Susperia

Susperia
One of the most horrifying movies of the last thirty years, Susperia has redefined the horror genre and continues to be a film that scares its audience. Susperia tells the story of Suzy Bannion, played by Jessica Harper, an American, who has traveled to Europe to attend a famous ballet school run by Madame Blanc, played by Joan Bennett and Miss Tanner, played by Alida Valli, Bannion cross paths with a woman who has fled the school only to be brutally murdered by something and when Bannion attends the school strange things begin to happen. She soon realizes that the school is being run by a coven of witches.
Susperia, directed by legendary Italian horror director Dario Argento, is the first film in the Three Mothers trilogy along with Inferno (1980) and La Terza Madre (2007). Argento, along with Goblin who wrote the musical score, and Luciano Tovoli who did the cinematography achieved a symbiotic masterpiece that has been scaring audiences since 1977.
Argento has collaborated with the band Goblin since Susperia on projects such as: George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (which Argento did his own edit of the film) and Tenebre (1982). Goblin's score of Susperia lends another character to the film. The opening scene where Suzy Bannion is walking out of the terminal to the street in order to hail a cab has a schizophrenic feel to it while Tovoli's camerawork of breaking up the POV of Bannion. As the film continues, Goblin almost has a split personality with two contrasting musical scores in some scenes where you get an almost serene underlying of sound with a frightening overtone. Some of the score reinforce what Argento is doing in Susperia by adding a soundtrack that conveys a sheer uneasiness of some of the other characters such as when Bannion is walking down the hall passing one of the cooks and the little boy. Another aspect of Goblin's score that is brilliant in Susperia is how unnerving the music which lends to the overall feel of the film. Goblin's score is a masterpiece lending Susperia an unknown character that underlies what Argento and Tovoli are doing in the film.
Luciano Tovoli's cinematography in Susperia lends Argento another character that truly makes Susperia one of the all-time horror films. Tovoli has since worked with Argento on Tenebre (1982). Tovoli's use of color, red in specific, gives Susperia a hallucinogenic overtone. The use of red also symbolizes not only blood, but also a madness that Suzy Bannion soon realizes throughout the film. Tovoli's use of color also reinforces the emotional settings in certain scenes as in the blue hue of the attic giving it a cold demeanor.
What Argento does in Susperia that makes this film truly horrifying is not letting up on the suspense that Bannion goes through from the time she comes in contact with the student who is brutally murdered to the very end when she discovers the coven of witches. Argento is brilliant at setting up every scene with a style and using movement to convey the simplest of messages. For example, the scene where the blind man and his dog are walking through a wide-open square with two buildings in the neo-classical style of architecture. Tovoli's complex camera shots convey the sheer terror of the scene. One might say that this is Argento's statement of fascism. The scene has a buildup of its own with Daniel walking with just a simple score of bells that turn from being very calming to a pounding of drums that heighten the suspense of what comes next in the scene. One of the more horrifying aspect of Susperia that Argento brings is how he uses a very calm and control movement of the camera to frame his characters in the film to buildup the suspense and horror. The scene where Sara slowly climbs the boxes to slip through the little window to escape the witches and falls into the coils of barb wire. The frame is still while Sara struggles in the wire. The terror on her face is Argento needed to capture such a horrific shot. One of the most brutal visions of Susperia happens at the beginning of the film where the student that ran away from the school is brutally murdered. The murder is one of the most gruesome in modern horror films. The climax of that scene where she falls through the glass ceiling being hung by the curtain rope is one that has been copied in such films as Demoni (1985) which is a film that Argento co-wrote with Lamberto Bava.
Susperia is one of the most horrifying films to come out in the last thirty years. It's influence can be traced to such films as Scream, The Witches, and even Halloween II. Susperia will continue to be an influence in future directors that are making the next truly horrifying film. Susperia's symbiotic use of color, sound, and movement make this a very unique horror film and one that continue to horrify the next generation of horror fans.