Inferno (1980)

... aka: A Mansão do Inferno (The Mansion of Hell)
... aka: Dario Argento's Inferno
... aka: Feuertanz der Zombies (Fire Dance of Zombies)
... aka: Horror Infernal
... aka: Pokol (Hell)
... aka: Rædslernes inferno (Inferno of Horror)

Directed by:
Dario Argento

This continuation of, and elaboration on, what went down in SUSPIRIA deals with The Three Mothers; a trio of evil witch siblings whose reign of terror leaves behind a string of bizarre, grisly murders stretching from Europe all the way across the Atlantic to America. An architect / alchemist named E. Varelli, whose diaries comprise a book on the gruesome gals titled - you guessed it! - The Three Mothers, designed three homes for the sisters to hide out in as they plot their nefarious schemes... whatever those may be. Mater Suspiriorum - the "Mother of Sighs" - calls Freiburg, Germany home. The eldest of three, Suspiriorum is the same witch who was featured in Suspiria and referred to as Helena Markos there. Seeing as how she's killed by Jessica Harper at the end of the film, she's not featured here at all, though the other two are. Mater Lachrymarum (or "The Mother of Tears") is the most beautiful of the sisters and resides in Rome, Italy, while Mater Tenebrarum ("The Mother of Darkness"), the youngest and most cruel of the three, operates out of New York City in the United States. Though the former is featured here in a few scenes (she becomes a greater focus in Argento's 2007 conclusion of the trilogy: The Mother of Tears), the primary focus here is on the latter.

For the record, this mythology is loosely based on Thomas De Quincey's Suspiria de profundis, in particular the essay "Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow" which involves Roman childbirth goddess Levana and her three companions: Mater Lachrymarum, Mater Suspiriorum and Mater Tenebrarum. Luigi Cozzi's unofficial pseudo-sequel to these films (1989's The Black Cat), which was made when it looked like Argento had completely abandoned his trilogy concept, concentrates on the Levana character, who's also a powerful witch and causes problems on a movie set filming what's basically an updated remake of Suspiria. Meta!

New York writer Rose Elliot (Irene Miracle), who also happens to be a tenant in the same large, barely-occupied brownstone as one of the Three Mothers, gets her hands on Varelli's book from a next door bookstore run by the mysterious Kazanian (Sacha Pitoëff). We can only assume the book has been left there intentionally to lure inquisitive victims to their doom, though that kind of flies in the face of the concept that the witches want to remain hidden from the world as not to have someone interrupt their evil deeds. Either way, Rose becomes obsessed with the book and the story of the sisters. Three "keys" are pointed out in the text. The first states that the land around the witches' homes will become "deathly and plagued" and start smelling horribly. Second, the secret of the witches is hidden in the cellar underneath the home, which will contain a painting of and the name of the sister occupying it. The third secret "can be found under the soles of your shoes." In this case it turns out to be literal.

After mailing out a letter to her brother, receiving little information from the bookstore owner and already picking up on a foul odor surrounding the area, Rose decides to see if the second clue contained in the book is real. She explores her building's cellar, finds an underground room flooded with water and, hidden down there, the painting of Mater Tenebrarum... along with a rotting corpse! Instead of phoning the police, she rushes up to her apartment and apparently just stays there... for a week or so... or however long it would take for a letter to arrive overseas back in 1980. Meanwhile in Rome, Rose's brother Mark (Leigh McCloskey) has received her letter but he's too distracted in class by his "musicology" final and a mysterious beauty (Ania Pieroni) who's seemingly materialized out of thin air with her cat, to actually read it.

After Mark accidentally leaves the letter behind, his friend and classmate Sara (Eleonora Giorgi) hops in a cab and heads his way. However, she decides to first investigate Rose's claims all by herself after reading the letter, which clearly isn't going to end well. That leads her to a library, trying to check out "The Three Mothers," becoming lost at closing time and ending up in the basement for a freaky encounter with a deep-voiced man who appears to be not quite human. Soon after, both she and a neighbor (Gabriele Lavia) are viciously murdered. When Mark finally decides to fly back to the states, he finds no sign of his sister when he arrives as she's been killed herself. He receives little help from the building's other suspicious tenants aside from the mentally-imbalanced Elise (Daria Nicolodi), who really isn't much help herself as she's killed off shortly after she appears, leaving Mark alone to uncover the secrets of the building and of Mater Tenebrarum.

For your money you get a cat eating a rat, a cat attack, a rat attack after someone drowns a bag of cats (?) during a lunar eclipse (??) and a handful of bloody murders, including a neck slashing via window pane, a head hacked with a cleaver, a knife through a neck, eyes gouged out and a burning body falling through a glass window. Giuseppe Bassan's art direction and Romano Albani's photography are both great and it's all drenched in blue, red, green, yellow, orange and purple light so nearly every shot looks vibrant and visually pleasing. Beyond that, this is one of Argento's most frustrating films to sit through.

