horror

Wes Craven’s Crown Jewel: New Nightmare (1994)

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Just two weeks ago, we lost a cinematic great who was often overlooked for his accomplishments as an auteur, perhaps due to his extensive work in genre films. Wes Craven may have made an occasional goofy trifle like a Shocker or a Swamp Thing, but his more accomplished films have unmistakably reshaped the horror landscape in a significant way. I don’t have much of a stomach for them myself, but his early works The Hills Have Eyes & The Last House on the Left rang out like the enraged, too-believable battle cries of a deeply disturbed mind eager to unleash its violent cravings upon the world at large. Honing in that anger for something more purposeful & universally palatable, Craven later scared the every living shit out of mainstream audiences with A Nightmare on Elm Street, which did for the simple act of falling asleep what Jaws did for nightswimming. Craven’s instantly infamous Freddy Krueger creation, brought to disturbingly vivid life by actor Robert Englund, would’ve been enough to coast on for the rest of the director’s life, but instead Craven broke out into more surreal territory with The Serpent & The Rainbow, political satire in The People Under the Stairs, and the very nature of horror as a genre in the meta franchise Scream, among other projects. Craven was an inventive fella, to put it mildly. He was enthusiastic about exploring new, strange ideas that would allow his demented id to escape from his mild-mannered exterior, scaring his audience while simultaneously challenging them in unexpectedly intellectual ways, the latter being something a lot of horror peddlers don’t bother with often enough.

My personal favorite Wes Craven film is 1994’s New Nightmare. It’s not his scariest, nor his most tightly-controlled work, but it is an incredibly smart picture that manages to bridge the gap between the dream-logic horror of A Nightmare on Elm Street with the meta genre reflection of the soon-to-come Scream franchise. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is a perfect way to remember the filmmaker for all he accomplished, not only because it marries those two defining moments of his career in a single picture, but also because he plays a role in the film as a fictionalized version of himself. The Scream franchise introduces its meta context by having the typical bonehead slasher victims be atypically self-aware of classic horror film tropes that usually lead to violent deaths, allowing for them to make commentary on the very film that they populate (eventually with their lifeless bodies). However, thanks to the dream logic of A Nightmare on Elm Street, New Nightmare allows itself even more free rein with its meta context. The movie itself is about the making of another Freddy Kruger picture, a cursed production that blurs the lines between reality & nightmare and free will & scripted fiction to the point where it’s near impossible to tell the difference between a character being awake, getting trapped in Freddy’s playground of the subconscious, or, worse yet, living out one of Wes Craven’s screenplays.

Set on the 10th anniversary of the original Freddy Krueger picture, New Nightmare stars Heather Langenkamp, who played the protagonist Nancy in the original Nightmare on Elm Street, as Heather Langenkamp, who played the protagonist Nancy in the original Nightmare on Elm Street. As the anniversary of the film draws near, threatening phonecalls (often accompanied by Earthquakes) that impossibly seem to be from Freddy Krueger himself torment the poor actress, establishing a mood of dread very early in the picture. The strange thing is that Langenkamp is good friends with Robert Englund, her colleague who portrays Krueger in the movies. Englund, playing himself (and Freddy, of course), is portrayed as a genteel dude here, spending his days idly painting in the sun room of a mansion undoubtedly funded by the success of the Elm Street films, a far cry from the undead homicidal maniac he embodies with Freddy. As mentioned above, Wes Craven also plays himself in New Nightmare. He explains to Heather that he’s been working on a script (or a “nightmare in progress” as he calls it) for a new Elm Street picture as a means to stop Krueger from becoming “real”. According to Craven, because Freddy was killed off in the 6th installment of the franchise (Freddy’s Dead: The “Final” Nightmare), he has been set free like a genie from a bottle, now able to manifest in real life, causing real havoc. The only way to stop Freddy, Craven explains, is to make another picture, an ordeal Heather is very reluctant to suffer.

