I’ve been wanting to do this post for a long time – I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to finally make it happen. Dario Argento played a significant role in my early forays into the genre. I remember watching Suspiria (1977) for the first time and being so struck by it. I don’t think I’d yet seen such an aesthetic piece before – in horror or in film generally – and to be clear, I don’t mean simply an ‘aesthetically pleasing’ (read: beautiful) film, but rather a film so focused on aesthetics above all else, with all other elements in service to style, to color, light, composition, and sound, and yet still working – not just a hollow, artsy exercise in pretty shots. It was also my introduction to Italian horror: the first time I’d dealt with the characteristic, and at first, puzzling dubbing, and my introduction to the glories of Italian horror scores, specifically Goblin – it made a deep impression.
Of course, I then went down a rabbit hole on its director, particularly, his most famous works of the 70s and 80s, most of which (with one glaring exception), I’ve written about by now. Eventually, I branched out to other Italian horror directors, and subsequently, to a broader view of international horror than I’d previously taken. For young horror fan me, Suspiria had opened that door, and it will always hold a warm place in my heart, both for its own specific merits and for this role that it served me.
But I’ve always had a significant blind spot with Argento. He’d made a splash at the beginning of the seventies with a series of gialli, stylish Italian crime thrillers, all with animals in the title: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Cat O’Nine Tails (1971), and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), often referred to as his “animal trilogy,” though they are all narratively unconnected. While I had watched The Bird with the Crystal Plumage long ago, somehow it hadn’t made as deep an impression on me as some of his later work – it was less of a horror piece (though it certainly has elements), and the other two, I still haven’t seen. But about a year ago, I randomly put on The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and I just had an absolute blast and knew that I had to finally consider these three works – as a whole and separately.
And so that’s what we’re doing this week – revisiting the first, checking out the next two, and sharing some thoughts on each of them. I don’t know how much I will have to say about each, but I’m sure it will be fascinating to see some of the earliest work of a director who I’ve so enjoyed (of course, beware of spoilers). Also, a new documentary on Argento, Panico (2023) has just shown up on Shudder, so I’d like to watch that as well and see what context it brings.
But First, A Note On Giallo
Discussions of the borders between genres are, I think, often somewhat fruitless, but if I’m going to get into these three movies, I think it makes sense to look at how “giallo” relates to “horror.” Generally, a giallo film is more of a murder mystery thriller than horror, and as I wouldn’t be inclined to include, say most 90s Hollywood thrillers on this blog, it is fair to ask why I feel it’s different if it’s Italian. For me, it is all a matter of style. Beyond specific genre tropes, such as the black gloved killer whose identity isn’t known until the final act or the often lurid sex and violence, I think the giallo is characterized by heightened style – not just stylish, but also cinematically stylized. Weird angles, expressionistic composition, energetic editing, strong use of color, and soundscapes that both seduce and assault the senses, gialli have artistic license to aspire to more than mere realism, and in that I feel there is a kinship with horror. The story may simply be a convoluted murder mystery, but the feeling transports the viewer more wholly, and in this stylish weirdness, there be horror dragons. Also, of course, one can trace direct lines of influence from the giallo to the American slasher of the 80s; so it all connects.
And Second, A Note on Pictures
Writing from the future, having finished the post and gone looking for pictures to illustrate what I’ve described, I find it’s surprisingly hard to do justice to just how good these films look. In some later films (such as Suspiria), Argento shoots in a way that you can take any shot and put it in a frame on the wall, but I feel that’s not the case here. With these three movies, I feel the flashiness is more often in the movement of the camera and the edit, with individual shots incapable of demonstrating how very cool it all is, though I do make some descriptive efforts. So, I’ve done my best in collecting, but it should go without saying that it is worth watching the films themselves.
