u/822406

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Watching The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo), The Cat o' Nine Tails (Il gatto a nove code), Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Quattro mosche di velluto grigio), Deep Red (Profondo rosso), Suspiria, Inferno, and then comparing them with The Mother of Tears (La terza madre), the feeling is almost disorienting. It doesn't seem as though thirty years have simply passed; it feels as if an entire way of making cinema has disappeared. Suspiria and Inferno can still hypnotize the viewer through colour, music, production design, editing and sheer visual invention. The Mother of Tears, by comparison, often feels like an impoverished and overly literal version of a universe that once never needed to explain itself. So what happened to Dario Argento?

An interesting answer, in my opinion, lies precisely in the personal and professional relationships that surrounded the director during his greatest period. Not in the simplistic sense that “Argento was good because his father produced his films,” but because Argento, at least until the 1980s, worked within a genuine family workshop and creative network, in which several different personalities helped transform his obsessions into cinema. His father, Salvatore Argento, produced all of Dario's films up to Tenebrae (Tenebre, 1982). Dario himself recalled many years later that before working together, he and his father had been rather distant, while through filmmaking they eventually discovered that they were friends.

And this wasn't merely a financial partnership. Salvatore knew his son: he knew his working methods, his obsessions, his ambitions and also his limitations. Alongside him was Dario's brother Claudio Argento, who became involved in the production of several of the most important films of the classic period. Deep Red was produced by Salvatore Argento through SEDA Spettacoli; Suspiria was produced by Salvatore and Claudio for the same company; Inferno was again produced by the Argento brothers, while Tenebrae marked the end of this particular production era.

But the most important thing is that this production structure coincided with an extraordinarily strong network of artistic collaborators. Daria Nicolodi, Argento's partner from 1975 to 1987, wasn't simply the actress who appeared in his films: she was a crucial creative collaborator. She worked with him in different capacities on Deep Red, Suspiria, Inferno, Tenebrae, Phenomena and Opera. Treccani describes their relationship as a genuine artistic partnership lasting from 1975 to 1987.

And Suspiria is perhaps the perfect example of how this mechanism worked. Dario Argento had the original idea, but Daria Nicolodi contributed to the screenplay, introducing fairy-tale elements and, above all, memories and suggestions connected with stories told by her grandmother. Then came Luciano Tovoli's cinematography, Goblin's music, the production designers, costume designers and special-effects technicians. The result wasn't simply “a film directed by Dario Argento”: it was a convergence of different creative sensibilities moving toward the same vision.

That is precisely what strikes me when I watch Suspiria again. The plot, taken by itself, is almost elementary: an American girl arrives at a prestigious German dance school and discovers that a coven of witches is hiding behind the institution. But the film doesn't really live through its plot. It lives through its violently saturated colours, its unreal sets, Goblin's music, the sound design, the camera movements, the corridors, the doors, the lighting, the blood and the distorted architecture. Everything contributes to the creation of a coherent universe. The story isn't really the film: it is the pretext through which the film can exist.

Inferno takes this concept even further. If Suspiria is a dark fairy tale, Inferno is almost an abstract nightmare. The mythology of the Three Mothers and the New York house of Mater Tenebrarum becomes above all an opportunity to construct a world made of water, fire, corridors, basements, impossible rooms and labyrinthine architecture. Everything doesn't have to be explained because the images themselves possess narrative power. At times, Argento seems to have understood something fundamental: horror cinema doesn't necessarily have to tell you about a nightmare; it can make you enter the nightmare itself.

And this is why the greatness of early Argento also comes from the fact that he had people around him capable of translating, correcting and sometimes even challenging his ideas. This is crucial because Argento has always been an extraordinarily powerful visual filmmaker, but a much less solid screenwriter in the traditional sense. His genius lies above all in the way he sees. He sees an image, a light, a camera movement, a murder, a corridor, a hand, a knife, a face. When that imagination is disciplined by a strong creative team, the result can be Deep Red or Suspiria. When it becomes increasingly isolated, the danger is that the extraordinary individual sequence survives inside an increasingly fragile film.

And the change actually begins before 1987. Phenomena (1985) is a fascinating film packed with invention, but also a much more irregular one: a Swiss boarding school, insects, telepathy, a serial killer, Donald Pleasence, Jennifer Connelly, a chimpanzee, gore, heavy metal and Gothic fairy tale all coexist in a film that seems deliberately incapable of choosing just one direction. It is certainly not a bad film, and Argento himself has later included it among his favourites, but compared with the visual unity of Suspiria and Inferno, something has already begun to crack.

There is also a revealing detail. In 1985, Daria Nicolodi expressed serious reservations about Phenomena, considering it, from her perspective, a step backwards from Argento's previous direction and stating that she did not want to continue working with him if he kept moving in that direction. This isn't proof that “Daria was right and Argento was wrong”, of course; but it shows that even within the old creative team, there was already a conflict over the artistic direction Argento was taking.

Then came Opera in 1987. Personally, I still consider it the last great Argento film of his first period. It isn't Suspiria, and it isn't Inferno, but it retains an extraordinary visual energy and several sequences of enormous power. And it is significant that Daria Nicolodi was still involved: their collaboration effectively lasted until Opera.

But 1987 really is a turning point, because two enormous things happen at the same time. Salvatore Argento dies, and Dario's romantic and creative relationship with Daria Nicolodi comes to an end. His father's death had a profound personal significance for Dario, as he himself later explained. And his partnership with Nicolodi, which had begun in 1975, ended precisely in 1987.

It is difficult not to see this as a fracture.

Not because from that moment onward Argento suddenly had no collaborators. Claudio Argento continued to work with him on various occasions, and Daria herself would return in 2007 for The Mother of Tears. So it would be incorrect to tell the story as if, after 1987, everyone disappeared and Dario was left completely alone. The issue is subtler: what disappeared was that specific combination of people, relationships, trust and creative continuity that had characterized his golden period.

And perhaps that is the real difference. A great auteur doesn't necessarily need collaborators who tell him what to do; he needs people capable of telling him when something he wants to do doesn't work. Salvatore could discuss production feasibility. Claudio could think in industrial and distribution terms. Nicolodi could intervene in the story and the mythology. His technical collaborators could transform Dario's visions into images, sounds and atmospheres. The result was a kind of balance between freedom and control.

