Three laughs: Ninja III The Domination

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs case file #30: Ninja III: The Domination
(USA, 1984)
Director: Sam Firstenberg

It's kind of odd that I've not yet featured any Cannon Group films in this column. Perhaps I've gone on even cheaper thrills than the relatively cheap but still Hollywood productions of the company started by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. The main idea of Cannon was to populistically grab onto any trend that might attract customers of the 1980's film landscape. Enter the Ninja.

As the world started to open up in the 80s, ninjas were some of the exotic thrills provided by foreign countries that managed to work wonders within the action movies. They made for good enemies for any action hero, but there was a sense of mysticism and magic in them that they could also carry entire movies as protagonists. Shô Kosugi was one of these crossover stars that first started as a villain yet grew into a surprisingly popular leading man.

As Cannon's Ninja trilogy goes, I've covered the Franco Nero -starring first part here before. While I might prefer the second one, Revenge of the Ninja, it is a close call and there's a lot more cult movie vibe in the third one, titled The Domination. For as Golan and Globus wanted to capture trends, it is not just a ninja picture, but rips off other popular films of the time, such as Poltergeist and Flashdance.

Yes, the story is of a female aerobics instructor that gets possessed by the spirit of a vengeful ninja, and must strike to kill at nights. She needs the help of Kosugi's wise old ninja master in order to defeat the evil. The film could have been a star-making turn for Lucinda Dickey, and the idea of a female lead in a ninja action movie is kind of progressive. It's too bad she can't be a fighter by her own right but has to be possessed in order to be able to take men on. The way to go about it is nothing short of crazy, so we might gawp and gather the highlights into a text such as this.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The movie has one of my favorite opening action scenes of any action movie ever. It's the best action scene of the movie, so it's a bit of a letdown that the rest of the movie can't hold up to that one. After a short intro of a man visiting an ominous ancient temple, a black ninja (David Chung) appears on a golf course to an entourage of polo-shirted white guys. He enrages them by squeezing golf balls into powder. He proceeds to hack and slash them to death which starts out a non-stop 10 minutes of pure action I won't go beat-by-beat here. Suffice to say the ninja lifts a running golf cart and stops such a hard hit from a golf club with his hand, the bar bends around it.

2. Soon after rich guys are offed, the action moves to cops pursuing the ninja. He lifts a ride from a helicopter and kills the cops within it, making the helicopter explode. Just as you think the scene is over as the ninja is hiding in a pond, breathing through a reed, he gets discovered and blows some poison darts to a cop through the reed and starts killing cops once again. Talk about making bacon on a beach.

3. I have to talk about the other side of the film, which sees Dickey's character be escorted by a cop (Jordan Bennett) since she is eyewitness of the Black Ninja's crimes. She ends up seducing him in an amazingly 80's apartement with arcade cabinets, neon lights and Duran Duran albums. Like a scene from The Naked Gun, she takes a can of tomato juice out of somewhere and pours some on her neck. Is this bizarre idea supposed to be sensual?

Three laughs: Killer Elephants

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart. 

★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs case file #29:
Killer Elephants a.k.a. Rumbling the Elephant (Thailand, 1976)
Director: Kom Akkadej

Low-budget action movies, particularly fromn foreign countries area n interesting pool to dive into, since they come from a place of having to  try harder to entertain the audience than their big-budgeted bretheren. That's why every once in a while something emerges that delivers outrageous action and no filler throughout their run-time.

Case in point is Killer Elephants, a Thai movie starring the local film star Sombat Metanee. It may not have the outstanding martial arts action that many Thai films since the 2000s have boasted, but it makes up for them in big stunts, big elephants and a big heart. It's basically a western film with a ruthless criminal gang terrorizing a small town, until a mysterious stranger comes to put them in line. Using a lot of violence and a group of elephants, of course.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. One thing I love most about these sort of exotic thriller movies is the way their action really looks dangerous. It might have been a horror to make, but the explosions are much more satisfying when it doesn't seem they have been made in a supervised and sterilized environment with professional stuntmen. This film doesn't really waste time, and the very opening scene is of a car chase through a jungle road with bad guys dropping oil drumson the road from a pick-up truck, and then shoot at them to explode the car of the pursuing hero.

