10 images from the new Suspiria trailer that will make you ask "What the f*k did I just watch?"

Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming remake occupies two very different spaces in my mind. It's both something I don't need in my life (a remake of Dario Argento's 1977 classic) but also made by people whose work had quickly become essential viewing. I've decided to allow myself to be excited about this film.

And the fact that we still don't know much about a movie only two months away from release troubles me not at all. If you've ever seen the original SUSPIRIA you already know its story is nonsense. Argento is a bit like artist Will Eisner in that his work is its own raison d'être. SUSPIRIA doesn't need to justify its own existance with such trivial details as "plot" and "character" because it's not about any of those things. SUSPIRIA is about Dario Argento. And I'm ready and willing to hear what Guadagnino has to say about Argento in his remake.

SUSPIRIA comes out October 26. Below are a collection of images from the new trailer, which you can watch for yourself at the bottom of this post.

Synapse to release new edition of Suspiria restoration in March

The 40th anniversary restoration of Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA felt like it took forever to complete. In fact, it's arguable that its eventual "anniversary" release date was entirely coincidental. When Synapse Films first began teasing the restoration with screenshots showing off the work being done to the original print in 2015, the release date remained up in the air. Synapse founder Don May Jr. warned fans that the hi-def restoration would be released once his work had been completed, and that he had no intentions to rushing. I doubt anybody expected it would take an additional two years to complete, but reviews of the final product were glowing. The Digital Bits called it  "one of the most beautiful horror films ever made and this release is one of the most beautiful Blu-ray releases ever mounted by any distribution company, big or small."

Synapse released SUSPIRIA last fall in a steel-book edition limited to just 6,000 copies ... which quickly sold out. If you missed it, there's good news: Synapse has a mass-market edition of SUSPIRIA slated for release March 13 this year. You can pre-order it on Blu-ray and DVD at Amazon HERE.

Here's what the two-disc set includes:

• A new 4K restoration of the original uncut, uncensored Italian 35mm camera negative exclusively done by Synapse Films, with color correction supervised and approved by SUSPIRIA Director of Photography, Luciano Tovoli.
• Original 4.0 1977 English language LCRS sound mix not heard since the theatrical release in 1977, presented in high-resolution DTS-HD MA 96kHz/24-bit audio, with newly-translated removable English SDH subtitles.
• Italian 5.1 surround mix, with removable English subtitle translation.
• Two audio commentaries by authors and Argento scholars, Derek Botelho, David Del Valle and Troy Howarth.
• Do You Know Anything About Witches? - 30 minute SUSPIRIA visual essay written, edited and narrated by Michael Mackenzie.
• Suzy in Nazi Germany - Featurette on the German locations from SUSPIRIA.
• A Sigh from the Depths: 40 Years of SUSPIRIA - All-new anniversary retrospective on the making of the film and its influence on cinema.
• Olga s Story - Interview with star Barbara Magnolfi.
• Original theatrical trailers, TV spots and radio spots.
• "International Classics" English "Breathing Letters" opening credit sequence from U.S. release.
• Alternate All-English opening and closing credits sequences, playable via seamless branching.
• Reversible Cover Art created by Joel Robinson.

A look back at Dario Argento's candy coated nightmare SUSPIRIA

(Note: Way back in 2013 I went on a bit of a Joan Bennett binge. A few of those were interesting enough to me for write-ups here at the Collinsport Historical Society. One of those was SUSPIRIA from 1977. As it happens, today marks the 40th anniversary of the film's premiere in its native Italy. My first instinct was to push my original story back to the top of the page today, but then I remembered it has since been heavily revised as part of our Monster Serial publications. So, without further adieu, here's the expanded version.)

By WALLACE McBRIDE

SUSPIRIA isn’t so much a movie as it is cinematic alchemy. There’s nothing about this movie that ought to work, from the lurching, deranged performances to the use of Technicolor film process to highlight the STAR TREK-like cinematography. The score sounds like the kind of stuff you’d find in the $1 bins of your local used record store*, the story makes no sense and the dialogue exists only because audiences have grown accustomed to hearing it since the release of THE JAZZ SINGER.