After this period, Argento gradually became a more isolated filmmaker, while the production circumstances of Italian cinema were changing as well. International productions arrived, American experiences, new financiers, new collaborators and new compromises. Trauma, for example, was made within a very different American production environment from the films of the SEDA period; and this inevitably transformed his cinema as well. This doesn't mean that everything that came afterwards was bad. The Stendhal Syndrome (La sindrome di Stendhal) contains some extraordinarily powerful images, Sleepless (Non ho sonno) represents an interesting return to the classic giallo, and even The Phantom of the Opera (Il fantasma dell'Opera) contains moments showing that Argento's visual eye was still very much alive. But the continuity had been broken.

And this brings us to The Mother of Tears.

The comparison with Suspiria and Inferno is almost cruel precisely because they belong to the same mythology. In the first film, the witch is an almost fairy-tale and irrational presence; in the second, the mythology of the Three Mothers becomes a cosmic force that seems to contaminate the very architecture of the film. We don't need to know everything. In fact, the less we know, the more disturbing the universe becomes.

In The Mother of Tears, however, Argento finally has to show us Mater Lacrimarum and bring the mythology to a conclusion. He has to close the circle, explain the origins and function of the threat more explicitly, transforming what had previously been mysterious into something closer to an explicit mythology. And this, in my opinion, is one of the main reasons why the film feels so weak compared with its predecessors: the trilogy is concluded precisely when its greatest strength had been that it was never completely explained.

It is almost paradoxical, too, that Daria Nicolodi returned for The Mother of Tears after twenty years. It is as if a fragment of the old creative team had returned to the scene of the crime. But the creative context was no longer the one that had produced Suspiria or Inferno. The continuity, the creative tension and the same alchemy were gone. Nicolodi's presence becomes almost melancholy: she is a return of one of the fundamental figures of Argento's old universe, but inside a cinema that can no longer recreate that universe.

That is why I wouldn't say that Dario Argento simply “lost his talent” after 1987. It's too easy an explanation and, more importantly, it doesn't really fit the evidence. Even in his later period, he continued to have extraordinary visual ideas. He continued to conceive memorable murders. He continued to produce images that remain in the memory. The problem is that increasingly often, the extraordinary image could no longer carry the rest of the film with it.

And that is perhaps the real tragedy of late Argento. You can take a scene from The Mother of Tears, a scene from The Stendhal Syndrome, a moment from Sleepless or even from much weaker works, and immediately recognize the filmmaker behind Suspiria. The eye is still there. The imagination is still there. The obsession is still there. What seems to be missing is the ability to build a structure around that image that is equally strong.

So I think your intuition about Argento's relationships with Salvatore, Claudio and Daria Nicolodi deserves to be taken seriously, provided we broaden it: it wasn't the simple loss of three people that destroyed Argento; it was the dissolution of the Argento “workshop”. That particular creative community in which his visionary talent found producers who understood him, writers who stimulated him, technical collaborators capable of translating his ideas, and people close enough to him to tell him “no” when necessary.

And perhaps that is why his greatest films still feel so unique today. Suspiria and Inferno don't simply feel like films by Dario Argento: they feel like the product of a small cinematic civilization that, for a few years, managed to function perfectly around him.

When that civilization disappeared, Dario Argento remained.

And Dario Argento continued to be Dario Argento.

Only now, increasingly often, he no longer had around him the people capable of transforming what he saw in his head into a film worthy of what he had imagined.

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After Suspiria (1977), Dario Argento returned to the world of the Three Mothers, a mythology inspired by Thomas De Quincey’s Suspiria de Profundis. The three figures are Mater Suspiriorum, the Mother of Sighs; Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness; and Mater Lacrimarum, the Mother of Tears.

In Suspiria, however, this mythology remains largely in the background. Suzy Bannion arrives in Freiburg to attend a prestigious ballet academy, only to gradually discover that the school is hiding a coven of witches led by Helena Markos, Mater Suspiriorum. It is a film built above all around atmosphere, colour, sound and the fairy-tale quality of its nightmare. The plot almost becomes secondary to the sensation of having fallen into a completely unreal world.

With Inferno, however, Argento takes that mythology much further.

The protagonist is Rose Elliot, a young poet living in New York. Rose purchases an old book entitled The Three Mothers, written by the alchemist Emilio Varelli, and discovers the existence of three powerful witches who inhabit three houses built by Varelli himself: one in Freiburg, one in Rome and one in New York.

The New York house is Rose’s home.

From this point onward, Inferno becomes a descent into pure nightmare. Rose disappears, and her brother Mark travels from Rome to New York to look for her. Around him unfolds a chain of brutal and seemingly inexplicable deaths, while the house itself appears to transform into a living organism of evil. Corridors, rooms, basements, elevators and hidden passages become a kind of infernal labyrinth.

And this, in my opinion, is where the greatness of Inferno lies.

If Suspiria is a gothic fairy tale, Inferno is almost a surrealist nightmare. Argento abandons any real attempt at realism and creates a film in which narrative logic constantly seems on the verge of dissolving. The images come before the story: water, fire, mirrors, windows, corridors, colours and impossible architecture. The famous underwater sequence, the murder in the library and the elevator killing are all extraordinary examples of visionary horror cinema.

The cinematography by Romano Albani, together with the score by Keith Emerson, also gives the film a completely different identity from Suspiria. The result is different but equally fascinating: less baroque and fairy-tale-like, more cold, abstract and hallucinatory.

What I love most is that Argento doesn't explain too much. The mythology of the Three Mothers remains mysterious, almost cosmic. We don't need to know exactly what these creatures are in order to fear them. We know that they exist, that they possess immense power, and that their houses are places corrupted by their presence.

And then there is Mater Tenebrarum, the youngest and most cruel of the three sisters, played by Veronica Lazar: an almost demonic presence who perfectly embodies the abstract and visionary nature of the film.

For me, Inferno is one of those movies that you have to feel rather than understand. The screenplay can be fragmented, some passages are deliberately absurd, and the logic behind certain events often seems secondary. But when Argento sets his visual machinery in motion, he reaches levels that very few Italian horror directors have ever achieved.

And this is precisely why I find The Mother of Tears (La terza madre, 2007) such a disappointing conclusion to the trilogy.

