Hello out there, dear readers. I’m sorry to say that this week, I really don’t have much of a post for you. Over the weekend, we discovered that our cat is very, very sick with a really serious heart condition and all I currently have mental capacity for is going back and forth from the emergency clinic and trying not to get in a car accident. I even thought I might try watching and writing about something light and comforting like It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, but I haven’t even achieved that, and it’s only 25 minutes long.
I sure do love horror films and stories, and I particularly appreciate when they make room for grief, when they feel like they have emotional depth, are about something real – through their fictional lens, we can grapple with some of the most difficult and vital aspects of living. But fiction is key here. When you’re thrust into an encounter (which you knew was bound to happen sooner or later, but you’re never ready for) with the reality of someone you love really suffering, and feeling like there’s so little you can do to help them, feeling like you’re failing them, it just breaks the world. It is a horror – crushing reality impinging, heartlessly on the comforting illusions of safety and security and agency that we need to hold onto to get through our lives without snapping.
Sadly, this week, I don’t have the power to dwell in those fictional horrors I find so rewarding. I don’t even have it in me to hang out in the comforts of a childhood Halloween special. I just have to deal with the reality in front of me and do what little I can for a lovely, loving creature about whom I care so deeply.
Sorry this post is a bummer. If you check in regularly, thank you so much – please keep doing so. Next week, I’ll be back with a movie or a book or something fun and spooky.
Following last week’s look at Argento’s output in the eighties, I felt like staying on this train and finally tackling what might be considered his opus, Suspiria (of course, others will argue the point, but that’s what I suppose the internet is for). Regardless of whether or not it’s his best work (and it very well may be), it is easily his most iconic and recognizable. It was the first of his films that I saw and it surely made an impression (I also expect it was my first Italian horror film way back when, and thus my first exposure to some of the typical traits thereof, such as the characteristic dubbing).
And yet, for all that it holds a place of honor among fans and critics, I think there is sometimes a kind of snooty gatekeeping reaction against it. “Oh sure, you like Suspiria. But everyone’s seen that; you can’t really call yourself a serious horror fan until you can comment incisively on Jenifer (an Argento-directed episode of the anthology TV show, Masters of Horror) and the collected works of Umberto Lenzi, Bruno Mattei, and Joe D’Amato.” Additionally, given the divisive nature of its 2018 remake (which I really love and have written about here), I think many fans of Guadagnino’s film (criticized by some for how it differs from the original), have thus taken a defensive posture against the original, or at least, have cooled on it. While I understand that emotional response, I’d encourage anyone in that camp to revisit Argento’s film. Having re-watched it a couple of times recently for this post, I can attest that it holds up as a very special movie and is worth watching with fresh eyes. So, let’s get into it…
Suspiria (1977)
I may not watch it so often, but every time I do, I get immediately excited. The opening scene is just such a thrill (in which not much really happens, but the way it doesn’t happen is so cinematic and magical). Our main character, Suzy, arrives at an airport in Germany late at night, and it is immediately the most gorgeously shot airport I’ve ever seen (not a gorgeous airport mind you, but gorgeously shot). As she walks towards the exit, every time the automatic doors open, a storm rages outside and the musical theme creeps in, only to cut out the second the doors have closed.
It’s as if she’s in this liminal space of travel, still between worlds, still protected within its walls, but outdoors, a gale of menacing supernatural force howls. Finally outside, buffeted by the wind and the rain, she eventually succeeds at hailing a taxi and has a hilarious interaction with the driver, familiar to anyone who’s spent much time abroad – she says the street she’s going to multiple times and he just shrugs, not understanding and not caring; finally she shows him the address and he goes “Ah, Escherstraße,” pronouncing it, to my ears, identically to how she had been saying it, and starts to drive. Now moving, her face is bathed in ever changing colored lights. It’s not realistic – I don’t think she would be lit this way by actual florescent signs and streetlights, but it feels real while it is happening and this disorienting chromatic play beautifully situates her as a small, wet, fragile being alone in a very foreign, incomprehensible, and unforgiving land.
When the taxi pulls up at her destination (the dance academy at which she has come to study), the deep red and gold building looms like a monster above her and the rain comes down in buckets, highlighted by an improbably bright light, just out of view. She sees a girl shouting in the doorway and running off into the night, but is denied entry herself by the voice on the intercom and has to return to the impatient driver to be taken to a hotel for the night.
In the car, she catches a glimpse of that girl, terrified, running through the woods from some unknown threat. We then follow that girl into a shockingly gorgeous art deco interior where she will shortly be murdered in the next scene (and that murder will of course be a visual spectacle – gory, scary, and stunningly composed, every rich streak of blood in its place).
I’m not going to describe every frame of the movie, though almost every shot could be framed, so consciously and artfully has it been crafted, but I wanted to give some sense of how strong it starts, of its atmosphere of overwhelming audio-visual elation.
Sometimes Suspiria is dismissed as style over substance, as that colorful movie, as an exercise in empty visual excess, but at the end of the day, what is the medium of cinema? It’s just light, brighter or darker, in different hues, accompanied by sound; thus, I think it short sighted to discount work which gives so much attention, so much care to exactly those elements, lovingly, joyfully, successfully crafting a sensory experience unlike any other (which still delivers other cinematic value as well) simply because the story is simple.
