(From left to right) - Giuseppe Transocchi, Joan Bennett, Flavio Bucci, Jacopo Mariani, Alida Valli, Stefania Casini, Miguel Bosé, Jessica Harper, and Barbara Magnolfi.
spooky tuesday is a (now not so new!) podcast where we’re breaking down all of our favorite slashers, thrillers, monster movies and black comedies on the new scariest day of the week.
should we have saved suspiria (1977) for pride month? rumor on the street is that this is a low-key lesbian film… which actually makes a lot of sense when you consider that, in a way, maybe all witch movies are. but while it doesn't actually include any footage of women kissing, dario argento's masterpiece is still a visual delight. just peep all the incredible architecture and fashion! that's not to say that this flick is all (technicolor) flash, no substance. there's a lot to unpack here, which is why we asked vannah taylor — writer, ballerina, and fellow horror podcaster — to join us as we break down everything from the classic fairytale references to the pop culture impact.
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Seeds will be released on DVD and VOD on January 31 via Vipco and BayView Entertainment. Written and directed by friend of the site Skip Shea, the folk horror tale won the Rondo Award for Best Independent Film in 2020.
Genre favorites Barbara Magnolfi (Suspiria) and Kip Weeks (The Strangers) star alongside Emma MacKenzie, Patrick Bracken, Rick Johnston, Nicole Watson, Aurora Grabill, Bella Medeiros, Demetri Kasperson, and Skip Shea.
No special features are listed. Check out the trailer and synopsis below.
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A grieving mother holds onto her Catholic faith as her husband leaves to study and learn the secrets of an old New England cult. Secrets that the Catholic Church wants for their own use. Meanwhile the cult has deadly plans of their own.
Starring Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé, Barbara Magnolfi
An American newcomer to a prestigious German ballet academy comes to realize that the school is a front for something sinister amid a series of grisly murders.
currently watching Ruggero Deodato’s 1985 movie Cut and Run (aka Inferno in diretta) featuring Lisa Blount, Willie Aames, Richard Lynch, Michael Berryman, Eriq La Salle, John Steiner, Barbara Magnolfi, & Karen Black
Cast: Jessica Harper, Stefania Cassini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé, Barbara Magnolfi, Susanna Javicoli, Eva Axén, Rudolf Schündler, Udo Kier, Alida Valli, Joan Bennett. Screenplay: Dario Argento, Daria Nicolodi. Cinematography: Luciano Tovoli. Production design: Giuseppe Bassan. Film editing: Franco Fraticelli. Music: Dario Argento, Goblin (Agostino Marangolo, Massimo Morante, Fabio Pignatelli, Claudio Simonetti).
I've seen movies in which the sets were more interesting than what's going on in them, but I don't think anyone would say that about Dario Argento's Suspiria. At the very least, in the competition of setting and action for the viewer's attention, it's a draw. When Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) tells a cab driver to take her to Escherstrasse, I should have been alerted to the visual phantasmagoria that is to come. It's clear that Argento means us to pick up on the allusion to the Dutch artist M.C. Escher, known for his plays on perspective and visual puzzles; Argento has the surly cabbie force Suzy to repeat the street name twice before saying it himself. But Escher's work was in black and white; Argento's, and that of his production designer, Giuseppe Bassan, and his cinematographer, Luciano Tovoli, is in color -- the most lurid Technicolor seen in a movie since the heyday of the MGM musical. Not that Suspiria has much in common with those musicals: The dominant color in Suspiria is red, and a lot of that red is blood, often artfully splattered. (One large blood splat looks like a Rorschach test.) I can't say that I was shocked by anything in the movie, although the many murders in it verge on overkill. It's too gaudy and noisy -- the background music by Goblin is the aural equivalent of the decor -- to build much tension. I could wish the dubbing of the dialogue didn't have the depthless quality, the lack of ambiance, of speech recorded in a studio -- even the English-speaking actors were post-synched in the manner of many Italian films of the era. But then the dialogue doesn't matter much: It's nonsense about witches, and the plot is only a device to hang horrors on. Still, Suspiria is a one-of-a-kind movie -- maybe we should be grateful for that -- and a landmark in its genre.