Rojo profundo

Italian cult director Dario Argento, master of arty gore, brings this eerie and stylish story plagued by depraved gore murders, it concerns about a composer(David Hemmings) who observes a chilling assassination of his neighbor, an Occultist-medium (Macha Meril). When he gets clues , the musician visits a woman and discovers that she has been cruelly killed , as well. The composer along with a reporter(Daria Nicolidi, wife to Argento and mother of Asia) start following the tracks on a strange mansion.Other key roles are his friend Carlo(Gabriele Lavia) and the psychic's assistant Doctor Giordini.

One of the best ¨Giallo¨with oneiric,effective esthetics packs lots of gore, guts and twists plots. This is a trademark terror work for the Horrormeister Argento with high tension quotient and equally high suspense by means of an ever-fluid camera that achieves colorful shots similarly to Giorgio De Chirico paintings. Noteworthy for intelligent edition work that tightens the mystery, glimmer use of color and distinctive utilization of shock images. Sometimes weak screenplay is added by nice but gory special effects by Carlo Rambaldi(ET).Screeching musical score by Goblin with stereophonic whispers combining to fortissimo soundtrack which help achieve incredible creepy moments.The terror pieces are well staged with eye-opening flair-play and contain obscure tracks to the denouement of the script.As trivia, Argento appears as murderer's hand. The motion picture is originally directed by Dario Argento, one of those film-makers(other examples are Mario Bava and Riccardo Freda ) who set off simple for frightening us to death. His period of biggest hits were the 70s when he directed the animals trilogy: ¨Four flies over gray velvet,The cat of nine tails, Bird with the crystal plumage¨, after he directed ¨Suspiria, Inferno, Tenebre¨ and of course ¨Deep red¨. This bloody fun plenty of graphic gore and weirdness may not be for all tastes but to be liked for Argento connoisseurs especially.

#201 Deep Red (Italian: Profondo rosso) - 1975 (126 minute version) (This Film Rates a B ) The films starts off around Christmas and someone being stabbed to death off screen. Fast forward to a music ensemble practicing their jazzy tune. It then pans to a conference about parapsychology and features a medium named Helga. She has "extraordinary psychic powers". In dramatic fashion she predicts her own death by an unnamed person in the audience. Shortly after she is brutally murdered with a meat cleaver. One of the jazz members (Marcus) sees her being murdered and can't help but touch and move the body. He becomes a suspect and then is broadcasted that he could identify the murderer. The only initial connection is the children's music playing with each death. In an abandoned mansion, Marcus discovers a disturbing piece of artwork which shows a child holding a bloody knife after stabbing someone. Eventually he finds a skeleton corpse behind one of the walls. He gets knocked out and finds himself outside the house which is now burning. After all that, Marcus, is well enough to break into an elementary school where he finds a similar drawing. The killer is then revealed but dies in a horrific car accident. Who is the real killer? The twist ending is short and to the point but is a winner. The film is overlong but offers some effective build. Maybe the shorter dubbed version has a better pace. The killer is methodical and creates giallo type suspense. "He" also isn't always the main focus of the film which adds to the suspense. The artsy cinematography is really top notch and one of the biggest highlights that make this film successful. There are many fine examples of scenes and still shots that are so well crafted. The soundtrack is also superb, but what else would you expect from Goblin! No one can make murder sound so groovy! The electronic progressive rocks music fits each scene like a glove and makes the simplest scenes pop, it also gives them some texture. The gore and effects are decent for a film of this era but not extensive. It just feels like there isn't enough and at times felt empty. There is an awful fake bird scare at the 1 hour 1 minute mark. That poor bird! Mostly it is all the little details that make this film succeed.

In the early 70s, Italian director Dario Argento took the world by surprise with the release of his first three movies, three excellent entries in the "Giallo" genre that had been growing in popularity across the 60s. In only two years, the success of "L' Uccello Dalle Piume Di Cristallo" ("The Bird with the Crystal Plumage"), "Il Gatto a Nove Code" ("The Cat o' Nine Tails") and "4 Mosche Di Velluto Grigio" ("Four Flies on Grey Velvet) turned Argento into the new rising star of horror, and his "animal trilogy" into classics of the Italian thriller. However, after this huge success he decided to move away from the Giallo for a while, and in order to explore something different, he made two TV dramas and a comedy named "Le Cinque Giornate" ("Five Days in Milan"). While this offered him the chance to try something new, it also allowed him to prepare his return to horror with what would be known as one of the best Giallo thrillers ever made: "Profondo Rosso", known in English as "Deep Red".

The film is the story of Marcus Daly (David Hemmings), a British piano player who is spending some time in Italy as a music teacher. One night after work, as he walks towards his apartment, he watches through the building's window and notices his neighbor Helga (Macha Méril) struggling with an unknown man. Helga, a psychic, gets brutally killed in front of Daly's eyes, who runs towards the apartment in a futile attempt to save her. After being interrogated by the police, Daly notices that he could have seen the killer's face among a group of portraits on the wall, but he can't truly figure out what's missing. This thought becomes an obsession and Daly decides to investigate the murder of the psychic with the help of reporter Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi), however, his obsession becomes dangerous as he becomes the killer's next target.

Written by Bernardino Zapponi and Dario Argento himself, the film's plot revolves around the solving of the mystery while putting special attention to Marcus' obsession with the missing clue he may have caught the night of the murder. While Argento is famous for preferring surrealism to logic when writing his screenplays, the story in "Profondo Rosso" is carefully constructed and takes advantage of every element of the Giallo genre to tell it's mystery. And mystery is the key of the film, as the secret of the killer's identity is exploited to the max in order to create wonderful set pieces of suspense and horror. The care taken to develop the characters is another of the things that make "Profondo Rosso" to stand out among similar films, a not only Daly's obsessions are explored, but his relation with Gianna becomes an interesting source of romance, some comedy, and lots of suspense.

