Bangers n' Mash 38: Witches

If it wasn't immediately apparent, my podcast co-host, Mr. Mash aka JD, is a dear friend of mine. I can honestly say he's my best friend, probably. The two of us have a lot in common and our mutual love of horror and comic books has given us enough material for 38 episodes of the Bangers n' Mash Show. (And will certainly provide enough material for many more.)

However, it's fair to say I'm a much more serious film fan then JD is. There are many genres I've explored that my co-host wouldn't be willing to. Silent cinema, for one. Foreign language films for another. I've tried to make in-roads but haven't had much success. It's frustrating. Living in the part of the country I do, (Here's a hint: It's rural.) I wish I had more friends interested in the same weird shit I like. Anyway, one of the topics I've been trying to break to Mr. Mash without much luck is Italian horror. I know it's not for everyone but I continue to believe that, if he gave the sub-genre a try, he would find some things he'd like.

For a while now, Mr. Mash has been wanting to do an episode about witches. It's a personal fetish of his. I don't mind using that word "fetish" because the attraction is pretty blatantly sexual for him. I can say this because I'm fairly certain no one will read this. JD has got a serious thing for chicks with special powers, whether they be supernatural or psychic in nature. Thus his life-long crush on Jean Grey and Willow from "Buffy." Feel free to read into that all you want.

Anyway, I was resistant to this for a while simply because I didn't think there were truly that many witch movies worth discussing. However, after thinking on it a bit I realized I could use this as his gateway into Italian horror. Dario Argento's Three Mothers trilogy feature, of course, a brood of evil witches as their antagonists. "Suspiria" also happens to be one of the most highly regarded Italian horror films of all time, if not the highest regarded. The experiment was, well... Not hugely successful but I think I have piqued his curiosity a little. Maybe we'll try some Fulci or Bava in the future? Maybe.

As for the episode itself, it's not our best effort. My brain was a bit scattered on the day we recorded and a lot of editing was required to cover up my stuttering and tripping. Secondly, I made the mistake of discussing several films my co-host hadn't seen in succession. I don't know what our tiny fanbase thinks but listening to myself drone on isn't the easiest or most entertaining thing to edit. It certainly took a lot of energy out of the show. That's also the reason why this took so long to get out. (Though the first episode coming out late in the month and me then rushing out the next episode is more or less standard protocol around here.) We'll do better next time. Probably.



Anyway, I'll put up another Godzilla review in a few hours so feel free to ignore this if you aren't a listener.

Director Report Card: Dario Argento (2007)

17. Mother of Tears
La terza madre

The latter-day Argento malaise rolls on and ends up sullying the name of perhaps his trademark films. Twenty years of brain-storming and this is the epic conclusion to the Three Mothers saga he came up with? I’m not even that big of a fan of “Suspiria” or “Inferno,” and I’m embarrassed by this.

Summing up all of the problems of “Mother of Tears” is difficult. First off, very little of Dario’s usual directorial style is present. We get a few POV shots and a nice long tracking shot towards the end, but there’s certainly none of the overwhelming camera movements that characterize his best work. Horrifyingly, he actually seems to adapt a shaky-cam/Hollywood action movie style during several scenes. I understand why this wasn’t a small scale ghost story like the previous entries, but going wide drains any personal horror from the story.

Things are pretty silly throughout, almost to the point were you wonder if Argento was intentionally going for camp. No, the over-the-top levels of absurd insanity seen in “Phantom of the Opera” aren’t quite reached here but the movie comes uncomfortably close. The trio of attacking demons? The evil witches that look like extras from a Paula Abdul video? The ghost of Daria Nicolodi floating around, Obi-Wan style, helping her daughter out, while Asia yells “Mommy!?" The magical T-shirt? That monkey? And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg.

There’s a lot of exposition about the mythology of the Three Mothers and, honestly, I don’t mind it by this point. But did we have to get it through slideshows or passages of books being read out loud to us? Argento has always had the tendency to clobber ideas together without much sense. Lately, the ideas themselves are as senseless as the presentation.

