heres are some of the shots from my latest fashion shoot, we were inspired by old ballerina horror movies like suspiria!

]]> http://crimecrawlers.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/suspiria/ Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:48:31 +0000 deathstalker2 http://crimecrawlers.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/suspiria/

By Deathstalker

“Suspiria” is the psychedelic horror story of a young American girl named Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) who transfers to a prestigious German ballet school that holds a dark ulterior motive, darker than teaching ballet to both boys and girls.

Suzy arrives in Germany

The movie begins with Suzie at the airport, arriving in Munich. As she approaches the automated exit, the theme music of the film starts to play lightly over the mise-en-scene.

In the first of several subliminal messages, a poster on the side of the doors read “Black Forest”, hinting that is for her, is what indeed lies beyond. The hydraulics of the doors open and close in close up, signifying she has gone through a rabbit hole that closed shut to reality leaving her alone and lost in Wonderland. The storm she encounters in the cool night air drenches her in darkness and rain as if the sinister nature  of the magical atmosphere itself has physically manifested itself to cover her in its trappings.  Hailing a cab Suzie realizes she’s not in Kansas anymore, or indeed Oz for that matter. A few cabs pass her by until she is able to flag one down. Getting into the cab, she and the viewer are driven to the Academy.

It's been raining for about half an hour.

Argento covers this scene in beautiful light and uses the theme music of the film to its ultimate effect. The tone of the film is masterfully set and the viewer is hooked in less than five minutes. What is perhaps the best opening scene of a horror movie ever is only amplified by what Entertainment Weekly calls “the most vicious murder scene ever filmed”.  Suzie decides to play Nancy Drew and solve the mystery of the murdered girls which only plunges her deeper into the underbelly of the witches coven.

Where the fuck is all this blue light coming from?!?!?!

“Suspiria” is the first of director Dario Argento’s loosely connected “Three Mother’s Trilogy” and EASILY the best of them by a landslide (or if you prefer, country mile).  Dario Argento, is called “the Maestro of horror” (but so is his predecessor, Mario Bava) for his inventive use of the camera and elaborate murder scenes. Indeed, when watching his films one gets the feeling that Argento finds the plot of films to come second to the visual (visceral?) experience. While this is usually a flaw in Argento’s other movies, it works in favor of this film.  “Suspiria” stands as a testament to the fact that Dario Argento is at his best when he could completely care less about the plot.  His visualization of a dark fairy tale that could only be experienced during REM (not the band) is an assault on all senses except taste. This was the last film printed in Technicolor and is all the greater for it. The film is bathed in primary gel colors throughout, giving it a heightened, very stylized look.   Some critics of the film cite the excessive use of lighting as a stumbling block in their enjoyment.  Be that as it may, the entire movie has a surreal edge that is enhanced by the lighting and it keeps the viewer reminded that we are in a world of very dark fantasy.  Indeed, there is no other way the film could work as it’s points of inspiration are witchcraft,  classic Disney films “Sleeping Beauty“, “Fantasia” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs“, and finally  Thomas De Quincey’s “Confessions of an English Opium Eater“.  The latter novel is where Argento got the ideas for the “Three Mothers”, of the series.  The three mothers exist solely to cause pain and misery to feed from.  The number of them signifies that they are like the “fates” or “graces”.  Their names are:   Mater Lacrymarum, Our Lady of Tears,” “Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs,” and “Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness”.   While “Suspiria” can be viewed as a stand-alone film, the sequels delve more into this mythology but never enough to make the films feel truly connected.

Setting out to assail the viewer audio visually, Argento is helped in the latter by Italian rock band “Goblin”. The infamous score to “Suspiria” is one of the key components to its atmosphere. The main theme itself is an inverted version of  ”Jesus Loves Me” giving a feeling of Satanic presence lurking in the background. This is one of the before mentioned subliminal touches that adds a menacing and palatable sense of the evil in the film, an evil that is more inferred and felt by the viewer than actually seen.

John Carpenter’s “Halloween” is famous for its opening point of view shot in which the audience spends the first 10 minutes or so in the shoes of young killer Micheal Myers. This scene makes the viewer feel somewhat complicit in the actions of Myers, and it was praised as inventive for its time. While “Halloween” is a masterpiece, Carpenter owes more than a few of his ideas to Argento (which Carpenter agrees with on his films commentary track). Many of the scenes in “Suspiria” feels as though they are taking place through the viewpoint from an unseen watcher…a malignant spiritual force that is able to see everything that goes on and destroy anyone who gets in the way of the coven. This is a horror film, so you want good kills, and you get it. The evil in the film kills its characters brutally and efficiently. To tell you about the deaths would be to spoil them, but I will say that the scene where a character falls into a room full of razor wire still jars me to this day.

