I first saw Suspiria after someone told me that it was some kind of freaky, livewire must-see camp horror flick. When I saw it, I new that it was much more than that, though I didn't know what. I admired Dario Argento's way of constantly keeping the suspense building without allowing any kind of gory release of the tension-keeping the bomb under the table without letting it go off, as Hitchcock put it in is demonstration of the difference between surprise and suspense. After watching the film a second time, I realized that it doesn't merely keep us on the-it, literally, emotionally tortures us. Argento grabs our hearts with his clawed hand and tightens it, little by little. Of course, his visual style, with cinematography by the experienced Luciano Tovoli, is extraordinary because of its magical, music video richness in color and texture; the music, which was composed by Dargento along with a band called The Goblins, is haunting in its pulsating repetition and the monstrous voices singing along. This style is not window dressing; it makes the movie. The pace is purposely sluggish with so little being revealed until the end. Even the final revelation isn't that satisfying. But Argento doesn't want to satisfy us; he wants to terrorize us. This film is not the conventional, delightfully scary horror film; its designed to make you feel frightened, violated, and depressed. It succeeds flawlessly but do you really want to be terrorized, tortured, frightened, violated, unhappy?