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.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Suspiria

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. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 11: The iris is the flower that will be the end of you! Suspiria

Suspiria, released in 1977, is considered by many to be Italian director Dario Argento’s masterpiece. It is certainly his most well-known film. Up to this point in his career, Argento had worked mostly in “giallo” film genre, which were usually violent pulp murder mystery stories. The level of violence had been increasing in his previous films and Deep Red, the film he made before Suspiria, dealt with some supernatural elements. Suspiria is his first full bore supernatural horror movie and it is a great one.

Jessica Harper plays Suzy, an American ballet student who arrives in Munich, Germany on a very stormy night to attend a prestigious ballet academy. When she tries to enter the front door of the academy another student runs out in a panicked state shouting to someone inside but the storm makes her words hard to hear. That student is murdered a short while later in one of the most lavish and gruesome first kills in a horror movie (it involves being hung and thrown through stained glass skylight). Suzy is questioned about her run-in with the murdered student, but can only remember the words “secret” and “iris.” Other violent, grisly deaths occur along with strange happenings, like maggots falling from every ceiling in the academy. The cause for all of the murders and the sinister nature of the ballet academy lies within what Suzy heard the night that she arrived -- but will she remember it?

Suspiria is heavy on style with its rich, vivid color palette and bold production design.  Several scenes are bathed in blue or red light. The death scenes are extravagant, but fit with the film’s aesthetic. The blood, which is bright red, sometimes almost orange-red, and gore are too stylized to be realistic, but realism is not the aim of Suspiria. The production design, visual effects, and cinematography combine to create a film that is visually pleasing even while being violent and scary. It’s an unusual, but interesting experience. The rock soundtrack by The Goblins is another important, and memorable, element in the spooky, surreal lavishness of the movie.

There are odd touches that make this a unique film. Argento originally wanted the girls attending the academy to be no older then 12 and wrote the script with preteen actresses in mind. When he was convinced that such a violent film starring children would likely be banned, he changed the age of he girls to 20, but did not change the script to reflect their age. This explains why the girls at the school seem extra naïve and sometimes act like children. Another unique touch is that like many Italian productions, the dialogue was recorded and added in after filming. Since the film had an international cast, the actors spoke their native languages while shooting even though their dialogue would be dubbed with English. The result is that not every character’s voice matches her lips and even the voices of actors actually speaking English don’t seem completely natural.

My favorite peculiar moment in Suspiria is an outdoor scene in which Suzy sits on a bench with a professor who explains the dark occult history of the academy. The wind gusts Jessica Harper’s hair over her face, nearly covering it completely, for almost the entire scene. It’s oddly the most realistic moment in the entire movie. You would not see that happen in a Hollywood movie.

This is one film that truly delivers on enveloping you in an experience. Jessica Harper, with her wide doe eyes, does well in the role of the new student trying to make sense of this strange school. Suspiria uses its stylistic elements to create the same creepy, mysterious, and disorienting feeling for the audience that Suzy is also experiencing. While not all of the effects hold up, Suspiria is not reliant on special effects for its mood and scares. This film walks a tightrope between art-house horror and schlock, and never misses a step.

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

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. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 4: Does that sound like a bird...? The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

Dario Argento had a career as a film critic before he began writing screenplays, and eventually directing movies. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is his first film as director and it is an amazing debut. He started his film career working within the traditional boundaries of the giallo, an Italian crime and murder-mystery genre pioneered by filmmaker Mario Bava. While it is clear that Argento is working within this established genre, it is also clear that he is imitating, in the best way possible, Alfred Hitchcock. The plot of the movie is about an American writer, Sam, in Rome who witnesses a woman being attacked. At first he is a suspect but as other attacks and murders occur he becomes wrapped up in the investigation and then becomes a target What Sam cannot seem to remember about the night of the attack is the key to solving the mystery. This may be Aregento’s first film but the stylized production design and composition that would become one of Argento’s trademarks is in full bloom and provides some memorable imagines, mostly notable the attack scene Sam witnesses in an art gallery.

But perhaps the most memorable scene a POV shot of someone falling out of a window. You see the approaching pavement straight on. This shot was achieved by, you guessed, throwing the camera out of a window with ropes attached to keep the camera from actually hitting the ground. It didn’t work.

There is nothing of the supernatural in this movie, but over the course of his next three movies Argento would make his mark on the giallo genre by gradually adding elements of the supernatural and stylized violence, before making a full-blown supernatural thriller: Suspiria. Argento can thrill by creating suspense and mystery just as well as he can with blood and the supernatural. If you’re in the mood to see a well-paced, well-crafted thriller without gore and terror, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is an excellent choice.