Inferno

This is a supernatural film shepherded by an Italian director with a heavy investment in art, architecture, color, and design. It is for the amazing imagery that I recommend the film. However, Inferno is about as coherent as Coppola’s Dementia 13 (1963). The film consists of mostly unconnected scenes stitched together.WHAT’S GREAT ABOUT THE FILM?There are 3 scenes that movie enthusiasts should not miss:1) The heroine, Rose (Irene Miracle), climbs down beneath the streets in New York City and finds a spooky cavern, with a trapdoor in the floor. She drops her keys into the trapdoor and slides through the narrow opening into clear frigid water filling an ancient, opulent, abandoned ballroom filled. Holding her breath, she dives deep down, about to become caught on tangled wreckage, searching for her dropped keys. Finally, her lungs burning, she grabs the keys and starts up breathlessly toward the surface, when she is suddenly confronted by . . . !2) Now caught in a terrifying occult circle, Rose writes to her brother Mark (Leigh McCloskey) in Rome for help. Mark opens the letter in his music class while listing to the chorus "Va, pensiero" from Verdi’s opera Nabucco (1842), but before he can read it, Mark is confronted by a striking woman (the third mother?) sitting with a giant cat on her lap. She paralyzes him with her eyes — while mumbling spells, her magical aura slows down time, until he stumbles away hypnotized, leaving the letter on the table.3) Mark’s classmate, Sara (Eleonora Giorgi), rides a taxi through the pouring Roman streets to return the letter to Mark, but the cab takes her to an occult library. Swooning after piercing her hand on a (poisoned) nail, Eleonora finds a mystical antique book mentioned in the letter and tries to steal it from the library (who does that?), but she is seen by a grotesque, misshapen bookbinder who chases her through the terrifying dark corridors.VERDICT: STYLISH AND SCARY!WHAT’S NOT SO GREAT ABOUT THE FILM?1) The first thing you will want to do when you see this film is call the health department. These fancy buildings are falling down, with moldering, powdery plaster, peeling mildewed wallpaper, and collapsing floors, ceilings, and staircases. Murky puddles of dank, smelly standing water are everywhere indoors. If you have allergies or asthma, bring your inhaler.2) The plot and the phony, uninformed occultism, is full of holes and is basically nonsense. It only serves to drag the limping plot along. The worst effect is a giant plastic skeleton costume galumphing across the stage like Boris Karloff.3) The New York scenes all look like they were filmed in Italy with Italians. Much of the acting consists of unbelievable, overblown caricatures of people you will never see on this earth. It shouts “unnatural!” Loudly.4) Somehow, after some compelling scenes, Sara goes running down the streets, and with no explanation, she is never seen again. Mysteriously, the bookbinder who chases her through the dark terrifying corridors in Rome appears a few moments later in New York City. Wha?5) The surprise ending is absurd.VERDICT: DUMB!WHAT ABOUT THE GORY, GIALLO SCENES?Argento is known for spilling blood and torturing his actors on the screen. Inferno treats you to:1) A horrible scene where a crippled man is “drowning” in a very shallow pool in New York City’s Central Park. He screams, “The rats are eating me alive!” However, there are no rats — just a few rat puppets pulled on strings. Meanwhile, all the way in Rome, some white lab rats painted with shoe polish are milling around some dummies looking puzzled (after all, albino rats can’t see well, and they cannot navigate by touch in unfamiliar surroundings). They’re having as bad a time as the viewers.2) We are supposed to think that a suitcase is full of cats (actually some wriggling apparatus) while a character tries to sink it in the shallow abovementioned Central Park pool. It won’t sink.3) Someone with forceps puts a white cabbage butterfly (?) into a lizard’s open mouth. Neither of them seems to care.4) A scaly-handed monster tries to ram a window down so hard it severs an actor’s neck. Ridiculous. Besides, it seems that the window is on the inside of a stairwell facing … nothing.VERDICT: WHY?WHAT ABOUT THE CONCEPT?After his Suspiria (1977) managed to earn $2 million in overseas rentals, director Dario Argento decided he would make it the first of a series of three films dealing with grand witches. The second mother witch is living in New York City and we get a brief glimpse of the third at the beginning of the film. It’s a strained concept that even Argento fought, and I don’t care much about it, either. At one point, Argento claimed he had based the film on Hansel and Gretel.RECEPTIONPersonally, I like high concept films with art, architecture, interior design, color-wheel images, and arty cinematography. But these attributes rarely make a movie successful. Costing $3+ million, Inferno was a box office bomb in the US, opening in 1985 for only 1 week at the Thalia Theater on 250 W. 95th Street in Manhattan (now the Leonard Nimoy Theater/Space Available). That version must have been heavily edited, because critic Nina Darnton and the New York Times listed the run time as 83 minutes (23 minutes less than the original release).MUSICKeith Emerson tussled with Verdi for a well-recorded but choppy score. The music overpowers the dialog, so keep your finger on the volume control to make out the words and keep your ears from blowing out.TECHNICALShot in 35 mm Technicolor film in Dolby stereo. 106 minutes long.SO, SHOULD I GET THIS MOVIE, OR NOT?This is an unforgettable film, but it is not great cinema. You should see it if you are a fan of Argento, or if you are hooked on great, powerful images. If you have seen it and liked it, or if you already have the other two mother witches' films, you should buy Inferno. Go for Blu-ray, for the beauty of the Technicolor images and the soundtrack fidelity.Wishing you the best of movie viewing!