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)
As I understand it (and I am not an expert), giallo films had been being made since the early sixties (Wikipedia lists the first as Mario Bava’s The Girl who Knew Too Much in 1963), but Argento’s directorial debut was a huge international hit and really kicked off a boom time for the form. It’s easy to see inspiration in earlier works, notably Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (1964), but by all counts, Argento brought a new modern energy and panache to this horror-adjacent genre. This is a fun, ultra-stylish film – you can feel how it’s the first effort of a young artist out to make their mark. Does everything make sense? Maybe not. Are the female characters uniformly underwritten? Unfortunately, yes. Are there tons of scenes that captivate and titillate and startle and wow? Boy howdy!
The story is typical of what I’ve seen described as “m. gialli” (when the story follows a male protagonist – the tropes differ with a female lead). An outsider, in this case, an American author temporarily living in Rome and about to return to the States, happens to witness a woman being attacked through the window of an art gallery. He rushes to help, but gets stuck in a glass antechamber and can only witness her suffering as he calls and calls for police. Once they arrive, he is pulled into the investigation as both a witness and a suspect, with a shadowy figure occasionally trying to kill him before he gets too close to the truth. Throughout the film, we see the killer strike again and again, always hunting beautiful young women. Finally, the killer is revealed with a surprising (and pretty satisfying twist), leading both the protagonist and the viewer to recontextualize what was actually seen at the beginning of the film (something Argento will return to later, perhaps perfecting the idea in Profondo Rosso (1975)).
While the structure is somewhat rote for the genre, this is a film of tremendous scenes and set pieces, and whenever we get into a kill or a chase, it really pops: As jarring, mysteriously ominous music plays, a young woman lies in bed smoking in her nightgown. She turns off the light and the camera shifts to her point of view. We see the empty doorway to her bedroom as her hand moves the cigarette in and out of frame. Finally, the camera follows her gaze to the bedside table as she stubs out her smoke and then back to the open doorway, now filled with a shadowy figure. Extreme close-up of her open mouth as she screams, zooming out to see her terrified face as a gloved hand stifles her shriek of terror. A series of quick cuts – the knife slicing off her nightdress – her widened eyes – the killer in shadow, cloaked in a shiny black raincoat and hat – light shining off the blade as it trails along her belly – her hand clutching a twisted sheet – blood splashed across a pillow. It is all so propulsive, so musical in its rhythms, done with such relish and flair, and at the same time, it is scary and icky, with a sickly veneer of sexualized violence (it is strictly murder, but it feels pretty rapey).
And the film is full to bursting with such nigh hypnotic sequences. There’s another kill scene where a girl comes home to her building and we first look down on her, framed at the bottom of a triangular stairwell, before we shift to follow her ascent. Mysteriously, the lights go out on the upper floors and she has to light her way with matches that keep going out – it is tense and scary and you know this will not end well, but that does nothing to reduce the delicious suspense as she climbs to her inevitable doom. Or, late in the film, there is a great crane shot where the protagonist is racing to find his girlfriend who’s disappeared and clearly in danger, and suddenly we’re looking at him from above, but then the camera pans up to look out over the wide expanse of the whole city – she is lost in all of this space, all of these buildings and people, and then, finally, we zoom in to one window, far in the distance, where we will soon cut to discover her fate. The crane shot in Tenebre (1982) gets a lot of attention (and rightly so), but this early effort really does the trick.
I was shocked to read that, being his first film, Argento was considered inexperienced and was almost fired during filming. I don’t know what it was like on set, but the final product comes across as the confident work of an artist with a sure eye, and a strong sense of artistic purpose. Also, his father was one of the producers, so it would have been really rough if they’d actually fired him.