Nair would have worked for her better.

I realize I have gushed about this film and overpraised it for the past hour now. I saw the film for the first time on VHS about 9 years ago and I did not like it. The film transfer looked like it was filmed on the same blurry stock as soap operas. However, some scenes and pieces of music stayed in my head for years afterwords, so I saw the film on DVD, remastered in glorious THX. I was floored by how much more the film improved by the vibrant colors, colors that had been washed out and muddled in my first viewing. After that, I fell in love with this piece of pop-art, subliminal, surreal, horror movie history.   Its sequels “Inferno” and “Mother of Tears“, which focus on characters running a foul of the two remaining “mothers”, are a mixed bag.  “Inferno” tries to duplicate the magic and feeling of the first and while coming close it ultimately comes up short. There is one scene filmed in a room underwater that is quite amazing and so is the and reveal of the second Mother in the films climax.  “Mother of Tears“, made some 20 years after “Inferno” is the weakest of the series. Argento abandons the surreal stylization of the previous two entries in the series for a more naturalistic style, and I believe it is one of the many faults of the film. Though it is interesting and ties the whole series together it was not worth the 20+ year of waiting horror aficionados had for it.

Sadly, “Suspiria” is one of the next films on the remake block. While I think it is possible to remake the film in the right hands, the current trend of horror remakes leaves me with little to no hope that it will actually be done right.  Also with societies current fixation on certain fictional school for witches, they may try to focus on the plot of the film rather than the feelings the original provokes.  To end this on a slightly less depressing note, here is a fan made poster for the remake by someone who gets what the spirit of the film is:

One of the best fan made posters in existence.

There’s something very wrong about a guy who gets his daughter to star in his latest film and then shoot a nude shower scene, adding a further layer of perv, to what is equal parts kitsch and creepy. We’re talking Italian horror maestro Dario Argento here, finalising his supernatural trilogy of Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980) with 2007’s Mother of Tears (DV1). Argento has always loved excess, overwhelming and confusing his audience with vivid colours, baroque imagery and insanely loud prog rock music. The plot in his hands is just a convenient way to connect the elaborately staged hyper gory murder scenes. It’s murder porn but it has style. Here the murders are crueler, more abrupt, the art in the gore, not the staging. With Asia Argento (Transylvania), Udo Kier (Suspiria) and a bunch of folks that look like they just stepped out of a Human League music video, it’s as insanely excessive as the other two, but somehow it doesn’t quite connect. That’s despite the joy of Claudio Simonetti‘s (Goblin) music and the opportunity to witness someone being strangled with their own intestines.

Sauna (Asylum), is heavy on the atmosphere, gorgeously shot, bleak and menacing. It’s set in 1595 after the bloody and brutal 25 year war between Finland and Russia. It begins with this awful sense of dread and doesn’t let up, following the weary battle scared warriors who have devoted their lives killing and defiling, now charged with marking the border between Russia and Sweden. In the middle of a swamp they find a mysterious uncharted village filled with the elderly and one solitary child. Nearby is an imposing concrete sauna that is said to wash away all your sins. The soldiers of course have more than a few they wish to offload. This is a grim kind of horror, about the weight of sin and the costs of redemption. It’s creepy, tense and scary as hell, the kind of horror that seeps into your consciousness until the narrative evaporates and all you’re left with is raw emotion.

Journey Among Women (Beyond) is Lord of the Flies with 70’s feminist ideals set in Australia’s convict past. In the generous extras director Tom Cowan speaks of taking 12 half naked inner city girls, including members of ghetto lesbian feminist rock band ‘clitoris,’ out into the bush and roughing it for 6 weeks, “there was almost a mutiny,” he explains calmly. And you can see this reversion to savagery on screen. It’s loose, heavily improvised and posses a dangerous feel, as a band of female convicts escape their shackles and create a utopian existence in the bush free from the abuse of men. It’s not entirely successful as a convict film thanks to the urban qualities of some of the girls , yet as a provocative (read heavy nudity and lesbian activity) study of power and gender issues in 1977 it’s a fascinating, not in the least because it manages to avoid the sexploitation tag, despite brimming with all the right ingredients.

When the hitchhiker beheads his driver, sews it back on and then sends the confused victim on his way, you realise that The Committee (Dark Horse) is a very strange film. This surreal murder is used as a catalyst to explore ideas of freedom of choice and bureaucracy as a means of maintaining control. By having the victim up and walking, the focus moves away from the violence of the act to the arrogant motivations behind it. Written by a professor of economics and with an obscure unreleased Pink Floyd score, this is provoking English intellectual surrealism from 1968.

