Posts Tagged ‘Dario Argento’
Thursday, October 31st, 2024
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…)
Tags: Daria Nicolodi, Dario Argento, Goblin, Jessica Harper, Luciano Tovoli, Udo Kier, witches
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 7 Comments »
Thursday, October 24th, 2024
This DVD I rented is labelled DEMONS III: THE OGRE, but I knew that wasn’t really a thing. That’s just how video labels chose to promote THE OGRE, a 1989 TV movie that Lamberto Bava went off to do after giving up on a third DEMONS.
THE OGRE opens in Portland, Oregon, where a little girl wakes up and wanders into a dungeon/wine cellar and finds a bizarre, pulsating cocoon on the ceiling. It’s like a giant spider egg sac except it glows yellow, drips fluid and beats like a heart. She sees a spindly monster inside, and it reaches a hand out for her, then chases her. Eventually she wakes up. Yes, it was only a dream, but she dropped her teddy bear in the dream, and now it’s gone. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Asia Argento, Barbara Cupisti, Claudio Simonetti, Dardano Sacchetti, Dario Argento, Goblin, Hugh Quarshie, John Richardson, Keith Emerson, Lamberto Bava, Michele Soavi, Paolo Malco, Sabrina Ferilli, Sergio Stivaletti, Tomas Arana, Virginia Bryant
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, October 23rd, 2024
Until now I had never seen DEMONS 2, really didn’t know anything about it, and considering its provenance it could’ve been a sequel-in-name-only. So I was excited when the opening narration described the events of the first film: demons unleashed from a movie theater. But it says that was followed by “days of terror that convinced the world demons can exist.” Days. So the war between the survivors and the monsters implied by the ending has already wrapped up, I guess. Things seem to be back to normal.
You could say it’s a DAWN OF THE DEAD type sequel – new set of characters later in the same apocalypse – but really it’s more of a do-over, a different take on the same rough idea. I think that’s a pretty cool approach, and they chose good elements to remix. Instead of a movie theater, the specific structure it focuses on is a high-rise apartment building called The Tower. Instead of the meta element of a movie about demons showing in the theater, they have one broadcast on TV, and various people in the building are watching it. They also have another part where suddenly it cuts to some punks driving around, although in my opinion they don’t really do much of interest with it. On the other hand they do one-up the iconic people-with-glowing eyes scene by doing it with a bigger mob of demons and then again looking up a staircase as they run down it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anita Bartolucci, Asia Argento, Bobby Rhodes, Dario Argento, David Knight, Davide Marotta, Italian horror, Lamberto Bava, Nancy Brilli, Simon Boswell, Virginia Bryant
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 4 Comments »
Monday, October 21st, 2024
Lamberto Bava’s DEMONS is from 1985 and it’s a thoroughly 1985 movie in a very good way. It has a catalog of tough punk type side characters, a very danceable electronic score by Goblin keyboardist Claudio Simonetti, and somewhat random rock soundtrack including “White Wedding” by Billy Idol and “Walking On The Edge” by Rick Springfield. It has lots of atmosphere and stylized imagery with colored lighting that makes the frame look like a blue or yellow screen printing, and a handful of scenes just starkly showing a strip of flashy businesses around the mysterious Metropol movie theater where it takes place. Gothic horror downtown.
When it opens on the subway, Simonetti’s theme song is grooving so hard – the drum and keyboard sounds he’s using seem old school hip hop influenced – you’re pretty sure this is gonna be a classic. And I think your instincts are correct. Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) is, I believe, a music student in Berlin headed to a lecture, clutching her Bartok book nervously as she eyes the cool punk hairstyles around her on the train. Lady, they don’t even know you exist. Get over yourself. Then she starts glimpsing reflections, almost like a hallucination, of some kind of cyborg man (second unit director Michele Soavi) with a half metal face? I don’t know, maybe it’s an updated Phantom of the Opera mask. He turns out to be real and approaches her at the station… she actually runs from him but is relieved when he turns out to be just a guy giving out passes to a movie screening. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Serra, Bobby Rhoses, Claudio Simonetti, Dario Argento, Fabiola Toledo, Fiore Argento, Geretta Giancarlo, Italian horror, Lamberto Bava, Michele Soavi, movie theater, Nicoletta Elmi, Paola Cozzo, Urbano Barberini
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 32 Comments »
Wednesday, October 5th, 2022
Every once in a while the streaming service Shudder does a “secret screening” – a one time only showing on their live feed of a movie they’re not gonna have available until later. I think this is a really cool idea, and something they can do specifically because they’re one of the more lovingly put together services, run by actual programmers trying to curate horror movies they think their subscribers will be excited about.