It isn't simply that the film is different. The problem is that, after almost thirty years, the mythology of the Three Mothers loses much of its mystery. The Mother of Tears finally introduces Mater Lacrimarum and brings the story to Rome, turning the conclusion into a kind of witchcraft apocalypse.

The problem is that what worked so well in Suspiria and, above all, in Inferno precisely because it was never completely explained, is made explicit and transformed into something much more conventional in the third chapter. Argento himself had spent years away from the world of the Three Mothers, returning to the thriller and giallo before eventually completing the trilogy.

And I think you can feel that distance.

Suspiria and Inferno seem to belong to the same universe, but they are above all two autonomous nightmares, connected by a mythology that is only partially revealed. The Mother of Tears, on the other hand, tries to close every loose end and provide a definitive conclusion. But precisely when it tries to explain and complete everything, it loses some of the magic.

That is why I consider Inferno the true heart of the trilogy: it is the film in which Argento takes the idea of the Three Mothers and transforms it into a genuine cinematic mythology, without ever completely imprisoning it within a conventional narrative explanation.

An imperfect film, certainly, but one of extraordinary visual power. It isn't simply horror: it is architecture, music, colour and death transformed into one gigantic nightmare.

🔥🔵🔴 A visionary masterpiece and, for me, one of the most fascinating films in Dario Argento's entire career.

▪︎ 50TH ANNIVERSARY ▪︎

On August 16, 1976, Pupi Avati’s The House with Laughing Windows (La casa dalle finestre che ridono) was released in Italy.

«“I think I’ve discovered the most disturbing story imaginable.”»

And what a story it is.

Set in the eerie, isolated countryside of Emilia-Romagna, the film follows Stefano, a young restorer who is hired to restore a mysterious fresco depicting the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. What initially seems like a rather ordinary artistic commission gradually turns into something much darker, as Stefano begins investigating the strange history surrounding the painting and the people who created it.

What makes The House with Laughing Windows so effective is that Avati doesn’t rely on conventional horror tricks. There are no monsters jumping out of closets, no excessive gore, and very little of the supernatural spectacle that characterized much of Italian horror cinema at the time. Instead, the terror emerges slowly from the landscape, the silences, the apparently ordinary villagers and, above all, from the feeling that something is deeply wrong beneath the surface.

The film has an almost unbearable sense of unease. The countryside should feel peaceful and familiar, yet Avati transforms it into an oppressive labyrinth of secrets, rumours and forgotten crimes. Every friendly face becomes suspicious; every apparently insignificant detail seems to conceal something.

And then there is that incredible final act, which turns everything that came before on its head and leaves you with one of the most disturbing endings in Italian genre cinema.

For me, The House with Laughing Windows is not simply one of the great Italian horror films of the 1970s—it is one of the most original. It sits somewhere between giallo, psychological horror and rural Gothic, but ultimately feels like something completely its own.

Fifty years later, it still works because Avati understood something fundamental about horror: the scariest places are not necessarily dark castles or haunted houses. Sometimes they are quiet villages where everyone knows something that you don't.

A true Italian horror masterpiece. 🖼️🏚️😱

Planet of the Vampires (Terrore nello spazio, 1965), directed by Mario Bava.

Based on the 1960 short story One Night of 21 Hours (Una notte di 21 ore) by Renato Pestriniero.

Music by Gino Marinuzzi Jr.

Plot

Two large interplanetary spacecraft, exploring unknown regions of space, receive an SOS signal from Aura, an unknown and apparently uninhabited planet. The two ships, the Galliott and the Argos, decide to land on this desolate and seemingly lifeless world.

During the descent, the crew members of the Argos are suddenly possessed by an unknown force that drives the men and women aboard the spacecraft to kill one another. Only Captain Markary manages to resist, eventually breaking the others out of their violent hypnotic state.

After the Argos lands and no further communication is received from the Galliott, the crew sets out across the planet in search of their sister ship. The atmosphere surrounding them is cold, eerie and sterile. When they finally come within sight of the other spacecraft, they discover, to their horror, that its entire crew is dead, apparently having killed one another. Among the dead is Toby Markary, the captain's younger brother.

Some of the bodies are gathered together and buried, while others remain inside the Galliott. Yet in the short time it takes the crew to retrieve the equipment needed to enter the ship, the corpses mysteriously disappear.

Members of the Argos crew also begin disappearing, only to be found dead later. While the bodies are still lying inside the spacecraft, Tiona, one of the female crew members, suddenly sees them standing up again and walking through the corridors. Panic spreads among the survivors, and Markary orders everyone to do whatever they can to escape from Aura. Unfortunately, the damage sustained during the landing makes an immediate takeoff impossible. Meanwhile, the deaths continue.

During the exploration of the planet, Wes discovers the ruins of a spacecraft a few kilometres from the Argos. Markary, Sanya and Carter decide to investigate. Inside the alien vessel, they discover the skeletons of a gigantic humanoid crew that has been dead for a very long time. Apparently, other spacecraft have also been lured to Aura by the distress signal, only to meet the same fate.

While exploring the alien ship, Captain Markary and Sanya briefly become trapped inside but manage to escape. Once back outside, however, they realize that Carter has mysteriously disappeared.

Meanwhile, the dead crew members of the Galliott awaken and emerge from their graves. Two of them, Kier and Sallis, infiltrate the Argos in order to steal the device that allows the spacecraft to avoid collisions with meteors in space. Without it, the two ships cannot undertake long interstellar journeys.

Kier manages to escape, while Sallis is captured by Markary. When the captain opens his uniform, he discovers that Sallis's body is already decomposing. Sallis reveals the truth: the corpses are being controlled by the Auran, the planet's original inhabitants, who need human bodies in order to survive.

Sallis explains that the host body does not necessarily have to be killed; its will merely needs to be weakened. He even proposes that the two species could live in symbiosis, with the Auran being welcomed onto the home planet of the two spacecraft. Markary, however, angrily rejects the offer.

With the entire crew of the Galliott under their control, these parasitic beings intend to abandon their dying world. Markary is determined to stop them and escape the planet. Together with the remaining survivors, he storms the spacecraft, retrieves the precious anti-meteor device and plants explosives to destroy the Galliott.

The losses are catastrophic. Only the final survivors—Wes, Sanya and Captain Markary—manage to escape, leaving Aura behind.

