Halloween is my favourite time of year, not only is dressing up mandatory (hello!) horror movies are essential – these are my TWO favourite things you see!! Plus there is loads of chocolate. My THREE favourite things. I was going to post about costumes, but everyone else is doing that and to be honest I tend to wear whatever I want and just cover myself in fake blood and zombie make up. Have you ever seen someone in Damir Doma with prosthetic scars all over their face and blood trickling out of their eyes? no? Well it is AWESOME. Leave shop bought costumes to amateurs. I thought I’d post about my favourite horror movie instead, something you should watch this Halloween if you haven’t seen it before. Don’t worry it’s no ordinary horror movie, in fact it’s one of the most visually breathtaking and aesthetically grandiose horror movies ever made. It’s called Suspiria and was directed by Dario Argento in 1977. Inspired by Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater from 1821, it’s about a young American girl transferring to a ballet school in Germany only to discover that it is run by a coven of witches. I could tell you about the fact that it’s part of the “Three Mothers Trilogy“, I could explain the Jungian symbolism, dissect the mise en scène or wax lyrical about the outcome of shooting on out of date 1950’s technicolour film stock but really the pictures do this justice more than words ever could. Check the geometric shapes of the ballet school interior, the kaleidoscopic colour palette and the lurid shocking pink blood. Argento is a bit more famous in Italy than he is anywhere else, one of my favourite stories about him is that he was hired by Trussardi to ‘direct’ one of their runway shows in the mid 1980’s. Argento recreated the violent rainstorm from Suspiria’s opening sequence and had one of the models stabbed and dragged down the runway in a body bag. Amazing. Halloween has never looked so good…
Traduction – Suspiria est l’un des meilleurs films d’horreur de tous les temps… Et une superbe source d’inspiration pour Halloween…
