The process of writing and directing drives you to such extremes that it's natural to feel an affinity with insanity. I approach that madness as something dangerous and I'm afraid, but also I want to go to it, to see what's there . . . to embrace it. I don't know why, but I'm drawn.  
                                                      -Dario Argento
 
 

If you asked me how to say horror in Italian, I'd say "Argento."
In terms of films dealing with horror, suspense, or the macabre, Dario Argento has written thirty-eight, directed eighteen, composed the scores for two, and produced fourteen. Considered the most famous director in Italy, he's been labeled the Italian Alfred Hitchcock.

And talk about "keeping things in the family." Check out some of Dario's films and you'll see his daughters, Fiore Argento (actor) and Asia Argento (actor, director, writer), writer-producer, Claudio Argento, Dario's father, producer, Salvatore Argento, and Dario's wife, Daria Nicolodi (actor, writer). Even as a child, his first influence was his photographer-mother who took him on shoots. What to speak of his producer-father, who fed him film with their espresso. Also, due to a very early influence from Edgar Allan Poe, who Dario read as a child, you'll see Poe's fevered, hallucinatory visions reflected in the dreamlike quality of Dario's films. Or in Dario's own words: "Cinema is the dimension of dreams." 

With little formal education, Dario became a film critic for the Rome daily, Paese Sera. But after Sergio Leone paired Dario with Bernardo Bertolucci to write the screenplay for Once Upon a Time in the West (1967), Argento caught the eye of Goffredo Lombardo, head of an Italian film company and made his directing debut in 1970 with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. According to Dario, "Before my first day on my first film I had never set foot on a movie set but in theory I knew it all." (Maybe there's hope for me yet!)

Immediately, Dario Argento distinguished himself. His films were considered "giallo," meaning yellow, which in turn came from the yellow covers of the penny-dreadful horror/thriller paperbacks sold in Italy. Think Italian pulp fiction. His next films of significance were Cat O' Nine Tales (1971) with American actors James Franciscus and Karl Malden, and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), but Deep Red (1975) (I love the Italian name, Profondo Rosso) is where he became known for pushing the boundaries between thriller and horror. (The difference between thriller and horror will be something I will be discussing later in an article on film genres) What followed would be what some consider his breakout film, and the classic title most associated with the name Dario Argento. That film was Suspiria (1977).

When speaking of Suspiria, director, John Carpenter (Halloween 1978, The Fog 1980, The Thing 1982, Prince of Darkness 1987, and In the Mouth of Madness 1995 - you know the rest!) said he felt "trapped in a nightmare by Argento's use of color and vitality." He goes on to call it "an incredible work of art . . . ground breaking." Rock legend, Alice Cooper, calls the soundtrack for Suspiria, "music with an attitude . . . the sound of a true nightmare." And that it is. With a soundtrack by the Italian rock band, Goblin, it's the simplicity of the music that works. Rooted in progressive rock, it combines hisses and whispers with whines and screams for a truly nightmarish effect.

Suspiria involves a young American dancer, Suzy Bannon (played by Jessica Harper, who Argento discovered in Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise (1974)), who travels to Europe to join a famous ballet school. As she arrives, the camera turns to another young woman who appears to be fleeing from the school and is later gruesomely murdered. Suzy tries to settle in at the school, but hears strange noises and is troubled by bizarre occurrences tracing back to the murdered woman. She eventually discovers that the school is merely a front for a more sinister, supernatural organization for a story that is more mystery than monsters.

What becomes most apparent is Argento's style at the start of the film. Notice the red tint on Suzy and the passengers of a train going to the airport, followed by Exorcist-like musical bells, and a greeting by thunder and lightening. Soon the music amplifies with the spooky, hushed hisses and whispers, whines and screams. You know this girl is in trouble . . . and now Dario takes you with her to find out. Another thing I noticed was the abundance of water during the opening sequences. Water in a fountain, rain, water rushing down a drain. All signifying the flow of blood, an abundant amount of blood. What's interesting is he does this without showing any blood at all. But it's his visuals that strike our psyche. I remember Quentin Tarantino saying he had to make a decision in Reservoir Dogs: should he show Michael Madsen cutting off the cop's ear or not show it. After filming both versions, he went with not showing it. He felt the audience would find more terror imagining what was happening off screen. This isn't to say that some good old-fashioned blood spilling doesn't have its place. I certainly look for it in my taste for horror, but sometimes the subtle workings of connotation do have their place, if you know to look. 

