31 Days of Horror: Deep Red

It's time for a little Giallo. Giallo is a genre of Italian horror crime / murder thrillers, predominantly from the 1960's to the 1980's although there are still attempts being made to make them today. Dario Argento was the master of this genre at one time and the 1975 Deep Red (Profondo Rosso) is his best film. Sure his supernatural witch movie Suspiria gets a lot of praise but after watching it a few times, I think it's highly overrated.

The movie starts with a psychic woman (Macha Meril) giving a conference on her abilities. While trying to demonstrate her abilities, she shouts out that someone in the theatre is a murderer and will kill again. Later on at night - David Hemmings is walking along with his friend down a street and happens to witness the medium getting killed in her apartment. He rushes into her apartment and misses the killer but the killer sees him. Thus a game of cat and mouse begins as Hemmings tries to find the killer before the killer finds him.

The film is filled with Argento's trademarks - extremely gory and innovative deaths, a music score from Italian rock band Goblin and brilliant cinematography. It's a shame that Argento's current films (The Card Player, Mother of Tears) are no where near as good as this movie is. Apparently Argento plans to remake this movie in 3D - I hope that's just a bad internet rumour.