Suspiria is basically a fairy tale. A young girl (Suzy Bannion) goes to a mysterious dance academy in the middle of a dark forest. Everyone there is strange and standoffish, and the teachers are demanding. Struck by a light reflecting off a crystal in the hallway, Suzy falls sick and is forced to board at the school against her will while she recovers. Her diet is controlled and it’s implied that the wine is drugged or enchanted. There are odd disappearances and deaths; those who displease the instructors meet bad ends. Suzy feels compelled to investigate and comes to learn that they are a coven of witches, led by the often invisible old crone who is perhaps leeching some of the young students of life. Having killed the witch and broken her power, Suzy escapes the school as it burns, the other witches screaming within. Technically, these are spoilers, but in a fairy tale like this, I really don’t think it matters.
There are some absurdities along the way and things that just don’t make sense (it seems obligatory to ask why any dance academy, even one run by evil witches would keep a room filled with razor wire – also, in one scene the pianist who provides music for classes seems to be playing an orchestra – we see him at the piano, but we hear a string section and perhaps some woodwinds until he stops playing), but the simple story actually plays out with consistency, and serves as a structure to hold glorious images and spectacular sequences of dread, suspense, and optic extremity.
And the quality of those images really cannot be oversold. Leaning hard into the fairy tale of it all, Argento instructed the cinematographer, Luciano Tovoli, to base the colors of the film on those of Disney’s Snow White, and utilized the same Technicolor film printing process that had been used on The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, thought outdated at that time (after printing Suspiria, the last Technicolor equipment in Italy was dismantled). Furthermore, Tivoli mostly eschewed typical colored gels, instead creating screens of colorful velvets and tissue paper which he used to paint the light, intending a greater tactile effect, which I feel he achieved. For more on Tivoli, I recommend this fascinating exploration of his work.
From moment to moment, especially exploring the luscious interiors of the academy, or the building where Pat is killed, my breath catches in my throat. There is really is something to the deeply saturated colors; this is as true of the crushed velvet on the walls as it is of the light coming through the stained glass in the ceiling, or of the bright red, paint-like blood trailing down a victim’s body. The whole film is a sensory delicacy, a delight.
And light and color are not the only sensory elements of significance. In this, their second collaboration with Argento, Goblin crafted an inimitable, dominating score. It features the synth-prog groove one would expect of them, but is also just really aggressive – sometimes discordant, sometimes jarring. Thus, it brings certain scenes to life, adding a sense of the arcane even to moments which lack other markers of danger – such as when Suzy speaks with two psychiatrists about witches (like you do) in a bright, modern, sunlit courtyard. Between the music and the camera’s ever shifting position, Suspiria never lets you forget you’re watching a horror film, even while listening to some doctors whose specialty seems to be expository dialogue.
But regarding that exposition (probably one of the least gripping aspects of the film), I do appreciate something about the lore. Inspired by a prose poem by Thomas De Quincey, describing an opium dream about three ‘mothers of sorrow,’ matching the three fates, or the three graces, the screenplay by Argento and his partner, Daria Nicolodi posits witches as powerful, menacing, and malicious, but doesn’t bring any typical Christian mythology into it. Satan’s never mentioned, nor is sin. I love when we can have supernatural threats that linger just beyond our understanding without having to buy into something that feels like an infomercial for the church. It is nice not to be plagued by religiosity in an occult horror film, but beyond that, I think it’s just more interesting, more evocative. This world has its own mythos and we catch only the smallest glimpse of it, letting it loom that much larger in the shadows. This will be satisfyingly expanded on in Inferno.
Even when it feels obvious that story beats have been crafted primarily to set up the next visual payoff, that payoff never disappoints, such as when the maggots falling from the ceiling (thanks to meat kept in the attic, which has spoiled, presumably due to its proximity to evil witches and not because it was being stored, unrefrigerated, in an attic) results in all the students and teachers having to sleep in a large dance studio, the boys, girls, and teachers divided by white sheets. The lights are turned off and suddenly, all of the screens are backlit in red and I go, “oooh, cool!” Behind Suzy and her new friend Sara, ghostly silhouettes flit across the screen, until one particularly decrepit figure beds down exactly behind them and starts to snore in a gasping, rattling, unsettling fashion. Sara feverishly whispers to Suzy about how that must be the school’s true headmistress, said to be away. Nothing really happens here, but it is an intense scene, visually striking, and heightening the story’s sense of mystery and threat.
One other key to the film’s success which could not be overstated is the center provided by Jessica Harper, who plays Suzy. Apparently Argento had originally wanted the dancers to all be children no older than 12, but the producer (his father) was concerned that censors wouldn’t pass a film with such violence if it featured kids (the script, however was never changed, which explains some of the childish interactions of the clearly adult actresses – also, to maintain the feeling of children, all doorknobs on the set were placed at about Harper’s head level).