The pacing is very weak, with far too much time devoted to Asia running from place to place. The police investigation aspect of the story is underdeveloped. When you think about all the other horrible stuff going on in Rome, would the police really devote that much energy to finding one person?

As for the acting… We all like Asia Argento, right? She can act, I’ve seen it myself. But anytime her dad’s behind the camera, it seems like she devolves into a scratchy voice shrieking little girl without a single bit of emotional restraint. I all ready mentioned how Daria Nicolodi makes a fool of herself. I really can’t stress how jaw-droppingly bad the whole mother-daughter plot line is.

The title character and lynchpin for the entire plot is played by model-turned-actress Moran Atias. It’s really quite obvious that Miss Atias has no formal training, as she mostly stands around naked and badly overacts. I suspect she was chosen more for her physical appearance and willingness to do nudity then for any ability to convey power or dread. Even then, I gotta’ question Dario’s judgement. A witch that’s been imprisoned for a hundred-some years probably shouldn’t have breast implants.

Philippe Leroy is supposes to be the male lead and Asia’s love interest. This is hampered by the fact that his character is completely useless. Moreover, he has very little actual interaction with Asia. Udo Kier brings his usual manic charm to his brief part as a homicidal priest and Valeria Cavalli, as an all-knowing lesbian, is decent. The movie needed more of those two.

Gone is the intimate terror of Dario’s previous film and he compromises with a bunch of shock value. Personally speaking, the guy’s obsession with child murder, previously displayed in his “Masters of Horror” episode “Jenifer,” is beginning to creep me out. And not in a good way. Three dead kids are too many for my taste. Maybe if the movie was actually trying to make some point with all the child killings, it would be different. Yet it’s all too obvious that at some point over the years, Argento got “scares” crossed with “shocks.” The taboo breaking is there simply because, I suspect, he can get away with more in this stage of his career.

There’s a lot of gore and it is pretty solid. Cleaver slashing, intestinal strangulation, head crushing, eye gouging... All good stuff. There’s at least one good jump scare (You’ll know it when you see it) and the weird sex stuff at the end, like witch orgies and butt-rope, is surprising, if nothing else. Claudio Simonetti’s score is decent but minor compared to his past work. Where are the overwhelming waves of throbbing synth cords? The hardcore shock-metal song that plays over the end credits is just the final crap cherry on the vomit sundae.

The movie ends in the same sort of nonsensical, frenzied way as the previous two parts of the trilogy. Only this time, we get some bad CGI, a ridiculously demise, a blatant call-back to “Phenomena,” and inappropriate laughing. It’s a clueless, abrupt conclusion to a largely clueless, abrupt film.

And this last point is a petty complaint, for sure, but I might as well throw it out there. “Mother of Tears” is a boring title. It doesn’t mesh with the other two films in the trilogy, at all. (Which is appropriate, I suppose, since the film itself sticks out horribly too.) The original Italian title is even worse, since it translates as just “The Third Mother,” and the U.S. working title of “Exhumed” is generic. “Suspiria” and “Inferno” were descriptive titles suggesting the film’s tone, themes, and central villain. In the alternate universe where Argento didn’t loose most of his talent after 1996, “Mother of Tears” was not only a lot better but it was also called “Hystericus,” a title that invokes the film’s Rome setting, the chaotic story and tone, as well as the villain’s association with panic and crying. It also fits the one-word titling scheme of the rest of the trilogy.

Is the magic gone forever? “Mother of Tears” is another manic, shrill misfire from an over-the-hill filmmaker. I bet all those fanboys begging for the third part of the trilogy are sorry now. [Grade: D]

Director Report Card: Dario Argento (1980)

6. Inferno

“Suspiria” was, in many ways, the break-out film for Argento, at least in this country. “Inferno” was not only a sequel to the director’s most successful film but was also produced by a big-budget film studio, 20th Century Fox. Unfortunately, the movie ended up being too weird for the studio brass. “Inferno” sat on the shelf for six years before being crapped out on video.

