Top 100: Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)
"Suzie, do you know anything about witches?"
A young American dancer, Suzie Bannion, joins a famous ballet academy in Freiburg, Germany. As soon as she arrives, bizarre events begin to take place: Students are murdered in a grisly manner, and there are maggots. Maggots? Maggots! MAGGOTS, MAGGOTS, FILTHY BLOODY MAGGOTS. There are strange forces at work here... And did I mention the maggots?
After collapsing in ballet class, Suzie is confined to the school's lodgings, where the staff can 'keep an eye on her'. Here, she has 'an experience', possibly a psychic one, after which she begins to discover the sinister secrets of this ballet school of blood!
The original idea for Suspiria was concieved by Argento and his then girlfriend Daria Nicolodi. Nicolodi has fairly specific dreams about what should happen in the film, and both her & Argento wanted Suspiria to be a dreamlike fairy-tale horror. The school/academy in the film was based upon an actual school in Stuttgart, which still exists today. The Rudolf Steiner school was an independent school with no religious ties whatsoever (quite a feat back in 1919!), and was alleged to practise paganism, Satanism & black magic! Riiigghhht. Today, there are hundreds of these Rudolf Steiner, or Waldorf schools worldwide. Just thought I'd mention that (Cue Goblin Music, or at the very least Tubular Bells).
The early version of the script had the girls of the academy to be between the ages of 8 - 10, but the producers weren't happy with the girls being so young, especially as the film would include scenes of grizzly horror. In order to avoid any possibility of the film being banned, the ages of the girls was changed to 16-20 years of age. However, Argento didn't update the script accordingly, which explains the juvenile, child-like dialogue between the students of the academy.
From the ultra-technicolour opening, a 14 minute sight and sound extravaganza of terror, you realize that Supiria is something special... something very, very unique. In all my years of watching movies, I believe that nothing can be compared to Supriria, not even any other film by Argento! I love his earlier film Profondo Rosso, but in turns of visual style and originality, it's not even close to what Suspiria has to offer. On a side-note, Argento credits Disney's Snow White as a key influence!
Jessica Harper is good in the lead role 'Suzie Bannion', which, for some reason, is a name that always makes me giggle. Her character is supposed to be a Snow White type of character... a semi-psychic one, no less! Harper is also in another favourite of mine: My favourite year.
Legendary actresses Joan Bennett & Alida Valli also make appearances... Valli is magnificent as the hardened, ball-busting Ms Tanner.
Suspiria was a coming together of talents at their most creative: Argento as director (check out the interior scene with the light bulb), Nicolodi as the co-scriptwriter and original idea-merchant; lurid, exuberant cinematography by Luciano Tovoli, and an amazing full-on mentalist soundtrack by Italian band Goblin, which stands up as one of the best soundtracks ever concocted.
Suspiria was part of a planned trilogy entitled The Three Mothers. Mater Suspiriorum is the mother of sighs (taken from Suspiria de Profundis aka "sighs from the depths" by English writer Thomas De Quincey), Mater Tenebrarum is the Mother of shadows/darkness (which was Argento's 1980 film Inferno), and Mater Lachrymarum, The Mother of Tears, finally made some 30 years after Suspiria.
This movie features some heavily stylised hyper-violence, Hitchcokian camera angles, a pounding Goblin soundtrack, and a terrific conclusion. A horrific fairy-tale as well as a tremendous work of art, Suspiria is not only one of the best horror films ever made, it is also Argento's true masterpiece.
2017 saw the 40th anniversary of this gem, and to celebrate, multiple Blu-ray releases were made available. After many, many delays, the North-American release by Synapse finally made it to the shores of WorldWideGimp, via a hideously-overpriced steelbook edition. Actually, it was released around Christmas time, and I only got my copy on the 28th December! There's enormous debate on the interweb over which is the better version on the market, but after tests I believe the Synapse Blu-ray edition to be the best on the market. See the difference in picture quality below:
For sure, I don't want to watch this film in 'Green-Vision', so the European versions are considered inferior. If you can play Region A discs, then go Synapse! Also, the audio mix is bonkers on this version!