Slight of frame, with big, gently curious eyes, Harper brings a childlike quality to the role, without at all behaving immaturely. She instead carries an awareness, a self-assurance throughout as she questions the stern headmistress about the killings, interviews psychiatrists about witchcraft, or squares off against the ancient occultist behind the curtain. Her stature and costuming implies vulnerability and youth, but her character is willful, steady, and intelligent.
Furthermore, Harper plays every moment with a kind of quiet sincerity, lending credence to the sometimes wild turn of events around her. Sometimes characters don’t seem to realize that they are in a horror movie, but Suzy seems to from the first time that the airport doors slide open and the sounds of mysterious threat starts screaming at her through the pounding rain. She can’t hear the soundtrack, but it feels like she is properly unnerved by it nonetheless. Without her at the film’s core, the often mad, if beautiful, pageant of aesthetic horrors might really not hold together (a criticism that could be levied against Argento’s follow up, Inferno).
Finally, it would be an oversight not to give any attention to the violence of the film, which is also unique, stunning, and potent. As is often the case with Argento, it is in the kill scenes that his cinematic flair most comes to play. Pat’s face pressed through the window, the knife seen entering her still beating heart, her friend dead on the floor of this grand lobby, a pane of glass splitting her face, the blind pianist threatened in the wide open, empty town square in the middle of the night, fascistically imperial monuments on all sides, only to be attacked from a totally unexpected direction, Sara in the razor wire, before the blade is pulled, graphically across her flesh, Markos with the crystal peacock feather pressed through her rotting neck; each kill is preceded by a sustained, tense game of teasing suspense and shock, and with few exceptions, each death is seductively beautiful.
Even in its brutality, the violence of the film is artful. I feel like each drop of blood, each pin in an eye, each shard of glass piercing the skin has been placed with great care, balancing horror movie scares that can startle or disgust with visual compositions that the eye doesn’t want to look away from.
Are there moments that don’t work? Sure (a certain bat attack and fake dog mouth come to mind). Does my attention sometimes wander a bit until the next extraordinary visual or sequence is presented? Yeah, I’ll admit it. But for me, those things just don’t matter so much. It is a unique monster of a film, the product of a singular vision, and a tremendous success. Though the tale is one of murder and horrors, full of hostility and brutality and unsettling moments and gore, the total effect for me is one of delight, every frame filled with the obvious joy of artists making exactly the thing that most excited them, and doing it so very well.
It must also be said that I do dearly love Guadagnino’s 2018 remake as well. They are such very different films, but each revels in a kind of excess (Argento’s being a maximalist aesthetic trip and Guadagnino’s being so overfull with ideas and history and character), and each creates a space in which I love to dwell. I think in a case like this, they need not be in competition and a fan need not take sides. You can love all your kids, but maybe you love some of them in different ways.
Recently I was down in Italy for a bit and, as mentioned in my last post, a highlight was getting to visit Profondo Rosso, the book/memorabilia store co-owned by Dario Argento and Luigi Cozzi. Obviously, I’m a fan of Argento’s work or it wouldn’t have been such a must-see, and yet, in one year of writing this blog, I’ve not yet tackled any of his films. How could this be? Perhaps he’s just loomed so large that it’s been intimidating? Perhaps, while I’d torn through his most acclaimed works when I was first really getting into horror many years ago, and he made such a deep impression, I haven’t necessarily returned to him with great regularity over the years, and it just hasn’t been at the forefront of my mind. Perhaps I just loved the sometimes maligned remake of Suspiria so much that, out of a kind of loyalty, I wrote about it before the original. I don’t know, but in any case, it’s time to remedy this fact.
It’s common to view his output in a few stages. The first consists of his “animal trilogy,” his first three gialli, all with some animal title: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Cat O’Nine Tails, and Four Flies on Black Velvet. Of these, I’ve only seen the first. The second stage could be deemed his “golden years,” spanning from Profondo Rosso in 1975 until Opera in 1987. And then things start going downhill. There were still occasional flashes of brilliance in the next decade (The Stendhal Syndrome has its moments and I’ve read that Sleepless is worth the watch), but they were found among considerably less inspired work, and for the last twenty years, there has been little to recommend, hitting a nadir in 2012 with the unfortunate Dracula 3D (but I am holding out hope for his new film, Dark Glasses (coming this year) – it’s never too late for a return to form). Today, in order to paint a picture of this idiosyncratic, characteristic artist, I’d like to look at four works from his golden years: Inferno (1980), Tenebrae (1982), Phenomena (1985), and Opera (1987). Though these films are very different from one another, there are clear artistic preoccupations and practices that run through them, and taken as a whole, I think they offer an interesting portrait of this influential film maker. And someday I’ll tackle Profondo Rosso and Suspiria, each of which probably merits its own post.
Also, for a change, I’m going to be good about spoilers here. Coming out of the Italian giallo tradition, these films all turn on late plot twists and they really can be spoiled.