The Land That Time Forgot (Madman) is a boys own adventure story from the writer of Tarzan, with hyper cheesy special effects of dodgy looking plastic dinosaurs, pink smoke and ludicrous plot developments. Yes the crap plot is a dodgy special effect. Put simply, former foes are forced to band together when they are marooned on a mystical island trapped in the past. They then decide to shoot everything. It was made in 1975. You can tell.

Sex Galaxy (Arkles) is a green movie, created solely with recycled footage from z-grade science fiction from the 60’s and re voiced with the maturity of a horny 14 year old schoolboy. At one point Billy gets attacked by a vaginasaur. “Talk about being pussy whipped quips one astronaut,” “does anyone have any yeast?” screams another, “you were lucky Billy 10 seconds longer and you would have been a human pap smear.” That’s one of the more intelligent exchanges in this proudly puerile film about a planet filled with female sex slaves who are protected by a jive talking Forbidden Planet robot pimp. It’s stupid and rude. You’ll love it.

Bob Baker Fish

http://screeningroom.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10/30/cult-horror-classics-get-remastered-plus-5-favorites/

Tired of getting short-changed by DVD extras? So is cult film authority Xavier Mendik.

Features where everyone just grins into the camera and talks about how great the production was are superficial, he says. Moreover, they “don’t do fans justice.” What extra features do you want to see? Tell us in the comments below

Mendik, the director of Cine-Excess, an international conference and festival on cult film, is doing something about it by partnering up with distributor Nouveaux Pictures to re-master cult horror movies.

Besides giving fans a chance to see cult classics for the first time on DVD, the label – whose slogan is “Taking Trash Seriously” – sets itself apart with extra features created by academics, he says.

The label has already re-released 1980s favorite “Amsterdamned” and in January 2010 comes a remastering of “Suspiria,” Dario Argento’s stomach-turning horror set in a ballet academy.

The restoration on the Blu-Ray and DVD release of “Suspiria” will include four new documentaries that examine everything from gender controversy in the film to its style and politics in Italy in the 1970s.

“It will be the ultimate DVD,” says Mendik, who says the label is responding to what fans want.

Cult devotees have more to look forward to.

Cine-Excess has been given rights to a catalog of 300 movies owned by B-movie producer director Roger Corman and is planning to release 15 films in the next 12 months with Nouveaux Pictures, says Mendik.

The label is aimed at both the everyday cult fan as well as the growing educational market that has emerged around cult, says Mendik, who teaches cult film and TV at Brunel University in the UK.

With all this in mind, we asked Mendik to list his top five horror cult movies of all time. His picks and comments are below:

1. “Suspiria” (Dario Argento, 1977): “Being in the position to re-release this film is phenomenal.”
2. “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (Tobe Hooper, 1974): “It remains a profoundly shocking film.”
3. “Deranged” (Jeff Gillen and Alan Ormsby, 1974): “For its gore and gross out factor – a look at depravity with a wonderful, near hysterical performance by the central lead.”
4. “Venus in Furs” (Jesus Franco, 1969): “A psychedelic dream scene horror with a freestyle jazz structure.”
5. “Cabin Fever” (Eli Roth, 2002): “A new talent in the horror field to keep an eye on.”

Thank you CNN!

Suspiria, filme de terror com direção do italiano Dario Argento, tem uma estética incrível …

e alguns posters… muita cor, sangue e un pò paura! (uhhhhh!)

* imagens: IMDB/Reprodução
+ http://www.darkdreams.org/

Soooo yeah, I really fell off there on the daily movie posting :X Right when it was Halloween and most important, too. SORRY! I got way too busy working on my costume and hanging out with EJ (the bf). Priorities are important.

As a penance, I’ll just talk briefly about a couple more horror favorites of mine (didn’t quite make it to 7, but oh well). I know it’s not Halloween anymore, but you should check these out anyway. Or, keep them in mind for next year, if you only watch horror movies around Halloween (like a lamer) haha.

Dead Alive (aka Brain Dead)– Peter Jackson, 1992

Definitely my favorite zombie movie. This one isn’t scary so much as hilarious and awesomely, crazily gory (often in a hilarious way). In fact, it’s rated R for “an abundance of outrageous gore”. Apparently 300 liters of fake blood were used in the infamous ‘lawnmower’ scene! Come on, you’re intrigued now.

The story begins with a Sumatran rat monkey bite at the zoo and honestly only gets better and better from there. The two main actors are also sooo appealing (I don’t mean like hawt, I mean adorable and really fun to watch – seriously).

To top it all off, it was directed by Peter Jackson. Yes, the Lord of the Rings guy.

Suspiria – Dario Argento, 1977

The two best things about Suspiria, the cinematography and the score, are in themselves enough to warrant labelling this one as a ‘must-see’. It’s a nightmarish fairytale set in a top European ballet school, where mysterious and sinister goings-on seem to be afoot – all captured in the most saturated colors, dramatic framings, and creepily insidious yet delicately beautiful soundtrack.

