Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb
Speaker 2: and this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 2: we are going to be talking about the nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: five horror classic Deep Red or Profundo Rosso, starring David
Speaker 2: Hemmings and Daria Nickelode, directed by Dario Argento. This movie
Speaker 2: is often held up as one of Argento's best, and
Speaker 2: in this case, I think I'm going to agree with
Speaker 2: the commonly held opinion not going to stake out any
Speaker 2: weird territory. I do think this is one of the
Speaker 2: best Jallo films ever made, if not the greatest one
Speaker 2: of all. Now, why are we talking about Jallo in January?
Speaker 2: Because it's January Jallo once more. What is this? Well,
Speaker 2: it's a tradition started by La based cult cinema outfit
Speaker 2: Cinematic Void. You can learn more about them at cinematic
Speaker 2: void dot com. Beginning in twenty sixteen, I believe, and
Speaker 2: it steadily become more official, spread to other cities and
Speaker 2: an official capacity, even while also being picked up informally
Speaker 2: as a viewing tradition, alongside the likes of Noir November
Speaker 2: and hopefully more themed months to come. I love a
Speaker 2: good theme, and I know you do.
Speaker 3: You're you're more aware of these calendar things than I am.
Speaker 3: I never would have known about Jallo January, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I'm not. I don't get behind a lot of holidays.
Speaker 2: So I like these new holidays we're presenting ourselves with.
Speaker 2: And hey, this is the tenth anniversary of this new tradition,
Speaker 2: so you know, we embraced it. We decided to pick
Speaker 2: a film last year. We did Footsteps on the Moon.
Speaker 3: Footprints on the Moon, Footprints on the Moon, Footprints on
Speaker 3: the Moon, Yeah, which was a kind of weird pick.
Speaker 3: We picked it because we had seen it listed online
Speaker 3: among Jello films, and it was supposed to be really good.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to say, however, much I liked it.
Speaker 3: I think we both liked it a lot, didn't we Yeah.
Speaker 2: I really liked it.
Speaker 3: But it turned out it really wasn't a Jallo film,
Speaker 3: at least as most people would describe it. It's sort
Speaker 3: of aesthetically Jallo adjacent. So I think in that episode
Speaker 3: we may have actually said something like, if you want
Speaker 3: to see what a core Jallo film is. Watch Deep Red.
Speaker 3: So here we are, and I would say, in all
Speaker 3: but maybe a few respects, Deep Red is about as
Speaker 3: Jallo as it gets. It hits all the bullseye markers.
Speaker 3: It's like, what the absolute essence of what this genre is.
Speaker 2: I'll have some questions about that as we proceed, because
Speaker 2: this is one of those areas where people get very
Speaker 2: specific about what should constitute jallo and what isn't Jallo.
Speaker 3: Well, can I offer a very actually oversimplified theory about
Speaker 3: why that question comes up so much?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think it is specifically because a lot of people
Speaker 3: get into jallo by watching Spiria first and then starting
Speaker 3: to watch Dario Argento's other movies, and Suspiria is not
Speaker 3: usually considered jello because it's supernatural, but some of his
Speaker 3: other movies like Deep Bread and Tinebray and Bird with
Speaker 3: Crystal Plumage are very like core Jallo. But because Suspiria
Speaker 3: has a lot of esthetic things in common with these
Speaker 3: other main Jallo movies, and because it's usually the first
Speaker 3: movie people see to get into this Italian film niche,
Speaker 3: I think the question just comes up over and over again.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, is Suspiria, not Jallo. Well, and so
Speaker 3: it creates the impression that there's a lot of discussion
Speaker 3: about this like category boundary.
Speaker 2: Well, and it gets confusing too because then like Deep
Speaker 2: Read has a psychic in it. It's true. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: not like this film is completely devoid of the speculative elopment.
Speaker 3: But as they make clear in the film, and they're
Speaker 3: like this, this psychic powers have nothing to do with magic.
Speaker 3: You remember the whole speech about that.
Speaker 2: That's true. Yeah, this is parapsycho.
Speaker 3: Right, science, it's pure science. So yeah, so I guess
Speaker 3: Robbie you had a section in the outline where you
Speaker 3: thought we should do a brief refresher on what makes
Speaker 3: a jallo.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, let's remind everybody.
Speaker 3: So. Jallo is an Italian movie genre which evolved out
Speaker 3: of a pulp literary genre of the same name. So
Speaker 3: you had Jallo novels which go back almost one hundred years.
Speaker 3: These were mystery and crime thriller paperbacks, originally published with
Speaker 3: this iconic yellow cover design, which is where the genre
Speaker 3: name comes from. Jallo means yellow, and Jallo films in
Speaker 3: plural are known as jalli Jalli plural of jello so
Speaker 3: while the original Jallo novels were I think more in
Speaker 3: line with your classic and maybe classier who done it?
Speaker 3: You can think of authors like Agatha Christie. Jallo films,
Speaker 3: which became especially popular in the nineteen seventies, are known
Speaker 3: today for being seedier, having seed deier, trashier elements. You
Speaker 3: can still think of them basically as murder mystery thrillers,
Speaker 3: but with strong elements of horror, usually grizzly violence, and
Speaker 3: what was usually seen as tawdry sexual subject matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, usually like the kills especially. Yeah, you're not
Speaker 2: going to get an implied stabbing. You're gonna get a nice,
Speaker 2: juicy stabbing, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So a lot of these movies have gore a
Speaker 3: lot of them. They they feel kind of perverted in
Speaker 3: some way, and almost in that luccio fulcy sense. There's
Speaker 3: a great sense of like, let's get a look at
Speaker 3: this as something that you wouldn't normally see or you're
Speaker 3: not supposed to see. The camera will really dwell on that.
Speaker 3: So there are core plot elements you will find in
Speaker 3: most Jello films. Usually there is a series of cold
Speaker 3: blooded murders that are very very chilling. There's you know,
Speaker 3: they're not your run of the mill crime movie murder.
Speaker 3: There's something really shocking and weird and disgusting committed by
Speaker 3: a killer with an unknown identity. So like, there's a
Speaker 3: killer on the loose, we don't know who they are.
Speaker 3: Maybe somebody only saw them from behind leaving the scene,
Speaker 3: and so there's a there's a mystery. Who is it?
Speaker 3: Who from the cast of characters could it be. Usually
Speaker 3: police are not very helpful. They are baffled and useless,
Speaker 3: except in a few movies where the main character is
Speaker 3: a police officer, but usually they're not. I really want
Speaker 3: to emphasize a thing that makes Jallo different than a
Speaker 3: lot of other mysteries or crime thrillers is the quality
Speaker 3: of the violence. The violence is more disturbing than your
Speaker 3: standard movie homicide. And these movies really like weird, icky
Speaker 3: weapons and the kinds of wounds that make you go
Speaker 3: ooh uh, Like, you know, you suck your air through
Speaker 3: your teeth when you see these movie deaths.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, grizzly would be a good description.
Speaker 3: So, for example, there's like one scene in this movie
Speaker 3: where you know, the killer comes up on a professor
Speaker 3: character and you think the killer is just gonna stab
Speaker 3: him with a knife, and the killer does stab him
Speaker 3: with a knife, but before that there's a lot of
Speaker 3: like bashing his teeth out on the corners of furniture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, on the whole. There were multiple times in
Speaker 2: this film where and I'm no prude when it comes
Speaker 2: to violence, but there are multiple times where us like
Speaker 2: this is a bit much, a genta, we really didn't
Speaker 2: need to see all of this.
Speaker 3: That's what Jello is all about. It's all a bit much.
Speaker 3: These movies also very frequently have an out of place
Speaker 3: or alienated protagonist who finds themselves carrying out an independent
Speaker 3: investigation into the murders. Usually they there's some kind of
Speaker 3: circumstance by which they have to become an amateur detective,
Speaker 3: despite you know, dealing with hardships along the way. So
Speaker 3: they might have something is wrong with them that makes
Speaker 3: it hard for them to investigate, or they're dealing with
Speaker 3: fear or psychic trauma of some kind, or a lack
Speaker 3: of support from the community if they're an outsider. There
Speaker 3: are a lot of jala movies like this, where like
Speaker 3: somebody comes in from the outside. They're investigating murders for
Speaker 3: some reason, and the locals are not helping. At the
Speaker 3: end of the movie, there will usually be a final
Speaker 3: revelation where we learn the killer's identity. Of course, it's
Speaker 3: usually a character already known to us in some way,
Speaker 3: and we get some kind of full download of what
Speaker 3: happened with a full explanation, like in Hitchcock's Psycho, where
Speaker 3: we learn not just who did it, and usually who
Speaker 3: did it is kind of surprising. It's rare that it's
Speaker 3: like the main suspect, who did it, why they did it?
Speaker 3: Usually in these movies they were driven mad by some
Speaker 3: sort of bizarre childhood experience or trauma. Very often Freudian
Speaker 3: logic is in play. And then another thing that I
Speaker 3: think is crucial to the the flavor of Jello is
Speaker 3: that we have to get an explanation for why we
Speaker 3: didn't realize it was them all along, like how they
Speaker 3: covered it up, or why we wrongly suspected somebody else.
Speaker 3: More incidental plot elements that I think are very interesting
Speaker 3: and how often they recur. One that I know I
Speaker 3: mentioned in Footprints on the Moon in our episode on
Speaker 3: that is that so many of these movies have a
Speaker 3: protagonist who begins the investigation with the central clue to
Speaker 3: solving the mystery already in their possession or already in
Speaker 3: their memory, but they can't make sense of it yet.
Speaker 3: So in several Argento movies, the main character of the
Speaker 3: film actually witnesses something at the beginning that reveals the
Speaker 3: killer's identity. This is there in Bird with a Crystal plumage.
Speaker 3: It's in a bunch of them, but they're not able
Speaker 3: to fully remember what they saw, or they can't make
Speaker 3: sense of it or un or stand it until something
Speaker 3: locks into place at the final revelation. And I think
Speaker 3: I said this last time as well, but I find
Speaker 3: this recurring plot element one of the most interesting things
Speaker 3: about Jello that these stories are about people who already
Speaker 3: saw the answer. It's there in their memory, but they
Speaker 3: can't consciously apply the information. It's like blind sight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it'll be fun to come back to this
Speaker 2: one as we actually break down the plot of Deep Red.
Speaker 3: Another thing is that the protagonist often ends up questioning
Speaker 3: their sanity. Not always, but there's a good bit of that.
Speaker 3: Often there is also a central love story, and the
Speaker 3: protagonist's love interest is both threatened by the killer but
Speaker 3: also suspected of being the killer, and sometimes they are
Speaker 3: the killer. And then, just to mention a few overriding
Speaker 3: esthetic choices you see throughout Jallo films. One is voyeuristic
Speaker 3: photography that is huge in Argento and in Deep Red,
Speaker 3: but it's throughout the genre as well. A lot of
Speaker 3: killer point of view shots.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of hands doing things, picking up weapons,
Speaker 2: caressing documents, that sort of thing. And of course Urgento
Speaker 2: is known for often playing the hands of the killer
Speaker 2: in his films.
Speaker 3: Of course, as we already said, explicit violence in Gore,
Speaker 3: there is a thematic and esthetic union of sex and death,
Speaker 3: a lot of eroticized violence. A little bit, I would say,
Speaker 3: less of that in Deep Red than in a lot
Speaker 3: of Jello's, but there's a bit of it.
Speaker 2: It's still there. It's a little more tastefully balanced compared
Speaker 2: to where it goes in some films. That's the thing
Speaker 2: about the genre as a whole, right, I mean sometimes
Speaker 2: it is not subtle. Now, what we're looking at here
Speaker 2: is really a finely crafted example of the genre.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The Jallo killer's uniform. This occurs again and again.
