Suspiria (1977)

Tagline: “The only thing more terrifying than the last 12 minutes of this film are the first 92”
UK Running Time: 95 minutes

Film Quality: 5/5
Gore Content: 3.5/5
Entertainment Value: 5/5
Originality: 4.5/5

Introduction

Italian director Dario Argento had already cemented a reputation for audacious and flamboyant set pieces, dubbed ‘The Italian hitchcock’ in many quarters. Up until 1977 his output had mainly been in the ‘Giallo’ sub-genre, a form of whodunit thriller renowned for their black gloved killers, violent murders and femme fatales. Having perfected the art with the masterful ‘Deep Red’ he was on the lookout for something different and entered into a relationship with his ‘Deep Red’ star Daria Nicolodi. She imparted a tale that her grandmother used to tell about an art school where the teachers dabbled in black magic, this formed the backbone of his next feature, his first full on horror film and arguably one of the greatest, most artistically beautiful horror films of all time.

In a nutshell

An American student, Suzy Bannion, arrives at a prestigious dance academy in Germany at a time when one of the students is murdered. Strange things begin to happen to Suzy and she starts to suspect that the teachers, particularly the mysterious director, may not be what they seem and that a coven of witches are behind the strange goings on.

So what’s good about it?

Despite his films’ reputation for lacking any kind of narrative structure his films up to this point had been relatively well constructed and densely scripted. ‘Suspiria’ goes completely the other way with a tadpole of a plot and an almost complete abandon of logic that creates a dream like atmosphere and a world where cause and effect go out of the window. The nightmarish scene where one of the girls, Sarah, is pursued by an unseen assailant and jumps, despite looking first, into a room filled only with coiled wire is a perfect example of this. What is the room for? How did she get there? What has happened to the geography of the building? The scene is there purely to construct that most nightmarish of concepts of being chased but not being able to get away.

He’d already given us some fine gore set pieces in ‘Deep Red’ but this freeform structure allowed his imagination to run wild and he doesn’t disappoint. The opening ten minutes is as close to perfection as a horror film has got as Suzy is plunged into a foreign land, segueing almost seamlessly into a chase scene involving another girl and what, in retrospect, must have been a witch (watch out for the shadow cast on a tree trunk as lightning strikes). What follows as the girl’s head is forced through a broken window, stabbed multiple times, wrapped up in wire cord, pushed through a glass ceiling and hung from the neck defies all logic but is devilishly frightening. Those otherworldly eyes that stare at her through the darkness on the other side of the window, her look of abject terror, that terrifying Goblin score combines to incredible effect and sets the tone for the rest of the film.

That Goblin score is legendary, even in horror folklore, and any remake will struggle to live up to the original, partly because of this highly uusual music. Goblin had already scored Argento’s ‘Deep Red’ but the band, under the supervision of Argento who insisted on the soundtrack being recorded before the film was made, went far more experimental with ‘Suspiria’. The opening theme ‘Suspiria’ is a magical, fairy tale style piece that wouldn’t be out of place in a Harry Potter film whereas the crashing sounds and sudden, piercing shrills of ‘Sighs’ sounds terrifying on its own but, when paired with the visuals including a maniacal witch repeatedly stabbing a defenceless girl is utterly shattering. Argento would play the music loudly whilst filming key scenes (he always overdubbed the films afterwards) to ensure the mood of the film was captured by the score.

The use of colour is very bold, Argento sought out IB stock that was considered outmoded and used different filters to create different colourful effects. Just note the incredible red tone that he bathes Suzy in as the airport doors open, a very unnatural colour and a palette that remains that way for the world she has just entered…her journey to the academy sees the rain change colour several times! Also, the scene in the dance academy when they are forced to sleep in the hall, the lights are turned off and beyond the curtains there is a deep red glow where the witches reside. It’s always the dark, indoor scenes that are bathed in red, outside, including the supernatural attack by what may or may not be a statue that has come to life, appear more naturalistic. In a sense the red represents the presence of the witches, danger, violence and the supernatural in an enclosed space from which there is no escape. It’s an incredible look, the appearance of which resonates with how you might imagine a dark fairytale (just watch ‘A Company of Wolves’ for a perfect example) to look.

It’s a cliché but the entire film is one great work of art. You can forgive the completely incoherent plot, with so much emphasis on perfecting the visual aspect of the film, any focus on plot would be a distraction and you wouldn’t necessarily have the power that the film possesses. Argento is known for his dislike, or perhaps disregard of actors, seeing them as just another prop that he can use to create his vision and far more care has been used in lighting the characters, positioning them in just the right place and violently murdering them than in the words they are given to recite. It takes a truly visionary filmmaker to pull that off to the extent that he managed with ‘Suspiria’, a feat he would continue throughout the 80s.

And what about the bad?

Modern audiences may struggle with some of the terrible acting and dialogue. Some of it was almost intentional. Argento’s original script was for the school to be for children but he was advised to up the age of the characters, such violent images involving children would not go down well with audiences. He reconsidered this but kept much of the dialogue the same. As a consequence many of the exchanges (stuck out tongues, fighting over ballet shoes, etc…) come across as childish. I’ve already said that it was tradition in Italy to film without sound and overdubbing the dialogue later. This gives the effect of lips flapping about like a rubber ring in rapids whilst the English language dub is read, monotone, by another actor or actress. Most of the actors used their native tongues so there was a variety of different languages played out during each scene, the players simply reciting the lines they were given. You’re never going to get Oscar winning performances that way!

