Deep Red [Profundo Rosso] **** (1976, David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi, Macha Méril, Gabriele Lavia) – Classic Movie Review 8611

Director Dario Argento’s highly esteemed 1975 Italian giallo film Deep Red [Profundo Rosso] is written by Argento and Bernardino Zapponi and was released on 7 March 1975 in Milan and Rome.

It stars David Hemmings as the jazz pianist Marcus Daly, who witnesses the brutal murder of a psychic and then investigates a series of murders by a mysterious killer wearing black leather gloves, in close-ups performed by Argento. Macha Méril also stars as a medium called Helga Ulmann, who can read minds and the thoughts of a murderer in her audience.

It is produced by Claudio and Salvatore Argento, and the film’s score is composed and performed by Goblin, an Italian progressive rock band, after Dario Argento was unhappy with jazz pianist and composer Giorgio Gaslini’s original score the film (though three Gaslini compositions are retained).

Writers Argento and Zapponi were interested in pushing the development of the film’s graphic violence in the murder scenes, inspired by them thinking of the kind of painful injuries to which the audience could relate as the agony of being stabbed or shot is outside the experience of most viewers. However, the most graphic violence is cut from the US version of the film.

The original Italian version is 126 minutes, but most US versions remove 22 minutes of footage, as overseen and approved by Argento, largely all the romantic scenes between Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi as as Gianna Brezzi, but also the most graphic violence and all the humorous scenes. Although it was long assumed that the film’s American distributors were responsible for the cuts, it is only recently that Argento’s hand in them was revealed, but he may have made them himself rather than suffer his film to be cut by other hands in America.

Also in the cast are Clara Calamai as Martha (Carlo’s mother), Gabriele Lavia as Carlo, Eros Pagni as Superintendent Calcabrini, Giuliana Calandra as Amanda Righetti, Piero Mazzinghi as Bardi, Glauco Mauri as Professor Giordani, Aldo Bonamano as Carlo’s father, Liana Del Balzo as Elvira, Vittorio Fanfoni as cop taking notes, Dante Fioretti as police photographer, Geraldine Hooper as Massimo Ricci, Jacopo Mariani as Young Carlo, Nicoletta Elmi as Olga, Furio Meniconi as Rodi, Fulvio Mingozzi as Agent Mingozzi, Lorenzo Piani as fingerprint officer and Attilio Dottesio as florist.

Deep Red was shot in 16 weeks, mainly on location in Turin, Italy, where there were more practising Satanists than in any other European city, apart from Lyons.

The special effects, including mechanically operated heads and body parts, are made and performed by Carlo Rambaldi.

Deep Red influenced David Cronenberg’s Scanners and Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween II.

It has the same star Daria Nicolodi and cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller as the 1973 comedy drama Property Is No Longer a Theft [La proprietà non è più un furto].

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8611

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