Halloween is a sacred holiday to me. Christmas has the pretty lights, but Halloween has human skulls. No comparison, right?
During the recent pow-wow with Mr. Dan Dorman, he attested that the three top films of Italian director Dario Argento are:
- The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (L’Uccello dalle piume di cristallo) (1970)
- Deep Red (Profondo rosso, aka The Hatchet Murders) (1975)
- Suspiria (1977)
The only one I’ve seen is Suspiria, but that list sounds about right. Those first two movies are giallo, the origin for all the American slasher movies you may know, such as Friday the 13th (1980).
In France, American pulp fiction was published in these editions with black covers and thus became known as roman noir, which later led to the term film noir (literally, “black film”). Similarly, beginning in the late Twenties, the Mondadori publishing house put out cheap paperback editions of pulp fiction — at first, Italian translations of English-language books and then later the works of Italian authors (who would always use American pen names). The covers of these books were yellow, which translates as giallo. In the Sixties, giallo cinema started. (Learn more about the genre here.)
Anyway, Suspiria‘s a little different, more supernatural in tone. In fact, it’s much like a very lurid, violent fairy tale, about a girl that goes to attend a dance school that turns out to be run by witches. The use of color is incredible; really over-the-top and nightmarish.
The soundtrack is by the prog-rock group Goblin, who also did the soundtracks for other horror movies, including Deep Red and Dawn of the Dead (1978).
Much like the rest of Suspiria, the theme song is so garish, it has no reason to be so effective, but it sure is. Note the “la, la, la” section, which was (poorly) ripped off by Harry Manfredini for the score for Friday the 13th (ch-ch-ch-ch, hah-hah-hah-hah…). More recently, DJ/producer RJD2 remixed the song as “Weatherpeople.”
Goblin – Suspiria — BUY
RJD2 – Weatherpeople — BUY