There is so much to enjoy in New Nightmare & the film really does at times feel like all of the best elements of Wes Craven’s aesthetic conveniently gathered in one package. Striking an unnerving artificiality from the get go, the whole film feels like a constant dream state, a feeling that’s only amplified as the walls between the conscious & the subconscious, as well as the walls between the movie & the movie within the movie, begin to break down into a mess of Freddy Krueger themed chaos. As for Krueger himself, he actually doesn’t appear in his full form for much of the film. He’s more of a disembodied idea than a physical threat, often appearing solely as a clawed glove & at one point literally becoming larger than life by appearing in the clouds above a freeway. Heather’s horrified reaction to Krueger’s new, true-life form & his adoring fans’ gushing at his publicity appearances call into question Craven’s own thoughts on his creations & their fandom, particularly with the rougher work of films like The Last House on the Left. Otherworldly landscapes of bedsheets & subconscious dungeons recall the POV of a child’s imagination Craven so well captured in The People Under the Stairs. Although the dream state reflections of The Serpent & The Rainbow and the original Elm Street as well as the meta reflections of the Scream movies may have been more thoroughly solidfied in his other pictures, it’s nice to see those two worlds bounce off each other in such a satisfying way here.

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare might not be his most technically accomplished film & it’s doubtful that it’ll be the one he’s most remembered for, but it holds a special place in my heart as a sum of the accomplishments of a director I grew up loving & fearing. When I heard the recent news that the incredibly gifted director had died, it was the first film I thought to revisit as a means of remembrance. It only helps that the director himself makes an appearance in the film to weigh in on the magical nature of filmmaking, directly referencing his personal compulsions to create, the often hellish compulsions that drive anyone to create, and the ways art can take on a life of its own outside its creator’s will or control. Besides being a great film as well as a reflection on the nature of horror as a genre & art as an enterprise, New Nightmare is a solid means to commemorating the accomplishments of a great director who is unfortunately no longer with us. He will undoubtedly be missed, but we’ll always have great films like New Nightmare to remember him by. Much like his creation Freddy Krueger, Craven lives on.

-Brandon Ledet

Shock ‘Em Dead (1991)

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threehalfstar

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Traci Lords has had one of the strangest careers in Hollywood. How often do you hear about a person transitioning from porn to an actual acting career? Sure, Ron Jeremy may be a household name (in certain households, anyway), but he never became a legitimate actor, and his appearances in films and on television are usually in cameos or roles that reference his fame as one of the most prodigious and well-endowed performers in the realm of “blue” movies. Recently, porn actor James Deen attempted to make the transition to mainstream(ish) cinema in director Paul Schrader’s The Canyons, a terrible erotic thriller penned by shoulda-known-better novelist Bret Easton Ellis, a movie that is only differentiated from poorly plotted direct-to-video softcore erotic thrillers of yesteryear by the presence of a nude Lindsay Lohan (and whose sole redeeming feature was three minutes of Nolan Gerard Funk in a glistening Speedo). But Traci Lords is something altogether different; after being one of the most sought-after porn actresses of the eighties, it was discovered that a great deal of her work had been made while she was underage, resulting in an infamous scandal that saw the adult film industry spending millions of dollars on recalls and withdrawals. Lords then enrolled to study legitimate method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, before establishing herself as a legitimate actress by appearing in John Waters’ Cry-Baby in 1990, although I will always remember her as a late addition to millennial sci-fi series First Wave, having been born in 1987 and having no real frame of reference for her career before that.

That’s a bit of a long-winded introduction, but it does help explain how Traci Lords came to be in the schlocky 1991 love(?) letter to metal that is Shock ‘Em Dead (aka Rock ‘Em Dead), a horror comedy featuring some of the best examples of the worst sartorial mistakes in music history. I’m not here to pass judgement on Metal as a genre—after all, as far as devotees to a particular musical style are concerned, metalheads are some of the most aggressive, fanatical, defensive, and insular, and I’m not looking to get my head bashed in by a guy (and let’s be clear, it would be a guy) who has willingly and purposefully refused to listen to anything that came out after the demise of Vinnie Vincent Invasion. Metal fandom is a mostly misogynistic miasma of guttural throats, thrashing, and toxic masculinity, devoted to a musical subculture that was most successful during a decade where everyone was coked out of their fucking minds, but it’s also the genre that features some of the most amazing and mindboggling musical feats ever performed on guitar, and that fact is not lost on me. Still, even the most devoted headbanger has to admit that the metal of the 1980s was performed by talented dudes who all dressed like they had wandered away from the saddest gay pride parade in the history of Marion, Iowa—all jeweltone lycra and neon jungle prints. It was a time of great musicianship, but at what cost?