And the movie is pretty weird. If you thought “Suspiria” was out-there, this movie will probably prove indecipherable. There’s no shortage of strange imagery, but what’s really odd about “Inferno” is there’s no real story to speak of. We are introduced to what we assume is our main character, a young woman reading a book about the mythology of the Three Mothers. The film is set in New York, the supposed home of the youngest mother, Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Shadows. The girl begins to suspect she is living in the home of Mater Tenebrarum and goes about investigating. After frightening encounters in an underwater ball room, the girl is violently murdered. The Hitchcock-style protagonist switch sets us up with the girl’s brother, Mark, just back from Rome. He investigates her murder, stumbling onto a supernatural conspiracy involving architecture, witches, violent murder, a mute old man, and the apartment’s plumbing.

That might seem somewhat straight-forward but doesn’t explain the film’s off-pace structure. We are introduced to a number of characters. Fifteen minutes in, we meet Mark’s friend, Sara, who, for reasons never well explained, investigates the Three Mothers herself. After a frightening encounter in a creepy old library, she meets up with a random dude and is then violently killed. There’s the old man on crutches, who runs an antique shop in the building. Daria Nicolodi gets in her required appearance as a friend of the sister. There’s a grumpy butler, a female caretaker, a nurse, a mysterious beautiful woman. Most of the cast seems to exist solely to add to the film’s body count. Even the characters that appear to be involved in the witches’ coven fall victim. The movie almost plays like a series of vignettes, revolving around each personal investigation and the bloody death that follows. The stream-of-consciousness pacing is deliberate but doesn’t make “Inferno” the easiest film to follow.

Detractors of Argento have accused him of being all style and no substance. If there was ever a film that proved that statement, it’s “Inferno.” The messy plotting and thin characters are another sign of Argento’s disinterest in a traditional narrative. “Inferno” is all about the visuals and creating a unique, dream-like atmosphere. I’m not complaining. The movie is visually gorgeous.


The motifs of “Suspiria,” the colors and architecture, are carried over. However, while “Suspiria” was heavy on screaming, glam-rock Technicolor, “Inferno” instead opts for cool blues and purples. Shadows are obviously a visual theme of the movie, what with the antagonist being the master of them. The very deep blue shadows certainly make for a memorable atmosphere. When the titular inferno breaks out in the last act, it makes for a strong contrast against the previously established look.

The architectural theme of the movie is impressive as well. The majority of the film was shot on stage. If the colors set up a horror atmosphere where anything can happen, then the set design solidifies it. Certainly, the school in “Suspiria” was a location with a personality, but the apartment here seems so much more alive to me. If nothing else, “Inferno” is a beautiful film, a visual-fest for horror nerds.

Of course the movie is pretty. But what about the horror, son? “Inferno” is a mixed bag in that regard. Much like “Suspiria,” it’s got a great first ten minutes. It’s a long sequence involving a late-night swim through an underwater ball room. Yeah, why would somebody do that? But you don’t find yourself thinking that while watching because it’s such a wonderfully shot, surreal sequence… That leads up to a killer jump-scare.

Some fantastic moments follow. Mater Tenebreum’s agent either have hairy, clawed demonic hands or dress all in black. The first appearance of these agents are in a suspenseful sequence in a library, involving a shirt caught on a door. Sara’s dead body is discovered when it falls through a blue sheet, tearing it in half. There’s a pretty cool kill featuring a shattered window. The entire third act, when Mark encounters the Mother of Shadows, didn’t impress me on a first viewing but on my most recent viewing, at three o’clock in the morning, I found it surprisingly creepy. Mater Tenebrarum is certainly an intimidating figure, especially when she explodes out of a mirror as a green-boned spectre of death itself.

Not all the stand-out moments are horror-related. A minor plot-point is that the piping in the apartment allows sound to travel from room to room. In the best shot in the film, the camera goes inside the pipes and travels through the building.

But what about the sequences that don’t work? Sadly, “Inferno” has got some real head-scratchers. Cats show up all throughout the film and animals factor importantly into two murders. In one, a woman is attacked by a group of felines. Now, I know cats can be vicious, mean-spirited little fuckers. But, sorry Euro-horror filmmakers, they aren’t scary. The visuals of somebody getting kitties tossed at them by a stagehand just off-screen is comical, not frightening.