If “magic” is the art of causing change to occur in conformity to human will, then director Dario Argento is a sorcerer to be reckoned with. Because SUSPIRIA works, even when logic and reason tell you it shouldn’t. The movie is a candy colored nightmare brought to life, a film so hypnotic that it’s managed to stay vibrant and vital no matter how much audience tastes have changed over the years.

For much of its early life, SUSPIRIA was a movie that film fans could only hear about. My first experience with the 1977 film came from the pages of Fangoria about a decade later in a feature story that did nothing but add to the movie’s legend. “Here’s a great film you can’t see,” was the gist of the story, which was all the more galling because of the flood of miserable horror movies that were littering the shelves of video stores in those days.

The first time I saw the film, I was both impressed and disappointed. Nothing could live up to the years of ominous chatter about SUSPIRIA, and I was even a little saddened to have survived the experience with my mind intact. This was my generation’s “The King in Yellow,” after all. Was suffering a little madness too much to expect from a work of cinematic genius?

I also realized that, for all the rabid fervor for which fans had praised the film, nobody had said much about its story. There’s a reason for that: The story is complete bollocks. An American woman enrolls in a European ballet academy and comes to the slow realization that it’s run by a bunch of witches. The end.

But story is hardly the point of SUSPIRIA. Like his American soulmate George Romero, Argento couldn’t care less about character development. Argento used to be such a deft filmmaker that traditional storytelling elements simply weren’t necessary.

With SUSPIRIA, Argento takes audiences through such a tangled, wild path that it should have ended in disaster. Originally planned to be set in a dance school for children, Argento reportedly revised the concept in order to use older and more reliable actors. For reasons that are anybody’s guess, he kept the script’s original childish (and dumb) dialogue intact.

And that’s just the beginning of the bizarre creative decisions on display in SUSPIRIA. Characters are killed for no other reason that to populate the movie’s running time with as much gore as possible, while the coven behaves so insanely stupid that it’s amazing it could have survived into the 20th century. In one scene, the witches use a demon to murder a rebellious student, while in another they provoke a seeing eye dog to kill its master. The movie is so front-loaded with action that little is left over for the movie’s climax, which limps to a grinding, confusing halt.

And then there’s film’s title, which doesn’t mean a god­damned thing.

And none of this matters. I’m not sure anybody’s even been able to adequately explain why the movie works, but the film’s got a stunning 95 percent at Rotten Tomatoes and is universally beloved by critics. It’s a wet, stormy fever dream that has survived the years better than more pretentious counterparts like ERASERHEAD and CARNIVAL OF SOULS.

It’s difficult to evaluate the movie’s cast because of their incongruent presentation. Many of the actors are dubbed regardless of what language they’re speaking, while Joan Ben­nett, who is clearly American, is given dialogue that suggests she’s not. Early in the film she tells newly arrived Jessica Harper that lodging in town will cost “50 of your American dollars,” a line delivered with her upper class East Coast accent.

Cult icon Udo Kier makes a quick appearance, but is not only dubbed by another actor, but photographed in such a way as to mask his good looks. It’s a role that could have been played by anybody, and don’t be surprised if you forget he’s even in the movie. Meanwhile, Harper’s role is so vapidly written that it took a decent actress to do anything with it. While her performance didn’t win any awards, Harper’s inherent charm keeps us focused on her character. (Note: SUSPIRIA is Harper’s second stop in her trifecta of cult classics, landing between 1974’s PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE and 1981’s SHOCK TREATMENT. In recent years she’s written a number of children’s books. If there’s a canonization process for cult icons, it’s high time Harper made the list.)

And then there’s Bennett. By 1977, the woman who was almost Scarlet O’Hara found herself delivering amazingly absurd dialogue in this low-budget giallo film. Her career progression didn’t happen all at once, to be sure. You don’t go from being Fritz Lang’s favorite leading lady to taking a supporting role in a movie like SUSPIRIA in a single bound. A combination of age and scandal (as well as a very public feud with Hedda Hopper) closed a lot of doors for her as the ‘60s began. Her appearance in HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS, a film that might accurately be called an American giallo, probably made her decision to appear in SUSPIRIA less difficult.

