"Suspiria" shows that there are some things that Italians do better than Americans. Namely, they make better teen slasher films. Before there was "Halloween", "Friday the 13th", "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer", there was "Suspiria". And it may be better than any of the Yankee films that followed.
"Suspiria" is a Horror film with a capital H. Plot, character development, and even script are secondary considerations. For director Dario Argento, who made a number of films like this one, these only distract from creating a feel of horror. Teenage girls running for their lives, but caught and slaughtered anyway. A blaring rock soundtrack with harrowing wails in the background. Long, lonely corridors, with something waiting for you at the end. This is what Argento is really after, and he succeeds admirably. What separates this film from its profitable American successors is that Argento concentrates on horror, with no interest in teenage angst.
There is a plot here, although it can be picked apart with little trouble. Susy (Jessica Harper) is a blank-faced young American ballet student, who has arrived in Germany to attend a prestigious dance academy. For some reason she stays there, despite the violent murders of two former classmates, despite the creepy instructors who are drugging her, despite the weird, hateful and/or paranoid fellow students. When her roommate Sara (Stefania Casini) mysteriously disappears, Susy picks up the investigations of witchcraft that Sara left behind. Which, of course, makes her the witches' next target.
This is not a film for the faint of heart. With the bloody zombies, vampire bats, stabbings, slashings, flesh-eating maggots and hangings, Argento leaves little to the imagination, and takes almost sadistic pleasure in tormenting the young female victims. He goes a step farther than his American clones in that the violence eschews campy humor and eroticism. Creating horror is all that matters. The sets and even the cast are bathed in bright colors, which are sometimes the result of frames painted by hand during post production.
The film was made in Italian, and is dubbed rather than subtitled. The conversations are rarely consequential enough for this to matter. (72/100)
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.