Interestingly, Argento composed the score with the band Goblin prior to any filming, and then played it during the filming, to really get the feel of it in the look of the movie (and also to creep out the actors!).

Holyfuckingshit!

I wrote this for the Film4 Facebook group, but it’s definitely full of good ideas, so I’m posting it here too.

Halloween, then. Here’s my recommended plan for the day:

Suspiria

11am: Watch the original version of The Fly on Film4
1pm: Lunchtime: eat pumpkin soup and maybe have a read of 50 Horror Movies To See Before You Die.
3pm: Catch a matinee cinema screening of the year’s best comedy, Zombieland.
6pm: Dinner. Feast on the blood of innocents. If blood of innocents causes indigestion, trick or treat the local chemists for Pepto Bismol.
8pm: Head on over to the I Spit On Your Rave Halloween Zombie Party.
10pm – 12.45am: Dead Set is on E4 – stumble home from zombie mayhem to watch, um, zombie mayhem.
12.50pm: Flip over to Film4 for Suspiria, a truly terrifying horror experience. Don’t say I didn’t warn you… sleep tight.

Suspiria (1977, Dario Argento) – Ah, that opening turtleneck-donned skeleton gets me each time, and I love the pulsating organ font that spells out the title. This is just a great horror trailer all around, it doesn’t rely heavily on shock content but uses the great Vincent Price-like voiceover to only hint at whatever the hell Suspiria is, never revealing too much. And that ending line, genius!

Possession (1981, Andrzej Zulawski) – What I love about this trailer is how it cuts back and forth between Isabelle Adjani’s fits of violence and the scenes in the film hinting at horrific and strange occurrences without revealing anything. I guess I just enjoy horror trailers that try to capture a certain eerie mood rather than convey the story. And take a gander at Sam Neill, so young – and the freeze-frame at the trailer’s end of him colored white and with red eyes is used to magnificent effect.

Eyes Without a Face (1960. Georges Franju) – This trailer has a great soundtrack first of all, I don’t know how much the music captures the ethereal and dream-like quality of the film but it definitely catches my attention – unless I’m mistaken and the music was in the film which I don’t think it was, anyway… Another trailer that eschews displaying specific plot points to capture the film’s tone by displaying Franju’s luscious framing and using a rather ambiguous voiceover – whose voice is it? is he watching these characters or is he omniscient? – and displays the film in a way that casts uncertainty on what is actually going on. A good trailer makes the film into a sort of puzzle, where we see bits of the film but they are presented in a way that is either misleading or too abstract to put into a certain context, and this trailer does both beautifully.

And finally…

The Wicker Man (1973, Robin Hardy) – Oh, the original film, what a weird, disorienting one this was, and the trailer is just the same. Starting with what seems like a Peter Rabbit costume party mixed with Love generation horny wild-childs and guitar, what can one really make of this film? The elusive shots of the sun, the weird townsfolk and their strange fetishizing of masks,  Edward Woodward’s freaked-out detective. What we are presented with is both hilarious in its absurdity and appalling in its sheer delight in its weirdness.  With the trailer displaying faster and faster edits building up to its climactic reveal of the mysterious Wicker Man. What a nightmare.

Now the next step is to watch the films! (Or re-watch them if you’ve already seen them.)

Eccole qua!

La mia prima ossesione di…oggi!!!

Possiamo definirle un pò “derbies” oppure semplicemente ballerine, fattostà che sono per me fortemente appetibili, anche nel prezzo, infatti si trovano su YOOX alla modica cifretta di 89 euro, che voglio dire….è più o meno alla portata di tutte noi, insomma non ci intacca troppo la crisi da quarta settimana!!!!

Nei miei abbinamenti…a occhi aperti—>le vedo benissimo con un vestitino taglio francese total black o con dei pantaloni very very skinny sempre rigorosamente total black, ma se avete altri abbinamenti virtuali…fatevi avanti….e “consigliatemi” pure!!!!

In effetti penso che potrebbero essere un bel chiudipacchetto del mio regalo di compleanno (sigh…l’anno scorso c’era una TESTA DI BABBO NATALE!!!!…Peggio non potrà mai andare!!!), quindi le aggiungo volentieri alla mia wishlist…che naturalmente e come al solito…rispetto a singhiozzo, ahimè!!!

Baci*

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
1966
Directed by Bill Melendez

Perfect! My childhood alive.

Five spooky pumpkins out of five.

The Mystery of the Wax Museum
1933
Directed by Michael Curtiz

Let’s just all degree that wax museums are creepy, shall we?

I give it one spooky pumpkin out of five.

