ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - February 7th
"INFERNO" released in Italy in 1980
A young man's investigation into the disappearance of his sister, who had been living in a New York City apartment building that also served as a home for a powerful, centuries-old alchemist, in Dario Argento's Inferno!
Don't miss out on future blogs, trailers, and clips IHdb has coming up
by Following IHdb's Facebook page above
by Following IHdb's Facebook page above
Young poetess Rose Elliot (Irene Miracle) buys a book from a local antique dealer, a diary in Latin of an architect, E. Varelli, where she learns of the Three Mothers, which tells of three evil sisters who rule the world with sorrow, tears, and darkness. The book also reveals that the three once dwelt inside separate homes that had been built for them by Varelli in Rome (the Mater Lacrimarum - The Lady of Tears), Freiburg (Mater Suspiriorum - The Lady of Sighs), and New York (Mater Tenebrarum - The Lady of Darkness) respectively. Rose suspects that she is living in one of the buildings and writes to her brother Mark (Leigh McCloskey) in Rome, urging him to visit her. Using clues provided in the book as a guide, Rose searches the cellar of her building and discovers a hole in the floor which leads to a water-filled ballroom. Accidentally dropping her keys, Rose enters the water to find them, and finds a putrid corpse in the depths of the water, frightening her. Meanwhile in Rome, one of Mark's classmates, Sara (Eleonora Giorgi), picks up Rose's letter, and, after reading it, discovers the music school is the Mater Lacrimarum - before she is brutally murdered. Mark later discovers Sara's body, along with the body of Sara's neighbour Carlo (Gabriele Lavia), and resolves to travel to New York to help Rose solve the mystery of The Three Mothers. Arriving in New York, Mark meets some residents of Rose's building, including a Nurse (Veronica Lazar) who cares for elderly Professor Arnold (Feodor Chaliapin, Jr.), a wheelchair-bound mute, and learns from sickly Countess Elise (Daria Nicolodi) that Rose has disappeared - in fact, Rose has already been murdered. Stricken with grief, Mark is determined to expose the murderous Mater Tenebrarum and destroy the houses forever!
TRIVIA: Apparently, part of the reason Dario Argento cast Irene Miracle as Rose Elliot was because she had synchronize swimming skills, which came in quite handy for the shooting of the underwater ballroom scene.
Top and Above: Mark (Leigh McCloskey) arrives in New York to investigate the disappearance of his sister Rose (Irene Miracle) and the mystery of The Three Mothers.
After Suspiria had been an unexpectedly big box office hit for 20th Century Fox, the studio quickly asked Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi to write a follow up. Argento proposed Inferno as the second film in his Three Mothers trilogy, and Fox agreed to co-finance the production with producer Claudio Argento acquiring additional financing from German and Italian consortium's. Nicolodi devised the original story concept but, unlike Suspiria, received no on-screen credit for her work on the screenplay. Nicolodi explained in an interview in 1996, that she did not seek credit because "having fought so hard to see my humble but excellent work in Suspiria recognized (up until a few days before the premiere I didn't know if I would see my name in the film credits), I didn't want to live through that again, so I said, 'Do as you please, in any case, the story will talk for me because I wrote it.'" Subsequently, Argento wrote the screenplay while staying in a New York hotel room with a view of Central Park.
Although a majority of the picture was filmed as interiors on studio sets on Italian sound stages in Rome, a short amount of time was also set aside for location shooting in New York, including Central Park where Sacha Pitoëff's death scene was partially filmed. Nevertheless, some of the exterior location shoots in Italy included footage of New York City, with skyscrapers being superimposed in the background to make it appear like the film's New York City setting. To achieve the effect, Argento invited his mentor, Mario Bava, to provide some of the optical effects, matte paintings and trick shots for the film (the New York cityscape views seen in Inferno were actually tabletop skyscrapers built by Bava out of milk cartons covered with photographs!).
Bava performed a number of other uncredited roles on the film, including; camera operator, lighting technician, visual effects artist, second unit director and even acting as a full director directing performances. According to Irene Miracle, almost all her scenes were directed by Bava, with Argento rarely on set through most of the shoot. When in fact, Argento was extremely ill with a serve case of hepatitis throughout the production, requiring the director to be bedridden for a few days. While he was recovering, the production worked manily on second unit work (directed by Bava). At one time, critic Maitland McDonagh had suggested that Bava had his hand in the celebrated watery ballroom scene, but that sequence was shot in a water tank by Gianlorenzo Battaglia, without any optical effects work at all. Unfortunately, Inferno would prove to be the final collaboration of the Italian horror maestros, as Bava sadly died shortly before the premiere of the movie.
Although a majority of the picture was filmed as interiors on studio sets on Italian sound stages in Rome, a short amount of time was also set aside for location shooting in New York, including Central Park where Sacha Pitoëff's death scene was partially filmed. Nevertheless, some of the exterior location shoots in Italy included footage of New York City, with skyscrapers being superimposed in the background to make it appear like the film's New York City setting. To achieve the effect, Argento invited his mentor, Mario Bava, to provide some of the optical effects, matte paintings and trick shots for the film (the New York cityscape views seen in Inferno were actually tabletop skyscrapers built by Bava out of milk cartons covered with photographs!).