Shock comes to us from 1991 as the directorial effort of Mark Freed, cofounder of StarLicks, a video production company that released instructional musical videos in which notable musicians detailed their personal stylings, which amateurs and interested parties could learn to imitate or build upon. According to the cover of the VHS tape (and the cast list on Wikipedia), the film stars Traci Lords and only Traci Lords, but this is not the case; the main character is villain protagonist “Angel” Martin, a “hideous,” mouth-breathing “young” nerd turned guitar god played by handsome, almost-40 Stephen Quadros, and the protagonist of the movie is actually uberbabe Greg Austin (Tim Moffett), boyfriends of Lords’s Lindsay. Aldo Ray and Troy Donahue, both in the twilight of their careers, make appearances as well, unfortunately, and Michael Angelo Batio makes a brief appearance as the Lord of Darkness playing a double-headed guitar as well as acting as hand double whenever the script calls for Angel to do something stunning.

Marty (Quadros) is a nobody, a terrible person going nowhere in life. He lives in a trailer park, where his shitty and never-improving guitar practicing is the bane of his landlord (Yankee Sulivan)’s life. His boss at a nondescript pizza eatery, Tony (Ray), is a verbally abusive micromanager, but Marty is also lousy at his job, licking his fingers before spreading cheese and spying on his nude female co-worker through a locker room peephole. Across town, metal band Spastique Kolon, fronted by Johnny (Markus Grupa), is having trouble finding a decent guitar player at an audition. Johnny’s getting impatient, because there’s a “big showcase” in just two days, and they have to have a guitar player by then! And, as we all know, most bands form and sign up for showcases before they have a guitar player. The band’s manager is Lindsay Roberts (Lords), girlfriend of Greg Austin (Moffett); she thinks it might be time for him to hang up his bass and take a job working construction for her dad in some backwater. Greg’s understandably not thrilled about that potential future, but he goes on a douchey ramble about how he knows he’s going to be somebody and he has the talent and “believe in me, baby,” etc. Johnny asks some random guy who happens to be there (I can’t figure out the character or actor, as less than a third of the people in this movie have photos on their sparse IMDb pages) if he knows any guitarists, and he mentions that his dad is always complaining about a guy living in the trailer park that he manages.

After getting the phone call from Random Guy, Marty ditches work and is fired by Tony. He auditions, performs terribly, and is laughed out of the studio. When Tony refuses to take Marty back and the trailer park manager evicts him from the property, effective at sundown, Marty is approached by the neighborhood “Voodoo Woman” (Tyger Sodipe), who offers him his heart’s desire in exchange for his soul. He agrees, and wishes to be the most technically proficient and famous guitar player in the world. She does some magic with an athame and potion and stabs him in the chest, leading to a dream sequence featuring zombies and the King of Hell himself, and when he wakes up, he’s got an over-sprayed mane of jet black hair, cowhide bedding, a boringly suburban McMansion, and a closet full of black leather vests, pants, and strategically ripped cotton shirts. He’s also got a “family” of hot ladies to tend to his every whim, and they are by far the best thing about this movie. Every single one of them has more character and understandable motivation than Marty, and they also have some of the best lines.

All three also sold their souls for something, with a price (other than being Marty’s reward, that is). Michelle (Karen Russell) was born disfigured and Marilyn (Gina Parks) was scarred in a horrible fire; they see their mangled visages in every mirror, and others can see them when reflected in silver. Monique (Laurel Wiley) had cancer, and she went to the Voodoo Woman for a cure, but the Voodoo Woman took her life immediately and turned her into a ghoul (as she has done to Marty), forcing her to kill and feed upon the green life forces of victims to stay alive, as normal food is toxic. Marty auditions for the band again and, naturally, gets a spot, ultimately pushing Johnny out of the band and getting Spastique Kolon a record deal, all while murdering his former tormentors and innocent groupies alike to feast on their souls. He becomes obsessed with the idea of possessing Lindsay and making her a part of his harem, which involves a Voodoo baptism ritual, but her love for Greg and Greg’s possessiveness of love for her ultimately saves the day. So, yeah, metal music + misremembered elements of Dracula + wish fulfillment for proto-MRA dorks = Shock ‘Em Dead.