Inferno (1980)
A follow up to Suspiria and a continuation of the “three mothers” mythology of that earlier film (there being three ancient witches ruling the world), Inferno is a wild, fevered, occasionally brilliant, generally shambolic ride. In many ways, Argento takes many of his own tendencies to their logical extremes, both to good and ill effect. He doubles down on the bold, non-realistic use of saturated color that served him so well in Suspiria, lending the proceedings a surreal air. The kill scenes are all tight as a drum: suspenseful, creative, scary, and weird. The story is secondary to an ominous mood of being observed, hunted, and manipulated by powers beyond your ken and there is a threatening sense that no one is safe as each person who might be the protagonist is dispatched until only one remains, and that is probably just because the film had to end sooner or later – if it had been longer, he probably would have died too, to be replaced by yet another potential victim. It is mysterious, unpredictable, captivating, and a little difficult to hold onto.
The story, such as it is, is spare: a woman in a striking old New York building falls down a rabbit hole of three mothers lore (and down a literal hole, into a flooded, sub-basement corpse ballroom) and writes her brother in Rome, begging him to come to her, which he does. Everyone who seems interested in understanding the power of these three witches is hunted down and killed in spectacular fashion. Finally, the brother finds Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness, in the basement, leading to a fiery, if inconclusive, conclusion. But more so than any other Argento piece I’ve seen, Inferno is disinterested in narrative. It is a film of moments, of uncanny, intense sequences which you have to be in the right mood for; if you don’t think too much about the plot and just go with it, you will be taken to some crazy, intense, glorious places (but that lack of a narrative center can also make it a difficult watch – I must say, it’s not my favorite). In this regard, it brings to mind Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy, but whereas Fulci prioritizes the horror of nightmare revulsion over narrative, Argento leans into the thrill of nightmare style. But they’re both more nightmare than story.
A woman dives into a flooded ballroom to retrieve her keys and is startled by the corpses that float into view. Desperately, she escapes them (though they aren’t actually moving or doing anything, it feels like they chase her, as if they will reach out and attack). During a seminar, a music student reads about the three mothers and looks up to see a mysterious, beautiful woman holding a cat, staring him down and intensely speaking something unheard as the wind blows the windows open and the room feels full of magic and power and danger. A woman enters a library seeking forbidden knowledge and other patrons watch her slyly as if they’ve been waiting. Book in hand, she ventures into the basement where she stumbles upon a demonic book binder in a hellish workshop who tries to catch her and steal the tome (though until ten minutes earlier, he could have just gone upstairs and taken it from the shelf). Scared to be alone, a woman invites a stranger into her apartment to wait for a friend. She plays a record and tells him of the dark forces she fears. Suddenly the music and the lights start cutting out and flickering on again. The tension is ratcheted up as the stranger makes his way to the fuse box, ignoring her plea not to be left alone. Out of sight, he carries on a conversation with her until, after one moment of silence, she finds him with a knife through his neck. In his death throes, he falls upon her, pinning her down and dooming her to a similar fate. When the friend arrives, she falls right through a thin fabric wall (who built this apartment?) to reveal the horrors that have occurred. It goes on and on.
There may not be a protagonist. There may barely be a story. But every 10-15 minutes, there is a fresh, beautifully and suspensefully staged phantasmagoric crescendo. Often when people reference Argento, they talk about the colors (mainly because of Suspiria), and they are on display here, but the thing about him is that all this artfulness is in service of effect. There may be themes and imagery that run through his work (close-ups of eyes, voyeurism, identity, doubling, questioning the veracity of seeing, etc.), but it’s never art for art’s sake – it should thrill/terrify most of all – and look really cool while doing it. Inferno delivers that.
Tenebrae (1982)
Whereas Inferno was a hyper-colorful, supernatural, gothic nightmare, with Tenebrae, Argento goes back to his roots, making a tight, twisty giallo thriller. There’s nothing supernatural; just a twisted killer hunting down pretty girls and the American crime author-cum-investigator who gets pulled into the stylish mayhem. Also, as a change of direction, it is all so white. Filmed in a modernist, brutalist, uncrowded Roman suburb, everything is sunny, out in the open, and exposed. And you just know that if a room is all white in a movie like this, sooner or later, it’s going to get painted red with an arterial spray; and when it does, it is truly a sight to behold – gruesome, gorgeous, terrifying and without warning.
The title references a pre-Easter church service in which the lights are extinguished one by one until there is a piercing sound, symbolizing the “total loss of god’s presence.” With this film’s religiously motivated killer, it is a fitting match. The film begins so bright, so stylish; and it is so much fun. The first kill sets the tone – the whole film is a flash of a blade in the dark, a slick, surprising, sometimes funny, sometimes scary romp. Throughout, there are moments of lightness and comedy (see John Saxon and his miraculous hat), and playful jump scares and plot twists. But by the end, the lights have all gone out and we are alone, screaming in the rain, having witnessed deadly art (literally – a very pointy statue plays a role).
