The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) & The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971) & Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)

          Around the same time that Alfred Hitchcock’s career began to wane, potential successors for his “Master of Suspense” title emerged in Hollywood and abroad. In America, director Brian De Palma laced several films with overt homages to Hitchcock. Overseas, Italian director Dario Argento won a fleeting sort of international fame with his first three pictures, all of which have unmistakably Hitchcockian elements.

          Argento’s debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, benefits not only from the self-assurance of a youthful talent eager to strut his stuff but also from extraordinary collaborators. Having proven himself as a screenwriter on pictures including Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Argento secured the services of composer Ennio Morricone and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. Their unnerving music and stately photography elevate the contrivances of the script Argento adapted from a 1949 novel by Fredrick Brown. The film opens with a bravura visual flourish—while living in Rome, American writer Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) happens upon an attack inside an all-white art gallery, so he watches from behind the gallery’s glass façade as a beautiful woman struggles to survive a stabbing. Luckily, he’s able to call for help. Afterward, police detective Morosini (Enrico Maria Salerno) confiscates Dalmas’ passport and forces the writer to remain in Italy until the investigation concludes. Dalmas then starts an investigation of his own, even as the killer attacks others who get too close to the truth.

          Despite myriad lapses in credibility and logic, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage moves along fairly well. Unfortunately, so many scenes feature the brutalization of women that Argento left himself vulnerable to charges of misogyny, just as De Palma did with his Hitchcockian shockers. That said, most of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is vivid. Expertly staged jump scares complement unpleasant scenes including a horrific razor-blade attack.  Salerno’s world-weary portrayal, while clichéd, is fun to watch, though Musante is far less impressive. In his defense, he’s burdened with some wretched dialogue (“What’s happening to me? This damn thing’s becoming an obsession!”). All in all, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is an impressive first effort, its rough edges attributable to inexperience and its highlights indicative of promise.

          Argento’s follow-up, The Cat o’ Nine Tails, is made with just as much confidence but slightly less panache. Morricone returns, but the movie suffers for Storaro’s absence, because the imagery in Argento’s second film is pedestrian instead of painterly. Also miring The Cat o’ Nine Tails in mediocrity are distasteful themes of child endangerment, homophobia, and incest. Once again, Argento uses the device of a witness who becomes an amateur sleuth. This time, blind typesetter Franco Arnò (Karl Malden) overhears a suspicious conversation and then makes a connection when he learns about a murder that happened near where the conversation took place. Franco enlists the help of newspaperman Carlo Giordani (James Franciscus), and they search for the killer’s identity. Things get convoluted fast, because the plot involves, among other things, cutting-edge genetic research and the use of a whip as a metaphor. Still, the plotting of The Cat o’ Nine Tails is no more ridiculous than that of the typical Hitchcock picture, except perhaps for the sheer number of McGuffins pulling the story down blind alleys.

          Logic is even more of a problem in Argento’s sophomore effort than it was in his debut, since the police in The Cat o’ Nine Tails seem both ineffective and weirdly tolerant of amateur detectives. Like Musante in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Franciscus cuts a handsome figure but offers little else to the proceedings, though Malden’s avuncular charm makes all of his scenes watchable. Argento’s apparent desire to out-Hitchcock Hitchcock gets a bit tiresome, as during a long scene involving poisoned milk, but Morricone saves the day with his offbeat score, all eerie wails and spidery syncopation. Furthermore, Argento comes through with a fun chase at the end as well as a colorful final death. So even though The Cat o’ Nine Tails doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, it’s the most entertaining installment of Argento’s so-called “Animal Trilogy.”

          Four Flies on Grey Velvet lacks the elegance of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and the pulpy energy of The Cat o’ Nine Tails. Worse, Four Flies on Grey Velvet tacks in a grotesque direction by fetishizing violence with close-ups of foreign objects penetrating skin. It’s as if Argento, upon reaching maturity as a storyteller, suddenly forgot the lessons about understatement he’d learned from Hitchcock’s work. Anyway, Four Flies on Grey Velvet gets underway when rock-music drummer Roberto Tobias (Michael Brandon) confronts a man he perceives as a stalker, then accidentally kills the man while another person photographs the incident. Blackmail ensues, so Roberto half-heartedly investigates with the assistance of artist friends and a PI. Meanwhile, Roberto navigates romances with two women. Four Flies on Grey Velvet is one of those befuddling thrillers in which the protagonist seems fearful of mortal danger in one scene, then seems untroubled in the next. Further muddying the viewing experience are brief attempts at comedy, such as a scene featuring Italian-cinema funnyman Bud Spencer. It’s hard to reconcile the lighthearted stuff with scenes of slow-motion mutilation, especially since the plot deteriorates into endless explanations of far-fetched motives sprinkled with cut-rate psychobabble.

          After making Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Argento took a break from the rough stuff and made an outright comedy, which flopped. Thereafter, he doubled down on gore and weirdness with Deep Red (1975) and Suspiria (1977). Exit the would-be Master of Suspense, enter the Master of Horror. While none of Argento’s early thrillers remotely approaches the quality of Hitchcock’s best work, all three are creepy and imaginative, with moments that would have made the master proud.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage: GROOVY

The Cat o’ Nine Tails: GROOVY

Four Flies on Grey Velvet: FUNKY

Deep Red (1975)

          Complaining about the excesses and shortcomings of Dario Argento’s celebrated giallo thriller Deep Red serves little purpose, because the folks who dig this sort of movie expect little more than stylish violence, and the people for whom the film’s rough edges would be problematic are unlikely to ever watch Deep Red. A visually dynamic shocker with absurdly detailed gore, indulgently long suspense sequences, and a murky storyline that exists mostly as a means of stringing sensationalistic set pieces together, the film has inarguable cinematic merits. Furthermore, it’s a safe bet that Deep Red and other ’70s Argento pictures influenced the work of such American horror/thriller auteurs as John Carpenter and Brian De Palma. Nonetheless, there’s no avoiding the fact that Deep Red was designed to be unpleasant. Except during sequences that get bogged down in turgid plotting, the picture largely achieves its goal of making viewers uncomfortable, sometimes through crude means (onscreen bloodshed) and sometimes through subtler methods (the generation of legitimate suspense). And even though the script by Argento and frequent Fellini collaborator Bernardino Zapponi actually devotes quite a bit of time to character development, the value of the picture ultimately resides in its ability to provoke revulsion. Therefore, despite being made with considerable artistry, Deep Red is not high art. If anything, it’s the exact opposite of that.

          Set in Turin, Italy, the meandering movie begins with atmospheric scenes culminating in the murder of a psychic. The killing, which occurs in a high window of an apartment building, is witnessed by an English musician named Marcus Daly (David Hemmings), who lives and works in Italy. Marcus soon becomes obsessed with determining the murderer’s identity. Helping him investigate are friends of the deceased psychic as well as a reporter named Gianna Brezzi (Darla Nicoldoi). The plot grows more complicated with each passing scene, eventually becoming almost incomprehensible as Argento adds in myths and rumors and whatnot, hence the picture’s bloated original running time of 126 minutes. (During its initial American release, Deep Red earned an “X” rating for its violence, only to get trimmed down for mainstream US exhibition.) As with many of Argento’s pictures, the style is ultimately more important than the substance. Argento’s probing camerawork is exciting to watch, with cameras floating and soaring through spaces whenever the director isn’t composing striking static shots. Pushing these images along is an undulating original rock score by Italian band Goblin, whose spooky grooves have a hypnotic appeal. As for leading man Hemmings, his work is chilly and intense, though in his defense, Hemmings’ character exists to drive the story, rather than the other way around.

Deep Red: FUNKY

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

          The saga of horror auteur George A. Romero’s career is filled with copyright disputes, editorial interference, and financial shenanigans, so even the release of his most successful film, Dawn of the Dead, has weird baggage. For instance, Romero first delved into the zombie genre with his acclaimed debut, Night of the Living Dead (1968), an indie success that fell out of Romero’s hands and into the public domain. When he returned to the genre for this film, he wasn’t authorized to create a proper sequel, so made a loosely related follow-up—and whereas Night is a contained thriller with a small cast, Dawn is epic by comparison.

          Ostensibly picking up where Night left off, even though no characters recur from the first picture, Dawn begins mid-action: Frenzied technicians at a Philadelphia TV station cover the story of a worldwide zombie outbreak, because some unknown X factor has caused the deceased to climb from their graves and feast on the living. Eventually, TV staffers Francine (Gaylen Ross) and Stephen (Dave Emge) flee their station. Meanwhile, two S.W.A.T. cops, Peter (Ken Foree) and Roger (Scott Reiniger), survive a horrific raid on a zombie-infested apartment building and join the TV staffers to escape Philadelphia by helicopter. The foursome selects an abandoned shopping mall as a potential fortress, realizing they can barricade the doors, kill the zombies already inside, and then help themselves to abundant supplies.

          The choice of the mall as the film’s principal location is the genius contrivance of this movie, a satirical flourish that separates Dawn of the Dead from lesser gorefests. In trying to explain why zombies flock to the mall, the heroes surmise that the urge to shop is so ingrained in the American character that even death can’t suppress the consumerist call. Furthermore, the heroes go on several “shopping sprees,” usually punctuated with zombie kills, putting a dark spin on the American dream of unfettered materialism. Even the nasty plot twist Romero introduces late in the movie—a gang of vicious bikers invades the mall—feeds into his cruel lampooning of modern-day excesses.