Once they are safely back in space, Wes discovers that his last two companions have also been infected. In one final, desperate attempt to stop them, he decides to sabotage the Argos itself, but is electrocuted by the explosion of the anti-meteor device.

Captain Markary and Sanya, the last two surviving crew members—or rather, the two Auran who have now taken control of their bodies—are unable to undertake a long journey through space. They therefore decide to descend onto the nearest planet, despite the fact that it is small and technologically primitive:

Earth.

Planet of the Vampires is widely regarded as one of the finest Italian science-fiction films of its period and is frequently cited as an important visual influence on Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). Bava's use of atmospheric lighting, gigantic alien environments, mysterious spacecraft and eerie, almost Gothic production design creates an unmistakable bridge between Italian Gothic horror and science fiction.

A fascinating example of how much could be achieved with limited resources when a director had an extraordinary visual imagination. Bava essentially turns space exploration into a cosmic nightmare. 🚀👽🩸

Film Directed by Mario Bava.

A fashion house owned by Massimo Morlacchi (Cameron Mitchell) and Cristiana Cuomo (Eva Bartok) becomes the scene of the murder of a model at the hands of an enigmatic masked killer. Despite the investigation led by Inspector Silvestri (Thomas Reiner), more violent deaths follow, while a web of suspicion and intrigue gradually envelops everyone connected to the events.

An elegant, icy and sadistic thriller, a landmark for Italian and international mystery cinema, built around a simple yet relentlessly gripping structure and an extraordinarily fascinating visual style.

The film is considered an extremely important title in Italian genre cinema. Indeed, Bava definitively codified many of the rules of the giallo (an Italian mystery-thriller genre combining crime, murder mystery, horror and psychological suspense), effectively creating the first film to bring together all the elements that would later become the stylistic and narrative trademarks of slasher movies in the following decades. At the time, it was heavily criticized for being considered excessively sadistic.

Bava anticipates and codifies several elements that would become typical of the modern thriller, focusing on the violent depiction of serial murders with a degree of imagination and brutality that may be difficult to fully appreciate today, after decades of exposure to modern noir aesthetics, but which was absolutely innovative and shocking by the standards of the 1960s.

The meticulous visual design, supported by cinematography built around saturated colours—with red recurring frequently as a symbol of violence and perversity—enhances both the claustrophobic atmosphere and the deep compositions of the interiors, not to mention the enveloping darkness of the outdoor sequences.

Bava stages a story of hidden betrayals concealed within the pages of a diary, set symbolically in the cynical world of fashion, where personal ambitions take precedence over human considerations and selfish calculation has no hesitation in treating men and women as mere pawns.

This dehumanization is symbolized both by the parallel between the murdered models and the mannequins—no longer merely tools of the trade, but skeletal simulacra of lives brutally torn away—and by the killer’s complete lack of visible facial features, making him terrifying precisely because of his inscrutability. Music by Carlo Rustichelli.

I hope I don’t upset the fans of the great Dario Argento, but this film is, for me, the weakest entry in the “Animal Trilogy.” With Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Quattro mosche di velluto grigio, 1971), the Roman director brings his first thriller cycle to a close, walking a delicate line between avant-garde visual experimentation and narrative uncertainty.

Although this film never reaches the perfect tension of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo) or the solidity of The Cat o’ Nine Tails (Il gatto a nove code), it remains a fundamental transitional work, full of charm and ideas that would later reappear in his next masterpiece, Deep Red (Profondo rosso).

Argento’s direction is undoubtedly the film’s greatest strength: a virtuoso exercise in style that more than compensates for its occasional shortcomings. The director constantly plays with the viewer’s perspective, alternating unusual long takes, highly precise compositions and distorted subjective shots that heighten the sense of paranoia experienced by the protagonist, drummer Roberto Tobias. The film’s greatest virtue lies precisely in this meticulously crafted, almost hypnotic visual staging.

The main weakness, on the other hand, lies in the screenplay, written by Argento himself. The mystery plot sometimes feels confused and overcomplicated, struggling to maintain a strict internal logic while introducing grotesque comic interludes involving eccentric characters such as the homeless man Diomede, played by Bud Spencer, or Jean-Pierre Marielle’s gay detective. These moments abruptly weaken the dramatic tension.

The visual high point comes during the superb murder sequence in the park, where the waitress Amelia is murdered by the killer. It is a small masterpiece of high-tension suspense, with the chase unfolding through the open yet labyrinthine spaces of an urban park, making excellent use of the contrasts between light and shadow created by the trees. The camera moves with great precision, isolating the victim while the threat suddenly and brutally materializes out of nowhere.

This extraordinary visual impact is largely thanks to the beautiful cinematography of Franco Di Giacomo, who opts for a cold, dark and distinctly 1970s colour palette that perfectly enhances the psychological desolation of the story.

Ennio Morricone’s score beautifully complements the imagery, partially moving away from the jazz dissonance of the previous films and embracing, at times, more rock-oriented sounds, closer to the atmospheric music and progressive rock of the period. The result alternates between obsessive, almost hypnotic melodies and sudden, disorienting bursts of sound.

As for the acting, the performances are rather uneven. Michael Brandon gives a perhaps overly passive and rigid performance as the tormented protagonist, while Mimsy Farmer’s unsettling performance provides the psychological depth necessary for the story’s more disturbing and sordid turns.

There are also several fascinating historical curiosities surrounding the production. Argento himself revealed that he inserted a subliminal frame showing the killer’s face during the murder of Amelia in the park, a detail that is almost impossible to perceive with the naked eye during a normal screening.

The film also had a bizarre distribution history. Due to complicated copyright issues, it practically disappeared from Italian television and cinemas for more than fifteen years, beginning in the early 1990s. For a long time, it became something of a legendary “ghost film” among genre enthusiasts, before finally being redistributed.

Despite its sometimes fragmented narrative, Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Quattro mosche di velluto grigio) remains an essential piece for understanding the visual evolution of the Italian thriller. It may be the weakest of Argento’s early trilogy for me, but it is still a fascinating, stylish and remarkably inventive film—and an important stepping stone toward the extraordinary visual language he would fully develop in Deep Red (Profondo rosso).

