compared to modern sentiment, although I must admit I cannot be certain whether this dissonance is the result of cultural differences between nations or eras. Morosini has Sam view a line-up of perverts, whose crimes include such heinous items as contributing to the delinquency of a minor alongside presumably consensual “sins” as sadomasochism and sodomy; it’s a scene which is ultimately pointless, and its inclusion is puzzling. There is undoubtedly a sexual undercurrent to all slasher films that feature, completely or simply in large part, victims of a feminine persuasion; that has been discussed in many essays by more academic minds than mine, but suffice it to say that this is present in this film as well, although the revelations of the film’s final third call into question some of the assumptions that could otherwise be made about the sexual politics of this specific film. In order to preserve the viewing experience, I won’t get into that here, but I will say that the sexual violence of the film is no more intentionally titillating than that of Psycho, and is relatively tame by current standards. More disappointing, in my opinion, is the utter victimization of Giulia when she is trapped in her apartment by the killer; she is utterly helpless, and she does make several stabs (pardon the pun) at defending herself, but her hysteria while doing so reflects the contemporary sexism of the era a lot more clearly than when the killer rips a victim’s undergarments off.

All in all, Plumage is an excellent movie, and well worth tracking down if you get the chance. There are several different versions floating around, but the differences between them are minor and inconsequential; I recommend the two disc release from Blue Underground for its faithfulness to the 35mm print and the wealth of special features. The film has a rapid pace that horror movies of the era are not generally known for, and the kind of attention to cinematic technique that most films in general fail to capture. It’s a classic for a reason.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

A Commentary to Die For: Blood and Black Lace (1964)

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Watching a film with the commentary on can sometimes be a tedious experience, but that is not the case when it comes to Tim Lucas’ commentary on the 2005 2-disc DVD release of April’s Movie of the Month, Blood and Black Lace. Lucas is known as a highly respected film critic and founder of Video Watchdog magazine, but he’s also a fountain of knowledge when it comes to everything Mario Bava. After spending over 30 years researching Bava’s life and films, he wrote the acclaimed book Mario Bava: All Colors of the Dark, which, at over a thousand pages long, is pretty much a Bava Bible. I’m not sure who decided to have Lucas participate in the Blood and Black Lace commentary, but that individual deserves a big pat on the back for making such an excellent choice.

Lucas talks about so many different things in the commentary, but most of the information he shares deals with the background of the film’s actors. I’m definitely not going to mention everything he discusses in this article because I’m more interested in the fun facts and quirky incidents that occurred behind the scenes during production. Here are my top three favorite facts/comments from the commentary:

1. In the beginning of the film during the fashion show (before the diary fiasco occurs), there is a pretty long shot that stretches on for about a minute or so where the camera is effortlessly gliding from one end of the room to the other. According to Lucas, Bava did not have very much funding for fancy camera equipment, so he propped up the camera on a child’s wagon for this scene. Actually, the budget for the film was less than $125,000, so Bava needed to be as creative as possible. I was pretty surprised by this information. I expected Bava to have had access to the latest and greatest camera equipment during the production of Blood and Black Lace simply because the film is known for its impressive camera work, so it’s completely mind-blowing to know that this wasn’t the case.

2. As I briefly mentioned in the Blood and Black Lace Swampchat, there seems to be a color theme going on in the film. Lucas does mention this a few times in the commentary as well. He examines Isabella’s relationship with the color red (red raincoat, red diary, etc.), and he really draws attention to the color black’s connection with death, especially when it comes to Nicole. She wears a black gown at the fashion show, carries a black purse, and while the majority of telephones in the film are red, the phone that she uses has a black receiver. Spooky!

3. Mary Dawne Arden is the actress that played the role of Peggy, the beautiful model that was burned and tortured before meeting her maker. According to Lucas, she had the worst luck during the film’s production. She spent over 5 days acting as a dead body, and at one point, she almost ended up being an actual dead body. During the scene when she falls out of the car trunk, the trunk’s lid partially opened and then immediately slammed back down. When it slammed down on her, the sharp trunk lock was inches away from stabbing her in the eye. She was in such a state of trauma and shock that Bava stopped shooting to come to her aid. What a gentleman! Thankfully, she only received a wound and small scar from the episode. I have such a huge amount of respect for Arden because not only did she continue to finish her scenes after almost being blinded, but she was apparently never paid for acting in the film.

Bava was so passionate about his art. To produce a film that would become such an influential landmark in cinema with such a small budget is not something that just any director could do. I definitely respected Bava prior to listening to Lucas’ commentary, but I now value his work on Blood and Black Lace more than ever.

For more on April’s Movie of the Month, 1964’s Blood and Black Lace, visit our Swampchat on the film, a look at its Bollywood brethren, Veerana (1988), and last week’s fan art ode to the poetry of giallo film titles.

-Britnee Lombas

Fan Art: Giallo Poetry

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As I mentioned in last week’s article on April’s Movie of the Month, Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace, there’s a finesse to gaillo movie titles that was somewhat lacking in the genre’s Bollywood equivalent Veerana (a title that roughly translates to “Creepy Forrest”). The giallo title is a beautiful, needlessly complicated art form that requires at least six or seven syllables to properly breathe. As the genre’s pioneer, Mario Bava was prescient in many ways and the beauty of his films’ titles is certainly among them. There’s no denying the inherent draw of movies with names like Blood and Black Lace, The Body and the Whip, Planet of the Vampires, and Knives of the Avenger. That’s not to say that longer, more complicated titles always indicate higher quality giallo movies. My favorite films by Dario Argento are Opera & Suspiria, not Four Flies on Grey Velvet & The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. There’s just an undeniable poetry & sense of one-upsmanship with the more complicated titles that feel unique to the genre.