          Speaking of excess, Dawn of the Dead achieved instant infamy during its original release not just for Romero’s ingenious storyline, but also for the outrageous gore that permeates the movie. Makeup man Tom Savini (who also appears onscreen as the leader of the bikers) contrived realistic simulations of beheadings, disembowelments, dismemberments, gunshots, knife wounds, and even exploding heads, filling the screen with enough viscera to nauseate a butcher. Some fans love this stuff because it’s so over the top, but for those not indoctrinated into the cult of bloody movies, Dawn of the Dead is rough going. (To avoid an X rating, Romero released the movie unrated in the U.S.)

          Adding another interesting wrinkle to Dawn of the Dead is the participation of Italian horror-cinema madman Dario Argento, who served as a creative consultant and also provided the film’s twinkly electronic music. As part of his deal, Argento got to re-edit and rename the movie for international release, so his version—much shorter than Romero’s—is called Zombi. In fact, multiple versions of Dawn of the Dead exist, with the longest sprawling across three hours.

          In any event, Dawn of the Dead was a box-office success, so Romero continued his zombie cycle with Day of the Dead (1985) and other sequels. However, Romero’s pictures should not be confused with the spoof Return of the Living Dead (1985) or its sequel, Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988); similarly, 1990’s Night of the Living Dead is merely a remake of the original picture. To make things even more confusing, Dawn of the Dead was remade by director Zack Snyder in 2004, and a sequel to the remake is reportedly in the works—even though Romero is still making follow-ups to the 1978 movie.

Dawn of the Dead: GROOVY

Suspiria (1977)

          Arguably the most beloved of Italian shock-cinema maestro Dario Argento’s various bloody cinematic freakouts—beloved by a certain stripe of masochistic viewer, that is—Suspiria is like a tone poem written in the form of a fan letter to Fangoria. Taking place in some bizarro alternate universe comprised entirely of horror-movie clichés, Suspiria is a nasty piece of work that takes perverse pleasure in getting a rise out of viewers, yet what separates it from standard slasher fare is the surrealistic artistry of Argento’s filmmaking. From the disturbing music (more on that in a minute) to the crazy lighting, which casts blazingly hot beams of bright colors across almost every scene, Suspiria is cranked up to overdrive from start to finish.

          The story, which couldn’t possibly matter less, concerns wide-eyed American dancer Suzy Banion (Jessica Harper), who is invited to enroll in a European dance academy. The night she arrives, one of the students is stalked and murdered by a psycho, and as various creepy things happen around Suzy, our intrepid heroine slowly, dimly, excruciatingly figures out All Is Not Right.™ Yes, even the hoary cliché of the Unbelievably Stupid Young Woman™ is represented in Suspiria, although with a trippy twist: The nutjobs running the dance academy start drugging Suzy soon after her enrollment, so for all intents and purposes, she’s high throughout most of the movie.

          It seems reasonable to assume that some of the folks behind the camera were toking as well, since Suspiria feels like a funhouse-mirror version of reality. Walls are alive with shadows and mysterious movements; maggots infest an attic; the exterior and interior spaces of the school look like backdrops from some experimental theater piece; and everyone talks in stilted phrases with no discernible relation to actual human speech. (Strange-cinema mainstay Udo Keir’s performance is particularly absurd, since dubbing magically erases his thick German accent.) More importantly, for shock value anyway, all of the characters are so weird that any rational person would run for the hills upon encountering these ghouls. Yet Suzy just hangs out, even as innumerable clues and otherworldly goings-on suggest her teachers are witches, because that’s what people do in over-the-top horror pictures: They linger because They Don’t Trust Their Own Senses.™

          As straight narrative, Suspiria is a disaster—when it’s not tediously repetitive, it’s insultingly obvious—but as an exercise in sicko style, it’s impressive. The picture’s crucial element, without question, is that aforementioned music, by a rock group called Goblin (with help from Argento). Played at punishingly loud volumes, Goblin’s music features surreal, jangling death rattles mixed with a vocal motif that sounds like a distant echo of a child’s lullaby. When those sounds are juxtaposed with Argento’s Day-Glo montages of women getting mutilated, it’s impossible not to react, because the audience is getting bludgeoned as mercilessly as the characters.

          If there’s any point to this exercise in excess other than trying to make viewers ill, however, it isn’t immediately apparent. So, if you go for this sort of thing, Suspiria is some kind of milestone achievement. If you don’t, it’s merely an unpleasant audiovisual assault created by One Really Sick Dude,™ a sobriquet one suspects Argento would consider a compliment.

Suspiria: FREAKY