Review: Susperia (1976)

Italian horror films tend to be a bit more to the gory side of things than their American counterparts. This is not necessarily a good thing: On both sides of the Atlantic, splatter pyrotechnics tend to take the place of creativity and originality.

Master Italian stylist Dario Argento is more inventive than most, and his films are, consequently, several cuts above the average splatter flick. Susperia is probably Argento's most famous film, and while it's shot with a great deal of ingenuity and features respectable acting, it also features some of the most disturbing, upsetting murders ever committed to film.

A pretty, petite American student (Jessica Harper) goes to Europe to study at a dance school...but you just know it's not merely a dance school, don't you? The headmistress (Joan Bennett) is a witch! The school is a coven! And bad things happen to students who figure this out--very bad things.

Within the first fifteen minutes of Susperia, the audience is made to witness a murder that has to be one of the most gruesome events in any horror film. A student escapes to a friend's apartment and is attacked there by...well, something (all we really see is a silhouette and a hairy paw). The poor girl is smothered, yanked through a window, stabbed slowly and repeatedly (including a smashing closeup of a knife entering an exposed, still-throbbing heart), and-finally--is hung and flung through an overhead stained glass window.

This murder takes damn near forever to play out and is accompanied by the howling, clanging soundtrack provided by The Goblins (whose music turned up in numerous Argento films as well as in George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which was co-produced by Argento). This is but the first of three truly nasty murders--all explicit, all taking place over a series of minutes, all carried out in disgusting (if inventive) ways.

It's a shame that Argento goes to such great lengths to show dismemberment and torture. He creates great mood throughout the film and manages to give the audience the impression that they're constantly being watched and measured for murder. But Argento's more spectacular visuals--a pane of glass bisecting a young woman's head, another young woman falling into a sea of barbed wire, and more maggots than you'd ever want to see in several lifetimes--overpower whatever mood he creates.

Consequently, Susperiaisn't so much scary as it is upsetting. After that first murder, I was more depressed than anything else and pretty much just wanted to turn the VCR off. But I stayed with the movie to the bitter end, at which point I didn't feel like I'd watched a masterful horror film; I felt like I'd passed a test. And tests, if I remember anything from high school, aren't meant to be enjoyed.

(UPDATE: In 2007, two of my very best friends, JB and Sister Dee, came over to La Casa del Terror to watch movies that each of us, for one reason or another, needed to give a second chance to. My choice was The Shining, JB's Pulp Fiction. Dee's selection? Susperia. I gave it a second chance that night as well, and was pleasantly surprised: While I still found the violence repellent, I found Argento's visuals, especially his use of color, appealing. There was more than gore going on there after all. Sometimes, you have to take a second look to see something for the first time.)