2. Although the film offers plenty of old-school action thrills with car stunts and explosions, the money shot is of course the elephants and their use in these scenes. Luckily, it doesn't seem like elpehants have been put to any real danger in making the film, rather it seems they enjoy being able to wreck shit up. The first such scene comes early on as  the police comes to confront the villainous Elephant Gang on a bridge. The baddies don't take no shit from the pigs, and command their steeds to throw police cars into the river.

3. Mostly the elephants don't kill anyone though, they are mostly used to scare people and perhaps demolish a village. I have to highlight one comedic scene, though, where a defeated little runt tries to cheese off. A bull elephant has surrounded him, and he klonks his head on its dong. Childish? Maybe yes, but you won't get anything like that on any other movie.

O is For Organized Crime

I haven't really honored an alphabetical order so far with our look into Italian genre cinema anyway, so let's just jump straight into O, shall we? There's a sub-sub genre of poliziottesci movies that focuses more on the underworld and various criminal gangs than the ruthless police chasing them. It was spawned mostly by the success of The Godfather films in the early 1970's, even though Italians were making films such as these before them as well. After all, the criminal clans and the pursuit to bring them to justice were all over the society at that time.

For blogging purposes, it would stand to reason to balance the last post with a look at some of the more notable of these. 

Sicilian Clan (France/Italy, 1969)
Director: Henri Verneuil

It's interesting to watch this Franco/Italian production today, as it was made in a time before the really hard-boiled 1970's crime movies kicked off. That's why, even though the name, it's not really a realistic depiction of organized crime by any means, but rather a tale of some gentleman thieves and their criminal family.

The film's most exciting scene comes right at the beginning, as we are introduced to jewel thief Roger Sartret (Alain Delon), who manages to escape from police custody from a moving vehicle. The Sicilian mafia, lead by Vittorio (Jean Gabin) help him out as he had learned information in jail that could help them pull off a major heist. Things are complicated as Vittorio's son's wife Jeanne (Irina Demick) starts to fall for Roger, as well as the commissioner Le Goff (Lino Ventura) following hot off their tail.

Verneuil is to me an underrated director who managed to create a nice filmography of exciting genre films in the 60's and 70's. The problem often is that even though the movies have all the elements of greatness, something stops them from being stone-cold classics. Here the problem is that Verneuil doesn't manage to keep the film's style compact. As an international heist movie, it entertains, but from a film titled like this, one would expect to see a more intimate depiction of a crime family, and not shy away from the brutalities they commit.

Now it's so casual it's basically a version of The Pink Panther without jokes. The film has a great cast, though and each makes their part a memorable one.

★★★

Gang War in Milan (Milano rovente, Italy 1973)
Dir. Umberto Lenzi

French drug couriers, led by Le Capitaine (Philippe Leroy) starts ruthlessly taking over Italy, first at small towns, then moving on to major cities like Milan. The owner of a local nightclub and pimp Salvatore "Toto" Cangemi (Antonio Sabato) resists both joining or working for the cartel, which leads to the increasingly violent feaceoffs between the French gangsters and Italian small-time crooks. One can see here as well that the Italians are worried thet their delicate balance of dealing with some criminal aspects in their society are about to blow in their faces with the advent of more brutal criminals from abroad.

Lenzi was one of the most prolific Eurocrime directors, and Gang War was his first shot at the genre. It's a seedy and confusing little film which had qualities the filmmaker would improve upon later on. As such, it works well as your average Eurocrime. It has little action scenes, shitty cars and slimy moustaches, but plenty of torture, abuse of women and other nastiness that guarantees its notoriety. Lenzi always had the most despicable central characters, but the film fails to give better reasons of following them.