Bava performed a number of other uncredited roles on the film, including; camera operator, lighting technician, visual effects artist, second unit director and even acting as a full director directing performances. According to Irene Miracle, almost all her scenes were directed by Bava, with Argento rarely on set through most of the shoot. When in fact, Argento was extremely ill with a serve case of hepatitis throughout the production, requiring the director to be bedridden for a few days. While he was recovering, the production worked manily on second unit work (directed by Bava). At one time, critic Maitland McDonagh had suggested that Bava had his hand in the celebrated watery ballroom scene, but that sequence was shot in a water tank by Gianlorenzo Battaglia, without any optical effects work at all. Unfortunately, Inferno would prove to be the final collaboration of the Italian horror maestros, as Bava sadly died shortly before the premiere of the movie.
[Reading from "The Three Mothers", by E. Varelli]
Rose Elliot: I do not know what price I shall have to pay for breaking what we alchemists call Silentium, the life experiences of our colleagues should warn us not to upset laymen by imposing our knowledge upon them.
Top: The Mater Tenebrarum: They call us DEATH!
Above: Writer/director Dario Argento on set with Eleonora Giorgi
After the production's principal photography had been completed, the film's producer, Claudio Argento, asked if McCloskey would be willing to perform the stunt work himself for the climatic explosion, as the stuntman hired for the job had broken his leg. The producer assured the actor, saying, "It'll be absolutely safe", after which the actor agreed. But when he walked onto the set the following day he observed "three rows of flexiglass in front of everything and everyone is wearing hard hats. I'm the only guy standing on the other side of this! ...Needless to say, I did it all on instinct... I still feel that blast of the door blowing by me. When they tell you in words, its one thing, but when you feel that glass go flying past you with a sound like a Harrier jet, you never forget it!"
While Inferno premiered in Italy on February 7th, 1980, for reasons never specified, Fox did not commit to a wide theatrical release of Inferno in the United States - playing for a one week engagement in a New York City movie theater - and later sat on the shelf for five years before being released straight to VHS in 1985 via the studio's Key Video subsidiary. Several reviewers expressed disappointment, comparing the film unfavorably to the much more bombastic Suspiria, including Scott Meek in Time Out who said that of the two movies, Inferno was "a much more conventional and unexciting piece of work [...] the meandering narrative confusions are amplified by weak performances." Variety said Inferno was a "lavish, no-holds-barred witch story whose lack of both logic and technical skill are submerged in the sheer energy of the telling", then complained that the film "fails mainly because it lacks restraint in setting up the terrifying moment, using close-ups and fancy camera angles gratuitously and with no relevance to the story." However, Cinefantastique described the film as "the stuff of all our worst dreams and nightmares and a tour de force from Italian director Dario Argento[...] Inferno brings his personal redefinition of the genre close to perfection."
The long-delayed concluding entry, The Mother of Tears, wasn't released until 2007, the last entry starring Argento's daughter, Asia, as Sarah Mandy who teams with a detective Enzo Marchi (played by Cristian Solimeno) to investigate the final "Mother" witch, known as Mater Lachrymarum. Critical response was mixed, although many reviewers felt the film, despite its flaws, was entertaining. Online review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes consensus reads, "As excessive and ketchup laden as predecessors Suspiria and Inferno, Dario Argento's Mother of Tears completes the trilogy with the same baroque grandeur and soggy 1970s sensibilities." Argento has noted that he is dismissive of critical reaction, saying that "the critics don't understand very well. But critics are not important – absolutely not important. Because now audiences don't believe anymore in critics. Many years ago critics wrote long articles about films. Now in seven lines they are finished: 'The story is this. The actor is this. The color is good.'"
While Inferno premiered in Italy on February 7th, 1980, for reasons never specified, Fox did not commit to a wide theatrical release of Inferno in the United States - playing for a one week engagement in a New York City movie theater - and later sat on the shelf for five years before being released straight to VHS in 1985 via the studio's Key Video subsidiary. Several reviewers expressed disappointment, comparing the film unfavorably to the much more bombastic Suspiria, including Scott Meek in Time Out who said that of the two movies, Inferno was "a much more conventional and unexciting piece of work [...] the meandering narrative confusions are amplified by weak performances." Variety said Inferno was a "lavish, no-holds-barred witch story whose lack of both logic and technical skill are submerged in the sheer energy of the telling", then complained that the film "fails mainly because it lacks restraint in setting up the terrifying moment, using close-ups and fancy camera angles gratuitously and with no relevance to the story." However, Cinefantastique described the film as "the stuff of all our worst dreams and nightmares and a tour de force from Italian director Dario Argento[...] Inferno brings his personal redefinition of the genre close to perfection."
The long-delayed concluding entry, The Mother of Tears, wasn't released until 2007, the last entry starring Argento's daughter, Asia, as Sarah Mandy who teams with a detective Enzo Marchi (played by Cristian Solimeno) to investigate the final "Mother" witch, known as Mater Lachrymarum. Critical response was mixed, although many reviewers felt the film, despite its flaws, was entertaining. Online review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes consensus reads, "As excessive and ketchup laden as predecessors Suspiria and Inferno, Dario Argento's Mother of Tears completes the trilogy with the same baroque grandeur and soggy 1970s sensibilities." Argento has noted that he is dismissive of critical reaction, saying that "the critics don't understand very well. But critics are not important – absolutely not important. Because now audiences don't believe anymore in critics. Many years ago critics wrote long articles about films. Now in seven lines they are finished: 'The story is this. The actor is this. The color is good.'"
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 64%
_________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment