Cast:
Leigh McCloskey (Mark Elliott), Irene Miracle (Rose Elliott), Eleonora Giorgi (Sara), Daria Nicolodi (Elise De Longvalle Adler), Sacha Pitoëff (Kazanian), Alida Valli (Carol), Veronica Lazar (The Nurse/Mater Tenebrarum), Gabriele Lavia (Carlo), Feodor Chaliapin Jr (Prof. Arnold/Dr. Varelli), Leopoldo Mastelloni (John), Ania Pieroni (the music student/Mater Lachrymarum), Paolo Paoloni (Music Teacher), and Fulvio Mingozzi (Taxi Driver) Directed by Dario Argento (#2461 - Suspiria)
Review:
Suspiria, as released in 1977, was a hell of a hit for 20th Century Fox when the States got it under "International Classics". Dario Argento and his partner Daria Nicolodi decided, well, it was only the first of a trilogy that clearly revolved around "The Three Mothers", which refers to a triumvirate of witches that deal in magic on a great scale to try and rule the world that took loose inspiration from Thomas de Quincey's collection of essays with Suspiria de profundis. Fox did co-finance the film along with Italian interests that saw a majority of filming in Rome, albeit with a brief amount of time spent in location shooting in New York. Mario Bava was hired to serve as a supervisor on the matte/maquette effects that saw him work for a few weeks (his son Lamberto served as an assistant director) on the condition by Bava himself to not receive credit (various descriptions of what he did and how it got done can be found here). Bava did a bit of second-unit work when Argento suffered a bout of hepatitis that knocked him to the point of doing work while lying on his back; Bava died of a sudden heart attack in April 1980 at the age of 65. The movie had a normal release in its native Italy in February 1980 but didn't get a normal American release due to management issues involving the studio (i.e. new management didn't care for the decisions made by old management) that instead saw it not released until 1986. John Carpenter was inspired by the film and what it did in its freedom in the face of narrative cohesion for what became Prince of Darkness [1987]. 27 years later in 2007, after years of planning (Nicolodi claimed they had done a script in the 1980s that wasn't utilized), Argento returned with the last witch film of the trilogy with Mother of Tears.
It's an odd little movie with the maneuvering required to make things stick with its strange plotting and atmosphere, but it works out more often than not. It starts, naturally, by telling you of a book called "The Three Mothers" that was written by an alchemist that tells you about evil sisters that rule the world in sorrow, tears, and darkness that live in separate houses around the world (Freiburg, Rome, and New York City, with an emphasis on the latter). Within a maze of water-filled ballrooms, weird gazing students, deadly pets, and a fiery climax that may or may not close things out with definitive flourish. Basements within odd antiques shops, a few neat deaths and plenty of visual curiosity to basically carry a movie that mostly is a trip through the nightmare scope. Comparing it with Suspiria is a futile exercise, mainly because one likes to switch around the lead focus (it takes a considerable amount of time to stick with McCloskey in its 107-minute runtime) that dances around logic but also happens to go further out in logic and also its sequences of gore, which probably sticks out the most with the guillotine. That, or either sequence spent in water (the scene with a sudden tease of a corpse or the other one where an attempted drowning leads to rats). It's a movie where you really can play the reveal of the "death card" for the climax and still have a crashing trick up your sleeve. Within the blues and reds is a film that goes for a game of throwing off the viewer and mostly succeeding with a hearty chuckle that might as well be the type of sleight of hand fit for watching maybe without thinking about the dialogue at all, as if it was a fever nightmare despite what happens with the ending. As a whole, Inferno is an infernal feature that dances through logic with plenty of flourish and nightmare qualities for an oddball experience of hokum and fun.
There were a few movies that we couldn't quite get to in 2026's 38 days of horror whether due to time or other unspecified reasons: Clayface, Other Mommy, Misery, Drag Me to Hell, Tenebrae (1982), Kalifornia, Popcorn, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, The Toolbox Murders, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, The Frighteners, Nomads, and 31. See ya later.