None of this is to suggest that Bennett should have been ashamed or embarrassed by her appearance in SUSPIRIA. But, the 1970s introduced a new world of cinema, most of which probably looked alien to her, if not utterly offensive. I’ve never read any interviews with Bennett where she discussed this movie, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear she’d never seen it. Her role in the 1945 film SCARLET STREET was shocking for its time (and led to at least one city banning it) but that film is tame when compared to the blood that splattered across the screen in SUSPIRIA.

(*Within context of the film, I actually quite like Goblin’s score. Hopefully, this little note will spare me some angry e-mails.)

Here's the 4K restoration trailer for Suspiria

A4K remaster of Dario Argnto's bonkers masterpiece SUSPIRIA has been in the works for several years now. The release date has long been in the air, with Synapse Films (essentially a mom and pop operation) taking the stance that "You'll get it when you get it."

It's been more than a year since the company had anything to say about their planned Blu-ray release, but a new trailer for the film has surfaced online. I'm a little unclear if this edition, coming to theaters in Italy by the Stardust theater chain and Videa, appears to be related. Could two separate restorations of this movie have been taking place simultaneously? That seems like a waste. But it's in keeping with the fractured history of SUSPIRIA's troubled home video releases, I guess.

You can watch the trailer below. I highly recommend cranking the picture resolution up to 1080p.

Dario Argento autobiography coming in January

Autobiographies are a lot lot "greatest hits" collections: They're almost always glorified obituaries that mark the end of an interesting, productive life. I tend to approach these kinds of projects with caution and doubt, because these books can also be examples of the worst kind of eye witness accounts. After all, the author has a strong bias for the subject matter.

For example is PAURA (or "FEAR"), director Dario Argento's upcoming autobiography. Argento has had a rich and varied career, with his name appearing in the credits of films such as ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE and the original DAWN OF THE DEAD. There's certainly a lot that can be said about the first act of his career, but I'm not sure the director of DRACULA 3D is the guy to speak on those films.

Argento has been in the throes of a downward spiral since at least the mid-1980s, which is not something we can necessarily blame him for. There's an element of fashion that connects pop artists with their audience, and that connection is so difficult to make that it's a wonder it happens at all. Some fans are still nurturing a grudge against Lou Reed for his changing tastes in the wake of his work with the Velvet Underground, as though he could simply keep riffing on "Heroin" for the rest of his life. Artists can occasionally change the world, but they're also subject to those same changes.

But, Argento's movies have become unwatchable in recent years. I've got a ghoulish curiosity about PAURA, which is due in January. How the hell does he justify movies like GIALLO when stacked against the actual giallo films in his credits?

Argento recently completed a successful Indiegogo campaign to finance his next film, THE SANDMAN. Iggy Pop is set to star in that film, a guy whose career arc looks more than a little like Argento's.

Monster Serial: INFERNO, 1980

Hello, boils and ghouls! October is upon us and that means one thing: HALLOWEEN! While most holidays get a measly day or two of formal recognition, orthodox Monster Kids prefer to celebrate it in the tradition of our people: By watching tons of horror movies. This month at THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY, we're going to be discussing some of our favorites every day until Halloween. So, put on your 3-D spex, pop some popcorn and turn out the lights .... because we're going to the movies!

By ANSEL FARAJ

INFERNO is the reason — along with ROSEMARY'S BABY, THE SENTINEL, and THE TENANT — that I am terrified to live in an apartment complex. You don't know who, or what, is living beside you. You don't know where that forgotten door down in your basement laundry room leads to. You don't want to know.  

You might say I'm overreacting, and that houses are just as bad. Look at THE AMITYVILLE HORROR or POLTERGEIST. Well, whatever ... you might have a point, but that's another essay altogether. We're here to discuss Dario Argento's follow-up to the brilliant SUSPIRIA, and second film in his "Three Mothers Trilogy," inspired by Thomas de Quincey's opium-inspired prose "Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow."

INFERNO's plot is something of a conundrum. There's a very creepy apartment building in New York with mysterious residents, permeated by a very strange smell, and next to it is an old bookshop selling creepy books from a creepy guy. Then there's a young man who's going to music school in Rome seeing odd visions of a beautiful woman with a cat; and his friend going to a — once again — creepy old library run by the most horrifying librarian you'll come across in movies. And lots of cats. Lots and lots of cats. Hidden amongst the shadowy corners of INFERNO is the Mother of Darkness — Mater Tenebrarum — whose job it is to spread darkness and death across the globe.