Speaker 3: Trench coat with the collar flipped off, flipped up, maybe
Speaker 3: a fedora hat, and black leather gloves. An outfit that
Speaker 3: hides their face. You know, you might see them only
Speaker 3: from behind going around a corner, and it's the coat,
Speaker 3: the hat, and especially the gloves. And then I would say,
Speaker 3: especially in the better Jallo films, I notice they really
Speaker 3: often love interior decor. So many of these movies are
Speaker 3: full of striking sets, just apartments with wild detailed furniture
Speaker 3: and wallpaper patterns and stuff, just way more than you'd
Speaker 3: see in any other movie genre I can think of,
Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, so like wallpaper and furniture in fashion too,
Speaker 3: a lot of like wild interesting clothing. But one of
Speaker 3: the last things I'd say about the esthetic commonalities is
Speaker 3: that they often feature high art and low art sensibilities
Speaker 3: crammed together in the same project. You get the feeling
Speaker 3: that a lot of these Jallo films were like perverted
Speaker 3: trash being made consciously as such by filmmakers who considered
Speaker 3: themselves great artists.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting to think about with Deep Red,
Speaker 2: especially because I feel like the trashier aspects of the
Speaker 2: film are really elevated in a number of ways. I
Speaker 2: think it's elevated in the writing, elevated in the acting,
Speaker 2: and of course in the direction. In a look of
Speaker 2: the film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, deep Red hits basically all of
Speaker 3: these notes, not quite all, but most of them pretty perfectly.
Speaker 3: It certainly wasn't the first Jallo film. There's debate about
Speaker 3: what was the first Jallo film. A lot of people
Speaker 3: point to the influence of Mario Bava's Blood and Black
Speaker 3: Lace as excellent film. Yeah, really good. Maybe not the
Speaker 3: first one, but like a standard setter in the genre.
Speaker 3: That was I forget what year, in the late sixties,
Speaker 3: so we were well into the Jallo craze when Deep
Speaker 3: Red came out. It also wasn't even Argento's first jallow film.
Speaker 3: You know, he had made Bird the Crystal Plumage, and
Speaker 3: I think I think a couple others, maybe Four Flies
Speaker 3: on Gray Velvet and The Cat and Nine Tails. But
Speaker 3: a lot of people think this is his best Jallo film,
Speaker 3: and I think that's probably right, But some of his
Speaker 3: other ones are also really good. Bird with Crystal Plumage
Speaker 3: I haven't seen in years, but I remember being great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was actually my first time watching Deep Red.
Speaker 2: I've been listening to parts of the soundtrack for years,
Speaker 2: especially in different like hard disco mixes, and I've seen
Speaker 2: other Argento films, of course, but I guess for some
Speaker 2: reason I've often been drawn more to his films that
Speaker 2: seem to offer a stronger spect cotive elopment, like Oh,
Speaker 2: Stendel Syndrome, people are gonna be falling into paintings, kissing fish,
Speaker 2: I'm in you know it's Oh, it's Fantom of the Opera. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll sign up for that, and of course Suspiria and
Speaker 2: the other the other Witches films, you know, Yeah, Dracula
Speaker 2: three D. Sign me up. I love I'll watch any
Speaker 2: Dracula film three D even better.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, is that the one with Rutger Howard?
Speaker 2: It is the one with record Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no insult intended. But a lot of his
Speaker 3: later films are not not usually favorites of the the
Speaker 3: Argento fans, but you know, check them out if you
Speaker 3: feel like it.
Speaker 2: I had to double check it is three D. Uh.
Speaker 3: Should we do a note on the different cuts of
Speaker 3: this film?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, different cuts as always, bunch of cuts, different titles.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: So there's one out there going around under the title
Speaker 3: the Hatchet Murders. That doesn't make any sense. I don't
Speaker 3: think any of the murders in the movie used to hatchet.
Speaker 2: Now Cleaver, Yes, so maybe they meant Cleaver and they can.
Speaker 2: They're like, it's the Clever Murders and I'm like, uh,
Speaker 2: it sounds like it's a Cleaver family or something, and
Speaker 2: they're like, Okay, hatchet.
Speaker 3: No hat Yeah, I don't want to mix it up
Speaker 3: with leave it to Beaver. Yeah, there's no hatchet in
Speaker 3: the movie. From what I recall there you could call
Speaker 3: it like the I don't know, Elevator Necklace Murders or something.
Speaker 3: But but there are at least three different cuts of
Speaker 3: the film out there, maybe more. I really don't know
Speaker 3: how many total there are. So there are said to
Speaker 3: be some shorter edits that have been kind of censored
Speaker 3: for particular international distribution that from what I can tell,
Speaker 3: people don't like those cuts. And then I think there's
Speaker 3: basically an original or theatrical cut, which I think runs
Speaker 3: like ninety something minutes or maybe just over one hundred minutes,
Speaker 3: and then there are some longer versions. There's definitely a
Speaker 3: longer director's cut with a lot of additional material that
Speaker 3: wasn't in the theatrical release, and that's the one that
Speaker 3: I watched for today. So Rob I think you and
Speaker 3: I may have accidentally watched different cuts even though we
Speaker 3: were trying to watch the same ones, So I apologize
Speaker 3: if I miscommunicated about that.
Speaker 2: Oh no, we've certainly watched different cuts of the same
Speaker 2: film for Weird House before, so it actually can make
Speaker 2: for an interesting comparison between our two experiences. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: normally don't do this, but it was a busy week,
Speaker 2: so I ended up streaming it on Pluto TV free
Speaker 2: with commercials. It was great. It was definitely a different cut.
Speaker 2: It wasn't the full extended cut, as we'll get into
Speaker 2: great quality though some scenes missing compared to what you're discussing,
Speaker 2: But it still had the comedic scenes, which I understand
Speaker 2: are sometimes cut, and it certainly had seemingly full gore
Speaker 2: because it.
Speaker 3: Was I'm thinking that the one you saw probably wasn't
Speaker 3: censored at all. It probably just had a lot of
Speaker 3: the stuff that was cut for time. And some people,
Speaker 3: from what I read online, do like the shorter theatrical cut,
Speaker 3: which I think is probably what you saw. They like
Speaker 3: it because they say that it's tighter. You know, it's
Speaker 3: just got tighter editing and the story just moves along.
Speaker 3: The one I saw. My impression was that most of
Speaker 3: the extra stuff that was added back in was stuff
Speaker 3: in the romantic subplot, like a lot of scenes with
Speaker 3: the character played by Daria and Nickelode which were cut
Speaker 3: out of the theatrical version. Like I've read people saying
Speaker 3: that in the other versions her character has a lot
Speaker 3: less screen time and less to do, but in the
Speaker 3: version I saw, there's a lot of her. So the
Speaker 3: one that I watched is the one currently streaming on
Speaker 3: Prime through a service called Cineverse, and so it looks
Speaker 3: like it's a fairly recent restoration. It has a few quirks.
Speaker 3: For example, the film is dubbed in English, so I
Speaker 3: was watching it mostly in English, but there are some
Speaker 3: scenes that are in Italian because that was the only
Speaker 3: format in which that scene was available. Also, we should
Speaker 3: say going forward, this will be a spoiler laden discussion
Speaker 3: of the film, So if you want to see it
Speaker 3: you haven't seen it yet, you should probably pause here,
Speaker 3: go watch the movie before you listen to the rest
Speaker 3: of the episode, because we are going to talk about
Speaker 3: the plot and spoil things about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is a who done it, so I
Speaker 2: do recommend going in spoiler free. I was fortunate enough
Speaker 2: to go in spoiler free on this one, which a
Speaker 2: lot of these films, especially ones that are particularly well known,
Speaker 2: you're just going to be spoiled on them one way
Speaker 2: or ano they're reading about films in general or so forth,
Speaker 2: listening to podcasts. So yeah, I highly recommend going into
Speaker 2: this one as fresh as possible. Let's see, we often
Speaker 2: do an elevator pitch. My elevator pitch is this is
Speaker 2: Dario Argento's only Murders in the Building, because.
Speaker 3: I've seen that show, so I don't get the joke.
Speaker 2: But well, if you've seen only Murders in the Building,
Speaker 2: you basically get it. Like there's been a murder in
Speaker 2: your building, in your apartment complex, and you are the
Speaker 2: amateur that is now investigating it. Yeah, it lines up
Speaker 2: in at least two ways.
Speaker 3: I think. No, I'm going to defend the logic of
Speaker 3: it a little bit. There's a lot in this movie
Speaker 3: that doesn't make sense. But I think there's a reason
Speaker 3: that David Hemmings character has to investigate, and it's that,
Speaker 3: having been identified in the press as a witness to
Speaker 3: the murder, he is now the target, the next target
Speaker 3: for the killer, and so he feels like he has
Speaker 3: to solve the murder because he's implicated in it, Like
Speaker 3: the killer is going to come for him next, so
Speaker 3: he's got to find out who it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, and I bought that. I bought that.
Speaker 2: Watching the film, OK, I think it is for the
Speaker 2: most part well support though there are a few times
Speaker 2: where you're like, Wow, this guy's just straight up destroying
Speaker 2: a villa with his bare hands to solve a crime
Speaker 2: and it's not his job at all.
Speaker 3: Some of the yeah, some of the clue leaps are
Speaker 3: incredibly tenuous, Like remember when he goes to the professors
Speaker 3: and they're like, oh, that song that you that you heard, Yeah,
Speaker 3: one time people heard that song playing at a house.
Speaker 3: You should go look up a book about this house.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. We get a little into the weeds on
Speaker 2: the in the research phase at that point, but it
Speaker 2: ends up working and it leads to some wonderful revelations.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go ahead and listen to just a
Speaker 2: little bit of the trailer audio. This one had a
Speaker 2: in the English language release of this had a wonderful
Speaker 2: grind housey trailer, So hopefully we can hear just a
Speaker 2: little bit of that that that narration and that music.
Speaker 3: Do they call it deep Red or profund Rosso?
Speaker 2: Oh? You know, I don't remember, but this is definitely
Speaker 2: one of those films where you hear you hear English
Speaker 2: speaking fans of the film refer to it both ways.
Speaker 2: And you know, because deep Red is how it was released,
Speaker 2: and that's a solid title. But I think Profundoso is
Speaker 2: just fun to say, even if you don't know the
Speaker 2: next thing about Italian. Uh, it just it sounds profound.
Speaker 3: Profound and fun funds right there. It's fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, have fun with all right, let's listen to
Speaker 2: a little bit of that trailer everywhere you look, everywhere
Speaker 2: you turn, and get this running with your.
Speaker 3: Deep Red. It'll put you into deep shock.
Speaker 2: All right. So at this point you might have decided, Okay,
Speaker 2: I do need to watch Deep Red. I need to
Speaker 2: watch it again. What have you? Where can I watch it? Well,
Speaker 2: it's widely available in pretty much any format you could desire.
Speaker 2: If you're going for physical media, which is always a
Speaker 2: nice way to go, Arrow has a nice blu ray edition.
Speaker 2: It looks like would have probably been my pick if
Speaker 2: my schedule had allowed it this week. But it's this
Speaker 2: is you know, this is an Argento film, so it's
Speaker 2: probably had just multiple rounds of releases with special editions
Speaker 2: and so forth. Same could be said for the soundtrack.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into the people behind this film,
Speaker 2: starting with Argento himself born nineteen forty, the director, the writer,
Speaker 2: one of the producers, and of course he plays the
Speaker 2: hands of the killers this time. What will our killer
Speaker 2: be wearing? How would you describe these leather black leather
Speaker 2: gloves with the gold zipper.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right. You can see there are lots
Speaker 3: of zipping up the glove scenes getting ready. It's like,
Speaker 3: what did we learned a name for that in the
Speaker 3: cinema in the cinema space? You know the suiting up
Speaker 3: scenes where you see people putting on their gear. I
Speaker 3: forget the name for it, but we talked about that
Speaker 3: in some movies last year. But this movie has suiting
Speaker 3: up scenes where you see like somebody staring into a
Speaker 3: mirror and putting like eyeliner on a crazy looking eye,
Speaker 3: and then like zipping up the black gloves.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, all right, our Gento we almost I really
Speaker 2: don't have to tell many of you who are gentle
Speaker 2: is legendary Italian horror director, writer, and producer, celebrated for
Speaker 2: his stylish contributions to not only Shallo and shallow adjacent cinema,
Speaker 2: but to the global horror genre as a whole. Active
Speaker 2: as a director from nineteen seventy with The Bird with
Speaker 2: the Crystal Plumage through twenty twenty two's Dark Glasses. Now
Speaker 2: he has not, as of this recording, like officially retired
Speaker 2: or anything, and I was trying to figure out, like
Speaker 2: what is he working on? Hard to say he may
Speaker 2: or may not be remaking a nineteen forties Mexican film,
Speaker 2: which is a tantalizing possibility, because there's a lot of great,
Speaker 2: you know, Golden age Mexican cinema that even you know,
Speaker 2: a late our Gento adaptation could be pretty fascinating. And
Speaker 2: I think, you know, everybody's rooting for Argento to to
Speaker 2: put something else out and like really sort of, you know,
Speaker 2: I guess, kind of like finish up his career with
Speaker 2: something really strong. Not that you have to, because, as
Speaker 2: we'll discuss, so many strong Argento films in his filmography.
