Skip to main content

31 Days of Horror Movies: Suspiria


There's really no easily cogent way to prep you for our 6th horror film of the month, so we're just going to dive right in....


Suspiria

I first saw this movie a few years ago, during the month of October, when the Art Theater here in Champaign was screening horror films every weekend leading-up to Halloween. This was during the same month that they screened Peter Jackson's chintzy classic Dead Alive (aka Braindead, more to come on that later in the month). Much like Jackson's quirky feature, Suspiria stood out among the month's offerings, though I'll be damned if I could make head or tail of it.

Ostensibly, Suspiria is about Suszy (Jessica Harper), a young ballet student who arrives at a ballet school in Germany, only to find out that it is run by witches. But Suspiria is so much more than its straightforward plot would suggest. It's kind of a trippy, haunted house-like experience, which much saturated color, quick scares, creeping unease, and an overall far-out vibe (no doubt helped by the soundtrack, produced by the band Goblin).

After viewing Suspiria, it made me want to seek out more films by director Dario Argento (especially the next two in his The Three Mothers trilogy). Alas, it has not yet occurred. Argento's style is definitely one you have to be in the mood for. It's not much of a pastiche of the horror movie genre. That makes it fairly unique and memorable, but also a tad inaccessible, depending on your frame of mind.



Labels:

Comments

  1. Dan JOctober 6, 2012 at 2:34 PM

    I think of the three films in Argento's "series" I prefer Inferno. His films are definitely not what the general US horror movie audience expects.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yesterday's Restaurants

The local newspaper has a feature from one of Champaign-Urbana's most legendary restaurateur's, John Katsinas, on what his favorite area restaurants were that have now since closed (or will soon be closing).  It's a nice little read, and has made me stop and think about the restaurants that have come and gone that have left an indelible (and edible) impression on me throughout the years. Here we go....
Post a Comment
Read more

Watching The Hours

A Twitter friend named Paula has asked for folks to submit ideas for a blog-a-thon about what we think will be the classic films of the future. In other words, what relatively recent movies (namely, from the 21st century), do we think will be considered classics in the decades to come, possibly airing on such venerable stations as Turner Classic Movies ? While a number of films come to mind for such a category, one in particular stood out from the rest, and thus is my entry for Paula's blog-a-thon.
5 comments
Read more

She's Madonna

Today we're going to talk about something very important. We're going to talk about Madonna. "Madge," as she's affectionately known around the gay scene, has been making music for over thirty years. I grew up with her songs, many of them pop classics. In recent years, it can be arguably said that her popularity has waned a bit. During the past decade, Madonna has put out seventeen singles. Of those, three have charted in the US Top 40. Ten Failed to chart at all on the Billboard Hot 100. We now have at least one possibility offered as to why Madge's chart power is waning: Ageism. At least, that's what Diplo (just, Diplo), a producer of some of the tracks off her latest album, thinks . I know it's difficult to be objective about something you've worked on -- whether you were the producer or the artist -- but, as a listener/fan, I have to say that Madonna's most recent work has simply not been that good. Still, we'll hear what ...
Post a Comment
Read more