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Dario Argento: Nature’s Greatest Monster

My views on the last few films by Mr.Argento are well known. Dracula 3D gave me a mental breakdown that I almost never recovered from. Mother Of Tears or whatever the hell it’s called was no better.

There was a time when I actually enjoyed Argento’s movies. I used to stay up late re-watching Suspiria, Inferno, Deep Red and Phenomena. I remember watching Suspiria one night with a friend and talking about the gore after the movie. My friend then proceeded to hit me with a statement that would forever change the way I looked at Argento movies.

“He does gore well but he seems to have a thing for butchering women. Especially for no reason.”

Grammatical errors of his statement aside, he was right. Aside from gore, what the hell did I enjoy about Argento movies? I’ll just stick to the first few that I mentioned at first.

What was so good about these films? It sure wasn’t the writing or the completely overdone soundtrack. It wasn’t anything technical either. If I didn’t enjoy the writing, acting, soundtrack or technical merits of his movies, then why did I enjoy his movies in the first place?

I’ll chock Suspiria up to guilty pleasure and cast aside the rest. Upon subsequent re watches they are indeed terrible movies.

What about Opera? The only thing I enjoyed about that movie was the soundtrack and that was all music by Verdi.

Trauma? That movie was so abjectly terrible that Brad Dourif allegedly had laughing fits on the set because he thought it was so stupid. It also started the trend of Argento casting his daughter in weird nudity/sex scenes.  I don’t know how everybody else feels about it but it completely weirds me out.

We can skip ahead a few years because he did nothing of note and start with Mother Of Tears, the third in his Witch trilogy. Everything about this movie is a mess. The music is atrocious and so is everything else. His murder scenes are watered down and that was the only thing he’s had going for him in 30 years as a director.

I started with a point in this, I really did but even mentioning the name Argento is enough to make me angry these days.

I’ve been told that Argento is “something you either get or you don’t”. I used to agree with this but now I have to wonder about who “gets” Argento. His movies are misogynistic filth masquerading as gore-fests.  He casts his daughter in the weirdest roles and it’s always uncomfortable to watch. Dracula 3D is the worst thing ever committed to celluloid. I’d say he hasn’t made a good movie in 30 years but I’m of the mind that he’s never made a good movie.

I will never again watch another Argento movie and from this article on, I will never mention him again. This madness has to end and it ends now.

Shawn’s Note: I’m aware that there is nothing balanced about this article and it comes off as pure attack. To get over the negativity I will recommend the following films

Villanelle by Ricky Adelon Laprade

Standards Of Living by Aaron Mento

ANYTHING by James Neff(Night Walker Cinema)

ANYTHING by Shane Cole (MASKEDfilms)

These are all up and coming people who love horror and tell good stories. They are masters of their craft. They write intelligent scripts and understand how to frame scenes.

The end.