Speaker 2: Unlike many of his fellow Italian horror directors, Argento almost
Speaker 2: exclusively worked in horror directing as far as I can
Speaker 2: tell only a single non horror film, nineteen seventy three's
Speaker 2: The Five Days, a kind of comedy set during the
Speaker 2: Italian Revolution. This was his film directly before Deep Red.
Speaker 3: That's funny. I thought he had done some other stuff,
Speaker 3: but actually maybe I'm thinking of he wrote other stuff, right,
Speaker 3: didn't direct it.
Speaker 2: He did write a number of genre films prior to
Speaker 2: his directorial, but as far as things he actually directed,
Speaker 2: I think this is the only one could be wrong.
Speaker 2: He also did some TV projects, but I think those
Speaker 2: were all more or less in the horror as well. Now, Yeah,
Speaker 2: briefly though, our Gento followed his debut film, of which
Speaker 2: we already mentioned with seventy one's The Cat of Nine
Speaker 2: Tales and Four Flies on Gray Velvet, then Five Days
Speaker 2: and which I just mentioned, and in seventy five Deep Red.
Speaker 2: He followed this up with the all time classic Suspiria
Speaker 2: in seventy seven, which I think you're supposed to be
Speaker 2: more properly pronounced as Suspiria, right, Spurria trailer. Then nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties Inferno eighty two, s tenebrae eighty five's Phenomena, eighty
Speaker 2: seven's Opera just a heck of a run there. Like
Speaker 2: seventies and eighties, our gento was simply genre defining.
Speaker 3: You know, we were just talking about movies where, for
Speaker 3: some reason, English speakers don't translate the title, you let
Speaker 3: it remain in another language, versus titles where you do.
Speaker 3: Like so we call the Bird with the Crystal plumage
Speaker 3: the bird with a crystal plumage, not the Italian version
Speaker 3: of that. I don't know what it is, but we
Speaker 3: don't translate titles like Suspiria and tenebrae there where we
Speaker 3: say the original. Yeah, I think Suspiria means like size
Speaker 3: and Latin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, size is not a good title at least, yeah,
Speaker 2: not as English. But so Spiria, like that's great, Like
Speaker 2: you don't even have to know what it means. You're
Speaker 2: just you're drawn in. It's a fascinating word. So subsequent
Speaker 2: decades of our gentle output, you know, haven't necessarily been
Speaker 2: as strong, but still featured some notable titles and some
Speaker 2: ambitious projects, including ninety six is the Stindell syndrome. That's
Speaker 2: one where people fall into paintings and kiss fishes. So
Speaker 2: you know, he's even his films that maybe don't have
Speaker 2: as strong a following or didn't resonate with critics. I mean,
Speaker 2: some of them have developed a cult following over time, certainly,
Speaker 2: but I think a lot of more still like they're
Speaker 2: really going for something like that. He was definitely making
Speaker 2: some big swings, and he's continued to act as well,
Speaker 2: not only playing killer hands but sometimes taking on more
Speaker 2: pronounced dramatic roles. And again, his writing credits go back
Speaker 2: to I think nineteen sixty six, with a mix of
Speaker 2: genre films, and he also contributed to several screenplays on
Speaker 2: films that he did not direct, but that he was
Speaker 2: like at least loosely associated with.
Speaker 3: I just had an idea. I can't believe I've never
Speaker 3: thought of this before. You know, those hands only cooking videos.
Speaker 3: There's cooking shows where you'd never see the person's face.
Speaker 3: You're just looking down hands making food. Or Jento should
Speaker 3: make those right, And he wears the gloves and probably
Speaker 3: he's a little bit violent, you know, he appeels the
Speaker 3: potatoes with a needle or something. It takes a while,
Speaker 3: but gets the job done.
Speaker 2: The first season of Look Around You has these science
Speaker 2: experiments with a pair of hands conducting the experiments, and
Speaker 2: there's one of the experiments where the hand, one of
Speaker 2: the hands becomes scalded by boiling water. So the hand
Speaker 2: then is adorned with a leather glove. And there are
Speaker 2: several nods to Jallo in that particular episode, with it
Speaker 2: not too overt, but in the way it's like caressing
Speaker 2: and fondling various scientific paraphernalia. All right, let's go further
Speaker 2: behind the camera here. The other credited writer is Bernardino
Speaker 2: z a Pony who lived nineteen twenty seven through the
Speaker 2: year two thousand, Italian screenwriter, best known internationally for his
Speaker 2: collaborations with Federico Fellini and Tinto Brass. His Fellini films
Speaker 2: include Toby Dammit, part of the anthology Spirits of the
Speaker 2: Dead from nineteen sixty eight this is the one hit
Speaker 2: Terrence Stamp in it, as well as Satiricon from sixty nine,
Speaker 2: The Clowns from nineteen seventy, Roma from seventy two, Casanova
Speaker 2: from seventy six, and City of Women from nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: His films with Brass consist of ninety one's Paprika and
Speaker 2: ninety two's All Ladies Do It. He also worked with
Speaker 2: Pasolini on sixty seven's The Witches and other films include
Speaker 2: seventy five's Lenore and seventy six is Plot of Fear,
Speaker 2: Oh in seventy sevens Lost Soul, and eighty one's Phantom
Speaker 2: of Love. This was his only collaboration with our gento
Speaker 2: no Bummer. They work well together apparently. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: Getting into the cast. We mentioned David Hemmings already. He
Speaker 2: plays our protagonist, the character Marcus Hemmings with nineteen forty
Speaker 2: one through two thousand and three British actor, director and
Speaker 2: something of a nineteen sixties cultural icon in his own right.
Speaker 2: He started out as a child actor and a singer
Speaker 2: that really came into his own during the nineteen sixties
Speaker 2: following his lead role in the film blow Up. This
Speaker 2: is set in like mod London, so very stylish affair
Speaker 2: and also very very eye catching poster art that I
Speaker 2: think everyone's probably seen if you spend any amount of
Speaker 2: time in like a movie theater or a video store.
Speaker 3: Am I correct in thinking that a key plot detail
Speaker 3: in blow Up is kind of like that that incriminating
Speaker 3: detail that is at the beginning of so many Gallo
Speaker 3: movies where there's like a the protagonist already has a
Speaker 3: revelatory kind of clue in their possession, but they just
Speaker 3: have to keep like zooming in to understand it.
Speaker 2: Mm yeah, yeah, that's a good connection. Yeah, let's see.
Speaker 2: Hemmings followed this up with see he was in the
Speaker 2: film adaptation of the musical Camelot in sixty seven. Oh
Speaker 2: and then a lot of you probably will recognize him
Speaker 2: as the rebel leader dil Dano from sixty eight to
Speaker 2: Barbarella if you don't remember specific plot elements or or
Speaker 2: character names. The guy with the mustache from Barbarella.
Speaker 3: Not John Philip Lawa's character correctly.
Speaker 2: Not the angel yeah, and not Duran Durant, So let's see.
Speaker 2: Hemmings filmography includes the various films that are now I
Speaker 2: would say deeper cuts outside of their time, but that
Speaker 2: seemed like they were a bigger deal when they came out,
Speaker 2: some lower budget fair for sure, as well as roles
Speaker 2: in noted blockbusters Towards the end of his career, so
Speaker 2: he was in two thousands Gladiator, he was in two
Speaker 2: thousand and two Gangs of New York, and his horror
Speaker 2: output includes sixty six His Eye of the Devil, seventy
Speaker 2: threes Voices, seventy nine thirst eighties Harlequin in eighty nine's
Speaker 2: The Turn of the Screw. He was also a prolific
Speaker 2: director in his own right, helming such films as seventy
Speaker 2: eight's Just a Jigglo, that one's the one with David
Speaker 2: Bowie in it, eighty one Survivor, and he also helmed
Speaker 2: various TV show episodes.
Speaker 3: Have you ever seen an Eye of the Devil?
Speaker 2: I have not seen Eye of the Devil the movie
Speaker 2: or the actual Eye of the Devil.
Speaker 3: Maybe we should check that out sometimes. That one, it's
Speaker 3: a little weird. It's got Sharon Tate in it, one
Speaker 3: of her film roles, and it's got Donald Pleasance and
Speaker 3: of course David Hemmings and David Niven. It's about like
Speaker 3: a person who goes to a I don't know actually
Speaker 3: now I'm forgetting some of the details, but somebody goes
Speaker 3: out to like a country estate with the castle and
Speaker 3: there is a be cult with hoods and robes all around.
Speaker 3: And if I'm remembering the details correctly, David Hemmings plays
Speaker 3: Sharon Tate's brother, and they're like a creepy, kind of
Speaker 3: ambiguous brother and sister duo.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, sounds interesting. Well, maybe we'll have to
Speaker 2: come back to that one. As for Hemming's role here,
Speaker 2: I think he's very good in this, and I think
Speaker 2: we have to stress as well that while in Lesser
Speaker 2: Jollo Fair this sort of character can be pretty trite,
Speaker 2: you know, but Marcus here is far better developed. He's
Speaker 2: an obsessive, flawed, often over confident man, and this I
Speaker 2: think plays into what we were getting at. Like, here's
Speaker 2: a character who early in the film is going to
Speaker 2: acquire the pieces he needs to solve the mystery, but
Speaker 2: it's not going to really be able to put it
Speaker 2: all together. But he he has the abilities, and yet
Speaker 2: he has overconfidence in his abilities at times to figure
Speaker 2: it out. Like it's a great It all comes together
Speaker 2: nicely on the screen.
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting that despite the dark and disturbing
Speaker 3: subject matter that makes up the core plot of Deep Red,
Speaker 3: the protagonist here, played by David Hemmings, is the subject
Speaker 3: of a lot of fun. Like the movie has fun
Speaker 3: at his expense. We are often laughing at his FOI.
Speaker 2: Boles, Yeah, because he is he's flowed and over confident.
Speaker 2: He's a bit of a sexist and gets called on
Speaker 2: his sexism.
Speaker 3: There's an actually I thought hilarious scene where he gets
Speaker 3: beaten at arm wrestling after like yelling at his girlfriend
Speaker 3: about how men are stronger than women, and then she
Speaker 3: beats him at arm wrestling and he's like, you cheated,
Speaker 3: it's not fair.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. He gets to have multiple comedic scenes that
Speaker 2: I thought were just perfectly balanced. Like, sometimes it gets
Speaker 2: complicated because you have different eras, different different film cultures
Speaker 2: that maybe have different ideas of how much humor you
Speaker 2: should have in your horror film, and so sometimes things
Speaker 2: can feel really out of balance, at least to us,
Speaker 2: to modern viewers. But here it feels just about right.
Speaker 2: Even though this is a dark, deep, and in many
Speaker 2: way statistic film, the humor doesn't feel out of place.
Speaker 2: It feels like a chance to sort of catch your
Speaker 2: breath and maybe forget where you were for a minute
Speaker 2: or two before things get dark again.