And seeing these subtleties won't be difficult with Argento. Again, we get red in the color of buildings, in hallways, for curtains and walls. Throw in a weird looking servant, a vampish roommate, close-ups on red fingernails, and the clues "secret" and "iris," words spoken by the murdered girl, and you have one hell of a set up. Subtle, mysterious, and macabre, thus, the comparison to Hitchcock.

The story (Don't worry, I won't give away the actual plot.) continues with images of ballet dancers in a red room, an old crone cleaning a large, sharp, sparkling knife, characters running down red hallways with curtains dancing on wind, raining maggots, mysterious red lights glowing behind secret rooms, and, for those of us who do enjoy some blood with our horror, a dog ripping out a man's throat as the mystery of the ballet school unfolds with murder by barbed wire, slit throats, and a climax of eerie sounds, surrealistic sights, and haunting music. We finally learn the meanings of the two words uttered by the murdered girl and follow Susie through her nightmare as she uncovers the secrets hidden in the school.

Without the blood and gore, most American audiences have come to expect, Argento creates a nightmare vision on celluloid. As some have said about his style: No politics. No moralization. Just impressionism! Argento's style has been called fresh, daring, and wildly imaginative, with a mix of special effects, vivid color and virtuoso camera movement. Watch for the scene when the blind pianist walks his dog in the plaza. The setting. The music. The sound effects. The high angles. The long shot. And you'll see the art of film ala Argento.

His later films would go on to push the boundaries of movie violence. In Opera (1987), a girl has needles attached under her eyes so she can't close them to the horrors around her. A social comment? You be the judge. In another scene, a bullet fires through a keyhole into the eye of a peeper. In Two Evil Eyes (1990), Argento asked special effects artist, Tom Savini, to come up with bizarre methods for inflicting death. So, you get to watch Harvey Keital hoisted over a fifteen-foot stake that's imbedded in the ground, and dropped. The stake thrusts up through his opened mouth. I'll let you dwell on where the stake went in. In Trauma (1993), Piper Laurie is beheaded with a mechanical garrote (invented by Tom Savini) and her head roles along the floor calling out a man's name with each roll. 

But my personal favorites are Demons (1985), and Demons 2 (1986), written by Dario Argento, but directed by Lamberto Bava. Think Night of the Living Dead (1968) - Italian style. (Note: Argento co-wrote Dawn of the Dead (1978) with George Romero.) Demons involves two girlfriends who are given free passes to a late nigh movie at The Metropol theater where they meet two guys in the lobby, and we meet a wild assortment of characters. One female patron playfully dons a demon mask hanging on a motorcycle display in the lobby. The mask cuts her. He friends laugh, and everyone proceeds into the theater to watch the film.

Now we get a movie within a movie. We watch the audience watch a film about two couples discovering Nostrodamus' crypt in a cemetery. Of course, they open the crypt and discover a demon mask similar to the one we saw in the lobby. A guy tries the mask on and cuts himself. Sound familiar? The people in the audience begin to notice the similarities as well, leading the woman cut by the mask to go to the bathroom to check the blood dripping on her face. Once in the bathroom, some good special effects transform her into a demon, while on the screen in the theater, the boy, also scratched by a mask, transforms. Soon we, and the audience we are watching watch the movie, realize that what is happening on the screen is happening in the theater. Soon, all hell breaks loose as more and more people transform into flesh eating zombies and the film focuses on the original two girlfriends and the two boys they met trying to escape their hell.

Demons 2 picks up where Demons ends and pretty much follows the same plot idea, and it's just as good. I recently purchased unedited, widescreen versions of both films for my personal library.

There are obviously more Argento films than I can go into. But for students and fans of horror, Dario Argento remains a director-writer to study and watch to appreciate where the genre is coming from. Oh, before I forget. Argento has certainly had his share of critics. His films have been accused of promoting violence against women. However, as John Carpenter reminded in an interview -- most of the leads in Argento's films are women. Another criticism is that Argento is more interested in the look of the film than in the performances of his actors, which he will admit, might be true. Still, nothing can taint forty years of unique visual style, creative shots, angles, and editing. One last note: Re-read Argento's quote at the beginning of this piece and then think about this: In his movies, whenever only the murderer's hands are shown, Dario Argento likes to use his own hands.