Suspiria [DVD] [1976]

Remastering A Classic, 24 Jan 2010

By 

S. Hawken “Spencer Hawken” (Cheltenham, UK) –

  

There was a time when the ultimate baptism of fire for any future partner would revolve around how they reacted when I showed them Suspiria. If they could stomach Suspiria without the exclamation “you’re really f**ked up!” that the relationship had any chance of surviving. For the uneducated Suspiria is a harsh vivid depiction for horror, for the more educated it was probably one of the tamer movies I had in my collection.

Dario Argento’s 1977 horror movie has always been one of the greatest assaults on the senses of any horror movie. With its lavish sets, vivid ear trembling Goblin soundtrack, and gross out prolonged gore; Suspiria is a sceptical on any level. To look at it is a thing of beauty, even if the story itself suffers some flaws. The 21st Century has bought something new to visual entertainment, something that Argento’s spectacular movie was made for, the wonder that is high definition viewing.

The movie itself surrounds a young American woman who travels to an acclaimed school of dance in Europe. Susie Banyon (Jessica Harper) is immediately offended by the German manners she encounters, the taxi driver is rude and insensitive and her expected warm greeting at the school is just a locked door. But Susie witnesses something, a strange series of events, these events lead to the death of one of her potential classmates in a highly unusual manner. Susie’s stay is drenched in further unsociable behaviour, and more equally disturbing deaths. In a strange country, and the talk of witchcraft banded about like it’s perfectly acceptable, Susie’s stay slowly gets worse.

In 1977 and for considerable years after, few movies had quite the same effect as Suspiria. The movie clearly put Italian cinema on the map in respect of horror, and gave the very stagnant horror styling’s of American and British horror a much needed wake up call. This was a movie that ticked all the right boxes and gave horror movies across the world something they craved, a really good scare. Its amazing to think but it took over two decades for American cinema to catch up, now the sort of terror you receive in Suspiria is commonplace in cinema, but well ahead of its time.

Suspiria is quite unpleasant in its character depictions, everyone in the movie including the character of Susie is fairly unlikeable, all very blunt and to the point, with appalling attitudes and beliefs. The main negative result of this is that when characters die you are not particularly bothered. Its not all bad it’s the unpleasantness that also gives the movie part of its charm.

For me personally the most impressive aspects of the movie are its style and soundtrack. Argento goes out of his way to deliver some of the most impressive looking architecture you could ever wish to see on film, the colours are so vivid, the structures so over the top and overstated. The décor for the movie is incredibly “loud”, from the bright red exteriors, to the lavish blue velour interiors; you really would be incredibly hard to find something that looks anything like this.

Onto the movies score, performed and composed by Italian Prog. Rock band Goblin. The wonder of their score is that you do not need to see the movie, only hear the music to get a glimpse of exactly how terrifying the movie is. Suspiria is a movie that’s main mechanism is its score, from heavy pounding electric guitars to haunting vocal whispers. Never has a movie been so well served by its soundtrack, take the soundtrack away and you have less than half a movie.

From a special effects perspective Argento delivers something quite spectacular, victims are slowly bleed on razor sharp wire, throats are ripped out, and hearts stabbed in ripped open chest cavities. While the blood effects are over the top, they are representative of the movies other vivid colours. Like the depiction of horror Argento was decades ahead of more popular horror cinema, to the extent that it has taken all this time for English speaking movies to catch up.

I wont lie, the acting needs a little to be desired, and its not even the fault of dubbing. It could however be on the part of Argento’s direction however, trying to take the viewer on a more ghostly experience by making the performances a little less animated than they should. You don’t quite get the impression that a couple of the characters are fighting for their lives, and this is in some ways an inexcusable flaw.

Praise put aside Suspiria does have a bit of a problem, and that is after an initial viewing it never quite lives up to the excitement of the first viewing (unlike a lot of other Argento movies), personally I have found Suspiria quite difficult to watch the whole way through for a few years now. It still impresses with its gore, overwhelms you with its soundtrack but needed something new to take it forward. That “new” is the wonder of Blu-ray, the experience is like a…

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 Comments (4)

Glass 80% full, 20% empty, 29 Jan 2010

By 

Mr. N. A. Harrison (Nottingham, UK.) –

  

Arguably the best current version of Suspiria in the world. Unfortunetly it uses the same source materials as the much maligned Italian and French dvd versions, meaning that some sequences are in entirely the wrong colour scheme (ie, the finale). The sound is certainly fixed, with music cues and sound effects re-instated and dialogue levels corrected from the seriously flawed Lustig supervised Anchor Bay remix. A few scenes have contrast levels that are way too high (Olga’s hand manages to make Casper the friendly ghost look like he has a sun tan). And at one point, not just the academy, but the pavement and even Daniel and his dog are all a uniform shade of very bright pink. Hmmm. The commentary by Newman and Jones is excellent, and highly recommended. Unfortunetly I can’t say the same for the featurettes which add very little to the package. You’ve either heard it all before, or didn’t particularly want to hear it in the first place. Worth upgrading for hardcore fans but by no means a definitive release…

btw I should mention that this bd is locked to region B.

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