favorite movie #89 - halloween edition: suspiria

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #89 - Suspiria (1977) - Dario Argento's Suspiria may be a giallo film, but its primary color palette is red, red, red. The horror thriller features Jessica Harper as Suzy, a young American ballerina who attends a dance academy in Germany. That is just the framework for hue-saturated set pieces which feature veteran Hollywood star Joan Bennet, Alida Valli and one ingenious, gruesome, and gory death after another. The film is ostensibly about witchcraft and devil worship, but it plays more like a nightmarish fairy tale. The young, mostly female victims are drenched in either blood-red lights or the real thing. It's hard not to think of the "horrors" of coming of age and a woman's intimate relationship with blood. Whatever Suspiria is about, it is so arresting to watch it could have been interesting even if it had been a silent movie. The moment Suzy walks through the sliding doors at the airport and into the stormy night, her adventure, and ours, begins.

Suzy (Jessica Walter( is not in Kansas anymore

Suzy's roommate Olga (Barbara Magnolfi)

Suzy's friend Sara (Stefania Casini) tries to warn her that the school is a strange place

Young and handsome Udo Kier, post-Warhol 

favorite movie #85 - halloween edition: spirits of the dead

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #85 - Spirits of the Dead (1968) - A film in three parts, with segments by three different directors, Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini. The most famous and best short (and my favorite) in the omnibus is directed by Fellini and entitled Toby Dammit, based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story "Never Bet the Devil Your Head." Terence Stamp stars as Toby Dammit, an alcoholic actor who is in Rome to film a movie — with the incentive that he will receive a bright, new, red Ferrari when he is done with the film. But this deal has another catch ...

Related:

birthday boys — alexander calder, albert brooks, and terence stamp

favorite movie #60 - halloween edition: castle of blood (danza macabra/danse macabre/castle of terror)

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #60 - Castle of Blood (Danza Macabra) (1964) - I grew up on horror films, mainly watching them with my dad (who must have loved them too, and always turned them on) and family on television on Creature Feature or Thriller Theater. One of my earliest memories of having the bejeesus scared out of me is this Italian dubbed masterpiece from 1964, Castle of Blood. For years I thought its title was Nightmare Castle, another Italian gothic horror film starring the wonderful Barbara Steele. It was also pretty sexy for its time. I recently tracked it down — it's available to view on YouTube (in English, French or Italian). The plot is both simple and fantastic.  In a pub, a journalist (Georges Rivière) accepts a bet from Lord Blackwood (Umberto Raho) and Edgar Allan Poe (!) (Silvano Tranquilli) that he can spend the night in a haunted castle on All Hallow's Eve. All during the night various ghosts re-enact their gruesome deaths, and he falls in love with the beautiful, ghostly Elisabeth (Steele) who tries to help him escape ...

related:
halloween memories — barbara steele
a life-long love of scary movies