This is a fun little movie, although it could have been much funnier if there had been more focus on some of the likable (if evil) supporting characters and less on the rechristened Angel Martin, guitar superstar. Lords’s character, who exists almost entirely for no other reason than to be a living McGuffin for Martin and Greg to fight over, would seem like more of an afterthought than a character in a better movie, but she and the demon girlfriends are the most interesting characters here, with backstories and desires that make sense, especially when compared to Marty’s motivations. I can’t tell if that’s part of the joke or not, but I tend to lean towards “not,” if only because Marty is too much like a real metalhead, with delusions of sex and guitar godhood in spite of reality, and this seems to be more of a spoof than a satire of that mindset. The two major songs performed by Spastique Kolon in this movie are “I’m a Virgin Girl” and “I’m in Love with a Slut,” which is pretty much a textbook case of the Madonna/Whore Complex, and I just can’t force myself to conceptualize the creators of this movie as deserving credit for that level of self-awareness. At the end of the day, that subculture and that era were dominated by socially irresponsible sexism and misogyny, and that comes across more clearly and overtly in this movie than anything else, if for no other mitigating factor than the number of undulating breasts displayed throughout. Still, it got a decent number of laughs from me, and it’s definitely worth watching on a rainy afternoon.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Sinister (2012)

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three star

Horror is one of those genres where you honestly don’t have to try too, too hard to succeed. Yes, it’s of course preferable that any film would stand out as a unique property that breaks all expectations of its context & genre, but it’s never that big of a deal when a horror film shrugs off that kind of ambition. With its own set-in-stone tropes & built-in audience, horror allows a lot of breathing room for films to just sort of coast on the long line of work that came before them. Innovation isn’t entirely necessary for each individual horror picture as long as they deliver a few basic elements: suspense, some good scares, maybe a memorably creepy creature or two, etc. As long as they play by the rules, all a passably decent horror film really needs to do is not drop the ball. In a lot of ways, Sinister is such a film.

There’s nothing really too special about Sinister. Ethan Hawke plays a “true crime” journalist who moves into the house of a slaughtered family in order to research his new book, some kind of In Cold Blood derivative. Of course, the house is haunted. Of course, the project drives him mad. Of course, there’s a Boogieman-type demon helming the entire horrid affair. Well, the film actually takes that last part quite literally. Known to historians as Bughuul & to possessed, homicidal little demon children as “Mr. Boogie”, The Boogieman is a real character in the film, orchestrating all of the haunted goings on from the protective distance of some super 8 films mysteriously discovered in Hawke’s attic. It’s curious that, since he exists largely in the imaginations & drawings of little children, Mr. Boogie isn’t represented here as I would’ve drawn him in my youth (a man-sized booger in a trenchcoat) but instead appears as some sort of Industrial Goth enthusiast in corpse paint. No matter. Despite Bughuul’s prominence in Sinister‘s mythology, he’s entirely nonverbal and doesn’t do much besides makes some guest cameos in the haunted super 8 films to look all goth-like & mean. The children under his spell do most of the heavy lifting & are much more effective at producing some great onscreen scares.

The haunted super 8 films that drive Ethan Hawke’s true crime journalist mad depict The Boogie Man’s child army calmly, methodically executing their respective families for the benefit of home video in a variety of unsavory ways: drownings, fires, lawn mowers, etc. These films are where Sinister excels most as a unique property, almost functioning as an old-fashioned horror anthology. There’s a lot of visual care that goes into depicting the projection equipment that screens the films and in other minute details (such as throats being slit in the reflection of Hawke’s glasses as we’re watching him watch a projection) that’s otherwise missing from the film’s more run-of-the-mill haunted house & creepy children formula. During these screenings the film’s sound design also takes on a special importance (including a kickass soundtrack) , reaching for some deeply unnerving vibes that can’t be accomplished simply through gore makeup & jump scares. Sinister may take a while to build up its own mythology & its central Nine Inch Nails Superfan villain may be a little underwhelming, but its haunted films concept is satisfying enough to make for a decent horror picture once the ball is finally rolling. Besides, creepy, murderous children are always an easy sell for fans of the genre, which allows the film to more or less coast.

-Brandon Ledet

Inferno (1980)

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threehalfstar

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

Pet Sematary (1989)

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(Viewed 9/2/2015, available on Netflix)

I hate to come down so harshly on a movie screen-written by Stephen King as an adaptation of his own book. It’s possible that I’m coming at it from a bad perspective, like attempting to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey after seeing all of the derivative works. Maybe after years of fast-cut digital movies, I don’t have the attention span to appreciate the pacing. Maybe having read the book first, I’ve ruined my shot at enjoying the movie.