Speaker 3: Well it's grand gain, y'all. You know. It's the hot
Speaker 3: and cold showers where the idea is that you would
Speaker 3: get a you know, a frightening, disturbing short play followed
Speaker 3: by a comedy sketch, and so it you know, takes
Speaker 3: you back and forth and the contrast makes each one
Speaker 3: more exciting and refreshing.
Speaker 2: All right. Up next, we have another actor that we
Speaker 2: already mentioned, Daria Nickelode, playing the character Gianna. This is
Speaker 2: our nosy reporter, another role that we've just come to
Speaker 2: expect from genre films, but here she's a strong, confident
Speaker 2: character played by Italian actress and frequent Argento collaborator Nickelode, also,
Speaker 2: of course, one time a romantic partner and mother of
Speaker 2: their daughter Aja Argento. She lived nineteen forty nine through
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, and she appeared in five films directed by
Speaker 2: Argento between seventy five and eighty seven. We have Deep Red,
Speaker 2: but also Inferno, Tinebray, Phenomena and Opera. In fact, I
Speaker 2: believe the two of them met on this film, so
Speaker 2: professional relationship giving away to romantic relationship. She also has
Speaker 2: screenplay credits on Suspiria and Inferno, but may have contributed
Speaker 2: to others in an uncredited capacity during their time together.
Speaker 2: Her other film credits include Mario Bava's final film Shock
Speaker 2: from seventy seven.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to remember if I've seen that one.
Speaker 2: I have not that I have not seen Bava's Mario
Speaker 2: Bava's later.
Speaker 3: Work Beyond the Door too. What I just looked it up,
Speaker 3: and it's known it was released in the US as
Speaker 3: Beyond the Door too, which is hilarious because have you
Speaker 3: seen Beyond the Door?
Speaker 2: No, this is a foro Italian film, but I'm not
Speaker 2: familiar with this. What's the deal on it?
Speaker 3: Beyond the Door is an Italian ripoff of the Exorsus.
Speaker 3: That is we I think maybe we should watch it?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Really, yeah, it's pretty wild.
Speaker 2: We could probably. It's kind of like with Jaws. We
Speaker 2: could probably do a solid month or many months of
Speaker 2: just exorcist ripoffs from other countries, because I've seen some
Speaker 2: some Spanish exorcist ripoffs. All right, we'll remember that one.
Speaker 2: But as for Nickelode here, solid presence here. I think
Speaker 2: she's great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, and I would say probably, especially if
Speaker 3: you watch this longer cut that I watched, which has
Speaker 3: all these restored scenes, and again, I really get the
Speaker 3: impression that most of what's restored has to do with
Speaker 3: her character, building her out more.
Speaker 2: All right, let's see up next. We have the character Carlo,
Speaker 2: played by Gabrielle Lavia born nineteen forty two. Talent and
Speaker 2: a well known Italian stage actor, active on screen and
Speaker 2: TV from about sixty six through twenty twenty two, and
Speaker 2: as a director and writer from eighty three through twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one. In fact, he directed, co wrote, and starred
Speaker 2: in a nineteen eighty three film titled Believe This is
Speaker 2: the Prince of Homburg and an historical drama that was
Speaker 2: apparently well regarded upon release. But I see few signs
Speaker 2: of it today. Maybe it's more prominent, prominently discussed on
Speaker 2: Italian language websites and so forth, but like on letterboxed
Speaker 2: and so forth, I just don't see people talking about
Speaker 2: what this film even really is. But it looked like
Speaker 2: it was nominated for various awards when it came out,
Speaker 2: As is often the case, sometimes it's the genre films
Speaker 2: that of course resonate internationally in a stronger fashion. And
Speaker 2: so yeah. Lavia's other films include nineteen seventy fours Beyond
Speaker 2: the Door, which I had in the notes here and
Speaker 2: we just talked about. He was also in a film
Speaker 2: the same year titled The Tempter. He was in Inferno,
Speaker 2: playing a different character, also named Carlo. I think, okay,
Speaker 2: it's just a nod back to this film. He's an
Speaker 2: a don't remember who that is. I have seen Inferno,
Speaker 2: but I think it's a supporting character. I don't remember
Speaker 2: him either from it. I think I've seen Inferno, but
Speaker 2: it's been a while. He's an eighty three Zetter and
Speaker 2: he's in another Argenta film, Sleepless from two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: So Lavia here really solid, and I would say that
Speaker 2: his scenes with Himmings especially have a lot of character.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they had any additional scenes together
Speaker 2: in the extended version that you watched or not, but
Speaker 2: the ones I saw they had great chemistry.
Speaker 3: I thought they did well. Actually I can't be sure,
Speaker 3: but I think the version you saw probably didn't have
Speaker 3: the scene where they after they talk, they go out
Speaker 3: together and they go to the bar and they play
Speaker 3: piano together on the same piano.
Speaker 2: I didn't know. Now I really want to see that
Speaker 2: because that's one of the whole things is they're both
Speaker 2: pianists and they have this discussion about how they have
Speaker 2: different philosophies and politics regarding their profession. So Carlo is
Speaker 2: playing piano to survive, where as as Marcus is more
Speaker 2: of a he's a professional. It's his career and he's
Speaker 2: he's ascending via the piano.
Speaker 3: The way Carlo explains it is he says that he
Speaker 3: says that Marcus is a bourgeois artist who you know,
Speaker 3: is a professional. Yeah, he does it because he has ideas.
Speaker 3: Whereas he says about himself, he says, I, Carlo am
Speaker 3: a proletarian artist. I play music because it's the only
Speaker 3: way I can make money, and thus my music is
Speaker 3: actually more pure than yours.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so Carlo. We'll discuss more about Carlo when
Speaker 2: we get into the plot. But you know, obviously a
Speaker 2: complex character that is ultimately just fascinating in the way
Speaker 2: that it's realized on the screen.
Speaker 3: I quite sympathetic and tragic, even before some of the
Speaker 3: developments that come at the end of the film, like
Speaker 3: early on when there's just scenes of them talking together,
Speaker 3: when Carlo is drinking. You know, Carlo is like drunk
Speaker 3: out in a piazza and they're having a conversation together,
Speaker 3: and there is a great kind of wise sadness about him.
Speaker 3: It really works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, all right. We mentioned there was a psychic
Speaker 2: in the film. The psychic is the character Helga played
Speaker 2: by Masha Morel born nineteen forty. She's a German psychic
Speaker 2: played here by a French model turned actress of Russian
Speaker 2: and Ukrainian descent. She was already an established name in
Speaker 2: eurocinema at this point, having worked with multiple big name directors.
Speaker 2: She'd worked with Jean lu Gotter a married Woman in
Speaker 2: sixty four, She'd worked with Louis Bounel Belldajour in sixty seven,
Speaker 2: and then right after this she'd worked with She would
Speaker 2: go on to work with Renier Werner of Fastpender in
Speaker 2: seventy six in the movie Chinese Roulette. Other films of
Speaker 2: note include eighty five's Vagabond and seventy five's Last Stop
Speaker 2: on the Night Train. So a stylish and doomed character,
Speaker 2: as we'll discuss our psychic discovers who the killer is
Speaker 2: way too early in the film, even before there are
Speaker 2: any present day murders, So you know it's not going
Speaker 2: to end well for her.
Speaker 3: I think we're going to have an amazing discussion about
Speaker 3: what it means the way she takes a sip of water.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, there's a lot of water falling out of
Speaker 2: people's mouths in this movie. It was a distinctive choice.
Speaker 2: I think I've noticed it three times. Hers is the
Speaker 2: most pronounced I think in a couple of the murder
Speaker 2: or attack scenes, we see either water or some other
Speaker 2: liquid that is not blood coming out of someone's mouth.
Speaker 3: Interesting, okay, yeah, and we can check in about that later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, we we have some additional investigators. So
Speaker 2: we have Professor Giordani played by Gloco Mai who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty through twenty twenty four. This is our the
Speaker 2: character is our parapsychologist, and the actor is an Italian
Speaker 2: actor and theater director who was a specially active in
Speaker 2: Shakespearean theater. Again, one of these characters who I think
Speaker 2: was far more active on the stage in Italy, and
Speaker 2: this is perhaps his best known film, certainly internationally. The
Speaker 2: stage is where we would find most of his prestige.
Speaker 2: But he's very good here and is at times kind
Speaker 2: of our central character. Like there's a point in the
Speaker 2: film not long before he dies, really where he's like
Speaker 2: out on his own side quest and Marcus listen, even
Speaker 2: along for the ride.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's doing some investigating and he figures out a
Speaker 3: message written by one of the previous murder victims. And
Speaker 3: I'm going to be honest, I did not figure out
Speaker 3: what that message was or what it contributed to the solution, did.
Speaker 2: You think, Well, he saw the full so basically, as
Speaker 2: we'll discuss the situation is, he figures out that the
Speaker 2: murder victim wrote on the steamed up mirror wall wrote something,
Speaker 2: but we don't get to read the full ride out.
Speaker 2: We get to read like the killer is. And I
Speaker 2: was to assume, maybe this is I'm interpreting it incorrectly,
Speaker 2: but I thought he read the whole thing, so like
Speaker 2: he knew who the killer was, or he had some
Speaker 2: vital clue and he didn't get to pass that on
Speaker 2: to chief investigator Marcus okay, unofficial investigation hierarchy.
Speaker 3: That would all make sense. I just I never got
Speaker 3: any indication that what she had written was the killer's name. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I just saw like she wrote something, and then we
Speaker 3: never get a good look at it.
Speaker 2: Very stylish scene. Not the only film with great use
Speaker 2: of mirrors, but one of them in this movie. All right, Now,
Speaker 2: there's another professor that's kind of helping out somewhere in
Speaker 2: the parapsychology department. And this is the character Professor Bardie,
Speaker 2: played by Piro Matt Singhi. I'm not sure what his
Speaker 2: dates happened to be. His other credits include seventy four
Speaker 2: is the night Porter. Apparently he was a graphic designer
Speaker 2: or illustrator and art director who just kind of pops
Speaker 2: up in the corners of this film and a few others.
Speaker 3: He always has a vaguely comic presence. I don't know
Speaker 3: quite why, but yeah, in all the scenes he's in,
Speaker 3: he's kind of there smirking in the background. Isn't he
Speaker 3: the guy who's like, oh, by the way, this song
Speaker 3: you heard, you should go look up a book about
Speaker 3: that song. That'll tell you who the killer is.
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, so he has some important suggestions for the
Speaker 2: investigation yet, but I don't think he He doesn't even
Speaker 2: We don't even bother to murder this guy, right, I
Speaker 2: don't murder not in my cut.
Speaker 3: Though, there are some some implied murders in the movie,
Speaker 3: do you know what I'm talking about? For example, the
Speaker 3: maid who is cleaning up Amanda Righetti's house, remember this.
Speaker 3: After Professor Jordani leaves, we see the maid like hear
Speaker 3: a sound down the hall and she's like, what is
Speaker 3: that and then starts to go investigate, and then we
Speaker 3: never see her again. So I think there are at
Speaker 3: least some characters who we understand have probably been murdered,
Speaker 3: but we never find out that's true.
Speaker 2: That's true. Now we mentioned Carlo earlier, Carlo's mother often
Speaker 2: shows up. Joke. Does Carlo's mother have a name? I
Speaker 2: think on IMDb she just listened to Carlo's mother.
Speaker 3: I don't remember this from the movie, but on the
Speaker 3: wiki that says her name is Martha, So that sounds right.
Speaker 3: So Carlo's mother is Martha. We have some interesting little
Speaker 3: meetings with her earlier in the film, where Marcus is
Speaker 3: looking for Carlo and goes to her apartment, and she
Speaker 3: keeps thinking he's an engineer instead of a pianist. Of
Speaker 3: like a common mistake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But she also
Speaker 3: recurring humor. She likes to she seems a little bit,
Speaker 3: a little bit confused about what's going on, and she
Speaker 3: often refers to the fact that she used to be
Speaker 3: an actress.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that's a nice little detail because the actress
Speaker 2: playing her is a classic Italian actress. This is Clara Kalamai,
Speaker 2: who of nineteen oh nine through nineteen ninety eight. Her
Speaker 2: credits go back to the late thirties and she was
Speaker 2: acclaimed for roles in a string of nineteen forties historical dramas.
