Welcome to Scream Theory
Beyond Hollywood's mainstream, outside of the accepted boundaries of the 'art' and third cinema lies the cult film. Shunned by critics, frequently misunderstood by distributors and official film viewing bodies, these are the offbeat images produced by movie mavericks whose impact is felt on the legions of frenzied film fans that constitute the cult film audience. Whether defined as horror, science fiction, madcap musicals, Kung Fu or weird world cinema, Scream Theory will devote itself to a critical appreciation of the underground and marginal image. Readers can expect a monthly update on the latest cult film releases, interviews with its hottest and most colourful characters as well as a critical appreciation on its leading figures and genres from across the globe. From the cinematic excesses of Europe to the drop kicking feats of the Far East and the triumphs of Turkish trash cinema, all will find a sympathetic home in Scream Theory.
So leave your cinematic preconceptions behind, expect the unexpected, revel in the unusual and enjoy.
"FEAR AT 400-DEGREES": THE CULT CINEMA OF DARIO ARGENTO
Dario Argento is very simply a cult film phenomenon. Since 1970 this Italian horror icon has directed 15 films whose convoluted plotting, excessive visual style and unconventional gender twists have repeatedly upset established definitions of cinematic taste. Argento's films are all marked by an elaborate use of camera work, lighting and musical score. However, any artistic labels applied to these images are complicated by his insistence on using them as backdrops to sexual violence. His first film The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) initiated the controversial theme of a serial killer who stalks a series of sexually attractive young woman with a cut-throat razor. Twenty-six years later, Argento's detractors were dismayed to find that cut-throat razors had been replaced with razor blades wielded by the art obsessed serial killer of The Stendhal Syndrome (1996).
With two new books on Dario Argento hot off the press and his latest movie Nonhosonno scheduled for a UK premiere at the ever excellent FrightFest this August, a reconsideration of one of horror cinema's most innovative and controversial figures seems long overdue.
Confusing Clues: The Argento Formula
Born in 1940, Dario was the son of an influential film producer Salvatore Argento, and his father's influence can be directly seen on the production credits of many of his son's films (along with Argento's brother Claudio). As with many of Europe's leading post war directors, Argento began his career as a film critic before screen-writing for popular '60s genres such war movies and westerns including Cemetery Without Crosses (1967).
It was his contribution to Sergio Leone's Once Upon the Time in the West (1968) which brought him to the attention of Gofredo Lombardo of the influential Titanus Distribution company. Lombardo asked Argento to fashion a screenplay for what was to become his first film. Although defined as a 'horror' director, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is actually part of the detective fiction tradition popularised in Italy under the label of giallo. The term (which refers to the yellow dust jackets placed around detective novels) became synonymous with a series of films detailing the fate of amateur detectives who find themselves compromised by their involvement in crime.
Argento initiated this theme with Plumage's central character Sam Dalmas, an American writer living in Rome. While walking past a gallery one evening Dalmas witnesses a violent assault against a woman by an unidentified aggressor. Becoming trapped behind the glass doors at the front of the gallery, he is discovered by police investigators who presume he is responsible for a series of sexual killings against women in the city. As a result, Dalmas is forced to adopt the guise of detective in order to clear his name.
In an important departure from American detective films of the period, Argento constructed his hero as an impotent investigator whose deductive errors actually result in the subsequent murders that dominate the remainder of the film. Using Dalmas's recollection of the crime, the police mount an elaborate investigation which they believe can identify the killer down to specific features including the type of cigar he smokes and the type of suites he wears. Here, Argento's parody of the crime procedures which dominate detective fiction are used to underscore the lack of faith he invests in his amateur sleuths. This is revealed in the finale, when Dalmas is shocked to discover that the woman whom he thought he saw being attacked in the gallery is in fact the film's killer.
With the shock ending of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Argento clearly signalled himself as a director playing with both audience expectations and critics presumptions about the nature of the horror film. This pattern of ineffectual male detectives unable to realise the identity of an aggressive female killer is repeated in the majority of his films.
Fear at 400-Degrees: Suspiria and Beyond
It is Argento's preoccupation with female killers that also dominate his most famous film, Suspiria (1977). However, this preoccupation with murderous intent is here spliced into the theme of a coven of witches dominating a German dance academy. Although the film's supernatural setting position it as a radical departure from his earlier giallo productions, Argento retained the theme of ineffectual dominated by aggressive women. This is seen in the film's pattern of depicting male characters who are dependent on the evil school governess and her female assistants. Argento presents these characters as responsible for some of the most shocking murders ever depicted in the history of horror cinema. For instance, a woman is stabbed to death and her mutilated body forced through a plate glass window (killing her companion in the process); a blind pianist is stalked and then savaged by his own guide dog; another victim becomes painfully entrapped in a room full of coiled wire before having her throat cut.
While the uncompromising nature of these murders ensured its shock value and instant cult status, Suspiria is also famous for the excessive visual style that Argento created as a backdrop to his grisly murders. In particular, the film highlighted the director's trademark features of disorientating camera work, vivid use of lighting and elaborate musical score (composed by his own house group The Goblins). In his pioneering work on the director, British critic Alan Jones has often argued that Argento is an art-horror director. His definition has proved justified, as Argento has close connections with art cinema greats (having worked with auteurs such as Bernardo Bertolucci) and has even adapted art film classics such as Antonioni's Blow Up (1966) with his 1976 film Deep Red.
As with all art cinema, Suspiria is a film that requires contemplation. Its surreal compositions emulate the feel of an artist's canvas, with individual scenes being more aesthetically pleasing than the film as a whole. In characteristic Argento style, the most cinematically charged sequence is the opening murder scene that is saturated with primary colours and a near-hysterical soundtrack. Both of these features are so overpowering as to distract the viewer from the gory murders that the scene depicts. The unnerving force of the scene is testament to the director's ability to manipulate every aspect of cinematic technology in his quest to expand the boundaries of horror cinema. In Suspiria, the distinctive visual style was achieved through the use of outdated Technicolor film stock, which in flooding the image track with an unnatural, unrealistic sheen confirmed Argento's wish to give the film a fairytale like quality. Other examples of his technical innovation included the use of medical cameras in Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1972), which were employed to capture the decapitation of (another female) killer. In the later Opera (1987), Argento constructed disorientating, panoramic camera operations to emulate the attack of vengeful ravens against a theatre audience.
Commenting on the cult status of Suspiria, Argento is often quoted as saying that he wanted to extend fear from a 375-degree centigrade experience to 400-degrees. While the film perfectly captures the director's wish to take the genre to new heights of sensory experience, his subsequent work has been at best, uneven. If Suspiria's sequel Inferno (1980) extended the theme of malevolent female forces at work in European locations, its style never equalled the dazzling heights of its predecessor. In the more recent films, one senses that the director has felt further embattled by the opinions of his critics (and the censors), who have repeatedly failed to see the merits of his technical and generic innovations. Paradoxically, when he did tone down his depiction of violence for the 1993 film Trauma, it was panned as uninspired by his most ardent defenders. With the more recent The Stendhal Syndrome Argento has experienced an aesthetic return to form, punctuating the serial killer's activities with breathtaking (and often disturbing) images of art. It remains to be seen if Nonhosonno, with its theme of a prostitute who (fatally) reveals a former client as a serial killer can consolidate the Italian horror master's position. But with its opening depicting a brutal set of multiple killings on board a train, as well as various gory encounters photographed with his usual visual flair, Argento's reputation, combining cinematic creativity with controversy looks set to be re-established.