Honestly, I just don’t think it’s a very good movie, following the general trend of Stephen King films. Pet Sematary comes with enough elements to make it truly terrifying, but it never quite gets off the ground. There’s a beautiful young family whose perfect life goes terribly wrong in a perfectly real-world way. Ancient, evil Powers Beyond Human Comprehension bring back the beloved, but brings them back . . . wrong. A rational man of science is driven to acts of madness. A possessed child kills everything in sight. Gory special effects are, well, effectively gory. All of these things should come together to take the viewer on a creepy descent into madness and metaphysical uncertainty. It just never gets there. The characters just sort of wander through the movie.

I truly enjoyed Fred Gwynne’s performance as the old Mainer Jud, which is no surprise because I loved him as Herman Munster. He’s easily the best and most believable actor in the movie, and I would have loved to have seen more of his relationships with the other characters.

I can recommend Pet Sematary to anyone merely looking for a Stephen King film or anyone interested in the Fred Gwynne’s post Munsters work. However, I wouldn’t recommend it for most viewers, simply because it’s not very good, and not bad enough to enjoy.

-Erin Kinchen

Blood Massacre (1991)

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On the last Sunday of each month, the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz in downtown Austin screens straight-to-VHS movies for their “Video Vortex” series. For August, this film was an almost forgotten flick helmed by venerable Baltimore-based director Don Dohler. Dohler was a cinephile from an early age who took a brief career detour into working on the underground comix circuit before founding Cinemagic magazine, which was purchased by long-running genre mag Starlog in 1979. In 1976, Dohler made his first film, The Alien Factor (released in 1978), with a reported budget of less than $4,000; the film was a Ted Turner cable staple throughout much of the 1980s. The Alien Factor, like most of Dohler’s work, was a B-grade creature feature about an alien crash-landing in/near Baltimore and proceeding to be a murderous nuisance. After going in a slightly different direction with 1980’s Fiend (in which an evil spirit possesses the corpse of a piano teacher in order to wreak havoc), Dohler returned to the “alien crashes, deadly hijinx ensue” mold with 1982’s Nightbeast and 1985’s Galaxy Invader (the former of which featured an original score composed by sixteen-year-old J.J. Abrams, who corresponded with Dohler after becoming a fan of Cinemagic and essentially begged to be involved in a future production of Dohler’s).

According to Alamo art director and programmer Joseph A. Ziemba, Dohler’s early work on the film that would become Blood Massacre was shot on video but piqued the interest of several film investors, who asked that he shoot the rest of the picture on film, including reshooting the 45 minutes that had already been produced. He later presented them with an incomplete working print of the film in 1988, and was told that they would get back to him. They never did. After quite some time, Dohler walked in to a video rental outlet in 1991 and discovered that the incomplete film had been released on VHS without his knowledge when he saw it sitting on a shelf. Dohler wouldn’t make another film for eleven years.

This is, presumably, the reason that the plot structure of Blood Massacre seems so out-of-joint. The transitions between scenes are often abrupt, and it sometimes feels that there is more filler dialogue than final dialogue being spoken onscreen. Consequently, the anti-hero protagonist of the film (Charlie Rizzo, played by frequent Dohler collaborator George Stover) suffers from inconsistent characterization, which isn’t helped by the fact that portraying jovial everymen is well within Stover’s acting range—Rizzo’s post-‘Nam grizzled nihilism, not so much. Stover’s not a bad actor, but he fails to have the kind of screen presence required to make Rizzo believably disturbed, and the inconsistency in the movie’s tone doesn’t help. Rizzo kills two people in the film’s opening scene with little provocation and for virtually no consequences in order to steal a small wad of bills; later, his bank-robbing partner has an emotional crisis after the collateral death of one person during a robbery that nets barely $700 dollars. In another scene, Rizzo supposedly murders a woman in an extremely violent way, but it’s hilariously apparent that he is repeatedly stabbing the table next to her, complete with repeated wooden thunks. There’s a pretty decent story in the film, which might have been saved with proper editing, but the reach far exceeds the grasp of the film’s budget and troubled production, and it’s a shame that viewers never got a chance to see Dohler’s complete vision of this narrative.