I caught what I believe was the first time they did it, when it was a time loop thriller called LUCKY. I was into it but something about the ending that I don’t remember anymore fell flat with me and I never actually reviewed it. (Others thought more highly of it.) But I happened to be free last Saturday when I saw they were doing another one, so I gave it a shot again.
When the credits started in Italian I admit that my limited horror brain did immediately think “Is this an Dario Argento movie?” But I didn’t specifically remember he had a new one called DARK GLASSES (Occhiali neri) until his credit and the title came on after the ominous opening scene. If there’s a giveaway, it’s the swaggeringly aggressive use of electronic score by Arnaud Rebotini (a French musician from a band called Black Strobe). It sounds John Carpentery at first, then a little Gobliny, and by the end you’re at some evil rave. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrea Zhang, Arnaud Rebotini, Asia Argento, Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini, giallo, Ilenia Pastorelli, Shudder, Viktorie Ignoto
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Thursday, December 12th, 2019
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: DEEP RED, SUSPIRIA, INFERNO, TENEBRE and PHENOMENA, and I can finally confirm that it belongs in that company. Though it doesn’t reach the feverish intensity of his very best, it’s cool to see Argento get access to a higher level of production value. This takes place mostly in a real opera house with a full opera production, orchestra, behind-the-scenes crew and audience, and cinematographer Ronnie Taylor (Academy Award winner for GANDHI!) takes Argento’s fanciful camerawork up a couple levels.
The ambition is clear in the opening scene, when obnoxious (and unseen to us) opera diva Mara Cecova throws a fit at Marco (Ian Charleson, CHARIOTS OF FIRE, GANDHI), visionary director of the Julie-Taymor/HIGHLANDER-II-ish stylized production of Verdi’s Macbeth she’s starring in, and storms out. The camera seems to represent her point-of-view, with everyone looking at her as she has her tirade, but if so then I guess she floats off the stage into the crowd and then walks out backwards? It’s confusing… and totally impressive and captivating. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Eno, Claudio Simonetti, Cristina Marsillach, Daria Nicolodi, Dario Argento, Ian Charleson, Ronnie Taylor, Ubano Barberini, William McNamara
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, December 12th, 2018
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, I’m saying it now: when it comes to balancing horror and comedy, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON is the goal. I mean, there ones I love just as much that I consider a little heavier on the goofiness, like RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and EVIL DEAD 2, but AMERICAN WEREWOLF is that ideal where it’s a perfectly serious horror movie and also it’s funny because of the situations and the way the story is told, and neither quality takes away from the other, in fact they only enhance each other.