A great example of this open and sunny, yet tense, vibe is the death of the main character’s literary agent, Bullmer, played by John Saxon. This is a unique set up – there’s no chase and the victim is taken completely by surprise, but for the viewer, there’s a fascinating, growing sense that something is wrong – something is going to happen – but what is it? Where will it come from? A series of innocuous images come together to imply danger in this open, “normal” space:
We see Bullmer standing in a modern piazza. It’s all concrete and right angles, suggesting open space and passages to other areas. He goes and sits on a bench in the center of the square. People are going about their lives. A boy chases a bouncing ball. An old man greets a woman at a café, kissing her hand. A young man shouts at his girlfriend. Some punks stand outside a shop window, looking shifty. He takes in the life all around, enjoying it, but checking his watch; he’s waiting for his lover (who received a mysterious gift of red pumps in the previous scene). A droning, apprehensive bit of music begins, accompanying a series of short cuts: The young man yelling at his girlfriend and storming off. Bullmer looking concerned, but also like it’s not his business. The crying girl now walking in his direction. Bullmer rising and some people bumping into him. The crying lady still approaching. His face watching her – then a shadow falls over him, and he turns. He looks surprised, then happy. A blade in front of his abdomen. His face, concerned. Stab in the belly. Face in pain. Another stab. Another reaction. We see the ground and then his beloved hat falls onto it. We see him collapse in front of the bench. Crying lady approaching – she hasn’t seen anything yet. Shot of him as her legs enter the frame – he reaches out to catch her dress. Her face looking down – scream. On him, her legs, more legs run in. A crowd has formed around him. The red pumps walking, entering the crowd. Shot of him from above, dead. The red pumps back away, exit the scene.
There are much flashier kills in this movie, but this is such a masterful exercise in building tension out of nothing and it’s put together with such a confident hand that I can’t be the first to liken it to Hitchcock’s “shower scene.” There’s really no reason to be scared, but the tension builds, culminating in a brutal murder in broad day light in a populated area where no one sees a thing. No place is safe. And no time.
Add in the famous, gratuitous, because-we-can, long crane shot, the psycho-sexual-repression fueled violence, the meta-play of the film containing both a book called Tenebrae, which the killer bases his crimes on, and a character getting killed while listening to the record of the Tenebrae soundtrack, both giving the sense that Argento is looking directly at the viewer and his critics (mirroring himself with a horror writer who uses his artistry to manipulate), a rockin’ Goblin soundtrack, and some real narrative surprises and scares that deliver searing cinematic pleasure, and you’ve got a little masterpiece.
Phenomena (1985)
This next one is pretty strange, but for whatever reason, it holds a real warm spot in my heart. Jennifer Connelly, just before Labyrinth, plays Jennifer Corvino, a young girl with a psychic connection to insects, sent to a strict Swiss boarding school while her famous actor father is off filming a movie. Unfortunately, there is a vicious killer on the loose, targeting girls her age. So it’s up to her, a friendly entomologist played by Donald Pleasance at his warmest, his helper chimpanzee and Jennifer’s army of creepy crawlies to save the day. This is all accompanied by Argento’s usual visual flair, some of the spookiest music Goblin ever produced, and some oddly placed excerpts of heavy metal which often feel completely out of place.
An element I love here is the atmospheric use of nature. Set in a part of Switzerland (referred to in the film as the “Swiss Transylvania”) where the wind coming off of the mountains drives people mad, the supernatural vibe is rich. It all feels other than human, bigger, alien, and yet it is just the natural world in a very “civilized,” populated area – this is not the wilderness, but this totally normal, natural world is made to feel uncanny, weird, and threatening. The trees are always creaking, the wind never stops howling, and Jennifer’s insects are always on the move. It really creates a mood, an enveloping horror atmosphere in which I just love to dwell.
Also, I expect that the fact this was filmed right before Labyrinth (which I watched with great frequency when I was younger) lends it a strong taste of nostalgia even if I didn’t see it until my early 20s. Connelly delivers a similar, if perhaps more impassive performance, and she serves as a strong center around which the story can revolve. She is of course sometimes upset, vexed by the bug eyed murder visions that haunt her dreams, the teasing at school, the being kidnapped, drugged, and dumped in a rotting pool of human compost, but she is also often quite placid, at peace with the swarm outside the window, linked to a nature that buzzes gently without great emotional disturbance.
Finally, what makes this film so lovable is how utterly crazy it is. It is filled with odd choices from top to bottom that just shouldn’t work (and sometimes, to be fair, they don’t), but usually do. And its execution of those weird choices sings with Argento’s usual sensory bravado, taking a plot description that could apply to an odd, charming, so-bad-it’s-good B-movie, and instead offering up a wild, glorious, so-weird-it’s-great powerhouse. I mean, at a key moment, the chimp shows up out of nowhere and attacks someone with a straight razor! How could anyone not love this oddball little movie?
But, as I said, not everything works. I think anyone who enjoys Argento, and Italian horror in general, knows that sometimes you just have to accept some things. It will always be dubbed, poorly, and the dialogue that makes it through will always seem strained and unnatural. This is no exception. Most of the characters speak in a stilted, on-the-nose fashion that can be laughable. But you can laugh, and love it, and go along for the ride, which is worth it (and in this case, having Connelly and Pleasance in such prominent roles, dubbing themselves, means that they can bring something slightly more natural to their text, so that’s nice). Also, as mentioned above, for the first time, Argento used modern music not composed for the film – it seems that he’d just gotten into Iron Maiden and Motörhead and had to include them…it doesn’t work. These are bands I like – I sympathize, but Argento just doesn’t stick the landing with matching the sound to the picture. But I’ve heard that while we may respect someone for their strengths, we love them for their faults, and that is clearly the case here. Somehow, all of the little things that don’t work, or the big things such as these music choices, just make me love the movie more – not in spite of its mis-steps, but because of them.
