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After making some of the finest gialli in the genre, Dario Argento (known as the Italian Hitchcock) decided to take a break from the brand of films with which he made his name to try something altogether different. Teaming up with writer Daria Nicolodi, a story and screenplay was written about a young American girl who goes to Germany to perfect her ballet only to find that the school is run by witches.
 
There aren’t many films that begin with a climax and continue from there, but this is what Argento does with Suspiria. When Suzy Bannion lands in the pouring rain and only just manages to get a taxi with the world’s least talkative cab driver, she arrives at the school and rings the bell only to find that the voice on the other end of the intercom system tells her to go away. If this wasn’t disconcerting enough, the conversation was preceded by a girl, Pat, fleeing from the building shouting something practically indistinguishable in the direction of the school doors.
 

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Cutting to an apartment where Pat is staying with a friend for the night, she is drying off in the bathroom when the windows fly open and, once securely closed, Pat thinks she sees something outside, only for a hand to burst through one window and press her face against the other. What follows is typical Argento elegant violence as Pat is repeatedly stabbed to death and hanged with electrical cord when she falls through the stained glass ceiling, a large piece of metal impales her friend and a sheet of glass cuts her head in half. All of this is in the first fifteen minutes and if that doesn’t get your attention, nothing will!
 
With Suzy settled into another dancer’s apartment, she notices the various cliques inside the school but when she faints during her first lesson she is quickly moved to the school in a room next to Sara, the only girl who Suzy has got to know, and is placed on a strange diet of bland food and red wine.

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As events unfold Sara confides in Suzy that she believes that the school is run by witches, with the mysterious directress, instructress Ms. Tanner (Alida Valli), and the vice directress Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett). As is occasionally the case in an Argento film, the narrative plays second fiddle to the aesthetics but Suspiria is perhaps the most exaggerated example as the plot (what there is of one) is extremely difficult to make out and it is best to sit back and marvel at this most gifted of directors at work.
 
This is the second version of Suspiria that I have bought and consider both the film and the set to be superb.

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