Well, what seemed like a million years later, but was actually only eleven, director John Landis did a far lesser known but confidently crafted horror-movie-that-is-funny, this time in the vampire realm. INNOCENT BLOOD tells the story of an out of control couple of nights in Pittsburgh when a well(ish)-intentioned bloodsucker named Marie (Anne Parillaud, LA FEMME NIKITA) decides to feed on the local mafia, and it turns into a big mess. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angela Bassett, Anne Parillaud, Anthony LaPaglia, Chazz Palminteri, Dario Argento, Don Rickles, John Landis, Linnea Quigley, Robert Loggia, Sam Raimi, Steve Johnson, Tom Savini
Posted in Crime, Horror, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Monday, November 5th, 2018
SUSPIRI… uh…
Luca Guadagnino’s SUSPIRIA (2018) is technically a remake of Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA (1977), because it’s about an American named Susie Bannion going to a dance academy in Germany in 1977 where other students are turning up dead and weird shit is happening because it’s run by a coven of witches led by Mother Suspiriorum, The Mother of Sighs. But don’t expect to see any of the things you think of when you think of SUSPIRIA, like the colorful lighting, the maggots dropping from the ceiling or that room full of razor wire. Guadagnino (CALL ME BY YOUR NAME) doesn’t use the same look or any specific scenes or story points, he just plays with the basic idea. Now there’s more intra-coven political stuff going on, as well as news coverage of Baader-Meinhof bombings and the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181 by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and a subplot about an old therapist looking for a patient who disappeared after telling him the school was run by witches, and also his wife (played by o.g. Susie Bannion Jessica Harper) disappeared during the war and he keeps thinking about her, and…
I mean it’s 52 minutes longer than the original so there’s alot more stuff going on. It bills itself as “Six Acts and an Epilogue in a Divided Berlin” (spoiler: actually should be Six Acts, an Epilogue, and a Brief, Uneventful Tag Near the End of the Credits). I appreciated the act breaks. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chloe Grace Moretz, Dakota Johnson, dancing, Dario Argento, David Kajganich, Jessica Harper, Luca Guadagnino, Mia Goth, Thom Yorke, Tilda Swinton, witches
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 75 Comments »
Tuesday, October 31st, 2017
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.
No big surprise here: I tend to consider it Argento’s masterpiece. The combination of its boldly colorful stylization and rocking, growling, hissing, demonic incantation of a score by Goblin (their very best, in my opinion) put me in some sort of cinematic state of delirium where normal narrative logic is not necessary, or even desirable. SUSPIRIA is creepy in some deep subconscious way far beyond the tyrannical reach of sense or explicability.
But after watching them both many times over the years, including this week, I confess I’ve become more attached to Argento’s 1980 follow-up, INFERNO. Technically part two in a “Three Mothers” trilogy (it connects to the witch from SUSPIRIA and the one from MOTHER OF TEARS 27 years later), it works as its own surreal adventure. The score by Keith Emerson is crazy and bombastic by any standards other than being compared to Goblin. Argento, his SUSPIRIA production designer Giuseppe Bassan (SUPER FLY T.N.T.) and new cinematographer Romano Albani (PHENOMENA, TROLL, TERRORVISION) elaborate on the evil-DICK-TRACY red blue and green lighting and ornate furnishings. There’s alot of beautifully textured wallpaper designs and a door handle so artsy it becomes a danger; its pointy metal fronds catch on a character’s blouse during a chase, catching her like an animal in a trap.
It is my position, though, that INFERNO has a more involving mystery than SUSPIRIA, and even higher peaks of surrealism and violence. I’m not here to argue that it’s better, but just to encourage you to see it if you haven’t, and confer with you about it if you have. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: alchemy, Ania Pieroni, Daria Nicolodi, Dario Argento, Eleonora Giorgi, Gabriele Lavia, Irene Miracle, Keith Emerson, Leigh McCloskey, Sacha Pitoeff, witches
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 24 Comments »
Thursday, October 31st, 2013
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 INFERNO were supposed to be about sister witches, and he always meant to make one about the third sister. Unfortunately he didn’t get it made until 2007, long after he stopped being a reliable filmatist, so most people were not impressed.
Argento’s daughter Asia (xXx) plays Sarah Mandy, an assistant at some museum who is there when her boss unseals and accidentally bleeds on (you know how it is) an ancient artifact, summoning witches who horribly murder the boss. This is a creepy scene because of the way Sarah just sort of glimpses a feeding frenzy from outside of the room, and because she gets pursued through the empty museum by an evil monkey that tries to keep up with her and keeps hissing to notify the others of her location. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: alchemy, Asia Argentoo, Claudio Simonetti, Daria Nicolodi, Dario Argento, evil monkey, Udo Kier, witches
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 12 Comments »
