SUSPIRIA (1977)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Though I liked SUSPIRIA the first time I saw in a theatrical venue, I've never been in a great hurry to re-screen it. Though there are a lot of movies I like for their use of overwhelming bravura set-pieces, somehow I never quite boarded the train that led me to "SUSPIRIA is one of the great horror films of all time."

One slightly off-putting aspect of the film is that I thought Argento seemed in too much of a hurry to provide his gorehound audience with not one but two grisly murders early on. American ballet student Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) arrives in Freiburg, Germany, to study dance at the famous Tanz Akademie. The young woman arrives at the school too late and she's refused admittance, so she has to go back to Freiburg for lodging. On her way she sees another young woman flee into the night. Argento then follows this woman to her destination, where she joins a friend at the latter's apartment. Both women are killed with the kind of operatic deaths for which Argento had become well known. I don't object to the deaths themselves, but I thought that the film would have benefited from a slower build to its more extravagant horrors.

As Suzy takes up residence at the school, her first encounters with the students are mundane enough, and the staff-- headmistress Blanc (Joan Bennett, just a few years after the end of DARK SHADOWS) and instructor Tanner (Alida Valli)-- merely seem eccentric. But it doesn't take long for weirdness to manifest exponentially. The first manifestation, a maggot infestation, seems to have a logical explanation; that the critters were carried in along with spoiled food. Suzy doesn't witness the death of another student, who falls into a pit filled with lacerating razor-wire, but she hears about how the school's piano teacher is slain by his own dog. Suzy consults various experts on the background of Tanz Akademie. One fellow tells Suzy that the school was established by one Helena Markos at the turn of the century, and that this woman was suspected of being a witch. In fact, her school was supposedly BOTH a dance academy and an occult studies academy, which sounds to me like a bit of stretch for that time-period. Markos supposedly passed away, but Suzy suspects that some sort of witchery is still going on, and she makes it her business to dive down into the belly of the beast.

The big reveal is that the current staff of the academy are indeed a coven of witches, and that they've actually resurrected Markos somehow to be the head of their cult. In fact, for reasons unknown they're even planning to sacrifice Suzy. After many more colorful set-pieces-- one of which references Argento's breakout hit, THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE-- Suzy escapes the academy while it goes up in flames, ending the coven's menace.

Though I didn't think the characters or the magical menaces were all that compelling, I did think that Argento's concept of witches felt almost like the concept seen in archaic tribes. In theory the academy's modern witches have no strong motive for bringing about random deaths in their own bailiwick. Argento even has one character say that the witches are motivated to make themselves wealthy, but how wealthy will they be if all their students pack up and leave? I call the movie's idea of witchery "archaic" because it seems as if the witches-- who aren't explicitly tied to any Christian notions-- just can't help doing bad things all the time.