Considering that Suspiria is by far the most popular and acclaimed film in Argento's catalogue I'm rather confused as to why the sequel Inferno isn't more popular. Fans of Suspiria, like myself, ought to eat this up. Admittedly, it isn't as good as Suspiria, but it takes all the things that made that film so extraordinary and unusual and pushes them boundaries even further, while managing to be a fairly distinct from it's predecessor. This is most definitely a worthwhile piece in and of itself, and it is a must see for any horror fan, or those who enjoy visually startling films.Visually, Inferno is even more stylized then Suspiria, with virtually nothing being shot in a perfuntory or realistic manner. It takes the most prominent visual aspect of Suspiria, the bright, garish sets and surreal colored lighting,(most often red and blue) and takes them to a greater extreme, and in a slightly different direction. In Suspiria, the set design and colored lighting were relatively simple, generally using open areas and relatively simple lighting, frequently with the entire scenes bathed in a single color.(And it rarely become more complicated than simply having 2 colors for the background, and 1 more illuminating the characters in the foreground) Thus, for all it's eeriness, the lighting in Suspiria actually illuminated the scene quite well. Not so in Inferno. The sets are cramped and elaborate, with numerous different light sources illuminating small portions of the scenes, generally with much of the scene still shrouded in darkness.(often to the point which you can't easily identify objects) Thus, although Inferno has many of the visual elements of Suspiria, they are used in a notably different style. Personally, I think that Inferno looks even better then its predecessor. The most notable scene, visually, is when Rose is attacked in her apartment. It is simply astounding.This film is not big on plot or character development. In fact, I would say that it has perhaps the least character development of any film I've seen. (none) And to my surprise, I think this is actually a slight problem. Although Suspiria wasn't too big on character development, it managed to make me genuinely like Suzy and Sarah, whereas I don't give a damn about anyone in this film. And this actually makes the horror scenes less effective. The plot extends the mythos of Suspiria, with Rose reading a book, The Three Mothers, in the opening scene. The book states that 3 sisters rule the world, Mater Suspiriorum, Mater Tenebrarum and Mater Lachymarum, and that they live in Freiburg, Rome and New York respectively.(Naturally, Mater Suspiriorum was Helena Marcos in Suspiria) And she discovers that, wouldn't ya know it, she's living in the apartment complex in which Mater Tenebrarum resides.(She lives underneath it though, not in one of the apartments.) She's disturbed by this story and calls for help from her brother, Mark, living in Rome. Thus, an investigation is begun by various individuals, generally leading to their untimely deaths. As you might imagine, the plot is driven by absurdities and contrivances almost exclusively. But I don't care, and neither should you, considering the film and its goals. It can be a bit confusing at times as well, but you ought not worry about that, for the reasons stated above.The murder sequences are very elaborate and nicely done, in much the same magnificently colored and hallucinogenic slasher film manner found in Suspiria, this time generally with taloned, cowled killers. They do have some slight flaws, however. Most significantly, they lack much of the sheer intensity and brutality of the killings in Suspiria. (Sorry about the endless comparisons, but they practically beg to be done) Simply put, the victims in Inferno are, for the most part, not made to suffer the way they did in Suspiria. Some people found the more sadistic aspect of Suspiria offensive, but that's what gave the deaths there power. Naturally, the most affecting death is the most painful seeming one, where the victim has their head pinned down through an open window, and the broken window pane repeatedly dropped on their throat. The visualization of this event leaves something to be desired, but it is conceptually nasty enough to make it work very well. Still, all the other deaths are beautifully shot and staged, even if they aren't as painful or personally affecting. Another problem is that they attempt a few more animal attacks, with little success. There is a cat attack, which is unintentionally humorous, and a massed rat attack