Suspiria
1977
Directed by Dario Argento

This is considered one of the classics of the horror genre, undeservedly so I’d say. Sure, it’s atmospheric, but that’s about all it is. I found myself getting lost in the story, which had to do with a witches coven based in a ballet school.

High point was seeing someone killed by falling into a pit of razor wire.

I give it two spooky pumpkins out of five.

Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)

Hello all.

A few weeks ago, I requested that a few close friends give me a short list of “must-sees” (in terms of horror) and Suspiria was the only film that was showed up on all of the lists. I have some exposure to Argento, having seen Inferno and Deep Red in a classroom setting. This film was nothing short of brilliant. If you haven’t seen the film, then I urge you to give it a chance prior to reading this post but if you have, then please continue reading.

The most obvious and one of the most astonishing features of the film is its score. A little bit shocking at first and even becomes overbearing at times. Sure it keeps your attention, but more importantly, it calls attention to the fact that it is a horror film. So in ways, the score is self-reflexive. Even if you don’t look at it this way it is still extremely creepy and fitting for the film. Sound is important in other ways as well; at times dialogue is drowned out by background noises.

I would also like to emphasize the brilliant structure of the film’s plot. The film is bookended with gruesome murders/deaths. Within the first ten minutes, we witness a brutal and shocking murder of a beautiful woman. Now that Argento has the audience’s attention and heart-rate up, he calms everything down for a good twenty-five minutes or so. Even after this point, when people begin to disappear and there are more murders, they are far less graphic and I would say even less exciting. That is, until the end of the film, in which the audience gets yet another brutal murder sequence.

For readers of this site, what film of Argento’s should I check out next? The three I have seen have been absolutely fantastic and would like to keep working through his filmography. Thank you for reading!

Yeah, Umineko still doesn’t make sense. We went over this before. Beatrice and Battler meet-cute by means of murder re-enactments. A bit like having When Harry Met Sally take place in the latest Saw sequel in that it totally clashes with the nonsense going on in said murders.

When you get down to it, though, these nonsensical scenarios make perfect sense when you apply a healthy dose of dream logic to the situation

There’s a fine line between “dream logic” and “that shit don’t make no sense.” In all honesty, it’s probably up to individual interpretation. I can look at a story or a movie as being dream-like in its narrative, and someone else can look at it as a random series of events that make no narrative sense. I look at “dream logic” as a manner of storytelling that doesn’t follow any sort of conventional timing or geography, yet within its own confines he sequence of events “make sense” the way such events would make sense while dreaming.

A perfect example is the movie from which the above scene comes: Suspiria. If you watch this scene play out, it doesn’t really make much sense. One second the woman is screaming at her window, her assailant reaching out from the middle of the sky. When the camera cuts back to her, she’s on what seems to be a roof running along a chain link fence. When we cut back to her ultimate demise, she seems to be inside an attic in which there’s a completely unnecessary stained glass window. In addition, we have other inexplicable scenes. How does her roommate know that she’s being attacked so quickly. The only audible noise was the breaking glass and a scream. It took a leap of logic for her to assume that her friend was being attacked. Also, the manner by which the woman is murdered makes no real sense. Not only is she stabbed repeatedly, she’s stabbed directly in the heart. By all accounts she should be dead, but she’s still struggling. And despite being in complete control of this woman’s fate, the murderer insists on pushing the woman through the stained glass window and wrapping a noose around her neck. It is said hanging that ultimately kills the victim and not the repeated stab wounds or puncturing of the heart.

This sequence of events is as thoroughly implausible as the wire-fu in The Matrix or hot goddesses fawning over Keiichi in Ah! My Goddess. Yet the movie is shot in such a way that it expects us to take this at face value, much in the same way that our minds accept the disjointed events of our dreams. There’s no sense of irony or parody. All that’s left is to either laugh it off as inept filmmaking, or look at it from a different perspective. That’s what I think viewers need to do when watching Umineko, especially those of us unfamiliar with the game upon which it’s based.

Umineko only makes sense when viewed as an exercise in dream logic. How else are you going to make heads or tails out of a story where the still-living head of an annoying brat is served to its mother after said mother and child were implied to have been torn to shreds by a herd of goat-headed butlers?

One of the common themes I’ve found in stories where dream logic is prevalent is a sense of absurdity and hopelessness. What makes the events so horrific are the same reasons why many people find Lovecraft’s works frightening: there’s no sense to the events transpiring and there’s nothing we mere mortals can do about it. The murders in Suspiria, along with the murders in Umineko, fall along these lines. Most of the victims don’t deserve to die. They’re innocent of any crimes that would warrant a death sentence. Despite this innocence, these individuals are thrust into situations that are hellish in nature and completely inescapable. They may struggle valiantly to the end, but that end is inevitable, gruesome, and often times morbidly amusing. Being crushed to death after being killed and resurrected is torturous enough, but to have said crushing take the form of a massive strawberry cake terrifyingly absurd and funny.