Finally, I love so many of the little details that live beyond the scenes of stylish murder. This movie is full of memorable characters, lines, and visual treats. The art in the gallery is fascinating – brutal, alien, and dangerous looking (another element that will resurface in Tenebre). There are so many enjoyable personalities and interactions – Solong, the pimp who has to say “so long” at the end of every sentence so as not to stutter, the effeminate German art dealer who had sold the painting that holds a key to the murderer’s identity, the crazy, cat eating artist (responsible for said painting) who exclaims that now he only paints mystical scenes because he’s “feeling mystical,” and the police lineup which has the lead investigator castigating his men that “Ursula Andres belongs with the transvestites, not the perverts!” It is consistently a deeply funny movie, and it is all of these odd little notes that lift it above simply being a cool looking thriller. It has more life than that. With its more than realistic stylization and its deep undercurrent of weird specificity, there is a pinch of something that feels like horror to me – it’s an easy film to love.
Ok, so that is The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, the only one of these that I’ve previously seen. Now for something new…
Cat O’Nine Tails (1971)
Well, that was…fine. I mean, it is a well-crafted investigative thriller, but whereas the style of “Bird” elevated it to something akin to horror, this really feels of a different genre and I wouldn’t be writing about it on this blog if not for this project. But, I don’t want to be negative about it off the bat because this movie has a lot of cool stuff – it just feels further from “horror.”
The initial premise is promising: A blind man (a former journalist who’s lost his sight and now lives with his precocious granddaughter, writing crossword puzzles) overhears a violent attack, and with the help of said granddaughter, begins investigating a series of murders, before they inevitably become targets themselves. Along the way, he ropes in a sighted reporter as they follow the nine leads (hence the title) that branch out from these killings revolving around an experimental genetic clinic.
While my initial paragraph comes off as lukewarm at best, there is great verve and craft on display here: interesting shots, tight, exciting edits (particularly some bits where we rapidly cut back and forth between times and locations before finally settling on a new context – a trick I recently appreciated Ti West using in X (2022) ), a great, groovy, occasionally jazzily discordant score from Ennio Morricone (who did the music for all three of the “Animal Trilogy”), and of course the film-making really comes to life whenever a character loses theirs. If there is a murder scene, a chase, or some other moment of violence, the movie just gets fresh energy and there are choices that surely wow.
I particularly enjoyed an early railway station murder – a man has come for a mysterious rendezvous. We shift between an objective view of him as he tries to find the one he’s meant to meet among the crowd on the platform, and the subjective perspective of the killer, clearly looking out from behind a column, back and forth and back and forth between the intended victim on one side and the oncoming train coming from the other, with one jump cut to an extreme close-up of the killer’s iris, filled with homicidal urgency. Finally, that subjective view looks back to the victim, who glances up, recognizes the one he’s come to meet and begins to walk forward before the hands of the killer come into view of this POV shot, pushing the victim onto the tracks. Quick cuts to his head slammed against the front of the train, a paparazzo catching the photo, the victim’s body spinning, pulled by the power of the locomotive, a woman bringing her hands to her head as she screams, a close up of a man’s mouth, shouting, and finally, a wide view of the gathered crowd, the murderer having disappeared into the chaos. It is really engaging work.
But, as I said, this one, for all of its flashes of high style, feels less stylized, feels more like a “normal” thriller. For me, one element that contributes to this is a shift of protagonist. Initially, it had seemed that the blind witness (played by the always enjoyable Karl Malden), would be the main lead – another “outsider” who everyone discounts due to his disability, who is enjoying getting back on the horse of chasing down a story, but you always have doubts that he should really be putting himself and his granddaughter at risk. As with many an investigative m – gialli lead, such as the writer in “Bird” or the musician in Profondo Rosso (1975), the blind crossword writer and this little girl are unlikely, but surprisingly effective detectives – a good team. But relatively early on, he goes to an active journalist (James Franciscus) with his discoveries, and they start working together, and it’s not long before the film shifts to primarily follow the new guy – young, square jawed, masculine, effective, and more than a bit obvious – and I was disappointed in the change. Malden is still around until the end, but there’s a long stretch in the middle where he seems to disappear from the story, and instead we just see an investigator investigating an investigation. While it is all still carried out well, this was to the film’s detriment.
