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| This is without doubt the best known of Argento's films and with very good reason. It is definitely not a film that you forget in a hurry. From the very first scene, when Susie Banyon (Jessica Harper) walks through Freiburg airport and the automatic doors open to a wet and wild night and a haunting melody on the soundtrack, you feel that this is going to be a bit special. |
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Susie gets a taxi to take her to the Ballet Academy where she is expected. This journey all happens to a magnificently eerie soundtrack, composed by Argento himself and played by Goblin, with some beautiful cutaway shots of running water on the journey through the city. There is a wonderful use of colour, especially red, right from the start. It is in the airport and again when Susie is in the taxi, lighting up her face as she tries to dry herself. When she arrives at the Academy, a beautiful, red, baroque building, a girl rushes out into the storm and runs away. Susie tries to get someone to let her inside but they tell her to go away. On the journey back to town the girl who ran away is seen running through the trees as if being chased. This girl arrives at another large building where she finds her friend. |
| Whilst drying off, she looks out of the window and sees a pair of eyes staring back at her. Then an arm smashes through the window and presses her face against the glass until it breaks. She is then graphically stabbed several times and is finally hung by a clothes line as she smashes through the glass ceiling of the building and her friend gets caught in the falling glass and metalwork. And all this happens in the first 15 minutes! |
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Freiburg was the home of a witch, the 'Black Queen' and when strange things start happening at the Academy it doesn't take too much imagination to work out that the coven still exists and where it is based. This is one of the most beautiful horror films ever made. Every scene uses colour magnificently, from backlighting characters with different colours to the wonderfully stylised architecture of the Academy with its red and blue halls and corridors. This all helps to conjure a surreal atmosphere where you just know things are not quite what they seem. |
| Argento uses imagery, light and sound in such a way that it builds up an almost unbearable feeling of claustrophobia and tension. This combined with some memorable set pieces - the room full of barbed wire, a trunk full of maggots, the seeing eye dog ripping it's owners throat out and of course the grand finale where the Academy goes up in flames, make one of the best horror films of all time. If you have not seen this film, you do not know how beautiful horror can be. |
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reviewed by NJD |
| The text on which the legend of the three mothers was based can be read here. |
| credits |
| cast: |
Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Udo Kier, Alida Valli, Joan Bennett, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé, Rudolf Schuendler, Barbara Magnolfi |
| director: |
Dario Argento |
| producer: |
Claudio Argento |
| screenplay: |
Dario Argento & Daria Nicolodi |
| cinematography: |
Luciano Tovoli |
| music: |
Goblin |
| sfx: |
Germano Natali |
| technical information |
| negative: |
35mm |
| print: |
35mm |
| aspect ratio: |
2.35:1 |
| format: |
Technovision |
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