13 Nights of Shocktober: Deep Red

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober.  So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some scary movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 5: Argento Night

“I can feel death in this room!”

Deep Red     

  

Italian filmmaker Dario Argento is most famous for his work in the horror genre, namely Suspiria, but he began his career writing and directing films known as giallos, an Italian subgenre of violent murder mysteries and thrillers. This genre, which takes its name from pulp novels printed on yellow paper (giallo is Italian for yellow), often skirted the line between thriller and horror. Giallo plotlines would be murder mysteries or who-done-its but sometimes also followed the structure of a slasher movie, with the violence to match. For this reason, many, if not all, giallo films can be considered horror movies, including Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso, or Deep Red.

David Hemmings plays Marcus, an English pianist visiting Rome who witnesses the brutal murder of Helga Ulman (Macha Meril), a famous psychic. He teams up with a persistent reporter, Gianna (Daria Nicolodi), to solve the murder. They interview potential witnesses, collect clues, and are pretty competent detectives. The police seem to be only slightly involved in the investigation and mostly just help Marcus conduct his own investigation. At the initial crime scene, Marcus asks the police if they touched or moved anything in the dead psychic’s apartment. It’s a peculiar choice but it allows Marcus to be at the center of the action.

Dario Argento’s directorial style is, well, being stylish. The auditorium where Helga demonstrates her psychic abilities for an audience (mentioning that she can only read people’s thoughts and see their past, not predict the future... hence her bloody murder with a cleaver) has lush red curtains and table where she sits is draped in the same bold red. The production design and color palette are bold and eye catching in every scene. Blood in Deep Red, and there’s a lot of it, is actually a bright, bold red bordering on orange-red in certain scenes. It looks completely fake, but it’s stylish to the point of turning the murder scenes into gruesome tableaus. The progressive synth rock score by Goblin is creepy and thrilling in all the right ways and of course, gives the movie a stylish soundtrack. The cinematography by Luigi Kuveiller is a feast for the eyes; every shot is well composed and photographed. Even a scene with not much happening visually, like Marcus and his friend Carlo talking on a deserted street with a Roman statue in the background looks impressive. Light and shadow, close-ups, and POV shots are used to great effect. Not only do they create a distinct look, but they also create an atmosphere of mystery and suspense. In a particularly effective scene, we see extreme close ups of the inner workings of a piano as Marcus composes a song followed by a POV shot of the killer approaching Marcus. Then we see a wide shot of the room and a shadow covers Marcus and his piano.

In its best moments, Deep Red is reminiscent of an Alfred Hitchcock film: an excellent blend of style and suspense. Also like in a Hitchcock film, Hemmings plays an everyman caught in an extraordinary situation that he has to solve (mostly) on his own. Like the protagonists in Argento’s previous films The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Cat O’Nine Tails, Marcus must solve a murder by picking apart his memory. While the supernatural sets up the premise for Deep Red, the rest of the movie is a straightforward mystery. However, the gruesome deaths, an increasing body count, and creepy touches like the killer playing a recording of children singing, a random ghastly faced automaton firmly plant Deep Red in the horror genre. It is not without lighter moments, usually of Marcus and Gianna being at odds, and bizarre moments, like Gianna mistakenly stabbing a bird in midair. All of that style takes the dread out of the violence and makes Argento’s macabre mystery a thoroughly engaging picture.