A Mansão do Inferno

In New York, the poetess Rose Elliot (Irene Miracle) reads an ancient book called "The Three Mothers" that she bought in the bookseller and antique Kazanian close to her building. The architect and alchemist E. Varelli, who tells that had designed and built three buildings for three mothers,in Rome, New York and Freiburg, wrote an impressive story in London. These threes wicked mothers, called Mater Suspiriorum (the oldest one), Mater Lachrymarum (the most beautiful) and Mater Tenebrarum (the youngest and cruelest), intended to rule the world with sorrow, tears and darkness. In accordance with the book, there are three keys, each one of them hidden in one building. Rose realizes that she lives in one of the buildings, and decides to look for the second hidden key in the cellar. From this moment on, weird things happen to her and she decides to write a letter to her brother Mark Elliot (Leigh McCloskey), a student of musicology in Rome, and asks him to visit her in New York. Mark never meets his sister and finds who the three mothers are indeed.

This is the beginning of "Inferno", one of my favorite Dario Argento's movies, with an intriguing and frightening story and great atmosphere. There are many flaws in the screenplay; the characters are not well developed, so their motives are not clear; and there are lacks of explanations for many events, so the viewer does not understand why the evil mothers attack the characters of the story, but anyway it is a cult Gothic movie. With some improvements in the screenplay, this movie would be a masterpiece classic. I have already seen this scary movie four times in a VHS I have recorded a couple of years ago from cable TV, and unfortunately it has not been released on VHS or DVD in Brazil. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "A Mansão do Inferno" ("The Mansion of the Hell")

Note: On June 23rd, 2009, I saw this movie for the fifth time in an imported DVD.

On June, 4th 2015, I saw this movie again.

It can hardly be denied that Italian horror film director Dario Argento is a true master craftsman. His films are often visually arresting, with many strange and horrific sounds, imagery, and bizarre set decorations that really succeed in creating atmospheres of pure dread, evil, and terror. His "giallo" (the Italian word for "yellow") murder-mystery films are what are most-known around the world to horror fans, because they combine the typical whodunit with elements of horror and the supernatural; the best film of this genre that I've seen so far is Argento's "Suspiria" (1977), though I have yet to see the other highly regarded picture from this time, "Deep Red" (1975).

Argento's 1980 feature "Inferno" is a semi-sequel to his earlier "Suspiria"; "Inferno" is the second in a loose film trilogy known as the "Three Mothers," which began with "Suspiria," followed by "Inferno," and was concluded in 2007 with the long-delayed "The Mother of Tears." This loose trilogy surrounds the legend of three ancient witches living in the present-day - one in Germany ("Suspiria"), another in New York City (this film), and the third finally in Rome ("The Mother of Tears"). "Inferno," while visually arresting with astounding production values and horrific blood-lettings, is a mixed bag with little coherence in the plot.

I did not find Argento's earlier "Suspiria" to be a particularly well-acted or well-written film. Argento is largely a director of style over substance, but his style is usually the star of the show in most of his films, hence why actors and plot often seem secondary. What made that film so horrifying was its sounds, imagery, and soundtrack (by the Italian band Goblin). It was such a uniquely unsettling horror film experience that it terrified me to the bone when I watched it for the first time.

"Inferno" is alternatively set in Rome and New York City. Rose Elliot (Irene Miracle) discovers the book "The Three Mothers" in New York City and comes to suspect that she is living in one of the buildings believed to house one of the Three Mothers. She writes to her brother Mark (Leigh McCloskey) in Rome for him to come visit her. This sets in motion a series of events that plunges them into a horrifying world of murder and the supernatural as they try to uncover the truth about the Three Mothers.

A lot of events in "Inferno" seem random and off-putting and seem to interfere with the narrative with little in the plot connecting any of the events. For example, the beautiful Italian girl (Ania Pieroni) who shows up at different points while Mark is in Rome; she never speaks, he never speaks to her, and we know nothing about her. But she provides an interesting visual element in an otherwise dark and disturbing picture.

"Inferno" is incredibly well-made, but like I said even incoherence in the plot has its limits. "Suspiria" didn't have much of a coherent story, but Argento's style and use of secondary background elements (sound, imagery, music) were able to make you "experience" the picture in ways that were more than enough to make up for the picture's shortcomings. "Inferno" does have some neat camera and visual trickery that plunge you into the madness so that you feel like you're actually there experiencing everything the characters are witnessing.

There are also some creatively gruesome murders here and there (a disturbing factoid here is that Argento himself often likes to portray the hands of the killer in his films). There's even a disturbing sequence involving a crippled old man, cats and rats that is pretty extraordinary and has to be seen to be truly believed, even if it does seem a bit random. And there's another sequence involving Rose in an underwater moat that is just downright chilling.

"Inferno" is not as "hot" as I thought it was going to be. In fact, I thought it was a little cold for my liking, considering my experience with "Suspiria." Maybe it'll get better (and "hotter") on repeat viewings.

6/10

Dario Argento is a master of his genre, no doubt about that, but his script here is pure hokum. The film has a number of striking images (the mysterious beauty that appears out of nowhere in the classroom; the drapes being slowly ripped apart by the nails of a stabbed-to-death woman; the close-up of Daria Nicolodi's lips; the pursuer at the library's basement, whose face remains in the dark, but whose hands are clearly not human), and a very peculiar architectural design, with secret passages leading to all sorts of hidden rooms to other passages to other rooms....However, as many others have said, the film is best approached as a dream, because the plot is incoherent and there are several scenes that run on too long. It does get better on the second viewing. (**)

Okay, here's the deal: If you need a coherent movie with an algebraic plot, skip this one. If you are interested in Dario Argento but haven't seen any of his films, start with something else. If you are a fan of Dario Argento, do yourself a favor and buy this one. Inferno is weird, makes no sense, but is a gorgeous horror film. I loved it.

Sequel to SUSPIRIA is both wonderfully lit and beautifully filmed. It is also visually very much like SUSPIRIA (which can be both good as it is dripping with atmosphere and bad as I think of it as the younger sibling who wants to be just like its older brother or sister).

One big problem I had with the film is the plot. If you have seen SUSPIRIA then you know that the villain will be a witch. Here two siblings Rose (Irene Miracle) and Mark (Leigh McCloskey) are investigating killings that are taking place only to find that a coven of witches is located in Rose's building. Okay, so the plot is not exactly non-existent, but there is not much to grab hold of at times. Some of things that take place as well in the film border on silly. Not to say that you should not see this film. As I mentioned earlier it contains lots of atmosphere that many horror films do not take the time to create. Maybe you will love it, but don't be surprised if it doesn't strike a chord like some of Dario Argento's other earlier work.

Pretty good score by prog rocker Keith Emerson. Also starring Daria Nicolodi. Followed by MOTHER OF TEARS.