Or it could just be stupid. Again, this stuff depends on the angle from which you’re looking.

More about this stuff later. For now, here’s some more absurd death scenes, this one from the sequel to Suspiria: Inferno.

Suspiria Soundtrack by Goblin

1. Suspiria
2. Witch
3. Opening to the Sighs
4. Sighs
5. Markos
6. Black Forest
7. Blind Concert
8. Death Valzer
9. Suspiria (Celesta and Bells)
10. Suspiria (Narration)
11. Suspiria (Intro)

Badly dubbed or not, Horror Month 2009 must continue, we are unlike the French in that way!

Written By: Dario Argento & Daria Nicolodi
Directed By: Dario Argento

I didn’t know what to expect going into Suspiria, despite being a very big horror fan I had never made the time to see any Dario Argento films. The last thing I expected was arthouse horror, but that’s exactly what I ended up watching. Suspiria is very much a horror film, but at the same time it has elements that are associated with your dank arthouse picture. It doesn’t strive to find any sort of happy medium between the two twains, and that is a good thing because it is comfortable in both skins.

What I found most surprising about Suspiria was how gorgeous of a movie it is. Every time the movie enters a new place or begins a new scene I felt the need to snap off a screenshot. There are very few movies, let alone horror movies, that I can think of where such lavish sets were filmed in such beautiful fashion. Along with the music the beauty of the visuals propel Suspiria along. I found myself thinking of Alice In Wonderland a fair bit, my mind also flashed to Eyes Wide Shut a few times, the visuals in Suspiria are constructed to create a fantasy world very similar to the one Alice discovers. The imagery found in Suspiria is gorgeous, I could say this a million times, that’s how true it is.

The story in Suspiria doesn’t leave me with much to talk about, an American girl in a foreign land notices that weird things are happening around her, and eventually she deduces that witches are afoot. The story doesn’t matter that much, it exists to prop up the trance like qualities of the rest of the film. Suspiria is a movie to get lost in, a movie where you need to allow the visuals and the music to carry you away. It’s like a fever dream, it may not make perfect sense, but you know just enough so that the haunting music and pretty pictures have meaning. The violence also has meaning, it doesn’t just happen, the gruesome deaths happen within the context of the dream like state the movie creates.

There is one bit of chunky expositional dialogue with a professor late in the movie that could have been removed, I’d much rather have had Susan learn that information in bits and pieces throughout the course of the movie. The bat scene is not that pretty to watch, the bat is far too fake looking to buy as an actual bat. I was going to bitch about the bad dubbing, but over time it grew on me. At the start it is woefully bad, the lips of the American actors don’t match their words, but over time the dubbing faded to the background so much that I didn’t pay it any heed.

The fever dream analogy is the best way I can think of to adequately describe Suspiria to you. It’s similar to any fantasy tale, you are willing to go along for the ride or you aren’t. I was more than willing and enjoyed the heck out of this picture. If one chooses to they could get lost in the visuals Argento provides, or become entranced by Goblin’s score. I often found myself doing the same, I spent a good deal of time marveling at the beautiful composition of the first death scene. Suspiria is widely regarded as Argento’s best work, and based on my experience with the film I look forward to delving into the rest of his catalog. If you like witches or are into dreamy imagery then Suspiria is definitely a movie you should see. If nothing else it’ll never allow you to look at seeing eye dogs the same way again.

Rating:

***1/2

Cheers,
Bill

Kate Langenburg/A&E Groove

In conjunction with the upcoming Halloween season, I give you MSN’s 10 Scariest Movies of All Time:

10. Eraserhead

9. The Exorcist

8. Halloween

7. Don’t Look Now

6. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

5. Nightmare on Elm Street

4. Suspiria

3. Night of the Living Dead

2. Repulsion

1. Psycho

So how many of these spine-chilling movies have you seen? I need to catch up — I’ve only got 3!

Though I am not thrilled with the idea of a remake of Suspiria, it is good that someone as talented as director David Gordon Green is attached. Still it is never going to take the place of the original in my pantheon of horror films. What it lacks in logic, it makes up for in mood.  This candy colored dark fairy tale, with a brutal heart, is best felt than dissected.  If you want explanations and airtight plotting,  you’ve come to the wrong school.

Suspiria is one of those movies I’ve seen more times than I can remember. It belongs to a select group of horror films that despite of shortcomings and flaws, I love. I’ve tried many times to explain it to myself and others but it comes out all wrong. It is such a pure visceral experience that words can only hint at its allure. I know most people won’t like it and that’s fine by me. They can have all the SAW movies and I”ll take Suspiria. Sounds fair to me.

