Dario Argento is not a great director. I find very little to like about his movies. Of the three films of his I've seen [THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMMAGE (1970), SUSPIRIA (1977), & INFERNO (1980)] the only one I really think was worth seeing was the oldest which was his premiere. I hope for his sake that I simply selected poorly from his extensive library of fake-gore-filled, stereotypical, ridiculous horror flicks. To say that his movie epitomize cheesy slasher films is no stretch. I found nothing progressive or impressive about them. If anything it felt almost like they were intentionally mimicking what was happening in that genre in America at the time, which was not good either. I forgive him very little for his films not aging well. If Orson Welles can pull off CITIZEN KANE in 1941, there's no excuse for filmmaking like this in the 70's.
But I don't want to spend my whole review just bullying him. His use of crazy colors shining onto walls from off camera may not be good or exclusively his (I'm thinking of German director Percy Adlon's use of this exact same tactic around the same time) but it is
interesting. Also the first scene of THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMMAGE lures you into the film, then effectively haunts you after the film.
Hopefully he's gotten better since I'm excited to see his 2011 release DRACULA 3D (that's a joke)
No comments:
Post a Comment