Suspiria **** (1977, Jessica Harper, Alida Valli, Joan Bennett, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, Udo Kier, Miguel Bosé) – Classic Movie Review 4276

Co-writer/ director Dario Argento’s iconic 1977 Italian Gothic supernatural horror movie Suspiria is an extremely scary, effective shocker from the Italian horror maestro known as the Master of the Thrill.

Jessica Harper stars as a naive American dancer called Suzy Bannion who arrives from New York at a renowned ballet school in Freiburg, Germany, where it turns out that students are being violently murdered by a couple of evil old witches (played by Alida Valli as Miss Tanner and Joan Bennett as Madame Blanc) who are running a coven.

Madame Blanc (Bennett) is supposed to be head of the school, but of course she is way too busy organising her coven to be doing much teaching. This is fortunate, because organising covens is much more interesting for horror movies than doing teaching.

Argento manages his movie with lots of style to spare, what with Luciano Tovoli’s virtuoso vibrant cinematography and Argento’s thrilling score with the progressive rock band Goblin, good gross effects, and some terrifying moments.

Suspiria takes its place as one of the scariest attic movies in cinema. There is a memorable graphic and gruesome murder in the attic as Suzy’s confidante Sara Simms (Stefania Casini) gets trapped in a huge bale of razor wire that slowly slices her to death with each struggling move.

Argento co-wrote the screenplay with Daria Nicolodi, partly based on the 1845 essay Suspiria de Profundis by Thomas De Quincey. Nobody really expects these stories to be anything but preposterous, and it is more than enough that it manages to be believable on its own terms.

It runs 98 minutes but there is a cut TV version.

Stefania Casini and Jessica Harper in Suspiria (1977).

Also in the cast are Stefania Casini, Udo Kier, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé, Susanna Javicoli, Jacopo Mariani, Eva Axén, Giuseppe Transocchi, Barbara Magnolfi and Rudolf Schündler.

Suspiria is Latin for sigh, sospiro in Italian.

Harper described the shoot as ‘very, very focused as Argento knew exactly what he was looking for.’

Suspiria was mostly shot at De Paoli studios in Rome, where exterior sets were built, including the façade of the ballet school replicated from the actual Whale House in Freiburg. Filming also took place in Munich, including in the city square for the death scene of Daniel (Flavio Bucci) and at Munich Airport for the opening sequence.

The cast are Jessica Harper as Suzy Bannion, Stefania Casini as Sara Simms, Flavio Bucci as Daniel, Miguel Bosé as Mark, Alida Valli as Miss Tanner, Joan Bennett as Madame Blanc, Udo Kier as Dr Frank Mandel, Barbara Magnolfi as Olga Ivanova, Eva Axén as Pat Hingle, Rudolf Schündler as Professor Milius, Susanna Javicoli as Sonia, Franca Scagnetti as Cook, Giuseppe Transocchi as Pavlos, Jacopo Mariani as Albert, Renato Scarpa as Professor Verdegast, Margherita Horowitz as Teacher, Giovanni Di Bernardo as Police Inspector, Lela Svasta as Mater Suspiriorum/ Helena Markos, and Dario Argento as Narrator.

The 40th anniversary revival of Suspiria plays in the 2017 London Film Festival’s Cult section. The film has been recently restored in 4K from the original camera negative and intermediate negative elements.

A remake arrived in 2018 with Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton and Chloe Grace Moretz, directed by Luca Guadagnino, maker of A Bigger Splash and Call Me by Your Name.

Suspiria (2018) premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 1 September 2018, screened at the London Film Festival on 16 October 2018 and released on 2 November 2018 (US) and 16 November 2018 (UK). Guadagnino said he wanted it to be a relentless disturbing experience. It cost $20 million and earned $7.7 million.

It proved Hollywood legend Joan Bennett’s last cinema film, aged 67, playing Madame Blanc, though she made three more TV movies before her death in 1990, aged 80.

Dario Argento was born on 7 September 1940. Suspiria is the first of a trilogy Argento calls The Three Mothers, followed by Inferno (1980) and The Mother of Tears (2007).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4276

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert

Suspiria (2018) stars Chloe Grace Moretz.