The film opens with Rizzo, a Vietnam veteran, being thrown out of a bar after aggressively berating a waitress for collecting his not-quite-empty beer can. He waits in the bar owner’s car; after they close for the night, he murders the man and his wife. After the title, we meet a young woman (Lucille Joile) approaching the home of the Parkers, a farming family with a room for rent. She introduces herself to the family’s daughter, Chrissy (Grace Stahl), and explains that she is an art student who has come to the countryside for the landscape painting opportunities it provides. She also likes the family matriarch’s stew, which seems like a throwaway line but becomes important later. (This character does not appear again before the final act, and it would seem that most of her scenes were planned but not shot, although I can only infer that this is the case.) Elsewhere, Rizzo returns to his fellow criminals:Jimmy (James DiAngelo), whose life Rizzo saved in the war; Pauly (Thomas Humes), Jimmy’s brother; and Monica (Lisa DeFuso), Jimmy’s girlfriend, who openly despises Rizzo. Following an aborted bank robbery, the foursome robs a video store (Rizzo picks up a copy of Nightbeast, which is a nice touch), killing a female clerk in the process. Their car breaks down, and Pauly and Monica take off on foot to find gas before flagging down a car being driven by Elizabeth (Robin London), who happens to be the elder daughter of the Parker family. The gang takes her hostage and forces her to take them back to her home, and the interesting part of the film, obviously inspired by the late Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, begins.

Rizzo and company meet Mr. (Richard Ruxton) and Mrs. (Anne Frith) Parker, and there’s some general strangeness about them. Pauly searches the rest of the house and says that there’s no one else there aside from the family, and there’s no mention of the young painter from the earlier scenes. Elizabeth in particular is an odd duck, displaying no apparent fear and seeming, if anything, bored (and slightly aroused) by her captors. She showers and seduces Rizzo, and the two exchange in a truly kinky sex scene (Google “bloodplay fetishism” if you’re curious–on second thought, don’t). A detective (Herb Otter, Jr.) comes to the Parker farmhouse, but Mr. Parker convinces him to leave while a gun is held to his back. Realizing that the heat will be on soon, the thieves prepare to skedaddle, but not before checking to see if the Parkers have anything of value worth stealing. What they actually discover, however, is the young art student from the beginning of the film, who is locked in a closet. They free her; she warns them that the Parkers are cannibals, then runs for her life. She doesn’t make it far, however, as she is captured and killed by Mr. Parker, as is the detective. Only Rizzo survives long enough to hide overnight in the woods, where he sets to work crafting homemade mines and building an impromptu long-range weapon that is basically a sling shot that shoots blades for a handheld circular saw. He returns the next night to exact his revenge.

Like I said, there’s a some decent plotting on display here, and it’s impossible to look back after two and a half decades and say how much better the film might have worked if Dohler had been allowed to smooth the film’s rough edges. As it stands, there are some neat visual elements (Rizzo’s nightmare sequence in the woods is a standout montage of experimental editing) and some that are… not so great (Dohler couldn’t resist revealing that the Parkers are monsters of some kind, although the pulsating air bladders in the Mr. Parker monster head are sickeningly effective). The film’s score is also quite good, featuring great snare drum work and an early synth leitmotif that really deserves to be in a better film. As a whole, however, Blood Massacre shows its seams as an aborted feature. The only reason you or I have access to this movie is because of a broken promise, and above all else, it really shows. If you manage to catch it on late night cable or it materializes on Netflix, check it out, but don’t go out of your way to track it down.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

White God (2015)

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White God opens with an immediate delivery of its basic hook: a canine revolution. Our young teen protagonist Lili is shown biking down empty city streets, passing the same vacant cars & eerie urban voids that begin 28 Days Later. Before you can piece together an answer to “What happened here?” Lili meets a canine flood. Hundreds of real-life pups chase her down the road, suggesting some kind of Dogpocalypse. Even in these opening minutes you’re overwhelmed with the feeling that White God is an instant classic or, at the very least, something you’re not likely to see too many times in your life. The trick is once it has you on the hook with a taste of what’s to come, it has to earn the grand scale lunacy of that moment, which the film backtracks to accomplish with an intense tale of (somewhat supernatural) revenge.

