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31 Days of Horror Movies - Day 21

 

We're officially in the home stretch of the list! We have 10 more entries to scare you with our selection of horror movies! Today's entry is another amazing international feature and one that gets progressively better with each viewing. 

Day 21 - Dario Argento's Suspiria

The first part of Dario Argento's "Three Mothers Trilogy" (which consists of Suspiria, Inferno, and Mother of Tears) is one of the best horror films out of Italy; it also happens to be a breathtaking assault on the senses complete with dazzling Technicolor imagery and a rock-heavy score by Goblin. The story is classic giallo (a form of Italian thriller involving a murder mystery) but with a heavy dose of the supernatural and finds Suzy Bannion, a young American girl, who travels to a prestigious dance academy in Germany but soon learns that there is something truly wrong with the institute. Throughout Suspiria, Argento crafts amazing Technicolor sequence after sequence involving grisly murders, a lice attack, and even more grisly murders before fully revealing the macabre explanation. Argento doesn't really start connecting the plot and the murders until later and the film has a rather loose atmosphere that maintains the audience feeling disoriented but throughout the film he injects the story with so much energy and dazzling pyrotechnics that there's no  denying its power. Goblin's score still remains one of the greatest horror scores of all time, an intense mix of vocals, drums, percussions, and heavy guitars that absolutely blows the stage once its played, and if you have a great surround sound system, just blast this one to 11 because it completely adds to the experience of watching the film. Jessica Harper, in her breakout role after Phantom of the Paradise, delivers a wonderful performance as she navigates the creepy halls of the dance academy and later has to resort to using her wills to stop the malevolent threat from orchestrating their evil plans. Suspiria is a marvelous horror film with incredible murder sequences but the real star of the show is without a doubt the transcendent cinematography by Luciano Tovoli. Argento and Tovoli display every single frame of the film with bright primary colors (red, blue, and green are incredible to behold), and a widescreen frame that makes the film so elegant, it at times looks like a Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger film from the 1940s. The bright colors contrast so well with the gruesome violence that it makes Suspiria's technical achievements and story decisions stand out even more within the horror genre. 


*All of the recommendations that we make can be found at the El Paso Public Library Catalog!

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