Speaker 2: This is getting and we're talking like big pictures, like
Speaker 2: not the genre stuff from Italian cinema that I'm more
Speaker 2: informed about. But I was reading that she's considered kind
Speaker 2: of a bridge between two distinct periods of Italian cinema,
Speaker 2: the White Telephone era, which is like this escapist era
Speaker 2: of thirties and forties Italian cinema with white telephones, apparently
Speaker 2: serving as a stark contrast between the style and the
Speaker 2: wealth on screen and the grim realities of the war
Speaker 2: torn fascist state. And then she goes on from this
Speaker 2: into neorealism, Italian neorealism, which emerges post warld War two.
Speaker 2: So by the time Deep Red comes out, she'd already
Speaker 2: pretty much retired but came back for this film, and
Speaker 2: I think she did one other film before retiring for good.
Speaker 2: But Argento apparently wanted an actress with like a classic
Speaker 2: cinematic appeal, because in part because that's kind of what
Speaker 2: she's playing. She's kind of playing. I'm not saying she's
Speaker 2: playing herself, but she's playing like maybe some take on
Speaker 2: the sort of actress that she was. All Right, let's
Speaker 2: see other characters of note. I'm going to try and
Speaker 2: skip ahead here. You know, we have characters that come
Speaker 2: up that are important. They catch a murder or two,
Speaker 2: but then we move on. There's a character named Massimo
Speaker 2: introduced as Carlo's romantic partner, played here by Geraldine Hooper.
Speaker 2: So it's an interesting bit of casting because we have
Speaker 2: a female actor playing a character with a masculine Italian name,
Speaker 2: but whose gender identity would seem to be feminine or
Speaker 2: non binary. Hooper was a British actress with a handful
Speaker 2: of mostly bit parts in such films as seventies Queens
Speaker 2: of Evil and seventy one's they have changed their face,
Speaker 2: but very small role at least in the cut I watch.
Speaker 2: I don't know if this character has additional scenes. We
Speaker 2: don't really get to know this character at least in
Speaker 2: the version of the film I watch, but her performance
Speaker 2: plays an important role.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an interesting scene. So the setup is that
Speaker 3: Marcus is looking for his friend Carlo. He goes to
Speaker 3: Carlo's mother's apartment. That's when we get this weird meeting
Speaker 3: where she's like, I used to be an actress, but
Speaker 3: somehow she sends him to this other apartment where Carlo
Speaker 3: might be found and when Marcus gets there, he meets
Speaker 3: this character Massimo, and you think, based on the very
Speaker 3: first interaction, like it seemed to me like, oh, no,
Speaker 3: is this being set up as kind of a homophobic
Speaker 3: reaction From what I from the context in the scene,
Speaker 3: it made it seem like this is the first time
Speaker 3: that Marcus discovers that Carlo is gay, but he actually
Speaker 3: in the scene doesn't really go that way. He comes
Speaker 3: in and then he kind of tries to be a
Speaker 3: good friend, and then like together Marcus and Massimo talk
Speaker 3: about Carlo's problems and how they're like both trying to
Speaker 3: help him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a it's a very humanizing scene and kind
Speaker 2: of a breath of fresh air. I'm really a breath
Speaker 2: of fresh air. Though at this point in the film,
Speaker 2: like you're still in a genre movie. If you haven't
Speaker 2: seen it before, you don't know how things are gonna
Speaker 2: ultimately land. Yeah, but looking back on it still, I
Speaker 2: think it was a very nice scene.
Speaker 3: I would say that Jallo films overall are not known
Speaker 3: for having super cool thoughts about gender and sexuality.
Speaker 2: No, I mean you can basically say that of genre
Speaker 2: films from throughout the nineteen seventies, So but not the
Speaker 2: place you're gonna find it. But you do find it sometimes,
Speaker 2: but it's just it's an exception when you do this movie.
Speaker 3: Though it didn't end up going in a bad direction
Speaker 3: that it felt like it might be going. It actually
Speaker 3: ended up being kind of like a sweet and interesting scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think it'll be interesting to discuss this
Speaker 2: once all the cards are on the table, because I
Speaker 2: believe this film is intentionally subversive in that, like it
Speaker 2: is taking certain genre staples and stereotypes, cinematic stereotypes, and
Speaker 2: also stereotypes that are probably in the viewer's mind as
Speaker 2: well either, I mean, stereotypes that they're bringing into a
Speaker 2: cinematic experience and probably bringing into real life as well,
Speaker 2: and then taking those and then subverting expectations. So yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll get back to that. Let's see rounding of the cast.
Speaker 2: Just a couple of small roles that I just want
Speaker 2: to mention because of their connection to other horror films.
Speaker 2: Nicoletta Elmi is in it playing Olga. This is the
Speaker 2: creepy redheaded girl from Footprints on the Moon that we
Speaker 2: watched last year.
Speaker 3: Yep, actually in both movies, if I'm remembering her right.
Speaker 3: In Footprints on the Moon. It's a character who shows
Speaker 3: up to be like a kind of strange, haunting child
Speaker 3: presence who had first seen weird and threatening, but then
Speaker 3: they turn out to be harmless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think she gets slapped around by the
Speaker 2: protagonist Footprints, and here she just gets kind of like
Speaker 2: strong armed. Yeah.
Speaker 3: In both movies she's treated badly by adults Summer, but
Speaker 3: here she ultimately ends up being the able to give
Speaker 3: the protagonists the clue that, oh, if we just go
Speaker 3: to a certain middle school and look at every drawing
Speaker 3: ever made by a child there, we'll find the drawing
Speaker 3: that will unlock the mystery.
Speaker 2: That's right, And they do. But yeah, fun Little just
Speaker 2: sort of almost an Easter egg for horror fans because
Speaker 2: she was also in Bava's Bay of Blood as well
Speaker 2: as Baron Blood. She's in seventy three's Flesh for Frankenstein,
Speaker 2: and she's the grown up redhead in nineteen eighty five
Speaker 2: Demons Now, and even Trashire Deep Cut. Though there's a
Speaker 2: scene where we see a fruit vendor in the street,
Speaker 2: a very distinctive looking man. This is Salvatory Bacco, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen thirty two through nineteen eighty four. He was
Speaker 2: an actual flower vendor outside of some Italian film studios,
Speaker 2: but then got cast because of his distinctive looks, frequently
Speaker 2: cast as heavies and beast men, cave men and the like.
Speaker 2: He was definitely in some sludge in his day, and
Speaker 2: I think some like spaghetti westerns as well.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I'm not super familiar, but well.
Speaker 2: He pops up. Let's see the cinema. We have to
Speaker 2: mention the cinematographer because of the look of this film.
Speaker 2: We can't reference everybody, but Luigi Cuvolar lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: seven through twenty thirteen, noted Italian cinematographer who worked with
Speaker 2: the likes of Billy Wilder, Paul Morrissey and Luccio Fulci.
Speaker 2: And then finally the music. We've already talked about this
Speaker 2: a little bit. There are two individuals quote to There's Goblin,
Speaker 2: of course, which we'll get to, but then also we
Speaker 2: have Giorgio Gazzlini, who is credited as well, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty nine through twenty fourteen. He was a composer
Speaker 2: and jazz pianist, and he apparently composed the initial score
Speaker 2: and then our Gento wasn't really happy with all of it,
Speaker 2: and said, okay, let's bring in Pink Floyd. I don't
Speaker 2: know the full I don't know he actually reached out
Speaker 2: to Pink Floyd or he was like, we need something
Speaker 2: like Pink Floyd. But this leads to him checking out
Speaker 2: a more local prog rock group by the name of Goblin,
Speaker 2: headed up by Claudio Seminetti born nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 3: It was destiny, a match made in heaven.
Speaker 2: So some of the GOSLINI tracks apparently remain, it's like
Speaker 2: three or four tracks. Some of them have been re
Speaker 2: recorded by Goblin. So I'm just guessing here. I'm no
Speaker 2: score expert, but I think maybe the indeed the jazzy
Speaker 2: or piano numbers, or perhaps his compositions, And of course
Speaker 2: you know Goblin. When you hear Goblin that key deep
Speaker 2: red theme song that gets stuck in your head, you
Speaker 2: know that's totally their work. This is interesting because this
Speaker 2: is of course, this is of course Argento's first collaboration with Goblin,
Speaker 2: and indeed Goblin's first film score. Many more would follow.
Speaker 2: They would go on to become a huge part of
Speaker 2: the sound of Jallo and Italian genre cinema of the
Speaker 2: seventies and eighties seminettes work as a solo artist as well.
Speaker 2: We've previously discussed him independently as an independent artist on
Speaker 2: our episodes concerning Let's See eighty three's Conquest from Fulci.
Speaker 2: I'm wearing my Conquest shirt today, and then eighty six
Speaker 2: is hands of Steel.
Speaker 3: If only I could be wearing my Hands of Steel today.
Speaker 2: You know their hands of Steel shirts out there somewhere. Yeah,
Speaker 2: what can you say?
Speaker 3: Amazing score, right, wonderful. In fact, if you're ready to
Speaker 3: switch over and talk about the plot a bit, one
Speaker 3: of the first notes I had was about the opening music. Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's do it so in general about the plot section.
Speaker 3: I think maybe we should do some close narration of
Speaker 3: the opening few scenes and then shift to a more
Speaker 3: general discussion for the rest of the movie. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so we open the film with music playing over credits,
Speaker 3: and visually it's a pretty straightforward credit sequence. It's sans
Speaker 3: serif text on a black background, and I love the
Speaker 3: main musical theme of Deep Red that's playing over this.
Speaker 3: I think it is really interesting how the primary riff
Speaker 3: that you hear repeated in this song is sort of
Speaker 3: the structure that everything else builds around. Is a musical
Speaker 3: phrase on a harpsichord that I think communicates this feeling
Speaker 3: of stuttering or disordered thought. The way this riff has
Speaker 3: always sounded to me is the musical equivalent of somebody rapidly,
Speaker 3: repeatedly saying the first few words of sentences without finishing them.
Speaker 3: So if you can kind of match what I'm about
Speaker 3: to say to the riff in the song, it's like
Speaker 3: I would, would you if I would? If we could.
Speaker 3: It's that kind of feeling.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, Okay, now you said this is this is on
Speaker 2: a harpsichord, though this is not synth.
Speaker 3: Well they're synth in the song, but the main riff
Speaker 3: you're probably hearing in your head that thing, well you'll
Speaker 3: get that on a couple of instruments in the track.
Speaker 3: So I think at one point it might be being
Speaker 3: plucked on an acoustic or classical guitar. I'm not sure,
Speaker 3: but the main version that sticks out with the high
Speaker 3: pitched ringing is on a harpsichord. And I looked this up.
Speaker 3: They used a real harpsichord here, so it's not a synthesizer.
Speaker 3: It's a real harpsichord. Being played by Goblin keyboardist Claudio Simonetti.
Speaker 3: And then below that you've got you've got a rhythm section.
Speaker 3: Of course, you've got a bassline that's played on an
Speaker 3: electric bass with this great, really plucky, hollow percussive sound.
Speaker 3: And then up top there is an extremely high pitched,
Speaker 3: almost painful to the ears lead melody played on synthesizer
Speaker 3: with this metallic whistle like voicing. I'm not sure what
Speaker 3: kind of synthesizer this is played on. It might be
Speaker 3: a minimog. I think they did use a minimog for
Speaker 3: some of the synth in this movie. But the way
Speaker 3: the high pitched lead and the bass fit together, they
Speaker 3: almost form these counter melodies playing off of this machine,
Speaker 3: like stuttering from the harpsichord, and it's just so cool.
Speaker 3: I couldn't love this theme more.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like I said, I've been listening to this particular
Speaker 2: number for years, popping up in mixes and so forth.