This, and all of Argento’s classic work, is clearly the product of an auteur – it always seems like one creator’s vision: sometimes peculiar, often intense, never dull. These are clearly not studio pictures with dictates from a group of risk-averse accountants. Argento takes big swings – and sometimes he doesn’t connect, but other times he knocks it out of the park. In Phenomena, everything is of a piece, from classic giallo kill sequences and plot twists, to the balance of beautiful, atmospheric original music and thrashing guitars, to the wind rustling the leaves and the chimp wielding a razor, to the juxtaposition of Jennifer’s peaceful communion with the insects and those insects tearing apart one who tries to harm her. It is a unique film, and one which I always find great pleasure in.
Opera (1987)
Considered by many to be Argento’s last great film (though others have said the same about Tenebrae or Suspiria or Profondo Rosso, so who knows…), this is a tight, often horrific thriller about a understudy thrust into the lead role in an avant-garde production of Verdi’s Macbeth, hounded by a killer who ties her up and tapes a row of needles under each eye to force her to watch the murders he commits. It is filmed with Argento’s characteristic verve, and it balances his visual creativity with a narrative that really holds together, even with its classic giallo character reversals and shocking twist revelations.
If anything, though there are really striking images (such as the needles under the eyes) and wild, propulsive film making (notably, all of the scenes of the opera in rehearsal or performance, or the raven eyed shots employed in the final act), this is the most conventional of all of the films we’re looking at today (possibly forecasting the direction he’d go in the next decade). Sure, there are still crazy moments, and funny character beats, and some really horrific sequences, but it feels more like it exists in our world. The stylishness is restricted to the work of the camera, the editing, and the scoring, but the people and fashions and locations (with the exception of the opera setting) all feel more “normal,” like they could fit in with any late 80s/early 90s crime thriller. Furthermore, it’s painted in much a more muted palette: murky beiges, tans, and browns.
But I don’t want to undersell its thrills either. From the opening shot of the opera house reflected in the eye of a raven, you can tell you’re in for something special. However murky this world may be, the cinematography is dazzling. The camera swoops like a bird. It creeps into places it shouldn’t be able to. It is constantly switching perspectives. Now we look through the eyes of the raven. Now through the eyes of the diva who refuses to sing with the bird and storms out of the opera house to get hit by a car. Now through the eyes of the killer. Now through the eyes of Betty, the young understudy who’s made to watch all the blood being shed. It even hides inside a door peephole, seeing the barrel of a gun, and then a bullet flying towards it, cutting away just in time for that bullet to fly out the back of a victim’s head. Argento has often circled the issue of seeing – witnessing – watching. Eyes have always been a preoccupation of his. The truth of what has been seen has regularly been called into doubt (see the late revelations in Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Profondo Rosso, and Tenebrae). In Opera, from one moment to the next, we’re not always sure what we’re watching: is it concurrent action, a memory, or a dark fantasy?
When the killer makes Betty watch, tied up, a victim of sight, Argento takes a sadistic pleasure in doing the same to us. And the violence here feels more realistic than in previous films. This may just reflect advancements in film technology that had taken place over the course of the decade, but I feel it’s an artistic choice. Just as the colors are less vibrant, so too is the violence less artificial and more grisly. The two elements are of a piece.
Then, the film ends on a peculiar note. Having been chased out to a rural landscape like something out of Phenomena (and actually, I’d misremembered this and thought it had actually been the final shot of that earlier film), Betty finally overcomes the killer and after a short interchange with the police, lies down in the tall grass and wildflowers to look at a lizard and disappear into the natural world. After the gloomy tones of the majority of the film, suddenly everything is so vivid and green. In voiceover, she speaks of how this will be her beauty now. She is done with “art,” of watching and being put on display, of human machinations and creation. Was Argento communicating the same? I mean, he’s continued making films for another thirty years, but maybe he was just in a bad place – he’d just broken up with long time romantic and artistic partner Daria Nicolodi (who had been in almost all of his films since Profondo Rosso and sometimes shared screenwriting credit), who begrudgingly agreed to be in this one because her death scene was going to be so spectacular, and apparently the inspiration for the film had been Argento’s own artistic failure of directing Verdi’s Macbeth himself.
Argento: a style all his own
These are four strikingly distinct films, ranging from a nigh-abstract, supernatural, technicolor dreamscape, to a blindingly white, crisp psycho-thriller, to a nature infused insect-girl/razor-ape flick, to a psychological, gory horror show that problematizes watching, that questions art. And yet, each so clearly feels like it is from the same creator. The particular flourish with which he films what is often nonsensical or insane, the care taken in crafting the aesthetics of each piece, the recurring key images or themes, the maximalist glee with which he throws everything and the kitchen sink into a film to create an overwhelming sensory experience, and the freeing extent to which he just doesn’t give a damn about things that aren’t interesting to him (logic, how operas work, why things blow up or don’t, how dogs protect territory and don’t hunt girls endlessly for no reason, what Rhode Island looks like; this list could be its own post) – all this comes together to make a film feel like his and no one else’s. And isn’t the world more interesting, more delicious, more exquisite for it?
