An admirer of the classic Dario Argento film, director Luca Guadagnino, fresh off the major success of "Call Me By Your Name", elected to foolishly remake the movie, throwing out all that made the original great. No more fabulous Technicolor experiments in color, no pulsating score in the vein of Goblin, but instead a stupid decision to retain Argento and Daria Nicolodi's 3 Mothers supernatural story, the weakest element of the show.
I was a huge fan of Argento's "animal" titled thrillers Bird, Cat and Flies, and even owned a 16mm 'Scope print of Four Flies on Grey Velvet back in my movie buff days of the '70s. But I never got into his later supernatural horror shows, while admiring Suspiria for its technical brilliance.
Now remakes are problematic in the first place, and just copying or aping an original like Gus Van Sant did with "Psycho" is an exercise in futility. But I did enjoy both the original "The Initiation of Sarah" and its fine TV remake. These are traditional horror films in the same genre as "Suspiria", set in a female world.
A pornographer would have taken this remake opportunity (called porn-parody in the Adult biz) and used it perhaps for a Sweetheart Video of lesbian porn, with the top young and old actresses having romantic liaisons. "Confessions of a Sinful Nun" is a recent example from Sweetheart of this approach in a non-supernatural nunsploitation vein.
But Luca opted instead for the sadistic brand of horror porn, meat hooks and all, with plenty of gore and unpleasantness rather than erotic entertainment. His use of urination is yet another example of rejecting sex in favor of other staples of pornography (softcore division). And his casting of several of Europe's best actresses of recent decades goes for naught: Tilda Swinton quite professional in a lousy, paper-thin role; Angela Winkler solid but hardly up to her great work for German directors; Sophie Testud lost in the shuffle along with the fabulous Renee Soutendijk, and only Ingrid Caven allowed one scene of panache near the end. Bringing back Jessica Harper was a good idea, and her scene has some power.
The many dimly-lit scenes play poorly on the home screen, evidently "artistic" for theatrical runs, of which the movie was one big flop at the boxoffice. The prologue staring Chloe Grace Moretz is terrible: poorly edited, uninvolving and utterly failing to engage the viewer in the story, just a waste of time and footage.
Just when I had gained an interest in a relatively new director thanks to his sensitive gay-themed "Call Me" movie, the guy's feet of clay were revealed here -just another delusional hack.
I was a huge fan of Argento's "animal" titled thrillers Bird, Cat and Flies, and even owned a 16mm 'Scope print of Four Flies on Grey Velvet back in my movie buff days of the '70s. But I never got into his later supernatural horror shows, while admiring Suspiria for its technical brilliance.
Now remakes are problematic in the first place, and just copying or aping an original like Gus Van Sant did with "Psycho" is an exercise in futility. But I did enjoy both the original "The Initiation of Sarah" and its fine TV remake. These are traditional horror films in the same genre as "Suspiria", set in a female world.
A pornographer would have taken this remake opportunity (called porn-parody in the Adult biz) and used it perhaps for a Sweetheart Video of lesbian porn, with the top young and old actresses having romantic liaisons. "Confessions of a Sinful Nun" is a recent example from Sweetheart of this approach in a non-supernatural nunsploitation vein.
But Luca opted instead for the sadistic brand of horror porn, meat hooks and all, with plenty of gore and unpleasantness rather than erotic entertainment. His use of urination is yet another example of rejecting sex in favor of other staples of pornography (softcore division). And his casting of several of Europe's best actresses of recent decades goes for naught: Tilda Swinton quite professional in a lousy, paper-thin role; Angela Winkler solid but hardly up to her great work for German directors; Sophie Testud lost in the shuffle along with the fabulous Renee Soutendijk, and only Ingrid Caven allowed one scene of panache near the end. Bringing back Jessica Harper was a good idea, and her scene has some power.
The many dimly-lit scenes play poorly on the home screen, evidently "artistic" for theatrical runs, of which the movie was one big flop at the boxoffice. The prologue staring Chloe Grace Moretz is terrible: poorly edited, uninvolving and utterly failing to engage the viewer in the story, just a waste of time and footage.
Just when I had gained an interest in a relatively new director thanks to his sensitive gay-themed "Call Me" movie, the guy's feet of clay were revealed here -just another delusional hack.