31 Movies of Halloween: Day 18

Day 18 - Suspiria


Italian horror films. Classics. So visceral. So confusing.

What are you!?

As far as I can tell, Suspiria has something to do with witches in a dance conservatory somewhere in Europe. My guess? Italy, but there's a character who apparently only speaks Romanian. Everybody has been dubbed into English, though, so it makes it even harder to tell just what the Hell is going on. According to the Gods of Wikipedia, the film takes place in Munich. Figures. Crazy Germans.

Seriously, that dog was in the movie for like 3 minutes. And is that Emperor Palpatine?

Like I said, the film is all over the place, but that doesn't make it a bad movie. Far from it. The only problem is that it is difficult to keep track of what is going on.
Suspiria brings many of what became Argento's trademarks to the forefront, namely the violence. The scenes depicting a character's death are pretty brutal, as are the acts themselves. The film itself pretty much opens on a carnival of gore, with a girl being partially suffocated on a window pane, then brutally stabbed multiple times, before having a noose thrown around her neck and thrown through a glass skylight to be hung. Oh, and her friend gets the business by the falling glass and metal.

Overkill? Try just-enough-kill.

Best Part:
The zaniness at the film's conclusion. There's invisible witches, magic lights and smoke, covens, and somehow the school is engulfed in flames, even though nobody lights it on fire. My guess? Supernatural arson. THE PERFECT CRIME!

And who doesn't love magically disappearing, knife-wielding BFF zombies?