which is just kinda bland. Fortunately, that is not all that is going on in those scenes, and they are still excellent sequences overall.One of the most famous aspects of Suspiria was its extraordinary score by the band Goblin. Here Keith Emerson takes over scoring duties, and takes them in a different, somewhat more conventional direction, with lots of omionous, discordant piano pieces. Though not as effective as Goblin's work, it still works quite well, and is preferable to merely attempting a retread of the previous score. It uses the old trick of having a vicious murder contrasted with a grandiose, incongruent classical piece,(to great effect) and I also particularly enjoy the rock version of some Verdi piece they use during the cab scene.(It's cheesy, but I like it)Sadly, the end of this film is somewhat anti-climatic.(Though to a lesser extent than was Suspiria) It's primarily hurt by the fact that it has a conceptually solid but incredibly hokey visual effect during the confrontation with Mater Tenebrarum. It's also hurt by the fact that the evil is defeated not by the actions of any of the protagonists, but just through luck and chance.Well, that's about it. Somewhat flawed, but the flaws don't matter much. If you haven't seen Suspiria yet, see it first. If you like that, check this out.

'Inferno' (1980) is a wonderful follow-up to Argento's highly regarded 'Suspiria' (1977), and is recognized as the second in a fantasy themed trilogy known as "The Three Mothers." This is not a Dario Argento Giallo in the way of 'The Bird With The Crystal Plummage' (1970), 'Four Flies On Grey Velvet' (1971), 'Profondo Rosso' a/k/a 'Deep Red' (1975) or even the highly impressive 'Tenebrae' (1982) were. 'Inferno' plays out as more of a mystery film, rather than a horror, albeit it does have a number of brutal killings but, in my opinion, slightly less graphic in nature compared to 'Suspiria' or 'Profondo Rosso.' Even so, it appears that 'Inferno' was held back for several years in USA over the violent content of the film, and when it was eventually released went straight to home video, losing out on the more lucrative cinema release. 'Inferno' should be a cinematic experience to best enjoy.'Inferno' was heavily influenced by Argento's partner Daria Nicolodi, a beautiful actress / writer in her own right,and who was heavily involved in the earlier successful 'Suspiria,' and of the two, was the one more interested into developing the fantasy / witchcraft subject matter. Dario and Daria being the parents of Asia Argento but eventually split up after 12 years together.Dario Argento, if you follow his works, has some tell tale trade marks that he puts into his films. He enjoys using progressive / electronic music and has often used a group known as Goblin / Claudio Simonetti (Electronics keyboard). Here he uses the talents of Keith Emmerson (Emmerson, Lake & Palmer), who scores his on version of Giuseppe Verdi's musical influences in an up tempo taxi ride shot in Rome as well as throughout. Dario also loves using rich colourful settings and in this Blue-ray copy you really get to appreciate the heavily emphasis of reds, blues and purples. He also shoots some extreme close ups on objects that usually come into play as the film unfolds. Also, he makes use of striking and unusual looking buildings as a background to where much of the subsequent action eventually unfolds. Dario also believes in employing a big named actor / actress (Usually American) to his cast to help sell the film internationally. Thus, Irene Miracle (Late Night Trains) and Leigh McCloskey are the major stars here who play brother and sister. Rose (Irene) is in New York and believes that the building that she is living in holds a sinister secret, and is a gateway to a greater evil inhabited by one of the three evil sisters known as the Three Mothers - Mater Tenebrarum (Mother of Darkness). She writes to her brother Mark (Leigh McCloskey), who appears sleepy eyed throughout most of the film, but went onto much bigger success in the TV series Dallas soon afterwards. He flies to New York just after his sister has been killed off and is attempting to understand what is going on.This Blue-ray disc features an inner alternative sleeve cover (which is the more blacker skull version) which I prefer in addition to some extra background material from both Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi as well as Tim Lucas, Keith Emmerson & Irene Maracle, and if you pride yourself as being a Dario Argento fan then, this release should be a must.

