- I'm not exactly a horror film connoisseur, but my limited experience suggests that the most enjoyable examples of the genre are split roughly evenly between good and bad movies. Dario Argento's Suspiria falls squarely into the latter category, and yet also manages to be very entertaining and fairly scary. The opening serves as an effective preview of coming attractions when a young woman named Pat (Eva Axén) flees a German dance academy only to be attacked and hanged after plummeting through a skylight, portions of which manage to impale and kill her friend, too. The scene is so over-the-top and grotesque that you're either going to walk out right then or enjoy the entire thing.
- It so happens that an American named Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) arrived in Freiburg just in time to spot Pat running through the woods in the torrential rain, which really sets the tone for the rest of Suzy's visit. By that, I mean that the dance academy is plagued by a maggot infestation, bat attacks, seeing eye dog attacks, and, for lack of a better term, a barbed wire room. Oddly enough, the assistant headmistress (Joan Bennett) and no-nonsense head instructor (Alida Valli) don't seem terribly worried about these events, and the other students (Stefania Casini, Barbara Magnolfi, Susanna Javicoli) are mostly numb to what is going on around them. Personally, I would have bailed after the maggot incident, but maybe that's just me.
- Although the occasional eruptions of gore are memorable, the most striking aspect of Suspiria is its truly bizarre color palette. Rooms are drenched in reds and blues that get even brighter when the lights go out, and some of the walls seem nearly transparent. This is an especially effective technique when the girls observe the silhouette of the elusive headmistress, whose stertorous breathing does a lot to prevent everyone else from sleeping comfortably. Combine these iconic visuals with a wonderfully eerie soundtrack by the Italian band Goblin and the result is both absurd and terrifying, which is exactly why I liked it.