There are so many tidbits and insights I have accumulated over the years on Suspiria that I know this will not be the last time I write about it. Stay Tuned!

I’m going to spend October going through my horror movie collection. This has been a hot topic over the past few days, as my sons have been begging to be able to watch Chucky movies, and they’re fascinated by the DVD case for Santa’s Slay. So I bit the bullet the other day and let them watch the cameo-packed opening sequence of Santa’s Slay, which is nasty and strange and gory but also a bit funny; they like the part where Fran Drescher’s dog gets punted by Bill Goldberg as Santa.

Later, my older son and I watched I Am Legend together. He thought it was okay, but now I want him to see The Omega Man and The Last Man On Earth, because he seems to like chills and scares, but wants quality, too. All of this got me thinking about my horror collection and how varied it is. I have a lot of crap, and I have a lot of good stuff. Today, I’m starting with the good.

Suspiria is my favourite horror movie of all time, and one of my favourite films of all time. It delivers the frights through atmosphere and style, rather than through gore and shock. There is one particularly gruesome death at the beginning, but after that, it becomes an exercise in colour-drenched surreality, and that’s why I enjoy it. A movie like this knows it isn’t offering anything new storywise, but is delivering its emotional impact through its visual and auditory assault.

The plot of this 1977 film  is simple. A young American girl moves to Germany to study dance, but there’s something strange about her new world. The movie is the first part of director Dario Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy, which also includes Inferno (1980) and a new one that I couldn’t sit through because it was terrible, and thus will not mention.

I particularly like the scene where main character Susie, who has just moved to the shadowy Bavarian woods to join an elite dance school, encounters one of the cooks polishing silverware. The cook glares at her, and the owner’s strange young nephew stares, as Susie passes along the blood-red corridor. The music rises, and the impact is clear. Susie is terrified but she doesn’t know why; neither do we and that’s why it works.

There is a reason for everything, and it makes sense, and it’s delivered well. That Suspiria trailer I played up top there doesn’t do it justice; it’s an American thing designed to put butts in seats. The impact of Suspiria is one of mood, not story, and that’s why it continues to affect me almost 30 years after I first saw it.

• Stupid Update: There’s a remake in the works. This is something that has been talked about for years, and now it’s apparently on the go. I’ll watch it out of curiousity but Suspiria is an accident of style; it can’t be done again.

- por  Luiz Carlos Freitas

Dario Argento é um dos mais cultuados cineastas do dito “Cinema Fantástico” e, ao lado de Mario Bava e Lucio Fulci, um dos maiores expoentes do cinema de horror italiano (e mundial).

Sua filmografia é carregada de contrastes, com tantos “altos” quanto “baixos”. Porém, mesmo nos seus trabalhos mais fracos, é impossível não reconhecer o seu enorme talento na direção. Suspiria é um dos seus filmes mais conhecidos e aclamados. Sempre presente em qualquer “top” minimamente digno de filmes de terror, é o ápice de seu apuro estético e dos maiores exemplos de sua habilidade de manipular as sensações de medo e tensão do público.

Ambientado na Alemanha, o filme conta a história de Susan Bannion (Jessica Harper), uma jovem americana que recebe um convite para ingressar como aluna na conceituada Escola de Balé de Escherstrausse, sede dos principais acontecimentos da trama. Chegando lá, logo na entrada, depara-se com uma jovem desesperada em fuga. Ao tocar o interfone, uma voz feminina alega que sua presença não é bem vinda e a manda embora. Somente no dia seguinte, após passar a noite num hotel, Susan finalmente é recebida pela diretoria da academia, a viace-diretora Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett) e a professora Tanner (Alida Valli), que dizem não ter conhecimento de quem possa ter sido a pessoa que a negou entrada na noite anterior.

À partir daí, vemos Susan interagir com as demais internas da escola, chegando a fazer amizade com Sara (Stefania Casini) e demonstrando interesse pelo jovem Mark (Miguel Bosé), também aluno que paga sua estada na escola prestando serviços gerais à diretoria. Ela também é informada que Patty (Eva Axén), a moça misteriosa que esbarrou nela na noite anterior, havia sido brutalmente assassinada, o que já a deixa receosa. Sua desconfiança aumenta quando ela passa a presenciar fatos estranhos dentro da escola, como barulhos à noite, vermes caindo do teto, indivíduos soturnos (como o mordomo ou uma das copeiras) e sensações ruins (chegando a desmaiar durante uma aula e, pouco tempo após, recuperando-se como se nada tivesse acontecido – e um misterioso sono que a faz acreditar estar sendo dopada), além do desaparecimento de sua amiga Sara (que havia alertado-a da presença maligna que ela sentia estar presente no prédio) que a levam a pesquisar sobre o local.