Speaker 2: It's just so good.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And also when we hear more of this theme
Speaker 3: later on, it will introduce other instruments, so you end
Speaker 3: up getting organ. I wonder, I don't remember for sure,
Speaker 3: but the organ might be playing on one of those
Speaker 3: on a Leslie speaker on a rotating speaker that creates
Speaker 3: this whirling effect, and you get a electric guitar and
Speaker 3: drums and it builds up to you this bombastic crescendo.
Speaker 3: But anyway, in the opening, before we get to this
Speaker 3: big part of the song, we actually cut away to
Speaker 3: an opening scene. It's the first action we see. I'll
Speaker 3: come back and describe that in just a second. But
Speaker 3: one of the things, Rob, if this makes any sense,
Speaker 3: one of the things I like so much about the
Speaker 3: Deep Red theme is how it feels old world and
Speaker 3: new world at the same time. The harpsichord creates this
Speaker 3: feeling of antiquity. It very much fits with all of
Speaker 3: the old architecture and sculpture that we see throughout the film.
Speaker 3: It's very baroque, almost like you know js Bach, and
Speaker 3: yet it's a proud rock song. So you have this
Speaker 3: electric bass, maybe with some kind of modulation on it.
Speaker 3: You've got the drums and the synthesizers, and it's groovy
Speaker 3: and it is very rocking, but it has this baroque
Speaker 3: harpsichord thing as like the main texture that runs through
Speaker 3: the whole song.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is good. It's this interesting analysis.
Speaker 3: Okay, So anyway, what's this opening scene that we get
Speaker 3: in the middle of the credits. It seems to be
Speaker 3: a flashback. We're looking at the interior of a house
Speaker 3: sometime in the nineteen fifties, seems to be in Italy,
Speaker 3: and it's a room decorated for Christmas. This room will
Speaker 3: play play a big role in the film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a Christmas film. I can't believe we didn't consider
Speaker 2: this one for Last Night.
Speaker 3: We should have. So you get a tree with a
Speaker 3: bunch of ornaments and tensil, and there is a dining
Speaker 3: room table with a bunch of half empty wine glasses
Speaker 3: on it. There's a record player. Rob did you notice
Speaker 3: that the crazy wallpaper and the pattern on the dining
Speaker 3: room tablecloth almost look like they match. I really assumed
Speaker 3: in they don't actually match that that would have been amazing,
Speaker 3: but they're close. And then so we're looking at this
Speaker 3: room at Christmas time. And the opening shot here in
Speaker 3: the room is weird because it is it is shot
Speaker 3: from like three inches above the hardwood floor, almost like
Speaker 3: we're seeing the room from the perspective of someone lying
Speaker 3: down on the floor. And then we hear a child's
Speaker 3: voice singing a creepy song without lyrics. It's just some
Speaker 3: la la las. But this song we will hear it
Speaker 3: a bunch of times in the film, not nearly as
Speaker 3: good as the Goblin song. And then suddenly we see
Speaker 3: shadows on the wall. There are two human silhouettes. One
Speaker 3: shadow is stabbing the other one with a knife. We
Speaker 3: don't see who's casting the shadows. And then after the
Speaker 3: stabbing is finished, the perpetrator relaxes posture and walks away,
Speaker 3: and then we see a bloody knife clatter to the
Speaker 3: floor right in front of the camera, and then into
Speaker 3: frame step a pair of feet, children's feet, so it's
Speaker 3: a child in black shoes and tall socks walking up
Speaker 3: to this cast a side knife as if to pick
Speaker 3: it up. And then the scene ends and we just
Speaker 3: smash back to credits and Goblin.
Speaker 2: So we've established a murder in the past before we
Speaker 2: fast forward into the present day.
Speaker 3: Even in the nineteen fifties, though, did kids wear like,
Speaker 3: you know, knee high socks and shoes like this at home?
Speaker 3: This just seems uncomfortable, don't you. When you get home.
Speaker 2: It's Christmas or some I mean, and their gifts still
Speaker 2: under the tree. So I'm to assume this is maybe
Speaker 2: Christmas Eve. I don't know when the depends when the
Speaker 2: presents are opened, given the household tradition, but maybe it
Speaker 2: was a special dinner and therefore everyone's stressed up.
Speaker 3: So we get a scene where we meet our protagonist,
Speaker 3: Marcus Daley, who is a jazz piano player, a band leader,
Speaker 3: and a music conservatory instructor. We learn later that he's
Speaker 3: originally from England but now living in Rome. And when
Speaker 3: we meet Marcus, he is rehearsing with his jazz band
Speaker 3: in an awesome I'm at first I did not know
Speaker 3: what the space was, but I looked it up. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna get to that in just a second. It looks
Speaker 3: like the inner sanctum of a temple of Jupiter. It's
Speaker 3: this huge circular space ringed with marble columns, and then
Speaker 3: light falling down from a skylight above, and Marcus has
Speaker 3: his piano pushed right up against this stone box in
Speaker 3: the middle of the room that looks like an altar.
Speaker 3: So I looked up the actual location. It's kind of
Speaker 3: unbelievable they shot this at a real place in Rome.
Speaker 3: It is the fourth century mausoleum of Constantina, The daughter
Speaker 3: of Constantine the first, the first Christian emperor. So his
Speaker 3: adult daughter's grave here her you know, tomb is and
Speaker 3: this was the mausoleum was later turned into a church.
Speaker 3: And then they actually shot a jazz practice scene for
Speaker 3: Deep Red Inside.
Speaker 2: Oh wow. Now I have to note the version of
Speaker 2: the film I watch does not feature scene. We go
Speaker 2: straight to the sequence afterwards, but it does. This sounds
Speaker 2: stunning and I love this detail. You're going to get
Speaker 2: into in a bit here that perhaps a meta commentary
Speaker 2: on the film and horror films in general.
Speaker 3: So they're playing music and Marcus stops his band in
Speaker 3: the middle of a song to give them some direction.
Speaker 3: He says, you know, you guys are doing a great job,
Speaker 3: good effort. But there's a problem. He says, it's too good.
Speaker 3: You're playing is too precise, it's too formal. He says,
Speaker 3: this is a quote. It should be more trashy. And
Speaker 3: he explains that the kind of jazz he's interested in
Speaker 3: playing was invented in Brothels and it should sound that way.
Speaker 3: And so I was just thinking, wait a minute, is
Speaker 3: this a meta commentary. It's like a great way to
Speaker 3: open a jallo film.
Speaker 2: Either way, needs more trash.
Speaker 3: But coming back to the fact that so this scene
Speaker 3: wasn't in your version. You know, I've seen people talk
Speaker 3: about the virtues of the different cuts of the film.
Speaker 3: This was one of the scenes with Italian audio, so
Speaker 3: I think it was definitely added back in for this
Speaker 3: particular release. I was watching, and yeah, I think maybe
Speaker 3: you could go either way. Like I like the perhaps
Speaker 3: meta commentary about needing more trashiness. I think it's nice
Speaker 3: to see our protagonist in his element before we meet
Speaker 3: him on the night that changes his life. But I
Speaker 3: would agree that it is probably a stronger, more vigorous,
Speaker 3: and grabbier way to start the film if we go
Speaker 3: straight from the credits to what comes next, which is
Speaker 3: the psychic demonstration scene.
Speaker 2: Right the parapsychology conference that is of course central to
Speaker 2: the plot and also just visually stunning. We go right
Speaker 2: from the credits into this just visually stunning sequence with
Speaker 2: some amazing Hitchcock esque long tracking shots. They take us
Speaker 2: into the auditorium where the parapsychology conference is taking place.
Speaker 3: And then later out into the bathroom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you're out into the bathroom. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's also I think key because this is a very
Speaker 2: red room. I mean, the rosso here is very profundo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this was shot in another location I looked up.
Speaker 3: This was the Teatro Carignano in Turin, which several of
Speaker 3: the locations in this movie are in Turin or to Reno, Italy.
Speaker 3: So this is a beautiful theater with this red and
Speaker 3: gold color theme, built in the late eighteenth century. Apparently
Speaker 3: at one point it burned down but then was restored.
Speaker 3: Overwhelming sensations of like opera and blood and champagne. It's
Speaker 3: really cool space. And yeah, so here's where this we're
Speaker 3: what we see, based on a sign, is going to
Speaker 3: be the World Parapsychology Congress. First we see the poster
Speaker 3: and then suddenly we're inside the lobby for the event,
Speaker 3: and we're just gliding along past the ushers toward the
Speaker 3: auditorium and we hear a professor's voice delivering a lecture
Speaker 3: about telepathy. There are a lot of wonderful moving camera
Speaker 3: shots in this film, but I would like to note
Speaker 3: a special eerie quality they have, and this one illustrates
Speaker 3: it nicely. So you've got to here. I guess I
Speaker 3: don't know if it's a dolly shot or a steady
Speaker 3: cam shot, but it's a smooth, gliding moving camera going
Speaker 3: through the space of the lobby into the auditorium, and
Speaker 3: it's shot at human eye level, so we get a
Speaker 3: strong feeling of moving point of view. We're seeing through
Speaker 3: somebody's eyes as they move through this scene, but there's
Speaker 3: no indication whatsoever of whose point of view we're getting.
Speaker 3: We are seeing through the eyes of a mystery, and
Speaker 3: that's kind of an unsettling feeling in itself. We don't
Speaker 3: know whose perspective we're sharing. But then also there are
Speaker 3: these other eerie things the way, Rob do you remember
Speaker 3: the shot as the camera approaches the auditorium, the curtains
Speaker 3: in the door to the event suddenly part without being
Speaker 3: touched as the camera approaches them. It's as if these
Speaker 3: portals are just opening in front of us by magic.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like we got movie signs, you know, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: the doors are just opening. But then also the camera
Speaker 3: movement is very smooth. It doesn't have the bounce that
Speaker 3: we associate with a human point of view when we
Speaker 3: are walking through a room, so it's got this agentic
Speaker 3: human point of view quality, but it's gliding smoothly through
Speaker 3: the air, so it seems a little unnatural.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I've seen this referred to what is
Speaker 2: a decoupled POV shot. So creates this weird sense of like,
Speaker 2: whose point of view is this? Is this the killer?
Speaker 2: Is this a ghost? Or is this like something a
Speaker 2: little more vague and something that is at once a
Speaker 2: character in the film and also just like a sort
Speaker 2: of an extension of us the viewer in a cinematic world.
Speaker 3: So we come into the auditorium and there is a
Speaker 3: parapsychologist named a Professor Giordani on stage delivering a lecture
Speaker 3: on telepathic communication, and then beside him at this table
Speaker 3: speaker's table, or a couple of other people. One of them,
Speaker 3: we will learn, is a psychic named Helga Ullman. I
Speaker 3: want to read part of this lecture that Giordani is
Speaker 3: giving because I thought this was interesting. He says, this
Speaker 3: is in translation, because this part of the lecture in
Speaker 3: my cut was in Italian, but I looked up a translation,
Speaker 3: so he says quote. The phenomenon, as confirmed by the
Speaker 3: most recent studies, is not limited to higher species, but
Speaker 3: includes both vertebrates and invertebrates, butterflies, termites, zebras, all these
Speaker 3: animals and many others use telepathy to give orders and
Speaker 3: exchange information. This fact is well known and can be
Speaker 3: easily demonstrated. For example, if we cage a butterfly within
Speaker 3: a few hours, it will be able to attract numerous
Speaker 3: other butterflies that, at its call will flock together in
Speaker 3: rapid flocks, even covering several kilometers. This is telepathy, a
Speaker 3: faculty that newborns possess well in their first months in
Speaker 3: the first months of their lives, but which they lose
Speaker 3: as with the passing of the years they acquire the
Speaker 3: means of verbal communication. There are some exceptions. Certain individuals,
Speaker 3: for reasons still unknown to us, do not lose this faculty. So,
Speaker 3: as we mentioned already, this is a movie in which
Speaker 3: psychic powers are real, but they're not just real. We
Speaker 3: get a scientific explanation of how they're supposed to work.
Speaker 3: Some animals possess these power or I guess not how
Speaker 3: they work, but some things about when they work. Some
Speaker 3: animals possess these powers. All humans are born psychics, but
Speaker 3: we lose our psychic powers somehow when we acquire language.
