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Well well well. What do we have here? It's another movie by Dario Argento! Who's that you ask? Why am I so excited? You may recall some time ago, I watched a little movie called Phenomena. A movie where the protagonists included both a ginormous bug swarm, and a ridiculously awesome monkey. Yeah, THAT Dario Argento. I'm not expecting Suspiria here to quite reach those same peaks of awesome, but I am expecting it to be darn good, and feature another totally great Goblin soundtrack.
Ah good. Unlike Phenomena, despite being from the same anthology, here we have have an actual DVD menu. Which... has a huge crowd of people screaming in horror on the audio side of things. That's really annoying, and I'm going to hit play now. Drum solo! Anyway yeah, we've just got credits on a black screen, with this weird newscaster-voice-but-not-style introductory shpiel. It kinda reminds me of Resident Evil's whole little opening text bit. The cryptic one. That's text only. Right then.
OK, so, we have a girl, who we'll assume for now is our protagonist, trying to hail a cab at the airport, with some crazy music box techno in the background. Between the age of this movie and the time we're spending on this one shot, I'm really really fighting the urge to just start quoting Airplane! here. Don't tell me which zone is for loading and which zone is for unloading. Right, sorry. So yeah, she hops in a cab, and drives through the dark and stormy night with a lightning flash possibly illumination a hand with a knife in it real quick-like, and eventually pulls up to a pretty freaking cool Big Red Ornate Building. It's like some sorta palette-swapped gates of Oz sorta deal. And... they won't let her in. Someone else came out right before she arrived though, who apparently has a key, which is used to get back in because boy it is nasty out there. Apparently, this is another one of these all girl's boarding schools. With really awesome set design. I mean, I hate to go all big-time movie geek like this, but this movie is just all around visually interesting. It's just primary colors and weird little art pieces and really neat shot framings and there's a huge variety to it.
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Heck, it's such a neat looking movie that I couldn't shut up about that until the scene was over, and it's not like it was a boring scene. Girl who ran out of the school then back in talks to her roomie for a bit, looks out the window, sees some weird cat eyes, and then proceeds to be murdered in this really really surreal fashion where her chest is cut open, she's stabbed through her still-beating heart, and then she's swung down with a noose through a stained-glass window, with shards of it stabbie Roomie in the temple. Even THIS is really really artsy and pretty and comes off surprisingly non-gory for it.
Fortunately, the next scene is the main character showing back up the next day, with a lack of storm, and police investigation in progress. So... there's a lot of recapping of what I just recapped going on, giving me time to catch up. Anyway, it turns out it's not a boarding school, it's a ballet academy, which explains why everyone seems to be in their early 20s and why this is such a generally awesome looking building. Our main character, Susie, is here for ballet lessons apparently, and we introduce the characters of Mean Headmistress, Creepy Romanian Caretaker, who voluntarily had all his teeth replaced over a case of gingivitis, and another student, Princess Leia.
We've also by this point introduced what's honestly something of an irritating din of a soundtrack. Susie's actually kinda staggering around looking dizzy and clutching her forehead, so apparently it's giving her something of a headache too. She has classes to go to though, so here we have this whiny, light-headed dancing session which is actually pretty funny to watch. Eventually though she faints and develops a sudden nosebleed. Also mouthbleed. Headmistress carts her off to bed and administers care by uh, shoving a pitcher of water in her face and shouting something to the effect of "DRINK, MAGGOT!" There's also a doctor present for, you know, proper medical care.
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Anyway, Susie gets some recovery time, and really looks familiar in a way that'll send me off to IMDB later I'm sure. She meets the girl across the hall, who we'll be calling Snobby, takes some ime to relax, and brush her hair, which is kinda itch because IT'S RAINING MAGGOTS! Grody dude! They're just pouring out of the ceiling like crazy. These aren't horror-movie freak-out hallucinatory maggots though. They're, there's a whole bunch of rotten meat up in the attic maggots. Yargh. So... everyone on that floor is temporarily set up in a makeshift barracks in a dance studio while they clean all that up. So we very very very quickly transition from IT'S RAINING MAGGOTS to SLUMBER PARTY! Then again to totally freaky because the soundtrack kicks into high gear. There's actually some late-night whispering plot exposition about how freaky the snoring of The Directress (which is an awesome title) is, but it's really hard to hear the snoring, or the exposition, over the soundtrack. It's like super-unsettling-Silent-Hill music (as opposed to the usual low-key mellow sort) turned up to 11.
