Suspiria

Suspiria (1977)

Directed by: Dario Argento
Written by: Dario Argento, Daria Nicolodi, based on Suspiria de Profundis by Thomas de Quincey
Starring: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé, Joan Bennett, Alida Valli, Barbara Magnolfi, Susanna Javicoli, Rudolf Schündler, Udo Kier

Classic Italian horror picture about a young woman who is accepted into a prestigious ballet academy in Germany. She soon learns that the academy is run by witches. Apparently that's bad (I happen to be a witch, granted, I'm not practicing witchcraft at the moment, but still, I resent that terrible portrayal of my sisters. Ah well).

According to the IMDb, the idea was that the girls at the ballet school would all be under twelve, but apparently this would have been too shocking or something, so they changed that. This does explain why all the girls appear to be slightly retarded (I mean this in the nicest possible way).

Anyway, I actually thought the movie was kind of stupid, no offense, but the art direction was incredible. The movie almost seemed to be all about art direction. Beautiful blues and greens and reds. All the beautiful colours.

And there were some pretty cool shots, through the lightbulb for example. Neat.

And the soundtrack was fuckin awesome. My friend, Mr. Blue, had always talked about the Goblins, but I never truly believed the stories. They really were great. I did sit through the movie making fun of them, but I liked them all the same.

One of my biggest problems with the movie, apart from it's being a little bit stupid, was the dubbing. Almost all the actors in it were dubbed in English (they appear to be speaking English, I watched their lips move, so I have to assume they just had thick accents). This was mildly irksome but I didn't really think about it all that much until Udo Kier came on. Udo Kier with a thick American accent is just wrong on so many levels.

It was certainly gory enough, though. No complaints there. I kept thinking of a movie I watched a while ago called The Woods with Agnes Bruckner and Patricia Clarkson and, like, Bruce Campbell, which pretty much lifted the plot from this wholesale. I liked that movie better though...

Yeah, good to watch and easy to make fun of. Not a very difficult target, I'm afraid (hey, just like Scientology, but I'd rather not get into that).

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