This is the thread wherein we talk about Dario Argento. For anyone who's never seen his films, imagine someone taking Fritz Lang, Powell + Pressburger, and (especially) Hitchcock at his most mean-spirited, and mashing them together. He took gialli (seedy-but-stylish Italian murder mysteries) into the realm of arthouse films, and inspired everyone from John Carpenter (who called Halloween his Dario Argento film) to Brian de Palma (who has outright ripped-off Argento and other giallo filmmakers on more than one occasion). He also wrote the majority of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, and produced Romero's Dawn of the Dead.

I guess I'll start with how I'd currently rank his movies:
1. Deep Red
2. Tenebre
3. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
4. Suspiria
5. Opera
6. The Cat o' Nine Tails
7. Inferno
8. Two Evil Eyes (his half of it, anyway)
9. Phenomena
10. Four Flies on Grey Velvet

Everything else he's done ranks distantly behind these ten films.

Man, I have so much Argento I still need to see. It sounds sick, but no one makes a gruesome death seem as beautiful as Dario Argento.

I'll rank what I've seen.

1. Suspiria
...
2. The Cat O' Nine Tails
3. Inferno
4. Opera
5. Tenebre
6. Profondo Rosso (Deep Red, but Profondo Rosso just sounds so much cooler.)

Suspiria is one the most brilliant films ever made. The Cat O' Nine Tails is also a very well-done and stylish little flick. The rest didn't impress me much. Inferno was nice to look at, but it felt like a dull Suspiria clone. Opera had its moments, but overall it was too sluggish and the ending was just one of the biggest wtf moments in film history. Tenebre was fairly boring, but it does contain one of the greatest murder scenes ever filmed, so that bumped it up a notch. Profondo Rosso was one of the biggest disappointments of all time for me. I was bored out of my mind. Though the Goblin soundtrack is awesome.

Agreed. But no one makes a gruesome death seem as sexy as Alexandre Aja.

bump

Just watched Opera for the first time in a while, and I really loved it much more than I expected. Right now my Argento ranking would be:

1. Tenebre
2. Deep Red
3. Opera
4. Phenomena
5. Suspiria
6. Bird with the Crystal Plumage
7. Cat o' Nine Tails
8. Inferno
9. Stendhal Syndrome
10. Four Flies on Grey Velvet

Never seen Tenebre

You should. It's fantastic.

Tenebre is pretty fantastic, but Suspiria is still my favorite.

Totally, Suspiria is just an amazing film top to bottom.

So glad to see an Argento thread on here.

bump

I haven't seen Opera, I guess I should do that. Guy's just got so much stuff.

The ending is a huge plus in my book.

Holy crap, you didn't mention Tenebre was a steelbook.



http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news/topnews.php?id=4991

Wow, I didn't realize it was. The bad thing is that I was hoping for something in the 10-15 dollar range, but with a steelbook I can't imagine it being that cheap for a while.

I don't know, I got burnt on that re-release of Re-animator that came out about a year ago. I paid $20 the first week and by summer it was down to $10. So you can never tell. But it seems unlikely, at least at first.

I don't think I'll be able to wait anywhere near that long, unfortunately.

and his daughter always look nasty