By the end, we get a killer reveal that makes sense, but won’t blow any minds, and a great, intense moment of the killer’s death – and as I said, it’s all fine. I consistently enjoyed watching the story unfold, though I wouldn’t really consider this even particularly horror adjacent. My read is that Argento put a lot of creativity and effort into making a splash with “Bird”; it was a hit and he was cleared to direct more movies, and the next was very capably made – the work of a solid craftsman with a good eye and some pizzazz – but probably wouldn’t have made a name for him if it had come first. Still, it is interesting to see in terms of a larger career trajectory, and it has me curious what I’ll find in the third film.
Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)
Wow – what an opening! Argento starts his third movie with an electric sequence of pure style and intrigue – setting a tone, introducing character and context, and pulling the viewer into a sense of weird mystery. We cut between instruments being played – close ups on the skins of a drum as the sticks bang down in slow motion, looking down the neck and even out the inside of a guitar before a hand starts to strum – and one of the men playing them, the drummer, Roberto, as he goes about his life, more and more aware that he’s being followed by a mysterious, dark figure. As he plays, Roberto is bedeviled by a small flying insect – in his face, his hair, his eyes, flitting around his head – he tries to get it when it settles on one of the drums, but too late. Sometimes the music of the band dominates the soundscape and sometimes we cut to near silence – an isolated shot of a beating heart with a heartbeat, once with the title card and once without, and then back to Roberto being tailed by the dark figure. Finally, the insect settles on the bottom cymbal and you can see Roberto, eager, hoping it won’t move for a few seconds, and then it’s time: the cymbals crash, the fly is dead. Roberto has a look of relief and satisfaction.
By the end of this scene (about 4 minutes long), I was charged – hooked and excited to see where this was going to go – and immediately we’re off to the races as one night after a recording session, when Roberto is walking home alone, he realizes the man is watching from the shadows and decides to follow and confront him. This becomes a chase through arched piazzas, full of movement and light and shadows and bold camera placements, striking angles, and a play of framing and focus. Finally, he follows the man into an old, abandoned, dilapidated theatre and catches his arm. The man pulls a switchblade, there’s a struggle, and Roberto seems to accidentally stab his stalker, who falls into the orchestra pit as floodlights fill the room and another figure in a creepy, plastic baby doll mask photographs Roberto in what looks like an act of murder. And then the lights are off, the figure is gone and Roberto is on his own to deal with this apparent crime which has so clearly and mysteriously been staged (in a theatre no less).
Great set up – so far, I love everything about the movie – suspenseful, intriguing, and so very over-the-top cool. But then, I’m sorry to say it doesn’t last. On Wikipedia, I read a quote from a contemporary review of “Four Flies” from Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times, that the film works “when the camera is moving and no one is talking,” and I think he nailed it. Argento pulls off some spectacular scenes here, and the passion for a great shot and a great edit is clear, but the story never really cohered for me, and furthermore (as this is a horror blog), though it sets up some atmosphere early on, and there are a couple of moments that feel like horror, most of the investigatory angle of the movie apparently isn’t interested in maintaining that vibe. What’s more, the investigation felt frustrating as we are fed red herring after red herring, and in the end, the explanation of what is going on feels like it comes completely out of left field, while leaving big questions unresolved. Now, I don’t need to understand everything, but for me, it just didn’t feel like it worked. And then the final moments are just so wildly abrupt that I couldn’t help but laugh. I mean, it was kind of fun, but I wasn’t sure if it was the tone this story wanted to end on.
So, I think this one might mainly be recommended for completionists – if you really want to track Argento’s development as a director, you will find a great deal to enjoy, but if you are just casually looking for a satisfying movie, you may come away disappointed.