Although Lili is first shown bracing the Dogpocalypse by herself, she’s far from alone in this world. Her pet mutt Hagen is Lili’s right hand dog, forming a strong sense of solidarity with her as the pair is passed off to her meat inspector father for a three month visit. Lili’s father is not fond of the dog, to say the least, and at first it’s tough to see his tenderness for his own daughter as well. The parallels between Lili & Hagen are established as early as when they’re being passed off to the nonplussed meat inspector at his slaughterhouse workplace. As they’re walked to his car, two cows are literally marched to the slaughter, hammering home the metaphor as much as possible in visual shorthand. As Hagen is shouted at, dragged by the collar, isolated, and abused throughout the film, Lili is similarly pushed around by the cops, teachers, and parental figures of her life. Her coming of age story poses a teenage girl’s lack of autonomy to be just as miserable & vulnerable as that of an abused street dog. As Hagen hurts his paw, Lili injures her leg. As Hagen’s filmed galloping down city streets, Lili prowls the very same locations on her bicycle, etc.

As similar as their troubled paths may be, however, it’s difficult to argue that Lili’s struggles with authority figures & indifferent older crushes are nearly as devastating as the indignities Hagen suffers. A mixed-breed street dog, Hagen is cruelly treated by every human being in his life in a gradually escalating gauntlet of abuse. After the cold beratement he suffers from Lili’s father, Hagen is abandoned roadside & left to fend for himself. A large part of the movie’s narrative takes a dog’s POV in a style that’s much more akin to the harsh realities of Baxter than it is to Homeward Bound. The confusing chaos of ducking through traffic, scavenging for puddles to drink & garbage to eat, and curiously pawing at roadkill are only the start to Hagen’s perilous journey. He initially makes enemies with animal control, a villain the film holds common with Shaun the Sheep & Babe 2: Pig in the City, but then his growing list of wrongdoers escalates to include butcher shop employees, desperate & homeless fiends, and heartless animal shelter brutes. Worst of all is an organized dogfighting ring (portrayed here in disturbing detail) that systematically abuses Hagen into becoming a trained killer instead of the sappy sweetheart he was in Lili’s protection. Speaking of Lili, even she becomes culpable in Hagen’s abuse as she gets so distracted with her own life that she gives up looking for her best friend, who’d been left to survive alone.

The good news is that as much as White God tests the strength & patience of animal lovers’ hearts (that dogfighting ring sequence is particularly brutal), it also delivers the immense sweetness of abused dogs’ revenge in a way so satisfying & so calculated that it approaches the supernatural. The final half hour of the film, which features extended sequences of Dogpocalypse mayhem & very precise acts of revenge on Hagen’s list of enemies, reaches a grand scale crescendo of chaos that rivals anything you’d see in a more well-funded natural horror film, like a Godzilla or a King Kong. White God pulls a surprising amount of pathos out of a dog’s dialogue-free journey through various forms of cruel captivity, whether he’s displaying the unbridled freedom of a leashless run, assembling a gang of dogpound miscreants (in curiously butsniffing-free exchanges), or, sadly, transforming from a kind soul to a hardened killer. Dogs really do just want to please us. They want to make us proud, asking only for love & attention in return. Even if you can see where the movie is going in its final minutes as Lili answers for her own participation in Hagen’s abandonment & resulting abuse, the climax still hits hard. Both in the sheer joy of beholding seemingly all of the world’s abused dogs exact their revenge on us human scum & in the tender intimacy of watching two wounded animals, Hagen & Lili, facing off & reconciling their pasts, White God makes every ounce of suffering that came before the climax well worth it. It’s a rare, satisfying conclusion of a genuinely strange film that gratifies both in its willingness to go over the top & in its ability to touch you emotionally.

-Brandon Ledet

Peeping Tom (1960)

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More than a decade after his back to back classics The Red Shoes & Black Narcissus, British director Michael Powell nearly sank his prestigious career with a seedy horror film about a psychotic cameraman with a very peculiar sort of bloodlust (emphasis on “lust”). Due to its lurid subject matter, Peeping Tom was initially met by British critics with an absurd flood of vitriol that placed Powell’s career in immediate peril, but time has been kind to the film & it’s now regarded at the very least as a cult classic, if not one of the greatest horror films of all time. It’s near impossible to gauge just how shocking or morally incongruous Peeping Tom must’ve been in 1960, especially in the opening scenes where old men are shown purchasing ponography in the same corner stores where young girls buy themselves candy for comedic effect & the protagonist/killer is introduced secretly filming a sex worker under his trench coat before moving in for his first kill. Premiering the same year as Hitchcock’s Psycho and predating the birth of giallo & the slasher in 1962’s Blood & Black Lace, Peeping Tom was undeniably ahead of its time. A prescient ancestor to the countless slashers to follow, Powell’s classic is a sleek, beautifully crafted work that should’ve been met with accolades & rapturous applause instead of the prudish dismissal it sadly received.

