SUSPIRIA

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SUSPIRIA (1977)
The only thing more terrifying than the last five minutes of this film are the first 90!

A young American dancer travels to Europe to join a famous ballet school. As she arrives, the camera turns to another young woman, who appears to be fleeing from the school. She returns to her apartment where she is gruesomely murdered by a hideous creature. Meanwhile, the young American is trying to settle in at the ballet school, but hears strange noises and is troubled by bizarre occurrences. She eventually discovers that the school is merely a front for a much more sinister organization

Entertainment Weekly rated the film #18 in its top 25 scariest movies of all time and said it had "the most vicious murder scene ever filmed." Suspiria is often considered Argento's finest film and a classic of the horror genre.
In a poll of film critics conducted by the Village Voice, Suspiria was named the 100th greatest film made during the 20th century.
This movie was number 24 on the cable channel Bravo's list of the "100 Scariest Movie Moments".

PART 1


PART 2


PART 3


PART 4


PART 5


PART 6


PART 7


PART 8


PART 9


PART 10



TRIVIA

A glass feather is plucked from an ornament. Director Dario Argento's feature film debut was directing Uccello dalle piume di cristallo, L' (1969).

Joan Bennett's last feature film.

The first part (with Inferno (1980) and Terza madre, La (2007)) of a trilogy of films about the "Three Mothers".

Director Dario Argento, composed the creepy music with the band Goblin and played it at full blast on set to unnerve the actors and elicit a truly scared performance.

It is often incorrectly assumed that, to achieve the rich color palette, the film was shot using the outdated 3-strip Technicolor process. This is untrue: no film after the mid-1950s was shot using this method. The film was instead shot on normal Eastman Color Kodak stock and was then printed using the 3-strip Technicolor process, utilizing one of the last remaining machines. This issue has been confused somewhat by the fact that, on the 25th anniversary documentary featured in the 3-disc DVD set, a discussion of the printing process by cinematographer Luciano Tovoli was incorrectly followed by a diagram showing a 3-strip camera.

Director Dario Argento's original idea was that the ballet school would accommodate young girls not older 12. However the studio and producer (his father) denied his request because a film this violent involving children would be surely banned. Dario Argento raised the age limit of the girls to 20 but he didn't rewrite the script, hence the naivety of the characters and the occasionally childlike dialogue. He also put all the doorknobs at about the same height as the actress' heads, so that they will have to raise their arms in order to open the doors, just like children.

Originally the film was to have starred Daria Nicolodi, who was Argento's girlfriend at the time and who also wrote the screenplay. However, Argento decided to go with a younger actress. Daria Nicolodi does appear in the film twice: she can be glimpsed in the film's opening sequence that shows Susy walking through the airport, and she also provides the gravelly voice of Helena Markos.

Tina Aumont had been offered the lead role, but due to scheduling conflicts, she could not accept.

The woman that plays Helna Markos is not credited. According to Jessica Harper, the woman was a 90 year old ex-hooker Argento had found on the streets of Rome.