Suspiria (1977)

An American girl goes to Germany to a prestigious ballet boarding house, only to find out its controlled by a coven of witches. The movie has good style and atmosphere, but that's about it. There is no memorable story, and it feels disjointed and random. I don't care about any of these characters, since there is no development. The best thing about this film is the bright colors and the last 20 minutes were pretty tense and actually quite creepy. The kills are also pretty gory for the time. So yeah, Suspiria has good style and atmosphere, but lacks a story and characters. The only character I will remember from this is the blind piano player and the nasty dance instructor, everyone else is forgettable. It is worth a watch just to see the creepy dance academy and all the strange colors, but that's about it.

American ballet student Jessica Harper goes to Europe to attend famous dance academy, but the school is a front for a witches coven. Italian director Dario Argento's most successful thriller in the States (thanks to an effective ad campaign) is also his most derivative film up to this point, using several other movies as stylistic reference points. The elaborate look and ambiance of "Suspiria" is truly original, however, and Argento's use of color is striking; for those unable (or unwilling) to follow the plot, at least the picture provides a memorable visual experience. Harper has an appealing presence and a pithy way of speaking, though the supporting performances are uneven, often confounding and inscrutable. The mechanisms of the loosely-hinged story--usually the least-important aspect of an Argento picture--come together neatly at the finish line. Weaving a hypnotic web, Argento ensnares viewers with shock cuts but holds his audience with a rapt attention to atmospherics. **1/2 from ****

These 4 out of 10 are mostly for the music - the droning main theme that I somewhat liked - and what was good of acting. The rest of it I did not enjoy even as you do with some cheesy horror B-movies of yore.Writing, decorations, FX and most of the acting are bad. The school's interiors look like they are made out of plywood with flat textures drawn on them, and decorations are cheap or kitsch. Death and struggle scenes are ridiculously cheesy with all the bright red gouache or whatever that was used for blood. Lines like "I'm blind, not deaf" and the very academic Prof. Milius' introduction into the nature of witchcraft make up most of the dialogue. The final scene surprised me because none of the witches melted. And what's with the room where someone left a lot of wire? Any reputed dancing school ran by a coven has to have one?I don't get it how you can release something like this knowing that Rosemary's baby or any of Hitchcock movies exist, and still be serious.

What makes this weird horror film of a ballet academy with murders going on non stop is the extremely artistic composition of the images using colour like an expressionist painter to make more a work of art than a regular film. The story is absurd: the ballet academy is run by two lady dinosaurs (Alida Valli and Joan Bennett) like two awesome commissars driving hard the dancing students evidently to their violent deaths, while the leading girl (Jessica Harper) gets increasingly worried as her friends disappear. Of course, the ballet academy seems to be run by witchcraft somehow, and some psychiatrists get involved. Then there is bad weather occasionally with lots of thunder and lightnings, there are problems with the telephone, she gets nightmares, and so on.There is no credibility at all to anything in this film, and yet it is fascinating and well made and worth the terrible experience if for nothing else at least for its sustained impressing colour expressionism.