 

But INFERNO, as with SUSPIRIA, is not a film for plot or great narrative structure. It's a cinematic nightmare, filled with dark threatening hallways and candy colored lighting. It's a film to get lost in, not to think about logic. Just watch it with the lights off and revel in that childhood fear of the dark ... a hooded figure might be lurking in the shadows, watching you.  Dario Argento's best work comes from building an atmosphere, something I strive to do in my own work. And, while INFERNO isn't quite as violent as SUSPIRA (or the third film of the trilogy, the miserable MOTHER OF TEARS,) it relies on the mystical atmosphere of the dark to draw you in and scare you. For what it lacks in Oscar-winning dialogue and acting, it has tension and dread in spades. And that, my friends, is better than all the gore you can throw across a screen.

Another thing that makes the film so great is that, while it doesn't have a concrete plot, it has an interesting layer that is both hidden and blatantly obvious at the same time: INFERNO is something of an interpretation of Dante's Inferno. The famous poem (read it if you haven't already) which details Dante's descent into the nine circles of hell guided by Virgil, is mirrored here in the story of Mark (played by Leigh McCloskey), guided by the writings of his sister as he descends into the whirlpool of ancient sorcery and horrors of Mater Tenebrarum. Watch the surrealistic climax and then tell me I'm wrong. Each new horrific fate dealt to the characters is a new circle of hell crossed, leading to the ultimate encounter of death and destruction.

INFERNO (along with SUSPIRIA) is a great film to study for its design — the garish lighting style Argento uses to convey a mood, and signify the presence of the otherworldly. The hidden alchemical symbols peppered throughout give the film a bit of weight. Designs in the floors and glass ceilings, and even in the blood splatters all represent some secret code of alchemists that we are not privy to, which just adds to the "mystical conspiracy" feeling of the film. It uses its architecture to really create another world - the apartment building is filled with secret passages, hidden listening devices, forgotten halls, and my favorite, the air duct. Argento has his camera travel down an air duct and amidst the rushing of air, we hear a strange disturbing whispering.

Even the real world locations of the film, such as the Central Park sequence is shot in such a stylized way that we forget it is Central Park. The great shot of the hot dog vendor running across the lake — not around but literally across the water — to stab a victim is a prime example. The world as we know it has been taken over by a strange evil, and this evil force is playing people like pawns in a supernatural chess game. Another evocative moment is the exterior shot of the apartment, and its windy street spot lit by street lamps, which slowly dim as the Mother of Darkness begins to exert her powers. Its these small detailed moments where INFERNO's strength lies. It also helps that the great Mario Bava was Argento's collaborator in the design of the film, building miniatures and helping with the optical work.

I hope during this Halloween season you take the time to check out INFERNO (and make it a double feature with SUSPIRIA. Wallace has a great appreciation essay on that film here at the Collinsport Historical Society). It's an unconventional horror film, but it's not one you'll easily forget. My only other advice to give - if you see a strange hole in your basement bubbling with what seems to be water, please, think twice before submerging yourself in it.

Ansel Faraj is an award-winning independent American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He recently wrapped production on his latest film, DOCTOR MABUSE: ETIOPOMAR.

JOAN BENNETT IN ... Suspiria, 1977

SUSPIRIA isn't so much a movie as it is cinematic alchemy. There's nothing about this movie that ought to work, from the lurching, deranged performances to the use of Technicolor film process to highlight the STAR TREK-like cinematography. The score sounds like the kind of stuff you'd find in the $1 bins of your local used record store*, the story makes no sense and the dialogue exists only because audiences have grown accustomed to hearing it since the release of THE JAZZ SINGER.

If "magic" is the art of causing change to occur in conformity to human will, then director DARIO ARGENTO is a sorcerer to be reckoned with. Because SUSPIRIA works, even when logic and reason tell you it shouldn't. The movie is a candy colored nightmare brought to life, a film so hypnotic that it's managed to stay vibrant and vital no matter how much audience tastes have changed over the years.

For much of its life, it was a movie that film fans could only hear about. My first experience with the 1977 film came from the pages of Fangoria about a decade later in a feature story that did nothing but add to the movie's legend. "Here's a great film you can't see," was the gist of the story, which was all the more galling because of the flood of miserable horror movies that were littering the shelves of video stores in those days.