This is one of the greatest sequel to the 1977 cult horror classic Susperia. Dario Argento blends both gothic horror and supernatural Art Deco in an unique way.The cast is outstanding from Italian and European Actors from Eleonara Giorgi, Gabrielle Latvia, Veronica Lazar, Leopoldo Mastelloni, Daria Nicolodi, Sacha Pitoeff and Aldia Valli along with America actors Irene Miracle and Leigh McCloskey all deserves all the acting glories in spell binding movie.Plus allowing the great prog rock keyboard genius the late and great Keith Emerson was a stoke of genius by providing an excellent music score. Please get this Blu-Ray as it’s a brilliant prelude to Dario Argento’s Susperia.It’s a pity that Dario Argento waited so long for the last of the trilogy, in my opinion ‘Mother Of Tears’ should have done it either in 1986 or 1987, and set it in a posh Italian Board School (with British styled formal posh school uniforms for the actors who are playing the students) with cameo appearances by Jessica Harper and Leigh McCloskey as their main characters from Susperia and Inferno with a blend of existing and new actors and actresses from Italy, France, Germany, Britain, Canada and America. The third movie should have the same dark style of the first two movies with the same dark and evil surprise at the end when they discover who is the Third Mother, and have either Goblin or Keith Emerson do the music score.I think my version would have been a lot better than the woeful 2007 ‘Mother Of Tears’.

A young man studying in Rome receives a letter from his sister in New York asking him to come as she's scared and needs his help. Upon getting there he discovers his sister missing and finds out that the apartment building once home to a the mother of darkness.Dario Argento's 1980 sequel to his 1977 classic Suspiria. Some great cinematography, colours, architecture really is a strong aspect to the film, the movie also has a very ethereal feel to it with the Keith Emerson soundtrack adding to the overall theme of the picture. The death sequence's are striking and also genuinely suspenseful, the central park scene is probably the best but all are great. The climax builds the tension expertly, Leigh McCloskey wondering through the building with each revelation leading to a joyfully chilling finale. Performed well the two American leads McCloskey & Miracle are good but Alida Valli is great. The main problem for me was how incoherent the narrative was, at times the story coheres and the viewer moves along with it, but mostly the story moves from set piece to set piece and the narrative takes second place, meaning you lose focus on it with only again the cinematography and score keeping interest.A truly wonderful film for looking at just don't invest your time trying to make sense of the plot. Although there is violence it isn't graphic or gory so its inclusion on the video nasties list is a real mystery as it didn't deserve it.

I'm a little bit of an Argento fan, so I freely admit going into this with bias. I absolutely adore Suspiria, so it's only natural that I'd be interested in sitting down and soaking up the sequel (a movie that has been bafflingly difficult to get hold of in the UK over the years). The Arrow release of Inferno has given me a slice of Argento's chromatic nightmare pie for Christmas - one that has proved to be a lot better than I expected.Mark Elliott, a musicology student studying in Rome, recieves a letter from his sister in New York filled with seemingly paranoid ramblings about witches and the apartment building she lives in there. Travelling to the US (and seemingly haunted by eerie events along the way) Mark finds his sister has vanished, and when he tries to find out what has happened to her the other distinctly odd inhabitants of the building begin to turn up dead. All roads lead back to an ancient book, The Three Mothers, and the confessions of an alchemist who was responsible for building the homes of three witches. Mark discovers that his sister has been living as a tenant of one of them, and the sorceress is preparing for an inevitable date with destiny, one she intends to drag eveyone who has discovered her secret along with too. Will our rather hapless hero discover the truth, and if he does, will he wind up joining everyone else in the fires of damnation?Inferno is classic Argento nigtmare fuel. It is ruled, much as Susperia was, by a hazy, disjointed waltz towards a conslusion, much like someone waking up from a bad dream and remembering fragments of it as they pass into wakefulness. Anyone going into this film expecting a solid, conclusive narrative is going to walk away disappointed and probably baffled. While there is certainly a progression from A to B to C through the movie, it is one broken up with vignettes and sudden bouts of violence that seem to come out of nowhere. Characters connected to the plot seem to fall out of the air like snowflakes, as do the sinister agents of Mater Tenebrarum (including a beautiful woman holding a cat and speaks silently, a bookbinding shadowy giant with claws, and most bizarre of all a knife-happy hamburger chef), and Argento once again hits us with creepy crawlies and household pets-gone-bad. Inferno is, if nothing else, a brilliant