The next day, the Headmistress freaks out at the blind piano player because his seeing eye dog bit someone, and fires him. Also he maggots are cleaned up. That night, Suzie and Snobby are having a late-night gossip session about how they can hear the teachers walking around in the hallways. Suzie's half asleep but apparently has good enough hearing to mention that they're headed the wrong way to be on their way out the front door, so they pool their resources of good hearing and not being half-asleep to count footsteps and door openings and track their movements. And then the soundtrack comes in, interrupting this. The soundtrack is just kinda malevolently stalking down the halls, through doors, through a secret tunnel. Seriously, until given major proof to the contrary, I'm going with the working theory that this movie's soundtrack is a malevolent sentient cacophony roving through a ballet school murdering people. Possibly assuming, from time to time, the body of some other character. The obvious suspect being Mr. Romani-Dentures.
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Oh, and here's another thing this movie has musically besides the cacophony. Music box music with this REALLY creepy, evil, barely audible whisper singing along "La la la la la la la..." and a techno backbeat. Anyway, this is going on. Anyway, Blindy and Dog are wandering around outside. Anyway, there's a major creepy vibe, a distorted "WITCH!" is loudly whispered, by, presumably, the soundtrack, and shortly thereafter, Dog spontaneously rips out Blindy's throat. Again though, this movie has such astoundingly non-gory gore in it. Bright red shiny blood doesn't read as blood.
Anyway, exposition occurs a bit. Susie mentions to the headmistress that she heard victim-girl say "secret" and "irises" when the movie started, then goes swimming with Snobby who reveals that she was also a witness there, specifically, the one who wouldn't let Susie inside, so, adding new info might end up making her a suspect in the murder. Anyway, that night, Snobby ffreaks out at a 7/8ths asleep Susie about how her footstep tracking notes were stolen. Susie falls completely asleep, and outside the door can be heard what, seriously, is the single most disturbing thing you can ever hear. Little kids laughing quietly. Shortly after, they're drowned out by the "lalala" variation of The Soundtrack. Seems The Soundtrack has come to kill Snobby. She flees out into the hallway, where she gets pinned down between two red spotlights. Oh yeah, that's another thing that accompanies evilness in this movie. Red lighting. Meanwhile, an ornate box opens revealing a funky curved straight razor whose shadow was seen at the start of the film, and the soundtrack suddenly drops down to just a creepy whisper and no lighting. Apparently it's trying to be very quiet and get the drop on her. Suddenly, it strikes! Back into full scale cacophony and red-light! Seems the soundtrack is trying to priy open a door Snobby locked with its curved-razor. It's really having a heck of a time with it though. Snobby takes this time to stack 4 boxes up to climb out a high window. She's having a heck of a time too though, since she failed to go from largest to smallest. So she hops out the window to land in... is that razor-wire, or just some sort of giant malevolent slinky? I'm... actually going to have to go with the latter here. The giant evil slinky apparently holds her down and roughs her up a bit, until the Soundtrack can finally catch up and slice her throat open in a weirdly unreal looking fashion.
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So uh... yeah, we're 2 for 2 on Dario Argento movies with American girls going off to european schools with murders going on, having their roomies killed, and using their superpowers to investigate the murders afterwards. Phenomena's way better though, because it has a monkey. Anyway, Mr. Exposition here explains to Suzie that Snobby had uncovered the interesting bit of backstory that the ballet school was apparently founded by a heavily persecuted Greek witch, as an academy dedicated to the study of ballet and magic. Seriously. Eventually though she was killed, her assistant took over, and kinda, you know, phased out the dark arts portion of the curriculum to focus on just the dancing. Mr. Backstory then tags out to Dr. Backstory who explains that yeah, there's totally witches, they form big ol' covens, and have all kinds of freaky magic powers which have the restriction that they can only be used for evil. Dr. Backstory here is apparently a psychologist. I'm thinking, he's probably not widely respected.
That night (and we are really burning through the days here), Susie flushes all her specially prepared food and medicine to prevent spontaneous blackouts and face bleeding, because it really seems to be knocking her out way too much what with sleeping right through two murders and all. Then a bat flys into her room and totally flips out on her for a while, in, honestly, ultra-cheesy rubber toy on a string fashion, before she finally tosses a sheet over it and wails away with a stool as it goes crunch crunch crunch. SERIOUSLY reminded me of the scarab scene from Bubba Ho-Tep. Then she calms down with a cigarette, and does the whole footstep tracking schtick again, while wide awake this time.