A character, midway through the film, gets fed up with all the cats and decides to drown a whole bag of them out in a lake. Yes, this shot features a beautiful silhouette skyline shot of New York City, but once our man gets to the water… His shouts of “They’re killing me!,” fake fuzzy looking rats, and a, frankly, utterly confounding conclusion, makes the whole sequence a joke.

Goblin took a break from scoring this one. Instead, prog-rock superstar Keith Emerson was brought in to provide the score. The synth-heavy music certainly has some silly moments, such as any of Emerson’s trademark bloops or bleeps. As our hero crawls into an underground tunnel towards the finale, a bombastic choral piece kicks in. While it’s definitely over the top, and the electronic organ hasn’t aged well, it is a very memorable musical moment. The score is serviceable, I’d say, and successful at times. But I can’t help but wonder what Goblin could have done with this material.

So, “Inferno” is a seriously mixed bag. It’s a beautiful film, with some fantastically executed scenes. It’s a film with a grab-bag, thrown-together plot that forges a mythology out of thin air and sticks a bunch of random characters together. Not even fantastic special effects, some provided by the late great Mario Bava, can save the movie’s most embarrassing bits. I’d still recommend it to adventurous horror fans. I think I even like it better then “Suspiria.” I’ll certainly take a chilling, bellowing, glowing grim reaper over a garbling, invisible, wrinkled old woman. [Grade: B]

Director Report Card: Dario Argento (1977)

5. Suspiria

“Suspiria,” Dario Argento’s first foray into supernatural horror, is by-far his most well-known and critically acclaimed film. Considering I’m such a huge dork for so many of the director’s films, you must think I love this one. Not so! If anything, I find “Suspiria” to be a bit on the overrated side.

Which isn’t to say it’s a bad film. Not at all. An Argento film is only as good as its murder sequences, and “Suspiria” has got two hefty ones. If the film has one major problem, it’s that it peaks too early. About ten minutes in, we find two characters in an apartment building with swirling, brightly colored, surreal architecture. A girl looks into a window and notices two yellow eyes staring at her from out of nowhere. Soon, a hairy, demonic arm explodes through the window and smashes the girl’s face into the glass. What follows is an incredibly furious murder that climaxes in a fashion both surreal and brutal. It’s one of the most startling sequences in a career full of them. Even somebody like me, who has self-identified as a non-fan of the film in the past, found myself thinking, “This is awesome!” A supernatural Argento film? How the hell can’t this work?

“Suspiria” was/is a deliberate homage to fairy tales. The central premise, a young girl finds herself in a dance school populated with witches, has a certain Hans Christian Anderson-edge to it. The story is set in the forests of central Germany, which was the setting for many strange fables. Furthermore, Argento originally wanted to cast the film with children. A couple of remnants of this plan are still evident in the final film, such as door knobs being placed up higher then usual. If anything though, Argento uses the deliberate fairy tale style as an excuse to make even less sense then usual.

One example of the dream-like mood at work here is the use of color. The color in this movie is crazy. Character’s faces are bathed in purple, blue, green, gold light, some times for no reason at all. It’s apparent early on that Argento is working over time to create a unique mood within the dance school walls. I think it’s fair to say the use of color is also far on the overdone side. Midway through the film, there’s a scene where a girl standing in a blue-lit hallway is knocked into a glass cabinet (Again with the shattering glass) and is suddenly bathed in bright red light. It’s almost comical. Moreover, and I can’t believe I didn’t catch this before, the crazy colors being layered on so thick has got to be a Mario Bava reference. It’s like Dario watched the antiques store scene from “Blood and Black Lace” and decided to do a feature length version. Now, Argento’s films have always featured surreal uses of color but I’m here to say that “Suspiria” takes it too far. Before the run-time is up, the effect goes from being dream-like to a little silly.

