by: Shaun Anderson
Posted on 01.10.10 in All Horror Films > Mystery > Supernatural

If 1977’s hallucinogenic and hyperbolic shocker Suspiria was as close as Italian director Dario Argento could get to a nightmare on celluloid, then the sequel, 1980’s Inferno is even more difficult to pin down because of its disavowal of any recourse to logic. Although Inferno continues the exploration of the mythical Three Mothers, it manages to have an illogical internal structure all of its own. This is Argento’s most unique production. Inferno takes narrative incoherence …

by: Shaun Anderson
Posted on 12.08.09 in All Horror Films > Giallo

After the critical and commercial failure of Dario Argento’s historical comedy The Five Days of Milan (1973), he returned chastened to the familiar terrain of the giallo. This was a territory that Argento had helped to both popularise and innovate with such trend setting suspense filled films as Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), The Cat O’ Nine Tails (1971) and the obscure Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971). For his fourth and ultimately defining entry into …

by: Letitia
Posted on 11.24.09 in All Horror Films > Giallo

Dario Argento’s masterpiece, Suspiria, relies almost completely on atmosphere—color, music, and setting—to create a sense of horror. Of course, there is gore (this is an Argento movie, after all), but the gore has a stylistic, high-contrast, hyper-real quality that does the opposite of what gore in movies usually does. Suspiria’s violence doesn’t make the viewer want to turn away—it makes the viewer stare, guilty that they do not even want to look …

by: sprouticus
Posted on 11.10.09 in All Horror Films > Monster > Supernatural > Zombie

Lamberto Bava, Dario Argento, and the demons may be back, but it’s just not quite the same this go around. For lack of a better term, I have sort of a love-hate relationship with Demons 2. On the one hand it successfully taps into the style, make-up, and mayhem of the original; but on the other hand it has almost none of the gore or bite that made that film so much …