No matter what you do, however important it is, however much you may love it, if you don’t take a break occasionally, things get heavy – you can get worn down, burned out. This is a perspective I only acquired after moving to Europe, where holiday time is really valued, and over the years, I finally learned to value it as well.
This is all to say, that for the last two weeks, I haven’t watched a horror movie and I haven’t written a post (hooray for working ahead and automating postings) – I also haven’t taught any classes or proofread any texts (which is how I earn my pay) or had any rehearsals or shows (which is what I do for pleasure). I’ve been on a much needed and long looked forward to vacation. But I haven’t totally abandoned my responsibilities – as I’ve been gallivanting about, relaxing and playing tourist, I’ve managed to visit a few locations significant to the genre (thanks to my patient and generous wife who isn’t a horror fan, but was game to shape some of our vacation around it) and I have returned with a few photos worth sharing. I know, I know – looking at someone else’s vacation photos can be pretty dull, but I think you might like these. So, without further ado, here is my “horror holiday.”
Orava Castle (Slovakia)
I’ve been living in Kraków in southern Poland since 2008, and I just recently learned that the castle used for Murnau’s Nosferatu is only about a 2.5 hour drive away, so we started our trip there. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to catch a shot of the film’s most iconic view of the castle as it was only visible from the winding road and there was no safe place to pull over and take a picture, but it was really exciting to come around the bend and get to see it – lots of pointing and going “ooh, ooh, ooh!”
And the castle itself is really worth checking out if you’re ever in the neighborhood. It’s up on some craggy rocks and consists of many levels, climbing the cliff face. Ascending the many steep staircases, I really felt sorry for Murnau’s crew, lugging heavy 20s film equipment up all those steps. There are cavernous tunnels when you first enter, which do feel appropriate for the film, and the castle itself is really quite pretty and impressive: interestingly stratified, surrounded by forests, and topped with wooden shingles.
Plus, I got this fun fridge magnet.
Graz (Austria)
Ok, this is rather a stretch, to be fair. Really I just went to Graz because I’ve driven though it on the highway many times on the way to other places and heard it was pretty (plus, I’m tickled by its highway signs, such as “Graz to meet you!” and “Graz you later” (imagine them voiced by a bad Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator) – what’s not to love?). BUT Styria (the state that Graz is in) is where Le Fanu’s Carmilla is set (which came up again and again in my recent posts on Lesbian Vampire movies), and General Spielsdorf at one point relates how a more experienced doctor was sent for from Graz to treat his ward for her affliction (this doctor was sadly unsuccessful at treating being-bitten-by-a-vampire). So the city isn’t really connected to the book or its many adaptations, but it is lovely and it can give some flavor to inform the imagination when reading Le Fanu. I found this hilltop garden beneath the city’s clock tower to have a kind of Carmilla vibe.
The Tomb of Dante Alighieri (Ravenna, Italy)
Most of the vacation, we were driving around Italy, and while we went to Ravenna to see the 5th and 6th century Byzantine mosaics, when I realized it also featured Dante’s tomb, I thought that could be worth a visit. It’s a tomb. I guess Dante’s in there. Ok, it’s not that much to look at really, but I figure that though he was not a “horror author,” per se, the amount of time he spent detailing the horrors of the underworld with great creativity and vividness qualifies him for inclusion. Plus, it’s kind of striking that Inferno is really the only thing people ever talk about – when’s the last time you heard Dante’s Purgatorio or Paradiso referenced? I remember reading and enjoying Inferno in high school and I think for pretty much everyone, wading through the endless, poetically apt tortures of the unjust is just more fun than whatever he gets up to in Paradise. Maybe he shot himself in the literary foot by starting his trilogy with what was ironically the most enjoyable part.
Villa Adriana (Tivoli, Italy)
Now, this was special on a number of levels. We chose it as it’s where the exteriors for Vadim’s Blood and Roses (which I wrote about here) were filmed, and it was certainly cool to find locations from the film, but it’s also just a really impressive site from antiquity (from the 2nd century AD) which is worth seeing in its own right. Furthermore, while it is only a half hour’s drive from Rome, it is rather off the beaten path and it’s rare to find a site like this that isn’t swarming with other tourists.
It’s a pleasure to so peacefully explore its vast grounds, with extensive ruins of a massive villa built as a pleasant retreat for the emperor.
More significantly for the purposes of this blog, it’s just so rewarding to find the gorgeous locations used in Vadim’s rich, sensual film and be able to take in their charm and atmosphere without the hubbub of a thousand other people around you.
It’s easy to visualize Carmilla/Mircalla floating through the olive groves or chasing after a peasant girl. The reflecting pool is still intact, if a bit murky, and the wall to the estate is easily identifiable, but I couldn’t figure out which ruins exactly had served as the tomb. Anyway, it is a beautiful place which can still evoke the atmosphere of the film. If you ever visit Rome by car, it’s really worth the detour.