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At first, the film almost fools you. In the opening scenes, we see this brand-new apartment building, city life, laughter. It almost feels like you’re watching a sophisticated comedy from the era, something along the lines of "Barefoot in the Park": a young, beautiful couple, visibly happy and full of hope, trying to start a family.

Around them are these elderly neighbours who seem friendly, perhaps a little too friendly, always eager to help and incredibly warm. But this is precisely where Polanski works his dark magic.

Little by little, you realize that the film is something else entirely.

The horror doesn’t come from the darkness or from some isolated forest; it comes from the apartment next door. It becomes pure anxiety. The real fear doesn’t come from the unknown, but from the people around you: the person who smiles at you on the street, the neighbour who rings your doorbell pretending to ask for some sugar, offer you a few cookies, have a coffee, or simply exchange a little hallway gossip.

The paranoia grows along with Mia Farrow’s belly, as she becomes increasingly isolated from everyone around her, including her own husband. It is a waking nightmare set in broad daylight, where the protagonist’s loneliness gradually becomes your own.

It is a chillingly modern film that, even decades later, remains a masterclass in how to build genuine tension in cinema.

"Rosemary’s Baby" is Roman Polanski’s absolute masterpiece, a film in no hurry to frighten you with the usual tricks or the usual monsters. It takes its time, slowly building an atmosphere that gets under your skin, helped enormously by that haunting music that never seems to leave you: a lullaby, an obsessive chant that creeps into your ears and stays lodged in your head for days.

Review

Black Sabbath (I tre volti della paura, 1963), directed by Mario Bava, is a wonderful example of just how sophisticated Italian horror cinema could be, even at a time when the genre was often dismissed as mere exploitation. Watching it today, what immediately strikes you is how much Bava relies on atmosphere, visual composition and suggestion rather than simply throwing shocks at the audience. The film feels like a dark fairy tale for adults: beautiful, theatrical, dreamlike and deeply sinister at the same time.

The three stories have very different premises and tones, but they are all held together by Bava’s unmistakable visual style. His use of colour, shadows, fog, elaborate sets and dramatic lighting gives the film an almost painterly quality. Every corridor seems to conceal something, every room feels slightly unreal, and even the most ordinary objects can suddenly become threatening. Bava understands that horror is often more effective when the audience is allowed to imagine what might be hiding just outside the frame.

The first segment, The Telephone, is a wonderfully claustrophobic little thriller, while The Wurdalak takes the film firmly into gothic territory, with its remote setting, ancient curse and atmosphere of decay. It has that wonderful quality of a nightmare that seems to have existed long before the characters entered it. The final story, The Drop of Water, is perhaps the purest expression of Bava’s talent for creating terror from a single disturbing image. It is remarkably simple, but that simplicity makes it even more effective.

What I particularly love about Black Sabbath is that Bava never seems interested in realism. He creates his own world, somewhere between gothic literature, European fairy tales and the fever dream of a child who has just discovered horror. The artificiality of the sets doesn't weaken the film; it actually makes it more disturbing. Everything looks slightly heightened, almost theatrical, as if we were watching a nightmare staged inside a haunted theatre.

And then there is the extraordinary cinematography. Bava was a master of light and colour, and Black Sabbath is a perfect showcase for that talent. The images are sometimes genuinely beautiful, but there is always something wrong lurking beneath that beauty. The film can be gorgeous one moment and deeply unsettling the next. That contrast is one of the reasons it still works so well today.

It is also fascinating to see how much later horror cinema owes to this kind of filmmaking. Bava understands that horror does not necessarily require elaborate mythology or enormous budgets. Sometimes all you need is an isolated house, a strange face, a dark corridor and the right lighting. His influence can be felt throughout European horror and beyond.

For me, Black Sabbath is an essential piece of Italian gothic horror and one of Mario Bava’s finest films. It is atmospheric, stylish, creepy and occasionally downright nightmarish. More than sixty years later, it still has an uncanny ability to make you feel that something terrible is about to appear just beyond the edge of the frame.

And finally, a great piece of trivia for both horror and heavy metal fans: in its English-language release, I tre volti della paura was retitled Black Sabbath. The title would later become legendary for another reason: the British heavy metal band Black Sabbath took its name from the film's English title. So, in a rather wonderful collision of Italian gothic horror and heavy metal history, Mario Bava indirectly helped give the world the name of one of the most influential metal bands of all time. 🤘🦇

I Vampiri (The Vampires, Riccardo Freda, 1956; completed by Mario Bava) was a wonderful surprise. 🖤

A film that, despite the production limitations of its time, still retains a genuinely remarkable Gothic atmosphere. Night-time Paris, young women being murdered and drained of their blood, crypts, laboratories, castles, and above all that wonderfully morbid idea of the obsessive pursuit of eternal youth.

What impressed me most is precisely the balance between Gothic horror and science fiction, almost anticipating some of the horror films that would come later. The cinematography and sets are incredibly effective as well: whenever Bava's touch becomes apparent, you can already see the visual talent that would explode in the following years.

I also enjoyed it because it isn't simply a "vampire movie": it takes the vampire imagery and rationalizes it, turning it into something arguably even more disturbing. Behind the apparent supernatural elements lies a very human obsession with beauty, aging, and death.

For a film generally regarded as the true starting point of modern Italian Gothic horror, I'd say it still has plenty of bite. 😁🧛‍♀️

I already know the Italian Gothic horror tradition quite well, and I Vampiri is a fascinating starting point for exploring one of the most distinctive chapters in Italian genre cinema. If you enjoyed this one, I strongly recommend checking out other films by Freda, Bava and Antonio Margheriti, as well as some of the lesser-known filmmakers who worked in the same tradition. There is a lot of great stuff to discover beyond the most famous titles.

Some recommendations:

Mario Bava: "La maschera del demonio" (Black Sunday, 1960), "I tre volti della paura" (Black Sabbath, 1963), "La frusta e il corpo" (The Whip and the Body, 1963), "Operazione paura" (Kill, Baby... Kill!, 1966).

Riccardo Freda: "Caltiki - Il mostro immortale" (Caltiki, the Immortal Monster, 1959), "L'orribile segreto del Dr. Hichcock" (The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, 1962), "Lo spettro" (The Ghost, 1963), "Follia omicida" (Murder Obsession, 1981).