Striking an odd resemblance to a more dapper version of Peter Lorre’s child killer in M (occasionally complete with whistling), the titular peeping Tom, Mark Lewis, is portrayed by Austrian actor Carl Boehm with an authentically creepy, lustful nervousness. Trained from a young age by his late father to not only act as a voyeur, but also to pursue the capture of fear on film, Mark is, reductively speaking, a strange bird. As his ambitions in his serial murders escalate, so do his ambitions in his photography. Discontent to merely film pin-up models as they remove their complicated lingerie, Mark dreams of one day being a director of feature films. His first step in this direction towards legitimacy is a gig as a camera operator on a production cheekily titled The Walls Are Closing In. Unfortunately for Mark, his professional ambitions & his bloodlust are intrinsically linked and, despite owning a director’s chair with his own name printed on it, he is destined to be captured by the authorities as he becomes more bold & obsessive in his choice of victims. Mark plans to begin his career in filmmaking on a fascinating little indie documentary about his own slashings & their resulting crime scene investigations. He admires his own work in the darkroom void of his personal studio, a lushly photographed inner sanctum packed with a mouthwatering stockpile of analog film equipment that Powell’s film leers over & lights with a giallo-esque palette of intensely colored lights. Just as Marks’ camera oggles drunken partygoers & couples canoodling in the dark, Peeping Tom oggles the very equipment he uses, drawing really uncomfortable parallels between Powell’s obsession with lush filmmaking & the more unsavory obsessions of his killer voyeur subject.

Mike’s one chance for salvation is a budding love interest in a downstairs neighbor, Helen Stephens, played by Anna Massey (who inexplicably reminds me of a mousier version of Game of Thrones actress Natalie Dormer here), an aspiring children’s book writer who lives with her bitter alcoholic mother. Their relationship is mostly a nonstarter, of course, as during their outings Mark’s mind is consistently distracted by the film developing back in his studio or passing glimpses of young couples molesting each other in the shadows. While he enjoys Helen’s company, Mark treats his missing camera on their excursions like a phantom limb & by the time he kisses the equipment goodnight, it’s painfully obvious who his true love is. Helen’s presence is more or less simply a glimpse into the more sympathetic aspects of our killer’s psyche, but her social circle also offers a view of Marks’ queerness in comparison to the more traditional square-jawed masculinity of her other beaus. Helen also provides an excuse for Mark to put his work on display. As he shows her his father’s documents/experiments of his own childhood (including what was likely his very first peeping), as well as the much more devious/criminal documents he’s been making himself, Helen acts as an audience surrogate, voicing reasonable responses like “Naughty boy. I hope you were spanked,” & “It’s horrible! It’s horrible! But it’s just a film, isn’t it?” Mark’s chillingly responds, “No.”

For all of its ghastly subject matter & general creepiness, Peeping Tom is actually great fun. Not only is there a swanky dance break provided by (legendary The Red Shoes actress) Moira Shearer, but the movie is packed with a dark sense of humor that might’ve gone by the priggish critics who initially dismissed the film on moral grounds. There’s a ton of winking, under-the-breath jokes that can be bitterly morbid, but are also genuinely hilarious. Powell’s proto-slasher is remarkable not only in its muted black comedy & phrophetic glimpses into the future of the horror genre, but also in its studied craft. Very rarely do horror films look this arty, with this much reverence for photography as a craft. Powell’s camera may leer in a way that cheaper exploitation films tend to, but it leers more at movie-making equipment than it does at half-dressed women. It’s Mark’s camera that lunges at its targets like a weapon, establishing the first person POV of countless cinematic serial killers to follow, except with a solid narrative reason for its inclusion that’s often missing from those films. Peeping Tom is the rare film of narrative, stylistic, and historical significance that plays just as chillingly fresh decades after its release as it did when it was first criminally overlooked. It may, in fact, be one of the greatest films of all time, horror or otherwise.

-Brandon Ledet

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