 ★★ 1/2

From Corleone to Brooklyn (Da Corleone a Brooklyn, Italy 1979)
Dir. Umberto Lenzi

Lenzi is on hand again, as he was one of the most central directors of the genre. This time around the film's depicting a multilayered cat-an-mouse game on the run. Mobster Michele Barresi (Mario Merola) makes a play for more power and has his main rival gunned down, but has to escape with his life to New York. The tough, uncompromizing insperctor Berni (Maurizio Merli) hatches a plan to capture the fugitive, but this makes Barresi's girlfriend and a former mob assassin Salvatore Scalia (Biagio Pelligra), out to testify in court, moving targets.

From the setting of the story to both Sicilian village of Corleone to New York, it is obvious this has been majorly influenced by The Godfather, but also several other 70's New York mob flicks, like Mean Streets. Lenzi has learned to not overindulge in violence and brutality, centering more on the plot and the paranoid athmosphere this time around. It doesn't offer anything too spectacular or best of the genre, but a very solid entry into the genre itself, with some interesting depictions of the Mafia pulling strings across continents as well.

This one was Lenzi's last foray to poliziottesci for a decade, in the 1980's Italian genre cinema basically became a lot more horror-oriented and he started to churn out Cannibal movies. He returned to the genre in the early 90's, but without Merli.

The Milieu Trilogy, 
Dir. Fernando Di Leo:

Caliber 9
(Milano Calibro 9, Italy 1972)

Di Leo specializes in making crime films that are simultaneously operaticly tragic and caricaturized like fumetti comics. He also usually starts out with a bang, and the same thing happens here. A criminal syndicate sends a money package from person to person, gets betrayed, and then Mario Adorf's Rocco Musco acts swift revenge and blows them all up with dynamite.

Mostly the film moves more slowly, with tensions rising as we wait on violence to explode again. The film has a bleak look on the Italian society that has failed to stop the most ruthless and brutal to exact on their will. The main character Ugo Piazza (Gastone Moschin) tries to play straight after being released from prison, but is soon sucked in to criminal works since he is being blamed of embezzling the money. At the same time, the police also wants his help in order to find the stash.

The film has more double-crossings as a season of soap opera. Mostly everyone plays to their own interests, and Di Leo also has a cruel irony regarding the ideas of honor among thieves and respect within the crime family. He doesn't find much good about working within truly rotten apples and getting involved in crime has plenty of tragic consequences play out. The movie also has a banger of a theme song, which has been used by Di Leo several times after this one, too.

★★★★

The Italian Connection 
(La mala ordina, Italy 1972)

On my money, this is Di Leo's finest work, and also one of the all-timers for the greatest action movies ever made. To tell exactly why would be spoiling, but suffice to say, Di Leo doesn't put his most explosive scene in the film first, this time around.

A small-time Milanese pimp (played by incresing desperation by Mario Adorf) finds out there are two American hitmen (Henry Silva and Woody Strode) sent for his head. Even though he works within the mafia, he doesn't understand why they would threaten his life. He tries to find out who has set him up for stealing a shipment of heroin, until the hits get too personal, after which he sets out on a quest for vengeance.

It appears Di Leo got a hold of bigger budgets after the success of (the rather small-scaled) Caliber 9. The film has superb action scenes, from car chases along the streets to a final showdown at a junkyard. Action direction is clear and purposeful, and daring to go as far into the ridiculousness as one can. Though Di Leo finds the life-or-death situations of involvement in the organized crime tragic, he knows he's also an entertainer. That's probably also the reason why a major action scene ends up on an abandoned circus.

★★★★ 1/2

The Boss
(Il Boss, Italy 1973)
 

The capper of his trilogy has some of the biggest scenes the director ever did, and was probably intented to be the first of two parts. The film ends on a "To Be Continued" cliffhanger, so it's a shame we never got to see what Di Leo had in store for the latter part. But what we had is explosive and mesmerizing either way.

