Suspiria (1977)

"Suzy Banyon decided to perfect her ballet studies in the most famous school of dance in Europe. She chose the celebrated academy of Freeborge. One day, at nine in the morning, she left Kennedy airport, New York, and arrived in Germany at 10:40 p.m. local time."

A newcomer to a fancy ballet academy gradually comes to realize that the staff of the school are actually a coven of witches bent on chaos and destruction. 

Suspiria is an Italian horror film, directed by Dario Argento.  It was co-written by Argento and Daria Nicolodi, produced by Claudio and Salvatore Argento and stars Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Alida Valli and Joan Bennett.

There is probably not a lot more I can say about Suspiria that hasn't already been said or written.  The film just isn't on the lists of top horror movies of all time....it's on lists for the top movies of all time...period.  And yet, I had never seen it.  I saw it on lists and heard how good it was. Well the day came that I picked it up. And I was floored that my stupid ass had never taken the time to see it.  It's a marvelous piece of work.

Susie, do you know anything about... witches?

 There are several things that set this film apart from most. One is Argento's visual imagery. He sets scene after scene aglow with color and uses it to affect moods and feelings. Believe it or not Argento later said that he modeled the look of the film directly on Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs".  Snow White couldn't have made it through this film in one piece and those seven dwarfs would have been butchered quickly.  Every single frame of this film is incredibly lit and colorful.

The score in this film may be the most effective I've ever heard.   The soundtrack was composed and performed by Goblin. The main title theme was named as one of the best songs released between 1977 and 1979 in the book The Pitchfork 500: Our Guide to the Greatest Songs from Punk to the Present, compiled by influential music website Pitchfork.  The music works so well throughout the film helping set a mood of terror and dread.  Next on my agenda is picking up this soundtrack.

You wanted to kill Helena Markos! Hell is behind that door! You're going to meet death now... the LIVING DEAD!

 The one weak point in the film is the plot. It fact, it's very weak and some things are not really explained at all.  But it really doesn't matter because that's not the main thing here. Style and atmosphere are what's important to this film and the images it provides are not easily forgotten.  It has two incredibly brutal murder scenes that linger in your mind well after completing the film.  The opening double murder may be one of the most intense in the history of film.  This one scene makes the silly murders in today's horror teenie films look tame and amatuerish in comparison.  How can such a brutal murder be so stylishly filmed?

Acting in this film must have been difficult.  All the cast spoke in their native tongues. Yet the performances don't seem to suffer. I especially enjoyed Joan Bennett's performance.  It was obvious she was having a blast making this film and I loved her in the Dark Shadows TV series.  Sadly, this was her final film. Cult actress Jessica Harper has another nice performance and her character Suzy seems to be trapped in a nightmare.  They may be the best way to describe this film.  With the colors and intensity, it's like watching a most gruesome nightmare.

This is not a perfect film but it is without a doubt a horror masterpiece.  Every horror fan must see this film...period.  Don't be a dumb ass like me and wait. 

Kevin Booker

Trivia:
Joan Bennett's last feature film.

The first part (with Inferno and Mother of Tears) of a trilogy of films about the "Three Mothers". 

Director Dario Argento composed the creepy music with the band Goblin and played it at full blast on set to unnerve the actors and elicit a truly scared performance.

It is often incorrectly assumed that, to achieve the rich color palette, the film was shot using the outdated 3-strip Technicolor process. This is untrue. No film made after the mid-1950s was shot using this method. The film was instead shot on normal Eastman Color Kodak stock, then printed using the 3-strip Technicolor process, utilizing one of the last remaining machines. This issue has been confused somewhat by the fact that, on the 25th anniversary documentary featured in the 3-disc DVD set, a discussion of the printing process by cinematographer Luciano Tovoli was incorrectly followed by a diagram showing a 3-strip camera. 

Director Dario Argento's original idea was the ballet school would accommodate young girls not older 12. However the studio and producer (his father) denied his request because a film this violent involving children would be surely banned. Dario Argento raised the age limit of the girls to 20 but didn't rewrite the script, hence the naivety of the characters and occasionally childlike dialogue. He also put all the doorknobs at about the same height as the actress' heads, so they will have to raise their arms in order to open the doors, just like children.

The woman playing Helna Markos is not credited. According to Jessica Harper, the woman was a 90 year old ex-hooker Argento found on the streets of Rome. 

The voice heard whispering on the bizarre soundtrack by Goblin is that of Goblin band member Claudio Simonetti. Simonetti stated in interviews that much of what he whispers on the music score is just gibberish.

Dario Argento was inspired to make this film by stories of Daria Nicolodi's grandmother, who claimed to have fled from a German music academy because witchcraft was being secretly practiced there.

The films finale was inspired by a dream that co-writer Daria Nicolodi once had. In the dream Nicolodi said she had encountered an invisible witch and most bizarrely there was a panther in the room with her that suddenly exploded. The dream was written into the film, only in the film it's a porcelain panther that explodes - rather than the real panther that appeared in Nicolodi'

Star Jessica Harper said in interviews that the most frightening scene in the film for her was the grand finale where everything explodes and shatters around her as she flees the academy. Harper said that the rigged explosions where quite unnerving as they were placed close to her on the sets.

For the wide shots of the 'maggots' falling from the ceiling the crew would drop gains of rice down onto the actresses from above.

 The film was shot over four months.

Argento had cinematographer Luciano Tovoli watch Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to have him model the color scheme of that film for Suspiria. 

In an interview with star Jessica Harper, she said that many of the actors on set spoke different languages during shooting. According to Harper most either spoke Italian or German and it would make communicating difficult at times. However since the film would be dubbed for American release it was deemed not to be an issue during filming.