Speaker 3: Except in a few rare exceptions, a few people can
Speaker 3: gain language, but still keep the power to read minds,
Speaker 3: and they say, Helga Ullman, the psychic sitting beside him
Speaker 3: is one of these exceptions. Interesting. I don't know, do
Speaker 3: you know if this is a common theory that like
Speaker 3: parapsychologists had, that like everybody's born psychic, but you lose
Speaker 3: it when you learn words.
Speaker 2: I have not explored it myself. It sounds convincingly like
Speaker 2: something you would hear from parapsychologists, and you know, it's
Speaker 2: kind of a neat idea. I guess the idea being
Speaker 2: that humans are all psychic and then we lose again.
Speaker 2: We lose the psychic power because we acquire language, and
Speaker 2: therefore there's no need to communicate psychically anymore, and it's
Speaker 2: like an energy intensive thing that we no longer need
Speaker 2: to do, or just all babies lose Or is it
Speaker 2: because we lost our psychic abilities so we had to
Speaker 2: develop language. I guess you could look at it either way.
Speaker 2: This film's not really concerned with such questions, but stop provoking.
Speaker 3: There might be something going on with it thematically. I
Speaker 3: don't know something about the idea of perceptive powers that
Speaker 3: are lost or something that we can't see once we
Speaker 3: start to talk about things that, like the talking clouds
Speaker 3: our minds in some way, I see that maybe we'll
Speaker 3: come back to that possibly, But anyway, so we go
Speaker 3: on with Helga here, and Helga starts to talk. She
Speaker 3: explains that her powers, she says, my powers have nothing
Speaker 3: to do with magic, and they are not fortune telling,
Speaker 3: she says, in fact, she has no ability whatsoever to
Speaker 3: predict or see the future. Instead, what she sees are
Speaker 3: people's thoughts, other people's thoughts at the moment they arise,
Speaker 3: or sometimes, she says, if the thoughts are very strong,
Speaker 3: she can detect them after they have arisen, she says,
Speaker 3: quote for they linger about the room like cobwebs, and
Speaker 3: she does a brief demonstration where she reads the mind
Speaker 3: of a man in the third row. She tells him,
Speaker 3: you know, here's what you've got in your pockets. Here's
Speaker 3: some personal details about you, and he confirms that she
Speaker 3: got everything right. But in the middle of this demonstration,
Speaker 3: suddenly Helga is seized by something powerful and she starts
Speaker 3: to gasp and cry out in fear and pain, and
Speaker 3: Professor Jordani, next to her, asks her if she's all right,
Speaker 3: and she says she says, it was I can't explain it.
Speaker 3: Something strange and sharp, like the prick of a thorn.
Speaker 3: It upset me. But it's all right now. But it's
Speaker 3: not all right because she gasps again, Oh Dad, it's
Speaker 3: in there again. And she she's like, I can feel
Speaker 3: death in this room. I feel a presence, a twisted
Speaker 3: mind sending me thoughts, perverted, murderous thoughts. Go away. You
Speaker 3: have killed and you will kill again.
Speaker 2: And this is where she has the airplane drinking problem,
Speaker 2: where she tries to drink water and it just falls
Speaker 2: out of her mouth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, he gives her a glass of water.
Speaker 3: We get an extreme close up of her mouth. Her
Speaker 3: lips are actually she's got lipstick on, so her lips
Speaker 3: are deep red, and she takes a sip of water
Speaker 3: and it just like drools out all over her chin.
Speaker 3: And then she also says that she hears a child
Speaker 3: singing a song in the house. I think that'll connect
Speaker 3: to the song we heard earlier. She says, death, blood.
Speaker 3: We must hide everything, everything in the house back the
Speaker 3: way it was, and then she collapses in fear. Here
Speaker 3: Suddenly we cut away back to the point of viewshot
Speaker 3: of someone unknown, probably the same person who we were
Speaker 3: with when we came into the auditorium. This unknown person
Speaker 3: stands up from one of the rows in the audience,
Speaker 3: and while Helga is having this episode on the stage,
Speaker 3: this unknown person moves down the row and they make
Speaker 3: their way out to the exit. They go to the
Speaker 3: bathroom and then go to the sink. And I really
Speaker 3: loved this bathroom, this squalid, almost science fiction bathroom with
Speaker 3: these gray tiles on every surface. There's something about the
Speaker 3: lack of furniture or fixtures that makes this room very weird.
Speaker 3: And then the mirror is tiny and degraded, so you
Speaker 3: can't see anything in it. So we get a point
Speaker 3: of shot of this character looking into the mirror, but
Speaker 3: they are just a pale blurb. Basically, the mirror almost
Speaker 3: looks kind of diseased, like the silver ring is eaten away.
Speaker 3: In all these places and great location. Yeah, it feels
Speaker 3: like I said out of THX eleven thirty eight.
Speaker 2: Yea. Now I have a quick question. As I was
Speaker 2: watching the film at this point and we sell the
Speaker 2: character get up and leave, part of me was tempted
Speaker 2: to do something that, of course the original audience would
Speaker 2: not have been able to do. And that's rewind the
Speaker 2: film and see if I could piece together who in
Speaker 2: the audience had just risen from their seat. I don't
Speaker 2: know if that's actually possible. I haven't. I didn't have
Speaker 2: time to attempt it, but it would make it in
Speaker 2: a way, it would make sense that the film would
Speaker 2: contain that spoiler. But also it might be it might
Speaker 2: not be revealed.
Speaker 3: So I don't know if you can see anything in
Speaker 3: this scene. But there is a scene later the scene
Speaker 3: where where Marcus gets his clue that he will be
Speaker 3: trying to make sense of the rest of the film.
Speaker 3: If you know what to look for in the scene,
Speaker 3: you will absolutely see the killer's identity in that scene.
Speaker 3: But it goes by so fast. If you don't know
Speaker 3: to look out for it, you're not you're probably not
Speaker 3: going to see it.
Speaker 2: Nice well, I like the consistency there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So anyway, this point of view character we've been following,
Speaker 3: they seem to be in distress. They're leaning over the sink,
Speaker 3: and a man on the way walking past asks them
Speaker 3: if they need help. But this person never speaks, so
Speaker 3: we get no clues about their identity. And then after
Speaker 3: the man walks away and goes through the door, we
Speaker 3: see suddenly black gloves being pulled on, black gloves with
Speaker 3: gold zippers, and ooh, that'll just you know, if you
Speaker 3: know what Ajallo is, that'll just get you going, like,
Speaker 3: here's what it's about to happen. But it's actually not
Speaker 3: about to happen just yet. It will be a gap
Speaker 3: in time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The character, whoever they may be, is saying, it's
Speaker 2: time to get those gloves out again. I've been keeping
Speaker 2: those gloves for a reason, and now that reason has arrived.
Speaker 2: And this is another scene where there are various other
Speaker 2: clues that can be important later on when you're looking
Speaker 2: back on it. But I'm not going to get into
Speaker 2: everything otherwise, we're just we're trotting out every detail at
Speaker 2: every scene, but there's some bathroom specific details here that
Speaker 2: could be important later on as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then also there is a little scene after
Speaker 3: this where we're still in the same point of view
Speaker 3: and this person is watching Helga Ulman speak to Professor
Speaker 3: Giordani after the event's over, so they're spying from the wings,
Speaker 3: and I think in the scene Helga is she gives
Speaker 3: away that she has incriminating information about the killer because
Speaker 3: she mine melded with them I don't know if she
Speaker 3: can go to the police and say I psychically read
Speaker 3: someone's mind and I know that they're a murderer now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and she suspects they will kill again again.
Speaker 2: She can't see the future, but she can tell this
Speaker 2: person is up for more murders if need to be.
Speaker 2: And you know, it doesn't look good for our psyche
Speaker 2: because again she just she just revealed to the entire audience,
Speaker 2: including the killer, that I know what's up. I know
Speaker 2: who you are.
Speaker 3: But then from out of this, I think this is
Speaker 3: the moment where or we just blast out of a
Speaker 3: canon into this almost music video style sequence that is awesome.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, a tremendous object fetishization decoupled POV sequence where
Speaker 2: the audience seems to be asked to consider the power
Speaker 2: and symbolism of a number of artifacts, and at the
Speaker 2: same time we seem to be seeing them through the
Speaker 2: presumed killer's eyes, all set to that glorious Goblin theme music.
Speaker 2: You know, we get the idea of this. Okay, here's
Speaker 2: a knife, and this knife is a holy thing, and
Speaker 2: and then there are various other objects that are displayed.
Speaker 2: Each one is presented to us as if like, here's
Speaker 2: some clues. See if you can make something of this,
Speaker 2: but also like, these are fetishes that the killer is
Speaker 2: fawning over.
Speaker 3: A lot of the objects are toys. There are dolls,
Speaker 3: there's a toy devil. There are marbles. I think they're
Speaker 3: on feldt It looks like is that right? They look
Speaker 3: like they might be on a pool table or something.
Speaker 3: But yeah, then Gloves and Nie. After this, we're going
Speaker 3: to come back and meet up with Marcus again, or
Speaker 3: if you're watching a different cut of the film, this
Speaker 3: will probably be the first time you meet Marcus where
Speaker 3: he is out on this piazza at night. And this is,
Speaker 3: by the way, we could go ahead and mention what
Speaker 3: this space is, because it's another wonderful location, this big
Speaker 3: empty piazza in the nighttime that is just radiating emptiness
Speaker 3: if emptiness itself is a presence. It's here and it's
Speaker 3: very cool. So I looked up where this is. It's
Speaker 3: called Well, so the movie is supposed to take place
Speaker 3: in Rome, but this is yet another real location in Turin.
Speaker 3: It's called the Piazza CLN in Turin or Terino. So yeah,
Speaker 3: big empty space, but it has these twin statue of
Speaker 3: reclining gods. There's a god and a goddess. They're both
Speaker 3: kind of like leaning back, like they're really relaxing. They're
Speaker 3: huge statues up on these stone pedestals with fountains that
Speaker 3: pour water out from under the gods into these pools.
Speaker 3: And then in the not in real life, but in
Speaker 3: the movie, there is a cross from these statues, actually
Speaker 3: not across from them, but sort of sideways to them,
Speaker 3: there is a bar called, I think the Blue Bar,
Speaker 3: and we're gonna learn that this is where Carlo plays
Speaker 3: piano usually.
Speaker 2: Yeah, clearly patterned on Edward Hopper's Nighthawks painting. Yes, looks great. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I get the impression they constructed it or positioned
Speaker 2: it here as part of the production. But also the square.
Speaker 2: This of course brings to mine a particular scene in Suspiria,
Speaker 2: particular sequence in Suspiria that makes use of a great,
Speaker 2: big depopulated e liminal space like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a big empty space in the scene in
Speaker 3: Suspiria where the piano player actually is another piano player character.
Speaker 3: The blind piano player is attacked by like the fluttering witches,
Speaker 3: and then there's a misdirection in that murder scene that
Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't want to spoil if you've
Speaker 3: never seen Suspiria, but very cool also with the big
Speaker 3: open empty space and the night sky above. So in
Speaker 3: this scene we're going to get the first meeting between
Speaker 3: Marcus and Carlo. We've already talked a bit about their friendship.
Speaker 3: Anything else you want to say about it? Here about
Speaker 3: their conversation. Carlo has some philosophical thoughts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we discussed this a little bit already about how
Speaker 2: they just have different takes on the profession. You know,
Speaker 2: one is a one is a pianist, the other is
Speaker 2: a piano fighter in a sense. And yeah, it's just
Speaker 2: a It's a great scene, beautifully shot, raw in so
Speaker 2: many ways, revealing of their characters. I really liked it
Speaker 2: a lot, one of several great scenes between these two.
Speaker 3: But this is building up actually to the iconic first
Speaker 3: murder scene in the movie. I guess the first real
Speaker 3: murder scene where in an apartment overlooking the same piazza.