Antonio Margheriti: "Danza macabra" (Castle of Blood, 1964), "La vergine di Norimberga" (Horror Castle, 1963), "I lunghi capelli della morte" (The Long Hair of Death, 1964).

And there are many other Italian Gothic films from the 1950s and '60s worth discovering. The cycle was much broader than just Bava and Freda, and it remains one of the most interesting and visually distinctive chapters in European horror cinema.

Ho scoperto, girando fra i siti, questa intervista che mi ha fatto ridere. Ma mi fa capire com'è forte il ruolo dell'ufficio stampa della Betel — anni fa vi ho collaborato come esterno, essendo giornalista freelance — perché vi presenti una sviolinata sul ruolo della donna nei TdG intitolato “Una Testimone di Geova racconta come vive all’interno del movimento religioso”, pubblicato dalla rivista L'Altro Femminile, testata culturale online che tratta temi legati al mondo femminile e che pubblica regolarmente, udite udite dame e messeri PIMQ, PIMO e POMO, articoli, riflessioni e recensioni che riconoscono l'importanza del femminismo e della parità di genere, pur presentandosi in primo luogo come uno spazio di approfondimento culturale, artistico e letterario volto a superare gli stereotipi sulla femminilità.

Ora, i Testimoni di Geova attribuiscono alla donna un ruolo definito da una subordinazione gerarchica basata su interpretazioni letterali della Sacra Bibbia, in cui la donna ha senz'altro ampi spazi nell'evangelizzazione — può esser pioniera ausiliare, regolare, speciale, missionaria e betelita — ma non riveste alcun ruolo di autorità o guida spirituale formale all'interno della congregazione, a differenza di alcuni culti acattolici protestanti.

Il ruolo delle donne, sia in famiglia che in congregazione, è subordinato a quello degli uomini. A parte il vestire in modo possibilmente morigerato, un tempo solo con gonne non troppo corte e non troppo aderenti (cosa il più delle volte disattesa in occasione di grandi eventi come le assemblee dove lo scopo è chiaramente quello di trovare un giusto candidato sposo, vista la sproporzione numerica tra maschi e femmine single che generalmente vige nelle congregazioni e il "consiglio" di sposarsi solo nel Signore, quindi solo tra TdG), e oggi anche con pantaloni ma sempre morigerati e casti, la donna TdG deve essere sempre sottomessa all'uomo, in ogni occasione, in casa per esempio quando si prega insieme o si studia insieme è sempre il capofamiglia a condurre preghiera e studio, in caso non sia in grado (impedimenti fisici) se è la donna a dover insegnare deve coprirsi il capo in segno di rispetto.

Per lo stesso motivo in Sala del Regno non insegnano nè fanno discorsi dal podio, perchè la donna non deve istruire l'uomo circa le cose spirituali. Al massimo fanno le dimostrazioni e le scenette esemplificative che tu stessa hai visto. Anche quando intervengono dal posto per commentare o rispondere a domande, chi conduce lo studio sta bene attento a non chiamare una donna a rispondere a seguito di una risposta "sbagliata" da parte di un uomo, dimodochè non sembri che lo stia correggendo con la sua risposta azzeccata (questo me lo ha proprio detto un anziano che conduceva lo studio Torre di Guardia quindi...).

Questo grosso modo è il ruolo della donna nell'Organizzazione teocratica dei Testimoni di Geova, la Watch Tower Society, in Italia la Congregazione Cristiana dei Testimoni di Geova. Và detto comunque che, almeno a parole, la donna viene considerata il "vaso più debole" e quindi dalla parte dell'uomo viene richiesto che se ne prenda cura e la tratti con ogni premura, specialmente all'interno del matrimonio, visto che i due diventano una sola carne e quindi, logicamente, lui deve prendersi cura di lei come di se stesso. Ma si registrano non pochi casi di violenza domestica, o fisica o psicologica.

Un mio amico "del mondo", invitato al matrimonio di mio fratello, mi fece notare ai tempi — ma ero PIMI e giustificai la cosa — la schizofrenia del sermone dell'anziano che ribadiva il ruolo centrale di mio fratello come capofamiglia e che mia cognata doveva essere sottomessa a lui, con quanto detto dal ministro di culto geovista, autorizzato dallo stato, che leggeva i codici di legge italiani che ribadivano la totale uguaglianza giuridica fra lui e lei. Me lo fece notare al ristorante mentre era uscito per fumarsi una sigaretta.

L'anonimato dell'intervista, inoltre, è alquanto sospetto. Perché la giornalista, Erna Corsi, intervista una TdG in anonimo? «Vista la sua espressa richiesta di rimanere anonima ci rivolgeremo a lei con un nome di fantasia, Stefania.»

Ma se sta lodando, senza contraddittorio alcuno, le prassi geoviste, perché la nostra “Stefania” deve nascondersi, tenendo conto che quando viene intervistato un addetto stampa della Betel o addirittura un suo funzionario o membro del Comitato di Filiale, si fanno nomi e cognomi?

Insomma, io alla redazione de L'Altro Femminile squinzaglierei addosso, tipo pitbull o rottweiler inferocito Barbara Grizutti Harrison, nota giornalista femminista americana ed ex betelita — scrisse "Visions of Glory: A History and a Memory of Jehovah's Witnesses", Simon & Schuster, New York 1978, la sua autobiografia sulla vita alla Betel di Brooklyn negli anni Cinquanta, tradotto in italiano da Sergio Pollina e in PDF sul sito web Infotdgeova.it — , che negli anni Settanta raccontava com'era il ruolo della donna nei TdG 😳

Sarebbe da far commentare sotto l'articolo una donna PIMO o una ex TdG.

Buona lettura

https://www.laltrofemminile.it/2025/05/28/una-testimone-di-geova-racconta-come-vive-allinterno-del-movimento-religioso/

Posterò le seguenti lettere dai toni farisaici con le regole alimentari sul sangue che la filiale italiana dei TdG inviava in risposta ai vari corpi degli anziani. Le lettere sono in trascrizione e hanno siglatura e data.

