Suspiria (1977)
HORROR-THON 2022 • HOUSE PARTY
10/10
DIRECTOR: Dario Argento
STARRING: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci
RELEASED: 1977
RUNTIME: 1 hour, 32 minutes
WATCH ON: Amazon, Tubi, The Roku TV Channel, Plex, Screambox, Midnight Pulp
SCARE LEVEL: High dread from start to finish
MAGGOTS: No.
The walls are red. The hallways are red. The light coming through the windows is red, blue, and toxic green. Suspiria looks like a jewelry box that is planning to kill you, and it’s one of my favorite movies of all time.
Suzy Bannion is an American ballet student who arrives at a prestigious dance academy in Germany on a stormy night. As she shows up, another student is running out into the rain, terrified.
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That student is dead before the end of the night, and in one of the most famous opening murders in horror.
The school’s instructors are strange. Students hear footsteps at night. A blind pianist and his dog end up on the wrong side of the faculty. Suzy keeps getting weirdly sleepy at dinner. Little by little, she figures out the academy is a front for something much older than ballet.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
This is a pure mood. Argento lets the plot be thin so the color, the sets, and the sound can run the show. Every room looks like a different nightmare. And the score. Goblin’s must is a mix of whispers, chimes, drums, and something that sounds like a witch breathing right into your ear. It’s the best horror score ever made, and I won’t be taking other opinions.
The one minus: maggots. There’s a scene where they rain from the ceiling into the girls’ dorm. I watched it through my fingers, and I will watch it through my fingers every time.
Sharp-eyed movie people: that’s Alida Valli as the stern instructor, Miss Tanner. She also played Louise, the assistant in Eyes Without a Face.
This is the first film in Argento’s “Three Mothers” trilogy. The next one, Inferno, is also on this year’s list.
FUN FACT FOR YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY
Luciano Tovoli was told to watch Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to model the color scheme after it. Also, Dario Argento deliberately wanted the opening mirror to be very shocking so it would undermine the audience’s expectations, and they wouldn’t know what was coming next.