31 NIGHTS OF HALLOWEEN : NIGHT 8 : SUSPIRIA

Horror films are quite often discribed as the things of nightmares, but there are very few people who can capture that ideal as well as Italian director Dario Argento. SUSPIRIA really is like a nightmare caught on film, you don't so much watch it as experience it. It's solid use of colour, sound and cinematography give it a surreal edge that helps the films atmosphere drag you in to its strange world of witches and witchcraft.

The films center around a young Jessica Harper, who has travelled to a private ballet school only to discover that the girls there are being terrorised at night by strange and often deadly things that hide I the dark corridors of the old building. Dragged into the nightmare she soon discovers the secrets of the school and finds an age old coven that feeds on its young residents.

If you have see my own film Slasher House then you will be aware of the amount of inspiration that I took from this and many other Argento films in regards to its look. But the film also carries an abstract narrative that, although hard to follow at first watch, only lends itself to its dreamlike feel. It really is horror at its truest rawest form. Truly inspirational filmmaking.

See you tomorrow. 

MJ