Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria opens on Halloween, but only in limited theaters. Most people will have to wait and see Dakota Johnson’s unsettling dancing and Tilda Swinton’s prosthetic penis and Thom Yorke’s eerie soundtrack next month. But hey, there’s always the original Suspiria, directed by horror maestro Dario Argento and starring Jessica Harper, with a score from prog-rockers Goblin. The first part of the stylish “Three Mothers” trilogy (which a friend once accurately described as “some creepy sh*t”) has one of the great movie taglines: “The only thing more terrifying than the last 12 minutes of this film are the first 92.” That’s one of the first things that hooked Edgar Wright to Suspiria.
The Guardian asked five filmmakers, including Alice Lowe (Prevenge) and Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body), to name their favorite scary movie scenes. The Shaun of the Dead director answered the first 10 minutes of Argento’s Suspiria, which he called “one of the great set pieces in horror cinema.”
Most horror films start with a sense of normality, and then plunge you into the horror world at the end of the first act. But in Suspiria, everything is intensely sinister from the very start… As soon as American dancer Suzy Bannion (Harper) arrives at Munich airport, you’re brought into Argento’s world of expressionistic technicolour. Primary colours are pumped up, so things are immediately unsettling. Even the automatic doors feel ominous. When she gets into her taxi, you have extremely stylised shots of the rain and the colours outside. Argento creates the impression that the very country we’ve landed in is inherently evil. (Via)
Wright went on to list the nods to Suspiria in his own work, like the hooded killers in Hot Fuzz and the “Argento lighting” in Baby Driver, “where Jon Hamm is in the police car, you’ve got the red and blue lights — that was very deliberate. That hyperreal use of colour tells you that you’re entering a slightly fantastical dimension, which is something I took from Argento’s work.”
Also, his (sadly fake) trailer in 2007’s Grindhouse.
DON’T, but do go see Suspiria. Both versions.
(Via the Guardian)
