Suspiria

Note: This is the second of five reviews chronicling the masterpieces of Italian horror movies. The preceding review covered Mario Bava’s Black Sunday.

I’m just gonna get this out of the way: Dario Argento’s 1977 career-defining film, Suspiria, is my favorite horror film of all-time. There. Now you know. You’re forewarned. Don’t be surprised when I sing its praises.

I come from a school of horror fandom that believes you don’t know shit from Shinola if you haven’t seen the Euro-horror classics. In many cases, the Europeans put American films to shame. Throughout the late sixties, and all the way up until the early eighties, Italy had an unbelievably powerful industry built up around the horror film. Studios invested truck loads of money–giving directors like Argento virtual free-reign behind the camera. Audiences lapped it up. Gore was a cultural phenomenon, violence an obsession. And when all was said and done, one movie stood above all others as being the true representative of what the hey-day of Euro-horror was all about.

That film is Suspiria.

In one of the most beautiful and terrifying opening sequences ever set to film, Argento begins telling the story of Suzy Banyon. Ms. Banyon, the voice-over narration tells us, has just arrived in Germany from New York. A student of ballet, Suzy has enrolled at the academy of Freeborge. Rigorous dance routines and tedious course work would have been difficult enough, but the academy of Freeborge harbors some dark secrets–namely that it’s a front for a coven of ancient witches.

Argento is never a director who cares about coherent plots, lucid dialogue or sensible endings. If anything, Argento’s priorities in making his films are about creating as much atmosphere as possible. The sets of his films are lavishly colored and decorated–sort of like psychedelic visions of hell. Argento is also famous for his inclusion of sensory violence. Characters are mutilated or killed in ways which we can relate to; like having their heads slammed into the corner of a mantle, or burning their palms on elevator cables as they freefall down the elevator shaft.

The Italian progressive-rock band Goblin recorded Suspiria’s soundtrack under Argento’s direction and it remains one of the most distinct–and truly unnerving–theme songs in the history of horror. John Carpenter’s score to Halloween (itself an amazing piece of music) was directly influenced by Goblin’s work on Suspiria.

An absolute original no matter how you look at it, Suspiria is the rarest of horror films–a movie that explores the paranormal and otherworldly while never falling prey to conventional plotlines or generic scares. Its influence is nearly all-encompassing. Put simly, this is the best of the best.