JUNKFILM

I received a text message from my friend last night as I was driving home from work that read (paraphrasing):

“Does Suspiria ever get scary, or should I not bother and just turn it off?”

I know by continuing this post, I might lose from cred from my film critic community, but I believe it has to be said, and truth is always important rather than faking my taste for credibility sake.

I sent a text back:

“Save yourself the evening. Turn it off now.”

She promptly replied:

“Why would Edgar Wright place this film on his top 10?”

Here is where a thought hit me. By no means was the thought a new or profound one, but it has been one rattling in my dome for years now. It was a thought I had had on a variety of occasions when watching films. It was a question I first asked myself long ago, after I had been getting into horror movies and trying to find scarier and scarier titles. The deeper I dug, the more innovative films I found, of course. But at the same time, I read many people loving Dario Argento, so I quickly bought a few of his more popular titles, received them, and took an entire two evenings to watch a handful of his films. It was after watching these movies I asked myself,

“How do an entire world of horror lovers fall over themselves when discussing these films? The cinematography is really not bad (though it looks like someone went crazy with a gel kit), the characters are weakly developed and the script is at points harkoning back to old sci-fi quality of the 50’s.”

in shot… “How can people like these movies?”

As years have come and went I have come to know that different people like different films. A film I might think to be phenomenal like Kikujiro, another might look at it and say it was too long or slow. A film that I loathe like Talageda Nights, another might consider their favorite film. But I think the situation at hand runs a little deeper than personal taste. So in short, I by no means hate Suspirira. I actually kinda respect it…but I find huge flaws with it.

Film elitists will never admit, or rarely admit, that they don’t like a film dubbed by other elitists as a “good film.” Many films have been dubbed as “0good films: no matter who likes or dislikes them, like: Rashomon, Godfather, Star Wars, or Casablanca,  This is the definition of “good film”, and that is the final time I will use quotes for describing a good film.

I know it was just a thing in the 70s, but blood in 70s horror films always looks like someone went bat-shit with the neon color paint. It looks like paint.. and I don’t think a human body could sufficiently survive with paint in it’s veins. I don’t think it could work, but than again, I’m not a doctor. I could be wrong. Some could live on acrylic and live longer…but chances are anyone who actually had paint for blood probably died in the 70s…on film…..in a low budget horror movie.

I like to consider myself a learned, well read, and well versed film watcher.  But when I watched Suspirira I felt like I was missing something.  I reread some reviews online and all of them raved about the terror they felt watching the movie.  I thought back to the film… do colored gels and water in a drain really scare the shit out of an audience?  It certainly did not do it for me, but at the time I wouldn’t ever consider let anyone know that I didn’t like the “masterpiece” Argento had crafted.

Film elitists are terrified of losing credibility to their fellow elitists that sometimes they will watch a film, hate it, but since it is so respected in the community they go along with it and talk about how genius it is and those who don’t like it must not understand it.  I’m sorry, guys, I used to be one of you.  I do get it.  It was lousy photography and decent direction with some added choppy editing that only the 60s and 70s were known for.

Granted, for Italian horror, Argento is known as one of the greatest, and of the films I have seen, his style is unique, interesting and artistic, but I think that is where it ends. I wouldn’t put an Argento film on any of my top 10 lists, least of all scary films.

I guess there is no moral to this ranting, other than don’t believe the hype, that it, unless it’s coming from yours truly, here at Junk Film.