It has another explosive opening as Henry Silva's assassin kills a bunch of mob bosses in a movie theatre with a grenade launcher that also sets the screen on fire (Tarantino was probably taking notes for Inglourious Basterds). But the pace evens out a bit, with most of the movie being criminals arguing in small rooms. As the film was released after The Godfather, there are several scenes of murder that imitate the suave montages that one had.

The film may be a bit slighter, subtext-wise, than its two predecessors, but it is still tremendous fun and everything one could want from a film like this, right down to the angry police chief. It's still a bit cynical on the situation of the society and the criminal enterprises it lives in a symbiotic relationship with.

★★★★

Blow Up, Blow Out

 Did you just accidentally capture a murder on film, or a sound of evidence for one? Can the truth be found on details or does it just send its seeker to the path of obsession? There's a trio of films much studied and appreciated that riff on a very similar subject. I think it appeals to film directors, as the job often includes getting easily distracted on the moments they weren't set out to capture. That's why this idea lingers on, and what's more it epitomize the styles and ides of each of their respective auteurs. Each could also not have been done in a different time, they are the image of the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's.

So, let's talk about Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966), Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) and Brian De Palma's Blow Out (1981).

Blow-Up (UK, Italy 1966)
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

One of the essential depictions of the image of 1960's Swinging London, Antonioni's most famous film sees David Hemmings as a wealthy, self-centered and womanizing photographer. Much of the film we also see odd and off-putting public performances of Flower People through his eyes. Like in many of Antonioni's films, much of the mood and ideas are put between the lines. Even as Hemmings' Thomas tries his best to be a hip mod, it is obvious that he does not feel comfortable or let his guard down.

But his boredom and uneasiness also allow him to push boundaries and operate on a morally gray area. As he's secretly photographing a mysterious woman in the park, it seems that his camera captures something odd. The woman confronts him later on and demands the roll. The instance haunts Thomas and as he's studying his secret negatives he starts seeing things by blowing up smaller and smaller elements to bigger pictures. But we as an audience also never get any closure or reinsurance of the fact throughout the film.

The obsessions related to the sexual nature of how Thomas uses the camera makes the film basically about the male gaze and voyeurism. Antonioni had a knack of combining his themes to the plot. Empty hedonism and sex where his every whim is filled still doesn't satisfy, and by pushing morals, the main character is left a giant void. These days, one could also see how his masculinity turns more and more toxic, as he treats women disposable and has the entire world revolving around his wants and needs. The film is a fascinating look at details and visually wondrous, but the strictly male navel-gazing it provides is a bit out of time by today's standards.

★★★★

The Conversation (USA 1974)
Dir. Francis Ford Coppola

As Antonioni was exploring life in the 1960's, then Coppola took the idea to the paranoid 1970's and brought a more political aspect to the proceedings. It is probably still the best movie ever made about surveillance and the endless hole of compromizing ideals it leads to.

It's not to say Coppola is stealing the idea from Blow-Up, rather he's using it as a key influence. A most notable difference is that as Antonioni's film was about a wealthy and cool young artist, Coppola centers around a sweaty and mousey middle-aged man that considers himself a public servant. Actually Gene Hackman's Harry Caul is a surveillance expert, and with his company, follows around those his clients point out to him with very little regard on the moral aspects of his work.

By contrast to his job description, Caul himself is very much an introvert, careful of his own privacy and keeping his private life private (I wonder what he would make of the modern day when American and Chinese apps follow your every move and sell them to the highest bidder in a bat of an eyelash). But as he is very much a loner, there's a perverted aspect of him following young couples around and listening their conversations. One particular conversation might contain some damning information, but it is not clear and could be interpreted multiple ways. Nevertheless, Caul is horrified to learn that the couple he is listening in might be stalked by a murderer.

