WITH that classic Italian psycho thriller Suspiria undergoing a recent and relatively superfluous reimagining at the hands of director Luca Guadagnino, it’s worth remembering just how great Dario Argento’s 1977 original really was.
Well, maybe great is too strong a word. With its fairly unhinged mood swings and wild psychedelic demeanour, perhaps unforgettable is a better way of describing it.
A riot of carefully arranged horror clichés, blood-crazed set pieces and thumping soundtrack noise, it’s the kind of film that practically defies you not to be entertained by its sheer over the topness.
Central to proceedings is the fresh-faced American ballerina Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) who is making her way to a famous ballet school deep in the heart of rural Germany. When she arrives by taxi a torrential rainstorm is battering the school and visibility is practically zero. Before she can fling her rain-soaked body through the entrance she is accosted by another girl who screams something at her before racing off into the grim and gruesome night.
As the night continues, a few fragmented words from that brief conversation keep recurring to Suzy as she tries to make sense of her welcome.
The next morning she is introduced to the old madam who runs the school and discovers that the screaming girl has officially vanished. A new friend Sara (Stefania Casini) confides in her that she feels something fishy is afoot and before you can say “Psychedelic Scooby Doo episode” the inquisitive Suzy is playing detective and uncovering a series of similarly weird disappearances at the school.
Plot-wise Suspiria feels like any tired old Italian Giallo thriller that might have propped up a Euro sleaze cinema from the early 60s onwards but what makes this slice of cult beauty apart from the crowd is the amazing atmosphere that director Argento and cinematographer Luciano Tovoli manage to create with such meagre material.
Deep, rich colours swim on the screen as characters lurch in and out of shadows to create a unique, often deeply unsettling, dream like state that really sticks in the mind.
Add to that the disconcerting musical squelches of Goblin on the soundtrack and it’s easy to see why this is a once seen, never forgotten 70s cinema experience. Those woozy visuals and brain-pounding sounds combine to shift what could have been a run-of-the mill detective tale into the realms of a full-blown psychological nightmare of a movie.
Alongside those super-stylish visuals and game-changing soundtrack noises, there’s a cast of internationally known, if often very wooden, actors and actresses like Alida Valli, Udo Kier and Renato Scarpo to enjoy. Tracking their bemusement as the film descends into wild hallucinatory madness is a joy in itself.
A trippy, spooky journey into cinematic lunacy, Suspiria marked a new high in Italian fantasy cinema when it was released in 1977. Dario Argento’s cult hero status was sealed forever within the walls of that bewitched dance school and no amount of needless remakes can ever take that away.
