1977 gave us some pretty important movies. Some influential ones. Some we still talk about today. STAR WARS was a big one. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. ERASERHEAD. SORCERER. THE HILLS HAVE EYES. And hailing from Italy, Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA. One of the greats, a true original, and I think it’s safe to say one of the most beautiful looking horror movies ever made.

When I first saw it as a young man it set my brain on fire. I was pretty new to the world of Italian horror and had never seen anything quite like it, but it turns out that’s also because there’s not anything quite like it. Since then I’ve seen it many more times, including once in a theater with a Jessica Harper Q&A, and its reputation has grown even stronger as a generation or two discovered it in the age of screen caps and gifs. Its stunning visuals require no context to knock you on your ass.

These days I tend to think of it as my second favorite Argento (I’m partial to the even more delirious nightmare logic of INFERNO), but there’s no way around it being the most potent, undiluted dose of his cinematic style available over the counter. The opening blasts it in your face like an air cannon – the credits in that stylish font, the drum roll and building screeches and squeals of Goblin’s wildest, strangest, rowdiest score, then they go quiet after the title, before kicking into that repetitive theme, like a music box falling into Hell. The opening narrator who never returns, the first person voiceover that appears only once, the spaghetti western style actors-speaking-different-languages-and-being-dubbed-later, and some dialogue written for 12 year olds then given to adults, all contribute to an otherworldy feeling, like you’re walking okay but your feet are levitating one centimeter above the ground.

In this Italian movie about an American in Freiburg, West Germany, filmed in Rome and Munich, Argento creates an extra sense of displacement by opening in the airport, 10:40 pm local time. Wherever we’re viewing from, we touch down in this fever dream lit by a red light like the inside of an oven. The bizarre Goblin growls and whispers cut in and out to suggest Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper, BONES AND ALL) is hearing them too and wondering, like we are, what the fuck is going on, what the fuck she’s gotten herself into. The automatic doors open to the street and blow her hair back, she emerges into the violently pouring rain, has trouble getting a cab, and when she does the driver doesn’t understand her German. She sits dripping wet in the back seat, red, blue, green and yellow light illuminating her face. Supposedly Argento had cinematographer Luciano Tovoli (THE PASSENGER) mimic the color scheme of SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, and somehow he birthed the style of hip 2020s movies with fights in dance clubs.

Suzy is literally driven through the forest (doesn’t that look like the shadow of a hand holding a blade that flashes on the tree in the foreground?) to the bright red dance academy building that might as well be made out of candy. And then thank God she asks the driver to hold on a minute, because the conversation on the intercom is confusing and they won’t let her in. Also, notably, she sees another student, Pat Hingle (not the commissioner from BATMAN, a character played by Eva Axen) fleeing in terror just as she’s arriving. Usually not the best sign, even if that student didn’t end up getting gruesomely, spectacularly murdered and thrown through a skylight that night.

It’s such a pure Argento touch that the finale hinges on Suzy forcing herself to remember two words she overheard in that brief, disorienting encounter and decoding what they meant. The keys to these mysteries tend to lie in the past, at a time when no one knew to pay attention. Suzy also has to combine this information with a location in the school she finds by listening for footsteps and counting them to determine distance. Surviving an Argento film may require puzzling.

A part that struck me hard on the first viewing is the surreal sequence where Suzy’s peaceful brushing is interrupted by the discovery of something in her hair, and suddenly the whole floor is being showered by maggots from a box of rotting food in the attic. That leads to the students and staff sleeping in the dance studio, and the first silhouetted sighting of the Mother of Sighs, a nickname for the movie’s head witch (and directress of the school) Helena Markos (Lela Svasta). They’re told she’s away traveling, but Suzy’s roommate Sara (Stefania Casini, ANDY WARHOL’S BAD) recognizes her snore.

I like the detail that the students are on mattresses on the floor but we can see through the hung up sheets that Markos has a full-on bed with a nightstand and a lamp. She’s not even gonna pretend to be on the same level as them for one night.

One thing that’s kind of funny is that we barely see Suzy dance. She has one class, but she’s sick and wobbly and quickly passes out. Then too much shit goes down to concern herself with the arts. Another thing that’s funny is that some of the witch’s cackling at the end sounds like Beavis. A creepy Beavis, though.