attempt to make an experience more akin to viewing someone else's nightmare than sitting down and watching a film.Visually, the film is a feast of semiotics and colour; sets and lighting segregate the movie world into stark reds, frigid blues and sickly greens on cue, and throw into this shrieking bags of drowning cats, men being nibbled to death by hundreds of rats, long shadows on walls and heroines being chased down staircases and along corridors, the whole thing is filled with images that stay with you long after the movie's conclusion. It also features a signature prog-rock soundtrack, this time by Keith Emmerson, which is much less subtle and tinkly than Argento's own score for Suspiria, and more full-on progressive bombast running wild with Verdi. Inferno, whether it makes sense to you or not, is a menacing banquet of colour and sound.This is also the first movie I've picked up from Arrow. I've got to admit, their lurid, T&A heavy new covers to their releases put me off massively, like they're trying to make all their catalogue look like tawdry grindhouse flicks or cheap VHS bootlegs from the 80's. However, I was extremely surprised by the serious quality of the package within; replete with great extras, a seriously sharp print of the film, and a crystal-clear soundtrack. Plus the covers are all reversable and interchangable, so I have the best of everything in one DVD. I've heard that Arrow's quality can be patchy, but this one at least is absolutely bang-on. So, whether you're an Argento fan looking for a potentially-definitive version for your collection, or you're looking for something a little more unusual and challenging than your average cut of horror, give Inferno a whirl... the flames will keep you nice and warm at the very least.

This film, Dario Argento's follow-up to Suspiria, forms the middle part of the so-called "Three Mothers" trilogy. Afficianadoes of Italian horror have long relished the claustraphobic and ultra-creepy underwater scenes at the start where the heroine dives into a flooded basement and disturbs a long entombed corpse. For once, Argento successfully creates and sustains an atmosphere of dread and mystery, this time centred on a strange old sparsely-populated appartment block in New York City. This building is one of three, built for the Mother of Darkness or Mater Tenebrarum, one of the Three Mothers who were powerful witches who ruled the world from Freiberg (setting of Suspiria), New York and Rome. A young poet who lives in the block discovers a book on the Three Mothers in an antique shop next door and sets about investigating the secret of the appartment block, beginning with it's basement. A very bad move. Soon she is writing to her musicologist brother in Rome in dread, begging him to return and help her. The evil spreads as soon as the letter is read, first engulfing a fellow student, then following the brother back to New York.The DVD (region 1) copy that I have is ravishingly beautiful, bringing the most out of Argento's incredibly detailed and controlled scene settings and lighting arrangements: a real feast for the eyes. A dirty old cellar can look incredibly lush, bathed in red and blue light, in Argento's world, and even the darkest scenes are filled with a lush chiarascuro. And there's some good and unsettling use of seemingly random images (the chopping up of blood-red meat, a lizard chewing on a butterfly or a cat mangling a mouse). As ever, the plotline plays out better in Dario's head and never translates fully to the audience, so we are frequently baffled by what is going on (what exactly is the role of the mysterious concierge or the rich woman's manservant within the witch-world, for example? Followers, protectors? Witches are supposed to relish accumulating riches, so these two soon commit a significant sin). Still, this is a slasher movie after all, so the killings are liberally scattered throughout the film and particularly well-staged this time around, in my opinion, even by Suspiria's standard. And the acting from the younger leads is not as hopeless as in that film! Finally, prog rock veteran Keith Emerson (of ELP fame) contributes a superior piano and orchestral score that fits the film well (you can find a relatively inexpensive mp3 download of the entire score elsewhere on Amazon). Although it may lack the uniqueness of a Bernard Hermann, this is a cut above the orchestral fluff that horror films usually end up with. The only cuckoo in the nest here though is a single contribution by Godfrey Salmon to the music score entitled "Mater Tenebrarum". This bonkers bit of mad latin singing over a punishing ELP-like sonic delivery rather overwhelms the visual drama when it is used toward the end of the film, and sounds as if he is blatantly ripping off bits of ELPs "Pictures at an Exhibition" LP to boot. Well, imitation is supposed to be the sincerest expression of flattery.On to the DVD extras: mostly the usual Italian horror fare (a few biogs and some stills) on this single disc edition, but there's a decent 8 min sub-titled interview with Argento and others about the making of the film, with a good bit on how Italian horror maestro Mario Bava (of "Black Sunday" fame) came on board to create key special effects.