Coppola's film has an amoral man grow a conscience but as one would expect, he is not rewarded from it but rather, having his whole life come crumbling down and things going from bad to worse quick. He blows his few relationships, work and most of all, his safety, which means all his posturing around privacy concerns was basically for naught as his enemys could still get to him. Coppola is also careful not to make his film into your basic thriller, but having the tensions come from very slow development of the plot, and as Antonioni, reading moods and implications from between the sparse lines of dialogue.

It's a jazzy and alienating, often frustrating and deliberately off-putting film. The use of sound is brilliant and I think would warrant a seeing seemingly such a small-scale character drama in theatres. This is one of those films you get to appreciate properly only second or third viewing. It is very multi-layered, but I think well worth the effort.

★★★★ 1/2

Blow Out (USA 1981)
Dir. Brian De Palma

Easily the most garish of the trio, De Palma was never afraid of "borrowing" stuff from even well-known cinema, so his answer to the same theme takes more out of the previous movies, as well as Michael Powell's Peeping Tom. Visually, though it looks more like it's director. As the ideas stretch far beyond just plucking them from previous work, it is among the director's finest works with particularly a climactic image lingering on long after the curtains have closed.

John Travolta plays Jack Terry, a character that is something like an amalgam of Hemmings' and Hackman's characters. On surface he may seem like a brash and cool film sound engineer, but below he's tormented and traumatized, as well as feeling empty and lonely. He is recording ambient sound at a park one evening as a car crashes into a pond. He manages to pull out a woman, Sally (Nancy Allen) and helps her to a hospital. But it turns out she was dealing with an important political figure and thus someone might be out to get her. Terry finds evidence on the sound he recorded that the car crash was not an accident.

The film makes fun of the misogynism of murder movies and by-the-numbers stalk-view that De Palma and many of his copycats have used. The movie opens with a film-within a film that seems like a cheap Halloween knock-off and a sub-plot of the film concerns on trying to find the right kind of scream to be used on the film. De Palma presents himself to be more detail-oriented. The actual film has a murderer stalking women too, played by thorough iciness by John Lithgow. But the movie goes out of its way to show how pathetic and disgusting this messy killing actually is, not just stalking girls in a house with a bread knife. De Palma uses plenty of underutilized tricks to emphasize the suspense, such as exciting camera shots and suspending expectations. He is a true follower of Hitchcock in that, carefully limiting on what the audience knows and what he shows.

But in its core, it is a tragic love story of a man who has lost his wife being unable to protect another woman he has developed feelings for. It has similar qualities also to Vertigo in this regard, with the love being really as much about obsession. The final punch of the film also depicts a more cynical end to the character arc than the more open-ended predecessors allowed. In a way all of these are about a man being destroyed by thier obsession in multiple ways. The film also draws parallels to the political decay of the loss for truth and the withering of cinematic artistry in a way I'm not really enclined to agree with, but find fantastically entwined within the plot. De Palma is just as angry as Coppola was, but comes to different conclusions on the same issues.

The cycle of inspiration carried on, as the film itself proved very influental to Quentin Tarantino (particularly Death Proof, which features the same love theme) and Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio.

★★★★

Three laughs: Don't Go Near The Park

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs case file #28:
Don't Go Near The Park (USA, 1979)
Director: Lawrence D. Foldes

We should all try to avoid public places there days, so to remind you, here's Don't Go Near The Park. And why shouldn't you go near? Well, since there are serial-murdering magic cavepeople in there, of course. The film has the gall to state that it's based on actual occurences throughout history.

In actuality, it is a cheap grindhouse flick that cashes in on similar 70's dreck such as The Hills Have Eyes. There is enough gore that it gained some notoriety when in the UK it was put on the Video Nasties list, but they shouldn't have. It's a childish movie that perhaps only open-minded kids could properly appreciate. The cavepeople seen in the movie are Gar (Robert Gribbin, as Crackers Phinn) and his sister Tra (Barbara Bain) some ancient native americans that were cursed by a witch to live forever near their home cave and only gain their youth by consuming human flesh.