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Her search leads her past a pair of creepy foreign cook ladies butchering up a side of beef while yammering back and forth in... Greek? Russian? Can't really place it. Anyway though, she then continues her search, coming to the most awesome looking room of the movie yet, and that's really saying something. Suddenly she remembers that whole "secret" "ireses" thing while looking at the really frelling snazzy movie. Oh. IrIses. Yeah, secret passage time. Onward she travels, into the very lair of The Soundtrack. It clearly doesn't hear her coming though, because it's half asleep, in music box mode. The whispering component is starting to sound downright inhuman though. Anyway, inside, she finds all the teachers, and a creepy blond schoolboy apparently, plotting to banish an/or murder her her. They also seem to be passing a joint around, and drinking from a goblet of... Snobby's blood. Suzie hides in an alcover, they all leave, soundtrack is apparently last in line, shuts the door, and it's suddenly all quiet. Except, that is, for uniquely creepy snoring of, bum bum bum, the Directress! Who, presumably, is the Head Witch, who, according to Dr. Backstory, is all you need to kill to totally put the kibosh on all the evil.
Suddenly, the Soundtrack begins to return, candle in hand, apparently having forgotten to grab the goblet so it can be rinsed out and put back in the cupboard or something. Hearing its approach, Suzie is startled, and bumps into the most hilarious thing to bump into under these circumstances. It's this great big gaudy metal peakcock statue, with thin wire plumage that clangs around, and upon hitting the floor, 5 huge croquet balls or spheres of similar size spill out, go rolling down the hallway bouncing around and clattering. This, obviously, wakes up The Directress, who has a really creepy voice and a really uncreepy speech pattern. Actually, it's more like 3 creepy voices. She's all like "So, tryin' to get the drop on the big cheese eh? Well, we don't take too kindly to that sorta thing 'round here, see! Now, I'm gonna open up that there closet see, and you're gonna have to tangle with zombie-Snobby, yeah, see!" OK, it's not QUITE cartoon mobster from the 30s speak, but take out all the "yeah, see!" and that really is pretty darn close to what she says. In freaky evil multiple voices. Anyway, Suzie's plan to stab her with a metal peacock feather seems to hit a snag when pulling back the curtain she was behind reveals nothing, and, yeah, out comes zombie Snobby with a knife. Luckily, with the help of a lightning flash giving a quick sillouette, Suzie deduces that oh, she didn't teleport away or anything, she just went invisible, stabs where the evil greek-witch-school-founder-funky-snoring-directress seemed to have been, and, yeah, dead evil gal. Would have been REALLY anticlimactic if she'd just stabbed through the curtains.
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So she makes her way out from the school, past all the teachers who are just kinda twitching around malfunctioning robot style now that the head of the coven is dead, or like Dr. Backstory said earlier, like a snake with its head cut off. I knew he'd be proven right there, but I thought he just meant, you know, metaphorically, like their magic powers would stop working or backfire. Turns out it was literal though. I guess witches are like a hive mind sorta deal here. Anyway though, yeah, Susie wanders out, as soon as she's out the door you see a big roaring fire in the window and hear a lot of screaming, because, well, load bearing boss and all... and uh... HOPEFULLY thats the sound of all the lesser witches/teachers burning alive and not, you know, the entire student body who, to the best of my knowledge, were uh... all still in there. In either case though, all of the sudden, up scrolls: You have been watching "SUSPIRIA" followed by the credits. It's just kinda written in this manner like "Stay tuned for a lot of laughs, on Cheers, next at 9" while we've still got the burning and the screaming going on. This actually rolls right back into the menu scream where, we've still got all that screaming going on in the background.
So anyway, yeah. Not really a whole lot of plot here, nor particularly good special effects, and the soundtrack really doesn't hold a candle to Phenomena's, but still pretty darn enjoyable, and none of that stuff is really the point here. The story behind this movie is, Dario Argento here went from doing hard-boiled mystery type stuff for several years to doing weird funky horror stuff. This is the first example of the latter. So, first, it's got that whole My First Horror Movie feel to it, which I have a real soft spot for, and second, it's just a frelling beautiful movie. This is the movie all the major horror fans/creators have all, at some point, sat down to watch and just went "oh wow that's really pretty" the whole time. It's not really the sort of thing you go and watch for the sake of watching it, it's something you watch just to kinda study, and appreciate, and possibly try to imitate. In that sense, it's darn nifty.
This also means it's pretty much the worst possible movie to decide to go and remake, but apparently there's one due out next year. It's also really not the sort of movie you'd expect to have a sequel, but it seems this is the first of a trilogy of artsy evil witch movies. The other two are totally forthcoming.