Keeping the poetry of these titles in mind, I attempted compile a poem composed almost entirely of titles of giallo films I have never seen, but admire for their names alone. I have added a few words here or there to make some sort of sense out of madness, but most of the words are drawn directly from the titles in the sequence they appear. Enjoy!

Giallo Poetry

Your vice is a locked room
and only I have the key. We kill
the fatted calf and roast it in the black
belly of the tarantula, my sweet. So perverse, my lizard
in a woman’s skin. Strip nude for your killer. Bring
a hatchet for the honeymoon, a dragonfly
for each corpse, a black veil for Lisa.

The bloodsucker leads the dance
in the house of the yellow carpet. Death walks
on high heels in the house with laughing
windows. The Devil has seven faces, seven blood
stained orchids. The flower with the petals of steel, the twitch
of the death nerve, forbidden photos of a lady above suspicion.

The night Evelyn came out of the grave, the young,
the evil and the savage committed the crimes of the black
cat. It was on the short night of the glass dolls, five dolls
for an august moon. The weapon, the hour, and the motive
cast a bloodstained shadow on all the colors of the dark.
The case of the bloody iris was cracked by the perfume
of the lady in black, who asked that we don’t torture

a duckling. Can I get you anything, my nine
guests for a crime, my iguana with the tongue
of fire, my man with icy eyes? No thanks,
coffee makes me nervous. Now smile
before death & watch me when I kill. Naked,
you die, reflections in black, nothing
underneath. The killer reserved nine seats.

For more on April’s Movie of the Month, 1964’s Blood and Black Lace, visit our Swampchat on the film & last week’s article on its Bollywood brethren, Veerana (1988).

-Brandon Ledet

The Canal (2014)

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threehalfstar

Horror is not a genre where individual films need to be narratively or stylistically idiosyncratic to work. Scary movies borrow so freely from each other that each of their subsets (“slashers”, “creature features”, “bodily horrors”, etc.) has its own lists of genre-trappings & clichés common to nearly every film under its umbrella. 2014’s stylish Irish ghost story The Canal is smart to acknowledge its heritage openly. The common images & themes it shares with films as varied as 2000s horror like The Ring or Blair Witch, early 20th century black & white scares like The Cabinet of Dr. Calgari, and 70s giallo classics like pretty much any title in Dario Argento’s catalog are so unashamedly open it plays like a knowing homage rather than an unfortunate side-effect of making a genre film. The Canal is so self-aware of the impressive range of horror it manages to cover in its 90min that its protagonist is a film archivist by occupation.

The story begins in a cinema, with the aforementioned film archivist David (played by Rupert Evans) addressing an unruly audience of children. He tells them that since the films about ghosts they are about to watch were filmed long ago and the people featured in them are most likely dead, it’s as if the images themselves are real-life ghosts. It’s a chilling thought that silences the room and it’s one I’ve pondered often, at least since I first read Hervé Guibert’s brilliant collection of photography essays Ghost Image or heard Daniel Johnston’s “It’s Spooky” in high school. The ghosts of The Canal are the believable kind, the kind that actually haunt us: images from the past, spaces that have been tainted by horrific acts, jealousy, regret, etc. The film shares a lot with last year’s The Babadook in that way: there’s a physical, violent threat that stalks its confined world, but it’s a threat that is based in more intangible elements like unhinged emotions and toxic personal relationships. It’s a testament to the film’s success that it can scare on a realistic level while still managing to run wild with obsessing over cinema as a medium, particularly the horror genre.

In addition to tipping its hat to a wide range of horror classics and setting several scenes in a movie theater, The Canal also prominently features images of cameras & projectors doing what they do: recording & displaying film. Giallo films, the most significant influence referenced in The Canal, generally have a particular theme or setting that guide their images, almost like a gimmick. For instance Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace is set in a fashion house and is littered with dressing mannequins; Dario Argento’s Opera is, well you get the picture. The Canal’s theme is film itself. Close-up shots of cameras & projectors are paired with loud clicks & whirs of the machines running and quick, disturbing flashes of violence & gore, seemingly from a wide range of different eras in scary filmmaking. The deep red of theater seats in the opening cinema scene plays into the giallo influence as well, as the genre is no stranger to saturated colors. Nor is it a stranger to the overwhelming sounds, lights, and masked killer that follow. The Canal’s intense focus on light & sound design boils cinema down to its most basic elements. The mystery of its mostly off-screen killer pays tribute to the Italian genre films that came before it, putting those elements to use in a genre context.

As film archivist David becomes more frayed in his search for the identity of the killer, the film gradually grows more erratic along with him. As a companion to last year’s similarly giallo-influenced The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, The Canal is a much calmer telling of a very similar story. It chooses not to reach Strange Color’s kaleidoscopic fever pitch until the climax, which is in some ways more true to the genre they’re both referencing. Strange Color pushes the cinematic elements of giallo to new, psychedelic extremes. The Canal uses them to bridge the gap between a seemingly endless list of horror narratives that came before it, to the point where its ghost-in-the-walls story has just as much to do with Strange Color as it does with The Grudge or Nosferatu or the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Normally, it would feel like a kind of insult to review a film only through means of comparisons like this, but the nature of The Canal calls for it. It’s the story of film & horror as a genre just as much as it is the story of a man trying to solve the supernatural mystery of his wife’s murder. The impressive part is how it balances both narratives so well, one never overpowering the other. It works just as well as a reflection on film as a medium as it does a telling of an original, terrifying, albeit familiar ghost story.

-Brandon Ledet