That said, there are pieces in here that I certainly appreciated, and even some that I loved. As is often the case, there was enjoyable specificity of character that brought a sense of life to it all, raising the film above its mystery procedural roots. For example, as he is being tormented by the unknown blackmailer who doesn’t even ask for anything, but just seems to be trying to torment him, Roberto turns for help to his friend, “God” (short for Godfrey), a big scruffy hippy type who lives in a shack next to a polluted stream, wears rags, and eats raw fish. God brings onto the case his associate, “The Professor,” a well-spoken tramp with a bible verse for every occasion, and Arrosio, a flamingly gay private detective on an 83 case losing streak who is sure that this will be the one he finally solves. It is odd to say the least. But also oddly lovable. Perhaps they kill the tone, but these roles bring something fresh and surprising to the film – and while Arrosio’s gayness reads as caricature from a contemporary perspective, he isn’t fobbed off as a joke – he does effectively figure out the mystery (though he doesn’t live long enough to reveal that information), so that’s something for representation I guess (beyond that, it is interesting to note how there are explicitly queer characters in almost all of Argento’s early films – I read somewhere that he was trying to show a more modern world – the one that he inhabited – and that this was an integral element of that).
And then there are a couple scenes that would shine in any horror movie, in which Argento allows himself to depart from straight realism and approach something more surreal, more expressive. The best example here features a character who has figured out what is happening and arranges to meet the killer in a crowded park on a sunny afternoon. She sits on a bench as children play and scream in an adjacent playground, young lovers kiss among the trees, cheerful music blares from loudspeakers, and everywhere there is bustling life and safety. Then the sound cuts out for a moment and the music is gone. We hear the children, but don’t see them. Suddenly, she is all alone – the park seems deserted. She is no longer safe. She gets up and starts for the exit, but in the next shot, it is abruptly night time and she knows she’s being followed by someone unseen.
Over the course of about 90 seconds, she seems to have stumbled from the world of the living, surrounded by the hubbub and security of the crowd, of day, into an underworld of shadow and threat. She runs through the paths of the park, the looming trees on either side become endless, winding corridors and it feels like a knife wielding maniac could leap out at any moment. She runs round a corner, and now she’s no longer among trees, but flanked on either side by stone walls, cobwebs connecting them that she must claw through. The way grows more and more narrow as, more and more desperate with fear, she claws herself forward. We alternate between her panting and grunting as she lurches towards freedom and life, and a silent POV shot of the killer trailing her slowly but surely. Finally, he hear her death screams and see her hand scratching down a wall as she meets her end. It is an absolute nightmare – and it doesn’t really make a lick of sense, but I think that’s part of why it works so well. The director is free to follow the star of the moment, unburdened by narrative demands. It’s when the story returns to the narrative that it falters.
So yeah, I’m happy I watched it. There are surely details worth seeing. But I can’t say it’s my favorite thing by Argento.
Summing Up
Ok, so I have now watched the “Animal Trilogy” and first off, I think it’s obvious why the only one I’d seen before was the first – The Bird with the Crystal Plumage really stands out among the three as special – in craft, in creativity, in style, and in its connection to the horror genre. The next two titles were made the following year and perhaps it was just too much too soon, but through them both, Argento’s talent and passion are still evident, and if one is interested in his work, I think it’s worth seeking them out. As I understand, after this, he turned to TV for a little while and also made a period comedy, The Five Days (1973) before returning to giallo (and horror) with what some consider his best film, Profondo Rosso (1975) (AKA Deep Red) (one of these days, I will finally write about it as well). While Profondo Rosso is obviously superior to these first three (a subjective opinion, but one I expect many would share), I think one can also see the seeds of creative choices he would make there in these “Animal” films. I’m happy to have finally seen them and I’m curious to know more.