By the time he directed "Profondo Rosso", Dario Argento was already a master of his craft with a defined style, and the whole look of the film demonstrates it. With his excellent visual composition and inventive use of the camera (with cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller), Argento shows that he knows how to build up suspense and tension in the audience; and together with the excellent make-up by Giuliano Laurenti and Giovanni Morosi, Argento creates some of the most amazing murder scenes ever put to film. Giallo films are famous for making an art of their murder scenes, and in "Profondo Rosso" Argento takes that idea to the next level. The effective score by Giorgio Gaslini and the band "Goblin" is the icing on the cake, as it completes the unnatural haunting atmosphere that the whole film has.

Leading the cast is David Hemmings as Marcus Daly, in what seems to be almost a reprisal of his role in Antonioni's 1966 film, "Blowup" (which was another of Argento's inspirations). Hemmings is excellent in his role, and effectively portrays Daly's own descent into darkness as he gets more involved with the killings. Argento's regular collaborator Daria Nicolodi stars as Gianna Brezzi (in her first work with Argento), an interesting role because the character demands her to downplay her beauty in favor of the awkwardness of the role. Nicolodi is charming, and very natural, making hard to not fall in love with her character, the typical wisecracking reporter of mystery films. The rest of the cast includes many interesting characters (everyone is a suspect here), and the supporting actors do a very good job. Gabriele Lavie is specially great as Carlo, making probably the most likable character of the film.

While definitely one of the best Giallo films ever made, "Profondo Rosso" is not exempt of flaws, at least in my humble opinion. The most noticeable I found was the fact that at times the plot kind of drags, wasting too much time in details that do not advance the plot. This makes the long runtime feel even longer than it should, and due to this some audiences may feel the film is boring. Fortunately, this doesn't happen too often and it's more a minor quibble than an actual flaw. Another detail that bothered me was the bad dubbing the film has, and I don't mean the English dubbing, the original Italian work of audio is really bad, and diminishes the value of many of the performances due to bad synchronization between audio and voice work.

As one of the modern masters of horror, Dario Argento's career is one of enormous value for horror fans, and among his many works, "Profondo Rosso" is an essential one. A remarkable work of style and technique, "Deep Red" is a movie that simply grabs you and doesn't let you go until it ends, making an excellent experience and a good companion piece to Argento's follow-up, the masterpiece "Suspiria". Without a doubt "Profondo Rosso" is one of the best murder-mystery films ever made. A true jewel. 9/10

A slaughtered psychic sets the scene, a vicious killer that can't be seen, but Marcus Daly's on the case, to unmask the villains face, it takes some time to follow clues, more red spills in shades and hues, an author takes an unplanned facial, it leaves her feeling far from glacial, a haunted house near derelict, it's still not easy to predict, help from Gianna and her small car, the end reminds of abattoirs.

Disgraceful lizard torture scene aside (appalling if we're honest), this takes you on a fine old ride, with doubts aplenty about whodunit, the slices, cleaves, slashes and head splits. As engaging today as it ever was (apart from the lizard, which was always wrong).

DEEP RED (Profondo Rosso)

Aspect ratio: 2.39:1 (Techniscope)

Sound format: Mono

After witnessing the brutal murder of his psychic neighbor (Macha Meril) by person or persons unknown, a British musician in Rome (David Hemmings) obsesses over details of the crime and uncovers a series of clues which lead to further bloodshed and horror.

Released in Italy at 126 minutes, Dario Argento's seminal psycho-thriller was edited down to 105 minutes for European exhibition and further curtailed to 100 minutes for the American market, where it was dismissed by critics as an incoherent mess. In fact, this was Argento's return to the giallo format following a brief - and unlikely - detour into comedy (FIVE DAYS OF MILAN), and the first time he was allowed to 'cut loose' and indulge his unique sensibilities. All the elements of a classic Argento thriller are here: Eccentric characterizations, outlandish plot twists, and a series of Grand Guignol set-pieces that would revolutionize the genre. Using the wide, w-i-d-e screen to create a bold visual tapestry, Argento's film thrives on offbeat sounds and images: The child's song which pre-empts the shocking murders; the heart-stopping moment when Hemmings glimpses Meril at her apartment window as the killer lunges at her from behind (a shot which is both horrific and profoundly humane, all at the same time); the crazy-surreal mannikin which appears from nowhere and 'confronts' a potential victim; and the climactic revelation of the killer's identity as Hemmings finds damning evidence literally staring him in the face. Hemmings is the heart and soul of the entire picture, an innocent abroad whose inquisitive nature fails to mask his essential cowardice, and there are fine supporting performances by Daria Nicolodi, Gabriele Lavia and Clara Calamai in pivotal roles.

The European print which played outside Italy is a tightly-controlled whirlwind of horror and suspense, incorporating character development and violence cut from the American variant. However, the complete Italian version is another matter altogether: Except for the extra material added to Hemmings' search of 'The House of the Screaming Child' (where an important clue is literally concealed in the brickwork), the additional footage simply pads proceedings to breaking point. Whereas the characters were once defined by their experiences, the longer print includes lengthy dialogue exchanges which ramble well beyond their relevance to the plot. Still a masterpiece, the movie works best at 105 minutes, though the flawed Italian edition is no less sumptuous and invigorating.

Sadly, DEEP RED contains one of the most dubious images in Argento's entire filmography: A shot of a lizard impaled on a needle, done for real. This monstrous act of cruelty is inexcusable, given that Argento had hired ace effects technician Carlo Rambaldi, previously responsible for *simulated* animal carnage in Lucio Fulci's A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN (1971) which was so realistic, it landed the director in court!

(English version)