After Two Evil Eyes, Trauma was Argento’s first feature length American production. Shot in Minneapolis (?!?) and featuring many familiar calling cards—a seance on a dark and stormy night, a black gloved killer, lizards, a medium in a hooded black cloak, red herrings, decapitations, rainy murder set-pieces, steadi-cam, ludicrous twists, and a unique murder weapon (a power tool with a steel wire that beheads people dubbed the noose-o-matic). 

This movie is friggin’ bizarre... a doctor (Frederic Forrest) uses psychedelic berries, Piper Laurie plays a medium, and there’s a subplot about Asia Argento’s characters anorexia (influenced by Argento’s other daughter, Anna, who battled with it before she sadly passed away in 1994). Trauma opens and closes with two great deaths and everything in…

I thought the film had lost me when I had a laughing fit to a severed head opening its mouth to give the male protagonist a clue. And yet it won me back over ten minutes later when a different severed head screamed as it fell down an elevator shaft. Why one was frankly ridiculous and the other slightly moving, I do not know. But it pretty much sums up the journey I took with this film.

Moments that are terrible, followed by moments that are good, wrapped by a convoluted nonsensical murder mystery that left me confused, incredulous, not bored and sort of happy...?

Of the good: the grey cat cameo, Piper Laurie, Brad Dourif, killer POV shots; a…

Hadn’t seen this since I owned the VHS back in high school so thank you Prime for having it and for the fond VHS memories. I watched this with Chris and honestly his rating for it is probably closer to accurate, but as the founder of the Church of Dario Argento of Splatter-day Saints, I am duty bound to give this the highest possible rating that can still be defended in a court of law.
And really, it is a great movie. It’s Argento’s only American production besides Two Evil Eyes and really I think that’s what keeps it from being God Tier stuff. Something about the American Minnesota (wtf?!!) setting just doesn’t work quite as well as the traditional European…

Spooktober IV: Morte all'italiana

There’s no Italian horror marathon without Dario Argento, and while I believe I got a few other of his better and most recognizable works later on in the marathon (No his Suspiria though), the Italian filmmaker and one of the key figures in the giallo makes his entrance with one of his two films being directed in the US, and in terms of quality, it may not be one of his better works, but far from his worst.

Performances are fine from everyone, though its evident daughter, Argento, Asia, is far from being a thespian. She does well; again, this isn’t shooting for the Oscars or anything. Unsurprisingly, Piper Laurie nails the role of the crazy…

Ahora sí se viene lo chido, empieza la mejor parte del año: Halloween.

Asia Argento tenía 17 años en esta película, y su papá desde aquí empezaba a filmarle los pechos. Y no solo eso: hace que su personaje tenga un interés romántico por un señor de 29.

Separando eso, la película es disfrutable, pero no llega a la excelencia. Se puede ver que Argento se pasó al lado hollywoodense con esta, más que nada en la música, que es donde más resalta ese aspecto, aunque también en unos cameos de dos personas.

En el guion, como siempre, Argento no da una. Tampoco esperaba que fuera diferente. Pensándolo bien, creo que el asesino solo utiliza una sola forma de matar…

Foram anos para chegar nessa conclusão, com pelo menos uma retrospectiva em que pude ver em película os filmes de um deles (em cópias restauradas), mas o dia em que me dei conta de que o Argento é um cineasta superior ao De Palma, ou pelo menos um cineasta de que gosto mais, foi o dia em que me dei conta do que essencialmente os torna cineastas diametralmente opostos: enquanto De Palma é um cineasta da autoconsciência, cuja estética é fundada em um recuo teórico-analítico do realismo para uma dimensão para-real ou meta-real, Argento é o cineasta do afloramento e do subsequente mergulho no inconsciente, o cineasta da ausência de recuo, da plena fuga do realismo - seja pelo viés…

the smudged light of a dim, cigarette-smelling room, sheltered by the fettered moisture of cold rain, the POV shot of a lizard in the corner of your room, not paying you any mind, which is what you prefer -- don't let your electronic psychiatrist inside your head, unlocking those precious memories and histories, recording over an old VHS tape so many times that it loses all cogency, becoming a pure, transparent repetition, losing yourself again and again like an anorexic heaving up into a toilet or garbage bin, the way that 90s movies always evoke this evening glow of the 20th century, slightly off-cue, an anxiety over individual psychosis becoming digitally-distributed insanity, the mcluhan aural village returning mankind to his…