The first time I saw the film, I was both impressed and disappointed. Nothing could live up to the years of ominous chatter about SUSPIRIA, and I was even a little saddened to have survived the experience with my mind intact. This was my generation's THE KING IN YELLOW, after all. Was a little madness too much to expect from a work of cinematic genius?

I also realized that, for all the rabid fervor for which fans had praised the film, nobody had said much about its story. There's a reason for that: The story doesn't make sense. An American woman enrolls in a European ballet academy and comes to the slow realization that it's run by a bunch of witches. The end.

But story is hardly the point of SUSPIRIA. Like his American soulmate George Romero, Argento couldn't care less about character development. Argento used to be such a deft filmmaker that traditional storytelling elements simply weren't necessary.

With SUSPIRIA, Argento takes audiences through such a tangled, wild path that it should have ended in disaster. Originally planned to be set in a dance school for children, Argento reportedly revised the concept in order to use older and more reliable actors. For reasons that are anybody's guess, he kept the script's original childish (and dumb) dialogue intact.

And that's just the beginning of the bizarre creative decisions on display in SUSPIRIA. Characters are killed for no other reason that to populate the movie's running time with as much gore as possible. The coven behaves so insanely stupid that it's amazing it could have survived into the 20th century. In one scene, the witches use a demon to kill a student, while in another they provoke a seeing eye dog to kill its master. The movie is so front-loaded with action that little is left over for the movie's climax, which limps to a grinding, confusing halt.

And then there's film's title, which doesn't mean a goddamn thing.

And none of this matters. I'm not sure anybody's even been able to adequately explain why the movie works, but the film's got a stunning 95 percent at Rotten Tomatoes and is universally beloved by critics. It's a wet, stormy fever dream that has survived the years better than more pretentious counterparts like ERASERHEAD and CARNIVAL OF SOULS.

It's difficult to evaluate the movie's cast because of their incongruent presentation. Many of the actors are dubbed regardless of what language they're speaking, while JOAN BENNETT, who is clearly American, is given dialogue that suggests she's not. Early in the film she tells newly arrived JESSICA HARPER that lodging in town will cost "50 of your American dollars," a line delivered with her upper class East Coast accent.

Cult icon UDO KIER makes a quick appearance, but is not only dubbed by another actor, but photographed in such a way as to mask his good looks. It's a role that could have been played by anybody, and don't be surprised if you forget he's even in the movie. Meanwhile, Harper's role is so vapidly written that it took a decent actress to do anything with it. While her performance didn't win any awards, Harper's inherent charm keeps  focused on her character. The script certainly didn't give a shit about her. (Note: SUSPIRIA is Harper's second stop in her trifecta of cult classics, landing between 1974's PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE and 1981's SHOCK TREATMENT. In recent years she's written a number of children's books. If there's a canonization process of cult icons, it's high time Harper made the list.)

And then there's JOAN BENNETT. By 1977, the woman who was almost Scarlet O'Hara found herself delivering amazingly absurd dialogue in an Italian giallo film. Her career progression didn't happen all at once, to be sure. You don't go from being Fritz Lang's favorite leading lady to taking a supporting role in a movie like SUSPIRIA in a single bound. A combination of age and scandal (as well as a very public feud with HEDDA HOPPER) closed a lot of doors for her as the '60s began. Her appearance in HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS, a film that might accurately be called an "American giallo," probably made her decision to appear in SUSPIRIA less difficult.

None of this is to suggest that Bennett should have been ashamed or embarrassed by her appearance in SUSPIRIA. But, the 1970s introduced a new world of cinema, most of which probably looked alien to her, if not utterly offensive. I've never read any interviews with Bennett where she discussed this movie, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear she'd never seen it. Her role in the 1945 film SCARLET STREET was shocking for its time (and led to at least one city banning it) but that film is tame when compared to the blood that splattered across the screen in SUSPIRIA.

If you've never seen the movie, you might want to tread carefully. I'm no expert on audio/video presentation, but there are a number of wildly different versions of the movie out there. Some look and sound better than others. Here's one opinion on the subject.

(*Within context of the film, I actually quite like Goblin's score. Hopefully, this little note will spare me some angry e-mails.)