Films
In the dark, a waking dream
The Day of the Beast
A real horror comedy to repair the damage of Polanski’s vampire farce. And a Christmas movie! A priest thinks he has solved the puzzle of when the Antichrist will be born, and goes to Madrid to stop it which involves giving his soul to the devil.
The Fearless Vampire Killers
I wanted something light. I remembered not enjoying this a few years back but loving it as a kid, so I gave it another go. It’s a farce based on a mixture of Hammer horror and Universal Monster films.
The Appointment
The shocking opening death of a schoolgirl becomes a realistic family drama, then a woozy nightmare of attacking dogs, car crashes and things in the woods.
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I Saw the TV Glow
Nostalgia is both comforting and soul crushing. Owen bonds with Maddy over a TV show she’s obsessed with, The Pink Opaque. Maddy is miserable in her life, and decides to run away from home, giving Owen a choice that will affect the rest of his life.
Red Rooms
Kelly-Anne turns up every day at the trial of a high profile alleged serial killer who is charged with broadcasting on the dark web the torture and murder of three teenage girls. She meets a groupie of the suspect who believes he is innocent, but Kelly-Anne’s motives remain elusive.
The Card Player
Rome detective Anna Mari pairs up with rogue Irish cop John Brennan to find a gambling serial killer who challenges the police to games of online poker to save the lives of kidnapped women. Twists and turns (but not that many) ensue.
Sleepless
Young Giacomo watches a hidden figure stab his mother to death with a flute. Police Chief Moretti promises the boy he will catch the killer, and he does, but seventeen years later the killings begin again. The retired Moretti teams up with adult Giacomo to catch the Dwarf Killer who seems to be back from the dead.
The Phantom of the Opera
A baby is put in a basket and released into the sewer where rats pull it to safety and raise it as one of their own. Argento’s Phantom is the king of the rats, but also a hunky blonde stud in Julian Sands, beautiful, charming, with no mask in sight.
Gothic
I love Ken Russell. He’s not afraid to be weird, sexual, gloopy and violent. Byron, Godwin, Shelley and Polidori whip each other into a fervour as a metaphor for the artists creative process and the courage required in the face of all the imagery and emotions that can fly around while making art.
Dracula
Christopher Lee’s Dracula is iconic. He’s tall, his face carries an animalistic quality when in vampire mode, he’s sometimes slow and imposing, but then he strides up castle stairs three at a time. Beneath his civility is a barely held in check hunger. It’s wonderful to watch.
The Eternal Daughter
Julie, an artist and photographer, takes her mother to a luxurious country hotel for her birthday, but is unsettled by strange noises and half-seen figures. The hotel was once her mother’s family home, and the visit unearths unexpected memories.
The Car
Deputy Wade Parent is raising two daughters alone after the death of his wife and policing the usually peaceful small town of Santa Ynez—until a black car with darkened windows drives out of the Utah desert and runs two cyclists off a bridge into a ravine.
Enys Men
A woman in a bright red coat walks the barren landscape of an island somewhere off the coast of Cornwall. She’s a volunteer monitoring wildlife, in particular a clutch of white flowers of which she records the soil temperature at their roots every day.
The Stendhal Syndrome
Imaginative and clichéd, intriguing and brutal, this film is primarily about rape, torture, and insanity. Asia Argento goes insane in Florence on the trail of a serial killer and rapist.
The Black Cat/Trauma
These two odd kittens are making me wonder if the Dario Argento project is reaching its end. The Black Cat sees a deranged, beret-clad Harvey Keitel play a photographer obsessed with taking pictures of mutilated bodies.
Opera
Opera is the last of what’s regarded as Argento’s unimpeachable run of giallo-horror-thrillers through the seventies and eighties. For me, there are hits and misses, but Opera is one of his best.
Phenomena
Like in Suspiria, a young woman arrives at a female-run school where students are being murdered by an unseen killer, but there are no witches in Zürich, just a girl who has an unconscious connection with insects.
Tenebre
You see different things in a good piece of art as you get older. I wrote about Tenebre back in October 2020 for the #31DaysofHorror challenge. I loved it then, and I love it now, but the protagonist is far less likeable than I remember, and the twists more surprising.
Inferno
If Suspiria was a step away from the narrative rigours of a whodunnit, Inferno is a giant leap, with four (four!) protagonists in two cities — but it starts with a woman, Rose, being sold a rare occult book called The Three Mothers and coming to believe her apartment block was built for a witch.
Suspiria
Suspiria is a vivid, colourful dream where death stalks us, out of sight but ever-present. Characters die in complicated and fantastical ways to Goblin’s driving mix of Moog synths, bells, whispered vocals and a drum beat for the ages. And it’s a film filled with strong women. The men are all ineffectual side characters.