Villa Sciarra (Rome, Italy)
Tucked away in a small city park in a residential neighborhood of Rome is the building and garden used for exteriors of the fashion house in Bava’s Blood and Black Lace. It can be a little bit of a hike to get to (especially if you make the same series of wrong turns that we did and go the long way round, on a really hot, sunny day, up lots of stairs, lacking water), but when you arrive, it is a peaceful, pleasant little park and if you’re a fan of the film, the fountain is just iconic.
Interestingly, the park is also filled with statues of chases (satyrs and such trying to catch one comely lass or another) which feels appropriate for Bava’s early, gory, and ever so stylish body count film. I recommend it, but if you ever think you might go, message me and I’ll walk you through the route not to take.
Capuchin Crypt (Rome, Italy)
There is no connection to any film here, but ye gods, what a creepy, creepy place. So this is a “skull chapel,” a site sometimes found in monasteries, where bones and skulls have been artfully arranged to create contemplative sites in which to meditate on mortality, to be confronted with death and thus be compelled to better consider life’s choices.
Photo by Dnalor_01, Wikimedia commons (CC-BY-SA 3.0)
Now, I’ve seen a couple of these before and while it is morbid how they are filled with bones, they tend to be pretty solemn, serious places. This was different. A combination of something from Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal and the scene in Alan Parker’s The Wall where Pink has gone mad in his hotel room, obsessively arranging trash, matchbooks and drugs into mandalas on the floor before shaving off his eyebrows and his nipples, this felt like the compulsive, whimsical, insane, driven work of a crazy person, toiling away in these rooms with a big bag of baby rib cages, making his art.
Photo by Dnalor_01, Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA 3.0)
Sadly, you’re not allowed to take photos, so I’m sharing some images collected online, but take my word for it: it’s a crazy, artful, creepy place (and it may not be for everyone – even if you appreciate pretty dark stuff, it can be disturbing seeing such peculiar work done with actual remnants of (a lot of) dead bodies).
Profondo Rosso (Rome, Italy)
This was one location that I couldn’t possibly skip. In fact, when we first arrived, it was closed due to holidays and we had to reschedule the second half of our trip to return to Rome for it later. Co-owned by Dario Argento (and named after one of his best flicks) and Luigi Cozzi (of Contagion and Paganini Horror), who is usually behind the counter, this tiny neighborhood book shop is a real Mecca of horror not to be missed by any fan. Ok, most of the books (and so many look really interesting) are in Italian, so if you can’t read Italian, you’ll be stuck just looking at the pictures, but there was a small selection in English too (I picked up one retrospective of Giallo films and another on Lucio Fulci) and a nice collection of t-shirts, magnets, tote bags and records (all of which I also dropped some euros on).
Past that, the store is filled to the rafters with old film posters and also a bunch of rubber masks, greasepaint, and monster costumes such as you might find at a Spirit Halloween store. I don’t know how much they move the rubber masks, but their inclusion somehow adds to the store’s charm.
Furthermore, in the basement, for a well-spent 5 euros, you can check out a small, bizarre, kind of informative, kind of hokey, thoroughly lovable museum, featuring some props from films that Argento directed and/or produced (e.g., Demoni). It’s got a kind of house of wax / spookhouse vibe, and features narration taking you through some description of the different tableaus on offer. There are some specific props that are fun to see, but mainly, it’s just a really lovely, sweet, somewhat grotty experience. These little leftovers are so obviously treasured by the proprietors and the guests, and that lends it all a kind of magic.
Generally each display centered on one particular film, such as Phenomena (1985),
Opera (1987),
or Demons (1985).
The Haunting of Night Vale (Prague, Czechia)
This was something a little different, and a delightful way to cap off the trip. On the way back to Poland, we made a detour towards Prague to catch The Haunting of Night Vale, a live performance of the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, currently touring Europe. I went to college with Cecil (the voice of Night Vale and also the co-host of Random Number Generator Horror Podcast No 9, which I recently had the pleasure of guesting on) and was so happy to get to visit with him briefly and see the show.
If you’re a listener of the podcast (which takes the form of a local public radio events calendar for a small town where everything is spooky and weird), it is an absolute treat to see the live performance. Just witnessing the animation and character of it all is a great pleasure, and everyone involved is doing great work. And if you’re not a regular listener, it doesn’t matter – you’ll be able to appreciate the story of “a house being haunted before it’s been built” all the same. As far as horror content goes, this is not a horror piece, so much as it trades in horror elements for comic, literary, and emotional effect. They’re still touring a while longer, so if you’re in one of their upcoming cities, I really recommend checking it out.
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And so, that is that. No movies, but I think following the star of horror led me to some really wonderful little experiences along the way on this trip (also, we didn’t only do horror stuff – there was plenty of time for Etruscan ruins, lovely hilltop towns, and endless wine and good food). I hope wherever you are, you get some chance to take a break and catch your breath. But now, back to work with me…
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Also, this post is going up on this blog’s one year anniversary. One year and 71 posts in, I’m feeling pretty good about what I’ve done so far and some plans I have for the future. I think occasionally I’ve managed to corral my thoughts into shape and it’s an honor that anyone at all would choose to read them. Whoever you are, thank you for lending me your attention for a bit. I hope you find something among these pages to be of value.
