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. (read the rest of this shit…)
Don’t get mad, but until now I’d never seen Dario Argento’s OPERA. It comes after a run of his best and/or most famous movies: 
This year has brought an avalanche of well-deserved attention to Dario Argento’s popsicle-colored opium nightmare of a Nancy Drew witchcraft mystery, SUSPIRIA (1977). With a new 4K restoration playing in some cities, a Blu-Ray finally on the horizon and somebody apparently having the audacity to do a remake, the film is being widely written about, discussed and discovered by a new generation.
MOTHER OF TEARS was Dario Argento’s backburner project for years. I never really watched them close enough together to pick up on it, but SUSPIRIA and 
I hope this isn’t oversharing, but my first Dario Argento movie was PROFONDO ROSSO, which we call DEEP RED here in the states. I don’t think I knew anything about it when I rented it on a mysterious, seedy looking VHS tape that called it “DEEP RED HATCHET MURDERS.” That’s not the worst title because it is, in fact, about a series of murders, though some of them are done with knives and not hatchets. So the “hatchet” part is kinda misleading. The plural on the “murders,” though, that part was dead on. There’s a bunch of them.