But there is also confusingly an important, magical date of two stars coming to in line approaching when they should sacrifice a virgin in order to gain eternal youth. And for this, Gar concieved a baby girl with a woman and grew her to be 16 years old (played by Tammy Taylor). She also has a magic amulet from her caveman wizard daddy that kills would-be rapists and such scum that would do her harm before his dad and aunt can.

The film's inner mythology doesn't make much sense and the wooden actors won't even try to sell it. Most of the movie is spent on following airheaded but peppy kids straight outta 60's Disney movies that are drawn to the cave-vampire Some familiar B-movie stars such as drunken Aldo Ray and fresh-faced Linnea Quigley are top-billed, but in actuality, have only small roles.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The opening scene where a Halloween-masked witch puts a curse on the diabolic duo is pretty funny, because Bain chews the scenery incredibly hard. It also seems like she's cracking up listening to the bullshit. Why were they cursed? There's an incestual tone here, but it's probably due to them being cannibals even in ye olden days.

2. The first poper gore scene is one of many cases of Tra doing the Kali Ma and ripping live organs from people's stomachs with her bare hands. The effect is laughable, but even more laughable is her taking off her withered old crone face like a rubber mask. Underneath, she had an eye patch for some reason, perhaps to make her look similar to Christina Lindberg?

3. The climax is something to behold, as Gar and Tra suddensly start shooting white lasers from their eyes and kill much of the supporting cast, start a major fire and then bring the dead back to life in positively Turkish-grade -looking zombies that turn against them. Way to save the sugar to the bottom, movie.

Re:Make - Suspiria

In this blogging series, I am contrasting a classic movie and its remake. This is to showcase that a remake is not always a bad thing. Very rarely do movie remakes attempt to do anything fresh with their concept, but usually just blandly redo every major scene. But sometimes this is not the case. A new director might find some new angles on the established IP and possibly given a totally new twist rather than same-old-same-old. Some great cinematic feats would not have been possible if there wasn't a rogue filmmaker ready to give a shot in redoing something beloved.

Suspiria (1977)
Director: Dario Argento

vs.

Suspiria (2018) 
Director: Luca Guadagnino

How similar do remakes have to be to earn the same name as its predecessor? While this blog maintains that remakes are all right when there is a fresh take on an old material, are some movies so canonized and huge, no one should ever even try them? Is a horror film's purpose to be scary first and work loftier ideas into the script second, or could a throughly political film about Europe in the 1970's be scary? And how much playing with audiences' expectations is allowed?

Luca Guadagnino is certainly one of the most celebrated Italian directors working today, with a unique voice. But his films often feel to me to be mixed bags. there are brilliant ideas and visual touches, yet often the end result doesn't click together in a meaningful way. But there are plenty of people who admire Guadagnino and his brand of filmmaking. I may be on the minority.

Nevertheless, if Dario Argento's 1977 horror classic Suspiria had to be redone, I was glad it was at least by an auteur with such strong visual flourishes. And the resulting movie is at the very least an interesting one, even if one's mileage of the things Guadagnino has done may very. But let's start by talking about the original.

Often branded as a giallo movie, I think Suspiria was actually Dario Argento's major leap out of the giallo genre and the start of his true auteur status. It is a supernatural horror film but other than that, many of Argento's later films are harder to label and brand. The play between light and music and architecture (and a very flimsy excuse for a plot) are something that only one person in the world could have made. Other Italian directors could keep on churning straightforward murder mysteries.

An american student Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) arrives to Germany to go to a esteemed ballet academy. But as soon as the airport's sliding doors close behind her, she is actually in an expressionistic fairy tale world, where a coven of witches plots and the young blood of the young girls is used to revive the ancient evil of Mother Markos back to life. There are plenty of gory demises and unforgettable death images that seemingly are caused by hexes and dark magic. No better explanation is given.