Durante suas investigações,faz contato com o psiquiatra Dr. Frank Mandel (Udo Kier numa pequena – mas importante – participação) e o Prof. Milius (Rudolf Schundler), autor de um livro sobre bruxaria, que a conta da lenda de Helena Markos, conhecida como “Rainha Negra”, poderosa feiticeira que havia morrido num incêndio quase um século antes naquele mesmo local, o que, aliado à morte de Sara, sua amiga, confirma suas suspeitas de que a escola é amaldiçoada, servindo como local de culto à antiga bruxa.

O argumento é bem simples e a abordagem do roteiro mais ainda, este, por sua vez, cheio de furos. Entretanto, a grande força do filme está justamente na parte estética. Argento cria um clima de tensão extrema baseado essencialmente nas imagens e nos sons.

Assim como no seu trabalho anterior, o também genial (e ponto mais alto de sua carreira) Prelúdio Para Matar, o diretor procura ignorar certos pontos “lógicos” e passar ao espectador uma atmosfera de pesadelo, oscilando entre o real e o bizarro, tudo em detrimento da construção de um clima de medo extremo.

O trabalho de cenografia é fantástico. Como de costume no cinema italiano pós neo-realismo, o uso das cores se sobressai e ganha vida como um personagem. Isso, aliado à meticulosa estilização nas cenas de mortes, todas de uma violência gráfica brutal, carregadas de um “profondo rosso” que viria a ser uma das características mais marcantes de toda a filmografia de terror do Argento, fazem de Suspiria um verdadeiro espetáculo visual e exercício de tensão.

Logo nos primeiros instantes, no caminho de Susan do aeroporto à escola, somos deleitados com o jogo de cores dos reflexos no vidro do táxi. Tons entre o vermelho e o azul fortes, alternados à cada relâmpago, entregam o que será o grande clima do filme. A cena da morte por enforcamento, minutos após, é tida como uma das melhores do filme, tanto pelo aspecto visual, quanto pela trilha sonora atordoante (tal sequência, inclusive, foi responsável por me deixar com medo permanente de janelas à noite). A chuva de cacos do vitral e a poça de sangue jamais sairão de minha cabeça.

Argento também faz uso de planos mega abertos, como na “belíssima” cena da morte do cego, focando as “sombras” passando nas paredes, dominando todo o espaço ao redor, procurando assim dar uma maior noção da dimensão do mal que os espreitava.

A trilha sonora é outro “personagem”. Fugindo da quase predominante trilha clássica usada nos filmes de terror, Argento embala os grandes momentos de seu filme com o rock da banda Goblin, com uma musicalidade pesada perfeita complementada por “suspiros” e gemidos de dor ao fundo, apresentada sempre em tom crescente, nos conduzindo lentamente à agonia.

Em alguns momentos, o volume alto da música sobrepondo-se aos gritos das personagens chega a ser realmente atordoante. A sensação ao ouvi-la é de que estamos realmente rodeados pelos mesmos demônios que dominavam o velho prédio. Seu ápice é alcançado nos momentos finais.

A “Mãe dos Suspiros” gritando (ao mesmo tempo em que gargalha ao coro de uma legião de dmônios): “You want to kill me! You want to kill me! Hell is beyond that door … The living dead!” é um dos momentos mais aterrorizantes e perturbadores que já presenciei em um filme.

Entretanto, muitos pontos fracos do roteiro são visíveis. Furos enormes que deixam alguns fatos importantes com pouca ou nenhuma explicação (como qual seria o envolvimento de alguns personagens importantes nos rituais de bruxaria, o destino de outros e a real motivação dos que veneravam a “Mãe dos Suspiros”). Porém, isso acaba sendo o de menos dentro desta obra.

Suspiria pode ser tida como a essência da contribuição do Argento para o cinema: a predominância da atmosfera sobre o conteúdo. Todavia, a força das imagens que ele nos passa é tamanha que até mesmo o roteiro, um dos pontos-chave de um filme, e as atuações chegam a ser, em dados momentos, irrelevantes. E conseguir isso é um mérito de poucos. Somente gênios (e doentes) como Dario Argento têm esse dom.

5/5

Suspiria (Idem) – 1977, Itália/Alemanha. Dir.: Dario Argento. Elenco: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé, Barbara Magnolfi, Susanna Javicoli, Eva Axén, Rudolf Schundler, Udo Kier, Alida Valli, Joan Bennett, Jacopo Mariani, Giuseppe Transocchi, Renato Scarpa, Margherita Horowitz, Fulvio Mingozzi, Franca Scagnetti, Serafina Scorceletti.