Il decreto del 9/6/83 il Ministero della Sanità dettando le Norme igienicosanitarie concernenti la produzione, il commercio e l'impiego di proteine plasmatiche, ha ampliato le possibilità di utilizzo del sangue per uso alimentare. Il sangue può essere utilizzato oltre che in toto, anche frazionato. La suddetta norma permette di impiegare il plasma nella produzioni di alimenti. È impiegato generalmente come legante nella preparazione di insaccati carnei cotti, come la mortadella, il prosciutto cotto, vari insaccati stagionali, ecc. Il decreto comunque prevede che nel caso sia usato il plasma come legante, sulle confezioni destinate al consumatore tra gli ingredienti deve figurare l'indicazione "proteine plasmatiche". Questa indicazione può quindi essere utile nell'identificare i prodotti contenenti proteine provenienti dal sangue. (C CODO 30/1/84)

SANGUE USATO COME CHIARIFICATORE DEL VINO O DELLA MARSALA:

È vero che nell'uso improprio del sangue sia come chiarificatore che come concime non vi è una diretta violazione al comando biblico di 'astenersi dal sangue' come alimento. Vi è tuttavia implicato il rispetto dovuto al sangue come Dio ha stabilito. W 15/10/64 p 630 L'uso improprio del sangue è pertanto una questione di coscienza. Comunque, se un servitore facesse uso improprio di sangue e la faccenda turbasse la cong., egli perderebbe il suo incarico in quanto non è esemplare. Se è un procl. non verrebbe chiamato davanti ad un comitato giudiziario ma si assumerà la piena responsabilità di ciò che fa davanti a Dio. Una saggia riflessione circa questa attività lavorativa la presenta la W 1/9/63, p 538. Naturalmente, il cristiano dovrebbe tenere in considerazione la coscienza altrui. Questo argomento è stato trattato nella W 1.1.83 p 26 dove sono elencati vari fattori da considerare circa il lavoro. (DC 22/1/84)

Ogni cristiano ha la responsabilità di accertarsi dei prodotti sui quali ha dei dubbi, prima di farne uso. Qualora dopo aver avuto spiegazioni e assicurazioni, in questo caso dai produttori di marsala, che non c’è sangue, ma nutre ancora dubbi, allora dovrebbe seguire il consiglio di Paolo in Ro 14:23 e non fare uso del prodotto. Però se dopo aver avuto le assicurazioni da parte dei produttori di marsala, che questa non contiene sangue, un cristiano desidera farne uso, la cosa dipende dalla sua coscienza e nessuno dovrebbe criticarlo.

Secondo il dizionario enciclopedico di G. Treccani, alla voce "Marsala", parlando della chiarificazione del prodotto dice: "Seguono varie chiarificazioni, fatte per lo più con sangue fresco e defibrinato di bue". Si può capire che alcuni tipi di marsala vengono filtrati o chiarificati con sangue di bue. Quali siano questi tipi di marsala non lo sappiamo. Ogni cristiano deve essere certo di non violare la legge di Dio sul sangue, informandosi presso la casa produttrice del marsala che intende usare. Questa sarà in grado di dire quale mezzo di chiarificazione viene impiegato da loro - W 1/11/78 p. 31. (SCC:SSB 20/11/81)

SORELLA CHE DEVE CUCINARE CACCIAGIONE AL MARITO INCREDULO:

Se il marito chiede alla moglie di cucinare della carne o della cacciagione che non fosse stata uccisa nel pieno rispetto della legge di Dio, ella come moglie, potrebbe sentirsi in coscienza di cucinare per il marito in quanto la cosa gli viene specificamente richiesta dal capo famiglia. Se lo facesse non violerebbe la legge di Dio sulla santità del sangue ma potrebbe in coscienza rifiutarsi di farlo. Non essendoci quindi una violazione della legge di Dio ella deve agire tenendo conto della sua coscienza. Ro 14:23 (SCB:SSD 19/11/80)

MANGIARE CARNE DISSANGUATA COTTE INSIEME A CARNE NON DISSANGUATA:

Ci chiedi se un cristiano può mangiare della carne dissanguata cotta insieme ad altra carne non dissanguata. Consultando l'Indice 78, al soggetto CIBO, poi al soggetto subordinato 'sangue nel' e quindi al soggetto specifico 'animali non debitamente dissanguati' vi è il riferimento a W 1/11/78, p. 312. A p. 31, viene posta la domanda: “Fino a che punto il cristiano dovrebbe interessarsi di sapere se c'è sangue nei prodotti alimentari?" Nel § successivo è detto: "Dio disse a Noè, e all'intera famiglia umana: 'Ogni animale che si muove ed è in vita vi serva di cibo... Solo non dovete mangiare la carne con la sua anima, col sangue. (Gen. 9:3,4)

Pertanto i veri adoratori dovrebbero voler evitare di mangiare carne in cui sia rimasto sangue o altri alimenti a cui sia stato aggiunto sangue". Se si fa cuocere della carne non dissanguata insieme a carne dissanguata, non è forse come aggiungere del sangue a quest'ultima? Se così è, quel cibo non è adatto al cristiano. Non è una questione di coscienza se mangiare o meno tale cibo. È una violazione alla legge biblica sulla santità del sangue (18/11/82)

Ci chiedi se un cristiano può mangiare carne dissanguata cotta assieme a carne non dissanguata. La risposta si trova in Rs 335 dove dice: “... qualsiasi cibo cotto cui sia stato aggiunto sangue intero o anche qualche frazione d’esso non deve essere mangiato”. La domanda che sorge è questa: Se si cuoce carne dissanguata insieme a carne non dissanguata, non è forse come aggiungere sangue intero alla carne non dissanguata? Tale cibo non sarebbe idoneo per il cristiano e non dovrebbe essere mangiato. (DC 28/10/87)

PRIMA DI SCANNARE UN ANIMALE È LECITO TRAMORTIRLO CON UN COLPO?:

Il motivo per cui il cristiano non deve mangiare animali soffocati (o morti da sé) è che contengono sangue. Il cristiano ha la responsabilità di accertarsi che ciò che mangia sia stato dovutamente dissanguato. Tradizionalmente è noto che il mezzo più efficace a tal fine è quello di scannare l'animale. Se un cristiano decidesse di tramortire prima l'animale con un colpo alla nuca o con qualche altro metodo e poi scannarlo immediatamente per dissanguarlo, sarebbe una sua decisione personale. In coscienza dovrebbe essere pienamente convinto che l'animale ucciso in tal modo, sia stato dissanguato altrettanto bene - Ro 14:10, 12, 23. (FPA 12/12/81)

TRASFUSI CONTRO LA PROPRIA VOLONTÀ:

Nel caso in cui venga violata la santità del sangue, la cosa che è necessario stabilire è se detta violazione è imputabile alla sorella oppure no. Da quel che possiamo comprendere la sorella è stata trasfusa contro la sua volontà e a sua insaputa. In tal caso non vediamo che sussistano gli estremi per un intervento giudiziario nei suoi riguardi. Di conseguenza, non è nemmeno necessario redigere una relazione da conservare nell'archivio permanente del corpo degli A. visto che non esistono gli estremi della violazione da imputare alla sorella in questione.

