Suspiria
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The story
Suspiria is the first film in a trilogy Argento refers to as "The Three Mothers," about evil forces attempting to break through to the earth and wreak merciless havoc. Argento's next film, Inferno (1980), was the second in the trilogy. The third remains unrealized.
The story involves a young US ballet student, Susy Banyon (Jessica Harper), who arrives in Germany to attend a prestigious dance academy. On the night she arrives, there is a torrential downpour, and she is unable to gain admittance to the school. But she witnesses one student, a young blonde girl, flee the building in a panic.
The fleeing student is horribly murdered, and Susy begins having suspicions that all is not as it seems at the school. She begins experiencing inexplicable dizzy spells, and other deaths occur, such as that of the school's blind pianist, who is savaged by his own seeing-eye dog the night after he is fired from his job.
Susy ultimately discovers the school is a front for a coven of witches who practice a diabolical black magic. The headmistress of the school turns out to be a legendary black witch over a century old, who has kept herself alive through devilish rituals. Susy uncovers the school's secret chamber in which the rituals take place, and manages to kill the ancient witch.
About Suspiria
Suspiria is noteworthy for several stylistic flourishes that have become Argento trademarks. The film was shot in Cinemascope using one of the very last three-strip Technicolor cameras in existence. The camera was in fact borrowed from a Chinese production facility, and upon Suspiria’s completion it was scrapped. The production design and cinematography emphasize vivid primary colors, particularly red, creating a deliberately unrealistic, nightmarish setting.
The musical score was performed by Goblin, a rock group discovered by Nicolodi. It is loud and bombastic, with pounding drums and shrieking vocals, offset by a gentle, tinkling piano theme (actually performed on a synthesizer) that is evocative of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, the song used as the theme of The Exorcist. Goblin recorded much of their score prior to the film's shooting, and Argento reportedly played tracks from it at deafening volume during the shooting of some scenes to get his actors in the right mood. The score for Suspiria made Goblin a world-famous cult band among horror devotees, and they went on to score more films for Argento and others.
But no aspect of Suspiria was as influential as Argento's flamboyant approach to shooting the many killings that take place in the story. Argento already had a reputation for brutal violence in his films, such as his preceding feature, Deep Red, and he would later in his career draw much criticism for it, including charges of misogyny which he staunchly denies. In Suspiria, victims are murdered in extremely elaborate ways. E.g.: the first student to die initially has her face shoved through a window, then she is stabbed in the heart repeatedly (in close up), then she is tied up, and her body dropped through the glass skylight of a building, only to be stopped in mid-fall by a rope around her neck.
Some viewers find this sort of thing excessive to the point of absurdity, but most fans of the horror genre recognize that the stylization is deliberate on the part of Argento — that he intends to take viewers away from the real world into a realm of his own nightmare, so to speak.
Suspiria propelled Argento to the front ranks of horror directors throughout the world. Though many of his later films were admired by his fans, it is generally thought that he has not since lived up to the artistic accomplishment of Suspiria.
A special edition DVD was released in the United States in 2001.