So, that said, I have one more assignment for myself this week. As I wrote at the beginning, a documentary on Argento’s oeuvre has just dropped on Shudder, so before I sign off, I’m going to give it a watch and report back on anything of interest, particularly that which pertains to these first three films…
Dario Argento – Panico (2023)
Well, I’m glad I watched that, but I’m not sure how much to go into. It is a very personal piece of work – most of the interviews are with family or long-time collaborators who feel like family – his ex-wife, some of his daughters, his sister, Claudio Simonetti (of Goblin), and Michele Soavi, Lamberto Bava, and Luigi Cozzi (all three of whom worked under Argento as an assistant, and also directed films that he produced), with just three directors, Guillermo del Toro, Gaspar Noé, and Nicolas Winding Refn, speaking about how they were influenced by Argento’s work (an interesting collection – they are three strikingly different directors, though a possible through line between them is how visual they all are).
It is a very intimate portrait, as interested in his life as a father, a lover, a brother, or a son, as it is in his life as a film maker, but one quality that comes across loud and clear is the extent to which the work was always treated as art. And I don’t mean that in a pretentious way – he was not (he’s still alive, so I should be using a different tense, but generally I’m speaking of the early career, namely the Animal Trilogy) claiming to make some “elevated work,” ashamed to be associated with the genre in which he found a home. Rather, he was making entertaining thrillers or horror films, but respecting them as art and therefore all the more demanding of himself and his team in their execution. This is obvious in the technical prowess on display (apparently, on “Bird” the reason he was almost fired was that one of the producers thought he was doing too much weird stuff with the camera – I think time has proved that guy wrong), but it was no less true in the writing, the storytelling, the choice of subject matter. Over the course of his career, he has returned time and time again to dark themes and brutality out of a need to express something specific of himself on celluloid (in, again, an entertaining thriller, as opposed to some kind of heavy drama). And sometimes, very private elements make their way onto the screen, such as Trauma (1993) in which his daughter, Asia Argento plays a character suffering from anorexia, who was directly based on Asia’s half-sister. Or in the case of our three films today, apparently Four Flies on Grey Velvet at least in part prompted the dissolution of his first marriage as his wife at the time was, shall we say, nonplussed to see the degree to which the protagonist and his wife were so directly based on Dario and herself (if you watch the movie, you’ll understand why she might find that objectionable).
It’s easy to say, “Oh Argento – he’s so stylish and visual and makes things that look cool,” but watching Panico, he really comes across as a cinematic artist who is doing everything in his power to dig deep and make work that is significant, meaningful, personal, powerful – but in his case, that is work where a killer’s hands get lacerated as he falls down an elevator shaft, a woman is decapitated in a slow motion car accident, art objects can be deadly, and black gloved hands are always capable of reaching out of the shadows, blade in hand. We respect work that makes us cry – we can recognize the artistic value in drama – why not work that makes us tremble? Why should sadness be held above terror – or as Argento would have it in one interview, “panic”? Now, it is obvious that Argento is not alone in this, but I think that so often, genre is still undervalued and standout work from horror or thrillers, or even lighter fare like romantic comedies is overlooked (horror can ask so much of a performer and comedy is really hard). This documentary merely underlines the extent to which this genre director deserves to be considered through the lens of artistic merit.
I must admit that the second two films, while interesting to me as a completionist, and while they included many great elements, didn’t exactly blow me away (at least not like “Bird” or much of his stellar run from Profundo Rosso (1975) to Opera (1987). But after watching something of the life behind the scenes, perhaps I appreciate them a bit more. They are straightforward mystery thrillers, but they were made with a real drive to innovation, to expression, to doing something bigger, better, more. And the experience of making these surely contributed to building the foundation that made his best work possible.
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And so there we have the “Animal Trilogy.” It’s been gratifying to explore these three. All have something to recommend them, and as an early glimpse of a director I’ve long enjoyed and respected, it has been illuminating. How good it is that I finally took up this particular homework assignment and checked them out. Thanks for coming along. If you’re interested in watching any or all of them, as of the time of writing, I found The Bird with the Crystal Plumage on Shudder, Cat O’Nine Tails on Tubi, and Four Flies on Grey Velvet on Plex.