In casi del genere, gli A. possono dare di concerto col com. sanitario locale la necessaria assistenza sia spir. che legale, ma devono stare attenti a non sostituirsi al paziente nelle decisioni che gli competono. Qualora si verifichino situazioni legali particolarmente interessanti è appropriato consultare, caso per caso, l'Ufficio che potrà eventualmente indicare quali aspetti del problema stesso possono interessare e per i quali viene richiesta una certa indagine. (SCA 3/5/88)

SORELLA CHE DEVE ACCOMPAGNARE LA FIGLIA MINORENNE A FARE TRASFUSIONI:

La sorella ha il marito incredulo e pretende che ella accompagni la figlia minorenne per la terapia trasfusionale. Il problema è: si tratta di una questione di coscienza o sta violando la legge di Dio? La responsabilità della terapia trasfusionale ricade sul padre e non sulla madre. Accompagnando la sua bambina la sorella non sta violando la legge di Dio. Ella non incoraggia né ha fatto comprendere che è d'accordo con tale terapia.

Accompagnando la bambina, semplicemente svolge il suo compito di madre e moglie in ubbidienza ad una precisa disposizione del marito, responsabile della figlia. Ci dite che ogni volta si sente turbata. In questo caso dovrebbe agire in armonia col principio di Ro 14:23. Se ella andasse contro ciò che dice la sua coscienza cristiana, pur non essendo soggetta alla disciplina della cong., commetterebbe peccato dinanzi a Geova. Incoraggiate la sorella a decidere secondo la propria coscienza non essendo per nulla influenzata da ciò che possono pensare altri sulla questione. Ella esaminerà la cosa in preghiera assumendosi le proprie responsabilità. (SCB:SSB 19/11/80)

Ci informi che il marito della sorella ... le chiede di portare il figlio in ospedale per ricevere trasfusioni di sangue e la sorella lo fa. Ci chiedi quale sia la posizione della sorella e se è una questione di coscienza. Nel caso in questione non è la sorella che accetta trasfusioni, né il figlio è un cristiano battezzato. Il marito è il capo della famiglia e prende decisioni sulla terapia che il figlio deve seguire. Se la sorella pensa quindi che come autorità deve obbedire al marito e la sua coscienza non è turbata, pur sapendo che il figlio riceve una trasfusione di sangue, allora è una questione di coscienza. La cong. non interverrà in alcun modo.

Non pensiamo che si possa mettere il caso in questione in relazione a Ger 7:15-19. Qui è descritta un’attività compiuta da dedicati adoratori di Geova per compiere un atto di falsa adorazione. Invece nel caso presente gli implicati non sono tutti adoratori di Geova, come ad es. il marito della donna, e la moglie non può prendere decisioni per stabilire le cure che saranno praticate al figlio. Naturalmente lei dovrebbe rendere chiaro a suo marito che la terapia che egli ha deciso non la condivide e che gli obbedisce semplicemente per essergli sottomessa come moglie essendo lui il capo famiglia. In questo modo lei non condivide la responsabilità della cosa. Naturalmente, se lei approvasse la trasfusione per il figlio, la cosa sarebbe diversa. (Ro 14:22, 23) - W 1.5.65 p 284. Benché la cosa riguardi la coscienza della sorella, se i fratelli fossero turbati della sua decisione di accompagnare il figlio in ospedale, il corpo degli A. dovrà prendere in considerazione se toglierle i privilegi o no. (SCB:SSA 9/6/84)

INFERMIERE O MEDICO CHE DEVONO PRATICARE UNA TRASFUSIONE:

Un TdG che fa l'infermiere non dovrebbe mai prescrivere di propria iniziativa una trasfusione. Però che dire se il paziente stesso chiede una trasfusione o se l'infermiere riceve dal medico l'ordine di praticare una trasfusione? In questo caso sarebbe lasciato alla coscienza del fratello decidere come comportarsi, cioè se praticare la trasfusione o no. Naturalmente bisogna tenere presente ciò che dice Paolo in Ro 14:23 dove è scritto che se la coscienza lo fa turbare dovrebbe astenersi.

Questo è in armonia con Deu 14:21 che dice: "Lo puoi dare al residente forestiero che è dentro le tue porte ... o si può vendere a uno straniero". Qui si trattava di un animale morto. Mentre l'israelita non poteva mangiare quell'animale poteva venderlo a uno straniero. Da ciò si comprende un'altra cosa, che il TdG. non dovrebbe mai fare una trasfusione ad un altro Testimone, sia che glielo chiedesse il Testimone stesso o glielo ordinasse il dottore. Il tuo caso è simile a quello del medico T.d.G. al quale un paziente chiede una trasfusione. L'accettare la richiesta del paziente dipende dalla sua coscienza - W 1.5.65 p 284 (SCC:SSF 12/9/80)

ESSERE ISCRITTI PER DONARE I PROPRI ORGANI:

La W 1/9/80 prende in considerazione il soggetto dei trapianti degli organi. Fra l'altro dice: "Se qualcuno accettasse un trapianto, il comitato giudiziario della cong. non prenderebbe misure disciplinari nei suoi confronti". Crediamo che l'essere iscritti o diventare soci dell'A.I.D.O. implichi basilarmente gli stessi princìpi. Che dire se un fratello decidesse in tal senso? Il modo in cui egli verrebbe considerato nella cong. dipenderebbe dall'effetto che la sua decisione provocherebbe sulla coscienza degli altri - 1Co 8:12, 13. (SCD:SSD 27/3/91)

Da https://www.infotdgeova.it/7tecniche/sangue-trasfusioni-trapianti.html