Inferno is unfortunately sorely lacking in narrative drive. Compound that with the complete absence of a compelling central focal point and the film has a tendency to lurch along looking pretty but otherwise feeling rather empty and aimless. The closest thing we get to a lead is former soap opera actor McCloskey and, while he's not a very interesting on-screen presence, it's difficult to blame him since he's not alone in that regard. Second lead Miracle also doesn't make much of an impression, but in the interview she gave with House of Freudstein, it's not difficult to see why. According to the actress, she was given little direction, no real character to play and more of an outline of the story than an actual script. She also claimed that Argento wasn't even on set when she filmed many of her scenes. Since there's not much of a plot to advance, most of the other actors are there merely as props to die, resulting in long scenes of bland cardboard cutouts wandering around colorfully lit sets looking confused and / or bored.

I've seen the story written off as incoherent but I don't necessarily agree with that sentiment. The film does make sense for the most part. The problem is it's lacking in plot complication, story interest and character motivation. We learn the witches are doing evil things from their residences and that's about all. What's the end game? Why leave obvious clues around for bystanders to find? Why are these all-powerful women doing everything so small scale? Why is so little time spent on them and why do these potentially fascinating characters come off as being so bloody uninteresting and non-threatening here? They're also ultimately defeated in rather pedestrian fashion after their whereabouts are discovered, leaving the final confrontation here feeling extremely underwhelming.

Stylistically, there's too much carried right over from Suspiria, which isn't just limited to lighting, camerawork and set design. Exact moments are duplicated, like the taxi ride with the flashing colors, the exploding lights, shots of street drains, shots of things like the moon shown in three progressively-closer jump cuts and basically the entire fiery final scene. While Suspiria had a genuinely memorable, scary and unnerving score from Goblin, Keith Emerson provides a score here that's a mix of more elegant-sounding compositions with noisier and more thunderous ones, which gets to be distracting and even irritating at times. One thing it's decided not is scary.

Inferno was not given a wide theatrical release outside of Italy, nor did it receive the same glowing critical reviews of Suspiria. It was released by 20th Century Fox on a very limited basis and was considered a box office disappointment upon release. Retrospective reviews since then have typically been much more kind, but I'm not on the same page with people like Kim Newman, who referred to it as "perhaps the most underrated horror movie of the 1980s," (Nope! It's not even Argento's most underrated film of the 80s. That would be PHENOMENA.) It also occasionally ends up on Top 100 horror lists, though usually / rightfully left off in favor of Suspiria and DEEP RED (1975). Time Out threw it on the tail end of their list, with Nigel Floyd complementing it for its "free associative fluidity of the unconscious," which is basically critic-speak for "it lacks a proper plot."

This film is as noteworthy as anything else as being the final film Mario Bava ever worked on. He helped with lighting, special effects, direction and photography, though all curiously sans credit, while his son, Lamberto Bava, actually does receive credit as assistant director. Parts were filmed in New York City, including at Central Park. Andrew W. Garroni and William Lustig (who also isn't credited) worked as production managers on these scenes shortly before filming MANIAC (1980). In fact, at one point Maniac was slated to co-star Nicolodi, be co-produced by Argento and feature a Goblin score but none of that came to pass. The cast includes Veronica Lazar (who later appeared in Argento's The Stendhal Syndrome), Feodor Chaliapin Jr., a completely wasted Alida Valli and Fulvio Mingozzi reprising his Suspiria role as a taxi driver.

★★1/2

Suspiria (1977)

... aka: Alarido
... aka: Chok House (Shock House)
... aka: Dario Argento's Suspiria
... aka: Flykten från helvetet (Escape from Hell)

Directed by:
Dario Argento

I've always had a love / like relationship with this film. Had you asked me a decade ago to list my favorite horror films of all time, Suspiria would quite likely get a quick mention. But then I went through a period where some of the film's flaws just kept jumping out at me and it went down a little in my estimation. Now I never outright disliked this film. On the contrary, I've enjoyed watching it occasionally ever since I was a kid. It was one of the first films I owned on video, one of the first films I bought on DVD and the film that helped get me into Argento films at a young age. I was so fond of it and Creepers that I was lured onto ebay back in the dial-up days and shelling out a lot of money trying to get my hands on any film Argento I could. You know, back when finding something like the heavily-cut copy of Tenebre called Unsane was the best one could hope for. But then we get a bit older and our tastes tend to change...

Over time and many viewings, I just got to the point where I wondered if Suspiria was truly worthy of the acclaim and a high placement on nearly every critic's top horror film lists. I mean, there's absolutely no denying its visual merits, but is it really so stylish that it manages to overcome its many narrative shortcomings? And the poor dubbing / dialogue? And some numbskull character actions? And the hokey stuffed bat attack? And that painfully bad scene where our heroine goes to a psychiatry convention to find out about witches and Udo Kier, bizarrely shot from the ground up, appears to be reading his lines off of cue cards? Now having taken a long hiatus and armed with a copy of the 40th Anniversary Synapse 4K restoration Blu-ray, I'm interested in seeing how I feel about this one now.

