31 Days of Halloween: Day 1

Poster of Black Sunday, if you couldn't tell.

I have decided that with the plethora of free time allotted by being unemployed, I will attempt the 31 Days of Halloween Movies this October.  The rules are simple: watch a horror film every day during the month of October.  However, I read this as AT LEAST one movie a day, so I plan to have some big purges on occasion.  I did start yesterday, but am doing my first post today, October 2nd. 

I also couldn't really wait for October, so I pre-gamed during the last weekend(ish) of September.  During those few days I watched the following films:

-IT Part 1 & 2 (1990) Directed: Tommy Lee Wallace
-Altered States (1980) Director: Ken Russell
-Black Sunday (1960) Director: Mario Bava
-The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) Director: Mario Bava
-Blood and Black Lace (1964) Director: Mario Bava
-Deep Red Director (1975) Director: Dario Argento
-Tenebre (1982) Director: Dario Argento

If you couldn't tell, I was in the mood for Italian horror films.  That's how I plan on starting off October, with a wave of Italian horror films, and I wanted to get a warmup/some background on the country's films.  Many of the films I plan on watching will be first time viewings (all of the above but Deep Red were), and I look at this as sort of a learning experience.  I plan to then pass those learnings to the three people who read this blog.  Go us.

Italian Horror

The late 1950s to the early 1990s is sometimes referred to as "The Golden Age" of Italian horror films.  Of the early directors, the most highly regarded is Mario Bava.  Over the course of his career he worked as a director, screenwriter, special effects artist and cinematographer, often times within a single film.  Black Sunday was one of the last great Gothic horror films before he moved onto films that would help lay the groundwork for the later slasher films.  Specifically, he formed the template for what is known as Italian Giallo films.

His movies The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace are considered to be the earliest examples of the Giallo genre, and where many of the genre's tropes originated.  Some of these include a series graphic murders, the murderer being shown as a masked figure of some sort, and the plot revolving around whodunit mystery structure.  The term "giallo" comes from the Italian word for "yellow," which was the color of the covers of a series of cheap paperback mystery novels, back in the day.

The most famous and well regarded filmmaker of the Giallo genre is Dario Argento.  His films are famous for their stunning visuals and elaborate death scenes.  So far I chosen to watch two of his best Giallo films, Deep Red and Tenebre.  Of the two, Deep Red is most often cited as Argento's greater film, and I would agree, although Tenebre was enormously entertaining as well.  All this, however, was to prepare me for the first film of the month, Suspiria (1977).

Suspiria (1977) Directed: Dario Argento

Still from Suspiria

Before I begin, please watch this:

Is that a trailer, or what?

Most conversations about Argento lead to weather Suspiria or Deep Red is his best film.  When I recently watched Deep Red it was my second viewing, and this time the original Italian version versus the truncated English one I saw when I was younger.  I enjoyed this second viewing of Deep Red much more, and seeing it on blu-ray was pretty spectacular.  It is also worth noting that while Deep Red is a Giallo film, Suspiria is a supernatural horror film, which makes the two quite different experiences.  With all that said, I still think I prefer Suspiria (this was my fourth time seeing it), and I will now go on to why I think it is a horror masterpiece.   

Suspiria's story is pretty simple, and to many, doesn't actually matter; it's more about the visual experience.  For those who do care, the film follows an American girl named Suzy Bannion who travels to Germany to study at a famous dance studio.  Lots of people die, she investigates, and finds out the secret of the dance academy.  The end.

This film is an art director's and cinematographer's wet dream.  Just take a gander at that still above. The entire 92 minutes is loaded with one gorgeous shot after the other.  Suspira was actually one of the last films to be shot using Technicolor, and being shot with that way makes all of the colors are highly exaggerated, especially red (which plays a strong motif throughout the film, for obvious reasons).  What I find most fun and exciting about the film, is that it combines these beautiful compositions with brutal images of death.  The result is an interesting "conflict of morality" in the viewer where one finds what's on screen to be aesthetically pleasing, while the content of the frame is horrific.  Here is a good example:

Pretty.

This is not the only Argento film to do this.  Many of them do, including Deep Red, but Suspiria, I think, executes it the best and to the fullest potential.

Still from Deep Red

Another standout quality of the film is its score, composed by the progression rock band, Goblin, with Argento's collaboration.  What I like about this score, and its usage in the film, is that when it comes on, it goes full blast.  It becomes kind of unnerving just by how relentlessly the sound plays during a scene.  I remember during the first time saw this movie, how struck I was by the opening scene when Suzy is walking out of the airport.  The music sharply cuts in and out with the camera switching from POV to tracking shot.  In doing this, the music almost takes on a sort of mysterious quality that not only foreshadows the tale to come, but also creates a slight unnerving feeling in the viewer.  Goblin also did the scores for Deep Red and Tenebre, and are each wonderful in their own right.

As a piece of art and entertainment, it's hard to top Suspiria.  The one flaw in it, in my eyes, comes from some of the dubbing.  A few of the minor characters sound really bad, and take me out of the moment.  (Side note: All Italian movies are/were recorded without sound and then dubbed over)  Other than that small complaint, this is one of the best horror films a fan of the genre could watch.