The original's striking architecture was an influence on the remake's poster art and opening and end credits.

But it's easy to criticize the film's plot's lack of coherence or the bad dialogue or silly dubbing. But they seem consequental, of no bigger reason for Argento's nightmare world. If there are bigger flaws in the movie, would one say they revolve around the fact that beyond the expressionism it doesn't seem to have much to say. Certainly not about the time and place it is set in, rather, Argento seems to want to take us to a timeless place untouched by the rational world.

Likewise, the film doesn't dwell too deep in its portrayal of either dance and ballet or the coming of age of a group of girls in a disconnected location far from home.The film has its basic teenage scenes of lessons and bullying and whispering during sleepovers, but mostly these are used to set up the next victim of the unstoppable murder spree rather than to say something about growing into a woman.

Since it would be futile to challenge Argento at his own game, Guadagnino wisely seeks to remedy these sidesteps that the previous movie didn't have concern for. Visually and aesthetically, his film is more similar to the works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, all cold grey, brown and ugly pastels rather than bright RGB lights. The film switches the focus more on the witches, who are trying to choose a new leader, as well as preparing a spell to do with a dance routine. Dakota Johnson is playing Susie Bannion, the new girl, here, but Chloë Grace Moretz's Patricia is the girl which the film has the most emphasis.

Perhaps the major issue of Guadgnino's film is that it tries to bite more than it can chew. It deals with both blossoming and withering age's issues and traumas as well as Germany's post-war situation, the scars left of the Holocaust, European value system's flimsiness, women's rights, the power of art and the political workings of the witches' coven, all of which bloats the film to more than 2,5 hours long. The characters may be more well-rounded, but they don't feel as comfy to follow (or edgy to see their ultimate fates) since all their scenes are built around a message being delivered. All the time that should be spent on building tensions and delivering shocks, is rather used on building a kind of academic paper with highbrow arthouse filmmaking.


While its good that a film also embraces its weirdness, Guadagnino's experimentations does not always serve the film. Thom York's soundtrack just sounds like vintage Radiohead. Lead actor Tilda Swinton in a dual role works to be majorly distracting, since there is no good bridge between the two (main) characters of the film. The idea falls particularly flat in the climax when her Madame Blanc and Dr Josef Klempener share screen time, as well as a third character that utilizes even more overacting and prosthetic makeup.

The film doesn't feel threatening enough, or even playful enough to deliver on this kind of experiments. Likewise the take on the more body horror-like aspects of the story are a bit hit-or-miss, some striking, some a little half-baked. Though he has certainly seen Hellraiser, the horror side of the movie does not seem to interest Guadagnino as much. He's certainly no Andrzej Zulawski that has the ability to melt both the political and the personal aspects into a great spiral into madness.

While it has good ideas with which to drive these points forward with the story, it is inevitable these its plethora of various ideas will battle each other for the dominance of the movie. At the end it feels like very little conclusions on each is reached. Where the film works wonders is delivering on some dreamlike fast-changing images (one can see the influence of music video filmmaking between these two movies) and its dance school setting, perticularly in its climatic ballet scene that does feel a bit scary and like it could be actual dark magick in the making. In this case, it was smarter to ration the strongest and most colorful visual scenes sparingly.

So, in conclusion, we have to Suspirias that set out to do almost exactly different things, yet also both are horror movies set on a dance school. While Argento's film feels surprisingly effortless even though it keeps upping its visual stylization and shocks, Guadagnino seems to try too hard and looses the playfulness in trying to fit in too many ideas. In the end, I'm still glad we have both of these movies, and Guadagnino's film has plenty to enjoy to warrant multiple viewings as well. But, y'know, it's no classic.

Suspiria (1977) ★★★★ 1/2
Suspiria (2018) ★★★