I like the surreal nature of the film, I love that cause and effect doesn’t necessarily apply and I don’t care that it’s highly unlikely that a faithful guide dog would rip out his master’s throat and start to eat his tonsils. But then the film is aimed at me! This approach isn’t likely to please fans of the latest ‘Friday the 13th’ remake which is why the idea of a ‘Suspiria’ remake concerns me. The sole aim of a remake is to make money out of the name or notoriety of its origin, if the aim was to improve it then they’d remake ‘Ghoulies’. I’ve got nothing against remakes per se but if it’s aimed at the lowest common denominator who then want to see the original then they’ll be sorely disappointed. I would hate for this masterpiece of surreal cinema to be diluted by a tame and lacklustre remake…only time will tell.

Any themes?

Considering Argento has often been accused of misogyny this is a film full of very strong women and very weak or impaired men. All of the women are in positions of power whilst the men are subservient to say the least. The most prominent male character in terms of stature is blind so literally can’t see what’s in front of his very eyes (that the place is run by a coven of witches) whilst Pavlo is a lumbering, simple mute who doesn’t speak the language so is freely insulted by everyone around him without any clue.

As with many Argento films, mirrors, windows and glass play a big part in proceedings. Our first encounter with the supernatural is when Pat sees the glowing eyes through the window before being thrust through it. She then falls through a glass ceiling, impaling her flatmate with a large piece of falling glass. Udo Kier’s character has a stunning conversation with Suzy as the camera zooms slowly in on them…just as you think Argento’s camera is going for the extreme close up it goes between them, instead focusing on their reflection in the large window on the background as the conversation about witches in folklore plays out. ‘Bad luck is not caused by broken mirrors, but broken minds’ he says via that reflection.

As mentioned before there are very strong allusions to fairy tales. The central premise is based on a tale that Daria Nicolodi’s (who has an uncredited cameo as one of the ladies in the airport) Grandmother used to tell her, a bedtime story to chill the heart! There is a ‘once upon a time’ style opening narration (the original Italian soundtrack features Argento himself as the narrator!) to set the scene and let’s be honest…witches play a big part in many fairy tales, although they’re perhaps not so graphically gory! Suzy is drugged, how about a nod to ‘Sleeping Beauty’ there, she is the third of three girls to be terrorised but survives by the hair on her chinny chin chin and there’s the theme running through it of grown up authority figures out to cause harm to the youngsters. The Brothers’ Grimm would have been proud!

Release history

‘Suspiria’ got a bit of a raw deal in its early years from the BBFC, categorised as a ’Stage 3 Video Nasty’ which meant that it was liable to seized and destroyed. Its sequel ‘Inferno’ was a stage 2 nasty with ‘Tenebrae’ put on the DPP list outright!

The BBFC demanding 15 seconds of cuts to the violent death of the blind man and a brief 2 second cut to the scene involving Sara and the coiled wire. When Thorn EMI brought out an uncut version on VHS in 1982 they withdrew it themselves, presumably worried about the violent nature of the film in the video nasties panic. They resubmitted it and the inevitable cuts were forced upon them, it lost a total of 1m13s with much of the opening murder removed, including the infamous stab to the heart and pretty much the entirety of the blind man losing his throat.

Entertainment in Video restored some of those cuts in 1990 but was still missing a good 34 seconds, again it was those same two scenes which caused the BBFC problems but it finally got a certified uncut release in 1998 (missing a few seconds from the opening scene, possibly due to print damage) when Nouveaux brought it out.

Anchor Bay then released a special edition two disc DVD, we’re just waiting for someone to bring out the truly mind-blowing remastered blu ray version that it badly deserves.

Cultural Impact

‘Suspiria’ is generally regarded as a masterpiece of horror cinema and no discerning gorehound should be without it. It appears in many critics’ top ten lists and influenced, and continues to influence many horror films in terms of its colour palette and outlandish style. That it continues to wow audiences 40 years on is astonishing for what is essentially an arthouse oddity but, despite the BBFC’s best efforts to treat it as a piece of trash cinema (honestly…why didn’t they just draw a moustache on the Mona Lisa whilst they were at it!) it receives high critical acclaim and continues to be reappraised.

Argento followed it up with the second of his Three Mothers trilogy, the equally surreal ‘Inferno’ which retains the nightmarish, fairy tale quality of ‘Suspiria’ but suffers slightly from some jarring geographical shifts, and carried on an incredible run of films with ‘Phenomena’, ‘Tenebrae’, ‘Opera’ and the good half of ‘Two Evil Eyes’ (sorry Mr Romero but you weren’t really trying there were you) to fully deserve his moniker of ‘The Master of Horror’. That ‘Suspiria’ was his first attempt at all out horror, yes there were elements of the supernatural in ‘Deep Red’ but it is essentially a giallo thriller, makes it all the more impressive.

Final Thoughts…

I can’t think of a more beautiful piece of horror cinema, and there have been many good ones. There is colour and style oozing out of every frame which, combined with a unique score and some of Argento’s most ferociously powerful and frightening images adds up to an unforgettable experience. It’s long been a desire of mine to see it on the big screen and perhaps, with the big budget Hollywood remake coming, it may get a limited release to provide that opportunity because it must be an extraordinary assault on the senses. Until then I’ll have to appreciate it for what it is, a majestic piece of cinema that is a testament to Argento’s ability to innovate and astound.

Memorable Quote

Dr Mandel: “Bad luck isn’t brought by broken mirrors, but by broken minds.”

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘Inferno’, ‘A Company of Wolves’, ‘Amer’, ‘Autopsy (2008)