That’s the type of stuff you fixate on after the tenth viewing. On the first one it’s definitely the deaths that hit you hardest: the opening hanging, the accidental drop into a room completely filled with coils of razor wire, the seeing eye dog chewing up his owner. But you quickly get over that because you’re stuck on the imagery. I couldn’t name another genre movie with so many vivid colors and beautifully designed settings, so much meticulous attention to stained glass windows, wallpaper prints, murals. The halls and lobbies and stairways are all six or seven layers fancier than needed, and even a simple dorm room will be so lovingly brushed with different colors of light that every moment seems suitable for framing. Even the swimming pool in this place looks like a glorious cathedral. I’m sure the bathrooms are amazing too. I expected when I looked up the production designer he’d have done some classier movies, but no, Giuseppe Bassan did SUPER FLY T.N.T., other Argentos including DEEP RED, and later CANNIBAL FEROX.

Somehow after a whole movie looking like that the furnishings get even more appealing the closer Suzy gets to the Mother of Snores. So many of the sets would be (and probly have been) great to re-create in a cool night club. A secret door leads through a blue velvet curtain and a hall painted with leaves, arches and magical incantations. And Markos’ bedroom has a beautiful eye-pyramid wall hanging, and the amazing peacock lamp that Suzy turns a piece of into a weapon to kill her. They have so much nice stuff in there that we only see when it starts exploding. I’m sure it all has some occult significance, but also it’s just cool stuff. Peacocks must have some dumb symbolic meaning to witches, but who gives a shit. We can appreciate a cool lamp in a secular way.

In this movie, even when you spy on a weird ritual you’re not supposed to see it’s just so pretty to look at. Must be distracting.

It took some doing to get here, knowing where the witches are and how to stop them (just kill the head witch and the rest go down with her), but Suzy pulls it off. I’m sure she’d be a great dancer too if she applied herself like this. Hopefully she’ll be able to transer to whatever the current second best dance school in Europe is, soon to be first.

It’s such a great ending – simple but so very satisfying. All we really need is for Suzy to get out of there safely, and she does… but behind her we see the school go up in flames. No more witches, no more candy house, or I mean dance school, to lure in victims. I love how Suzy breaks into a grin without even turning to look. Even more than that, I love that the credits play over the witches’ cries as they burn alive. Brutal!

Ordinarily I’m anti witch burning. Civilization’s long history of capital punishment for the fictional crime of witchcraft has given me a hangup about these stories. I was able to lighten up a bit about that a few Halloweens ago when I watched THE WITCH, LORDS OF SALEM and SEASON OF THE WITCH, but even so, I never really associated SUSPIRIA with witch trials and shit. It feels like a different thing to me.

In stories and life, the witches and accused witches are usually the misfits and outcasts. The people accused of satanism are often artists. SUSPIRIA’s witches do have a connection to the arts. Their cover is this dance school, the building itself clearly employing many artists in its creation. In a way, many conspiracy theories center on a fear of artists: freemason architecture, heavy metal musicians, “Hollywood elites,” all accused of filling their works with hidden symbols, codes, meanings. Which is also what art is anyway – making sense of the world through metaphors and allegory. The paranoid feel empowered by supposedly knowing how to decode these supposed symbols – this glyph means the band worships Satan, this hand position means the rapper is in a secret society that controls the world, but I’m onto them. Maybe that’s also why some people (including me at times in my life) get so mad at cryptic, “pretentious” art. They sense that it’s supposed to mean something but they don’t know what and that’s not fair. Stop sending secret messages, you guys.

I don’ think SUSPIRIA gets that reaction – it’s so visceral you don’t worry about what anything means. And in a sense Argento’s practicing witchcraft himself, casting powerful spells with color and rhythm and sound contrary to the accepted methods, like he got the instructions from some arcane tome. But the Mother of Sighs and her coven are not true artists. They’re more like rich assholes who go to the opera or the ballet and buy fancy shit but contribute nothing positive to the world.

Argento says in an interview on the 40th anniversary blu-ray, “I wasn’t interested in the country witch, but the city witch. The one that deals with money, that has nice homes.” These are powerful members of society, not hermits in the woods. As Professor Milius (Rudolf Schundler, THE EXORCIST [English voice: Geoffrey Copleston, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM]) says in the movie, “They’re malefic, negative and destructive. The knowledge of the art of the occult gives them tremendous powers. They can change the course of events and people’s lives, but only to do harm. Their goal is to accumulate great personal wealth, but it can only be achieved by injury to others. They can cause suffering, sickness, and even the death of those who for whatever reason have offended them.”

Yeah, I know of people like that. They’re not the weird widow up the street, the goth kid, the people hearing voices, the underdogs. They’re in positions of power, and not secretly. I don’t think getting rid of their leader would make the whole organization collapse, but there’s only one way to find out. Until then, I take comfort in Suzy Bannion’s triumphant smile as she hears the building igniting behind her and doesn’t even look back.

You have been reading a review of “SUSPIRIA”