Upon receiving her acceptance letter, American ballerina Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) travels to Freiburg, Germany to start training at the esteemed and exclusive Tanz Akademie. It's late at night when she arrives and she's given a chilly reception right at the front door, with a frantic young woman muttering something inaudible before fleeing the building and another girl coming over the intercom telling her to "Go away!" And that she does, right to a hotel for the night. The fleeing girl - Pat (Eva Axén) - ends up at her friend Sonia's (Susanna Javicoli) apartment, but someone, or something, has followed her there. Whatever it is manages to float outside a third story window, busts its hand through the window and grabs her. Next thing we know she's being stabbed repeatedly. She's tied up, falls through a stained glass window and is hung by the rope, while Sonia gets impaled by the falling debris (glass and a metal pole).

The following day, Suzy returns to the academy to begin her training. She's introduced to vice directress Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett), once a very famous ballerina herself, and is shown around by the stern Miss Tanner (Alida Valli), who acts more like a prison warden than a teacher and constantly has a red face from screaming so much. Most of the dancers there prove to be immature, snobby and / or money-obsessed, though Suzy is befriended by fellow student Sarah (Stefania Casini), who doesn't quite fit in herself. And then Suzy begins picking up various signs that something sinister is afoot.

For starters, the staff can't seem to make up their mind about Suzy's accommodations. She's initially told that instead of boarding at the school, she's to live off campus in an apartment with third year student Olga (Barbara Magnolfi). But after she tells investigating detectives that she saw Pat on the night of her murder, they then try to coerce her into moving to the school... almost as if they want to keep a close eye on her. When she resists, she's briefly blinded by a crystal the cleaning lady shines at her and passes out. When she comes to, all of her belongings have been moved to the school; pretty much forcing her to stay there. A quack doctor puts her on a strange diet of bland food and thick red wine, even though Suzy's fainting spell seems to have been an isolated incident and she feels fine. But it does help her sleep well at night. Almost too well.

Suzy's first few days there, she's greeted by a maggot infestation (blamed on spoiled meat in the attic) and the death of blind pianist Daniel (Flavio Bucci), which occurs after his usually well-behaved seeing eye dog bites the cook's young son and, later, chews out his own throat. She learns a bit more about the strange occurrences at the academy from Sarah, who was Pat's friend and is in possession of some notes Pat was keeping that point in the direction that the school is run by a (gulp!) coven of actual witches. After relaying just a bit of information, Sarah promptly disappears and her room is completely cleaned out, with Miss Tanner claiming she must have run away in the night.

As for Tanner and the rest of the staff, they claim to live in town, but their footsteps late at night tell a different story; one where they're not even leaving the building at all. There's also the issue of the mysterious primary school director that no student has ever met and the staff keeps well hidden. She may be somehow linked to a Greek emigre named Helena Markos. Known as "The Black Queen," Markos had previously been expelled from several European countries for practicing witchcraft until she permanently found a home in Freiburg and established the Tanz Akademie. She supposedly died in a fire back in 1905. Supposedly.

Suspiria is quintessential "style over substance." While the screenplay (by Argento and his then-partner Daria Nicolodi) holds little of interest, the dialogue is often clunky and the post sync dub is sometimes distracting (though there's certainly a lot worse), the film is so visually captivating, imaginative, well-crafted and gorgeous to look at, that it frequently transcends the narrative altogether. Great care has gone into the look of virtually every shot. Giuseppe Bassan's production design, Luciano Tovoli's cinematography, the lighting and vibrant colors overlaid with a bombastic, chilling and unique score from prog rock group Goblin (with assist from Argento himself) all combine to create some of the most effective and mesmerizing sequences in horror film history. The opening ten minutes and Sarah's death scene are the standout set pieces here, but virtually every frame at least holds something of aesthetic interest. So, I'm happy to report that Suspiria has managed to cast its spell over me once again all these years later, perhaps most especially now that it's looking and sounding better than ever.

This is the first in the "Three Mothers" trilogy that also includes the New York City-set INFERNO (1980) and the Rome-set Mother of Tears (2007); all of which involve witches spreading evil from three distinct locations. Since the third entry took so long to make, Luigi Cozzi made his own unofficial pseudo sequel in the interim titled Il gatto nero / The Black Cat (1989). A remake, which uses the basic plot of the original but has a bunch of added subplots and a completely different visual style, was released in 2018. Directed by Luca Guadagnino, who'd previously made the popular (and Oscar nominated) gay coming of age film Call Me By Your Name (2017), the two-and-a-half hour film polarized both audiences and critics.

★★★1/2