One of the film’s other intentional appeals to surrealism is the deliberately out-there set design. The school is a freaky looking place. Many of its hallways and rooms have deep red walls that invoke blood vessels and internal organs. The teacher’s main office has black and white illustrations for wall paper. (This, incidentally, is a plot point.) In one of the movie’s best visual moments, the girls are forced out of their rooms into the main hall, onto simple cots, white curtains separating them. The red background lights make the silhouettes cast through the curtains especially spooky and memorable. Argento’s camera movement is slightly restrained here, with the exception of two scenes where the camera is attached to a food trey and a cigarette lighter. But he lavishes a lot of attention on the design of the school. There are some subtle, smooth pans, up stairways and down hallways. It effectively establishes the dance school as its own world more effectively then the over-the-top color saturation.

The movie never matches the throbbing madness of the first attack, but it does come close. A minor character in the film is a blind piano player, always accompanied by his seeing-eye dog. As is common in stories like this, animals can feel evil, so the dog quickly gets the guy expelled from the premises. While walking home late at night through an empty, very large courtyard, a spell of evil comes over them. The courtyard seems far too empty, completely deserted. Even the birds quickly flee. The shadows on the way seem to move. There’s a subtle, barely audible whisper in the air. The silence is almost deafening. The camera comes swooping down at the man, as if taking the perspective of some unseen airborne spirit. The faithful dog turns and tears his master’s throat out. It’s a chilling sequence and maybe my favorite in the whole film.

Which kind of raises the question why the rest of the movie isn’t that good. There’s a pretty icky moment involving maggots but the rest… Argento and his co-scripter Daria Nicolodi obviously set out to make a supernatural story. But only the opening scene and the aforementioned dog scene play up the magical powers of the witchy antagonists. Later, one of the girls, suspicious of the teachers, leaves her room at night and goes exploring. After a mildly suspenseful sequence of her avoiding a patrolling teacher, she finds herself being stalked by a figure with a straight-razor. This is straight-up giallo. It’s almost if Argento lost confidence in the paranormal aspect of the story. The chase scene that follows is well done, and I especially like the denouncement involving a room full of razor wire, but it’s a bizarre change in tone. The movie also seems unsure of just what exactly these witches can do. At times, their powers seem limitless. Other times, their forces appear solely physical.

The story itself presents other issues as well. Why exactly the witches have such an interest in protagonist Suzy isn’t explained, neither are the witches’ goals in general. I’m fine with ambiguity in horror but this strikes me as just underwritten. Plot elements are swiped from “Rosemary’s Baby.” Suzy is drugged and poisoned with doctor-appointed and specifically prepared food and drink. There’s definitely a conspiracy at work here to keep her in the building. Suzy eventually figures something is up and goes out sleuthing in a way similar to Argento’s previous movies. There’s a painful exposition scene, featuring Udo Kier for some reason, where she visits a pair of doctors in town that flat-out explain the movie’s mythology. Later, she’s counting foot steps and remembering sudden details she couldn’t remember before, like your standard giallo detective.

The final confrontation with Suzy and Mater Suspiriorum is obviously meant to be the big finale of the movie, but ends up kind of anticlimactic. First off, despite supposedly being a supremely powerful evil being, the best Helena Markos can pull off is some magical moving corpses. Furthermore, the witch goes down way too easily, with a simple stab to the neck. Following video game logic, with the villain dispatched, the entire lair goes up flames, literally cracking up in an admittedly cool moment. This is a weakness with all of the Three Mothers films: These super-strong evil witches sure go down easy.

As a “Phantom of the Paradise” fan, I like Jessica Harper. She’s good in this. Her big wide eyes have never been used better and she conveys Suzy’s innocence nicely. The mostly female cast features some other standout performance such as Joan Bennett, who turns from helpful to evil successfully, while butchy Alida Valli cuts a memorable figure. Even with a strong cast, the characters still come off as somewhat thin.

So “Suspiria” isn’t subtle or densely written. Goblin’s bombastic, less-rock-n-roll, more-in-your-face-creepy score is indictictive of this dynamic as well. (Especially the frequent shouting of “Witch!”) These aren’t necessarily bad things but it does make the film less effective for me, personally. In my opinion, this isn’t the highlight of the filmmaker’s career nor does it make a particularly good entry point for newcomers. Even that can’t rob the movie of its occasionally very powerful moments. [Grade: B]