Sigh

So, now we've seen Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977). It's the only Argento movie we've seen, and I think we may be happy to keep it that way.

It starts with Jessica Harper, an American dancer, going to a school in Germany. She arrives in the middle of a storm, just in time to see another girl run out of the school and into the night. Harper bangs on the door, but nobody will let her in. As she drives off in the taxi to find a hotel, she sees the girl running through the forest.

The girl winds up at a friend's apartment in a very de Stijl building. She takes a bath, but an unseen figure grabs her, ties a noose around her neck and throws her out a window into the courtyard. Her friend, who has been running through the building trying to get help, looks up to the skylight covering the foyer, just in time to see the body on the noose come hurtling through it, killing her with glass and metal.

This first big kill ends with the black and white checkerboard floor sprayed with red blood - the kind of abstract, super-saturated shot that he is known for. We will see a lot more fashionable violence in this movie. Also, a lot more violent violence. A slow throat-slitting and a graphic disembowelment, for example (at least as far as I could tell, peaking through my fingers). I’m pretty sure we won’t be watching any more of Argento’s “Mother” trilogy.

It’s too bad, because there is a lot of striking (but not horrifying) visuals here. The atmosphere of languid decadence and menace in the dance studio is interesting. Harper collapses in the studio and is moved more or less against her will from an apartment (the one the murders took place in) to the school proper. She is also fed a controlled diet with a glass of drugged wine. Will she shake off these malign influences.

Sure. And it’s pretty great. Just a little too much gross violence for us.

Also, the electronic score by Euro-program band Goblin is just OK - did not make us fans.