Speaker 3: So in a window up above in her apartment is Olga,
Speaker 3: the psychic from the demonstration earlier. Oh and I totally
Speaker 3: forgot to mention this, but did you notice the huge
Speaker 3: number of similarities between the psychic demonstration in this movie
Speaker 3: and the one that would come later in Scanners.
Speaker 2: Oh, I did think about that. Yes, I shall now
Speaker 2: scan everyone in the room. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, nobody's head explodes.
Speaker 2: But but I wonder if there was some inspiration there
Speaker 2: for Kreunenberg.
Speaker 3: But in both there's so much similarity it would be
Speaker 3: hard to imagine there wasn't an inspiration. Like, in both cases,
Speaker 3: the psychic they scan somebody in the audience and then
Speaker 3: they they pick they like lock in with an audience member,
Speaker 3: but then the audience member like turns it back on
Speaker 3: them and is ultimately going to kill them. You picked
Speaker 3: the wrong brain, yes, exactly. And so in this case,
Speaker 3: the the psychic Hell guy, she's at her apartment and
Speaker 3: she's just, you know, hanging out and doing some things.
Speaker 3: I don't remember what she's doing here. I think she's
Speaker 3: talking to some people on the phone.
Speaker 2: She's talking talking to somebody in She's speaking in German,
Speaker 2: So she's talking I don't know, her agent or somebody
Speaker 2: family member I don't recall.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, while she's just hanging out
Speaker 3: in her apartment, we see somebody getting ready to go
Speaker 3: out for the night. But we get like a close
Speaker 3: up of an eyeball and clearly like putting the putting
Speaker 3: the jallo murder gloves on. So something's about to go
Speaker 3: down and someone arrives at the psychic's apartment. The psychic
Speaker 3: knows before the door even opens that something is wrong,
Speaker 3: like she becomes afraid and tries to block the door,
Speaker 3: but the person comes in and then murders her. Hits
Speaker 3: her first with a cleaver, but then the death gets
Speaker 3: much more jallo because of the way that it uses
Speaker 3: non traditional movie murder weapons. The movie murder weapon after
Speaker 3: this becomes window. Yeah, so she is shoved into a
Speaker 3: window and the jagged glass on the window that goes
Speaker 3: into her neck and kills her. And then down below
Speaker 3: in the piazza, Carlo and Marcus hear the screaming and
Speaker 3: they're they're like, what's that? And so Marcus is drawn
Speaker 3: to go investigate, and he goes up to the apartment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we could scrutinize and say he says, hey,
Speaker 2: there's a murder going on up there. Let me get
Speaker 2: up there and get my fingerprints all over that, because
Speaker 2: that is what he's what he does. But the police
Speaker 2: When the police show up, they're surprisingly cool with this.
Speaker 2: They're like like, hey, you want to what are your
Speaker 2: thoughts on this prime suspect.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, he's genuinely trying to help.
Speaker 2: But then we learn I don't, at least in my cut,
Speaker 2: I don't think this was firmly established. This is his
Speaker 2: apartment building, Like, this is a murder in the building,
Speaker 2: is it?
Speaker 3: I actually don't know the answer to that, but I.
Speaker 2: Believe I, either wrongfully or correctly watching the film, is that, like,
Speaker 2: this is his building, and therefore it makes a little
Speaker 2: more sense that he's like I think he tells the
Speaker 2: police like, yeah, I didn't really know her, but she's
Speaker 2: a floor below me or something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah, So yeah, he comes
Speaker 3: up into the apartment so now, and on the way in,
Speaker 3: he's like going through her apartment, which has all these
Speaker 3: like creepy paintings of screaming faces. There's very like Monks
Speaker 3: the Scream, but just a hundred of those versions like.
Speaker 2: Whoever drew the this is the one artist that like
Speaker 2: really gets there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And as he's like he's going through the hallway
Speaker 3: and he sees all these weird faces and then as
Speaker 3: he comes to the murder scene like she has is
Speaker 3: either dying or dead there. And then he looks out
Speaker 3: the window and he sees someone leaving the scene on
Speaker 3: the ground down below. Sees them only from behind the
Speaker 3: wearing a raincoat and a hat and gloves, so no
Speaker 3: identifying detail. But so after this we we have an
Speaker 3: interview with the police. The police are there, they're not.
Speaker 3: They don't seemed to be incredibly useful, but we do
Speaker 3: learn some things that will be important for the rest
Speaker 3: of the film, such as the detail that we talked
Speaker 3: about there. This is in so many Gallo films, the
Speaker 3: detail where if you could just remember it right or
Speaker 3: make sense of it, it would solve the mystery. Here
Speaker 3: he remembers coming down the hallway and seeing a painting
Speaker 3: that's not there anymore. So the police are there looking
Speaker 3: in the room and they can't find the painting that
Speaker 3: he saw, a painting of a face.
Speaker 2: Which is a nice bit of it's not pure misdirection,
Speaker 2: but it does bring up this one. You start thinking
Speaker 2: about it as the viewer, like, okay, there's some sort
Speaker 2: of a theft of a painting. Okay, that's a whole
Speaker 2: crime staple in and of itself, but I don't have
Speaker 2: much else to go on beyond that. But it seems
Speaker 2: to be important because Marcus is fixating on it, right,
Speaker 2: even though I don't remember, Like I was like, maybe
Speaker 2: I looked up and I missed what he was talking about,
Speaker 2: But no, you didn't miss anything. It is something in
Speaker 2: his mind and it all makes sense later on.
Speaker 3: Also in this scene, we meet Gianna for the first time,
Speaker 3: played by Daria Nickelode. She arrives to to you know,
Speaker 3: to write a story on what's going on here. I
Speaker 3: guess she's a crime reporter. She is bold, assertive, flippant, difficult,
Speaker 3: and funny, and she's like making fun of the police
Speaker 3: who are trying to stop her from coming and looking in.
Speaker 3: She clearly is she has encountered, you know, their resistance
Speaker 3: to her investigations before, and is inclined to just kind
Speaker 3: of blow through them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just storms right in and starts taking photos.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But actually there will over time develop a relationship
Speaker 3: between Gianna and Marcus for one reason, because she takes
Speaker 3: his picture and then advertises in the newspaper that he
Speaker 3: is a witness to the murder, and that puts him
Speaker 3: in the crosshairs because after this there's a scene where
Speaker 3: he is home alone and somebody appears to be like
Speaker 3: stalking him in his apartment. He manages to slam the
Speaker 3: door to keep the person away from him, but he
Speaker 3: hears a whispered voice on the other side of the
Speaker 3: door saying, I think I will kill you soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the mysterious murder is onto him as well,
Speaker 2: because whoever committed this crime in the past, this Christmas homicide,
Speaker 2: they don't want anybody to do unearth the secret, the
Speaker 2: dark secrets of this crime.
Speaker 3: Also, she's she's just really into him, not the killer,
Speaker 3: but Gianna. So she's she's not just helping because she
Speaker 3: feels bad for putting him in the crosshairs. Also, she's like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know you're attractive. I'm saying we let's hook up.
Speaker 3: I don't know how much of that was in your version,
Speaker 3: because I know those are a lot of the scenes
Speaker 3: that got cut out, but clearly like, yeah, she's looking,
Speaker 3: she's looking for love.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I felt like the actors had great chemistry and
Speaker 2: they had some just nice playful back and forth here.
Speaker 2: Sometimes in these these scenes that are played a little
Speaker 2: bit more for comedy, but again not in the way
Speaker 2: that feels out of balance. Particularly there's this scene where
Speaker 2: she gives him a ride in her car and there's
Speaker 2: all this like you can't get in on that door
Speaker 2: through that door because that door doesn't work, and then
Speaker 2: like his seat doesn't work either, and he's like hunched
Speaker 2: over and you know, too far down, and.
Speaker 3: He locks his door, which means they can't get out of.
Speaker 2: The Yeah, it's like that door can never be up.
Speaker 2: We have to get a mechanic to open that door.
Speaker 3: Now, well, they from then on they get in and
Speaker 3: out of the car through the sun roof.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. So yeah, it's it's fun and
Speaker 2: it helps establish like, yeah, these two are having fun
Speaker 2: together despite all the dark things going on in the
Speaker 2: world around them, Like they have a they have a spark,
Speaker 2: even if they're kind of fighting at times about and
Speaker 2: when he's you know, his sexist side comes out and
Speaker 2: he's talking about, you know, scoffing at women's rights and all,
Speaker 2: and then she has to beat him at arm wrestling.
Speaker 2: It's nicely played out.
Speaker 3: That scene starts with him being like, oh, don't start
Speaker 3: telling me about women's equality, you know, and then it
Speaker 3: just ends with him complaining because she keeps beating him
Speaker 3: at arm wrestling. Yeah, he's like, you're doing we need
Speaker 3: to do it different this next time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So so there's that. There are also some more
Speaker 3: scenes of the friendship between Marcus and Carlo, so you
Speaker 3: get the sequence where you know, Marcus goes to check
Speaker 3: on Carlo, meets his mom, she talks about how she
Speaker 3: used to be an actress. Then he goes to find
Speaker 3: Carlo at the apartment of his lover Massimo, and they
Speaker 3: leave together, and then they talk about the case, about
Speaker 3: like whether Carlo also saw somebody leaving the apartment that
Speaker 3: night in a raincoat. Carlo thinks maybe he did, but
Speaker 3: he doesn't have any information. But then Carlo is really
Speaker 3: concerned for Marcus because he's like, he's afraid that if
Speaker 3: his friend keeps looking into this, it will lead to
Speaker 3: more trouble and he's going to end up dead. Two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So at this point we've pretty much established like
Speaker 2: the mission for all the characters here. You know, Marcus
Speaker 2: is gonna Marcus and UH and Jenna are going to
Speaker 2: continue to investigate. They're going to get various leads, they're
Speaker 2: going to follow those leads, and meanwhile, the mysterious killer
Speaker 2: is going to keep offing people that are key to
Speaker 2: the invent investigation, and these are going to be your
Speaker 2: stylish Jallo murders we already mentioned, like the one that
Speaker 2: takes place in a mirror walled bathroom. Yeah crazy, Yeah,
Speaker 2: death by drowning in a tub of hot water, scholar,
Speaker 2: which is grotesque, but also like physically the flesh aspect
Speaker 2: of it is grotesque, but the steamed up mirrors makes
Speaker 2: for it's just wonderful. It's wonderfully composed scene and then
Speaker 2: makes great use of like the the victim writing something
Speaker 2: out on the mirror before they die, and then our
Speaker 2: investigator having to make sense of that and try and
Speaker 2: figure out, oh, they actually wrote the killer is or
Speaker 2: the killer was such and such.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the victim there is the author of a
Speaker 3: book about a local legend about a haunted house where
Speaker 3: the song that Marcus heard associated with the killer was
Speaker 3: also heard playing. Yes, implicated, that's how he gets He's
Speaker 3: like trying to find out more, and then she gets killed.
Speaker 3: Somebody gets to her before he can.
Speaker 2: It's a little convoluted to the point. You wonder if
Speaker 2: the point it might be that he has completely gone
Speaker 2: off the rails and it's like fallowed some sort of
Speaker 2: nonsensical clue that's leading him in the wrong direction. But
Speaker 2: who's following him in the wrong direction, the killer. It
Speaker 2: turns out it's the right direction.
Speaker 3: Yes, So he eventually hunts hunts down this local haunted
Speaker 3: house by way of identifying some unusual plants in a
Speaker 3: book photo of the house. So now he's getting somewhere.
Speaker 3: I think they call it the House of the Screaming Child.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it surprisingly has not sold. It's still on
Speaker 2: the market. Nobody wants to live in the House of
Speaker 2: the Screaming Child. It's like when Marge becomes a real
Speaker 2: estate agent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's yeah, it will we
Speaker 2: will learn it is a murder house and it is
Speaker 2: an historic villa in Toronto, so it's I was looking
Speaker 2: it up. It's still out there.
Speaker 3: So Marcus goes to investigate. There is some great music,
Speaker 3: just you know, goblin jazz playing while he walks around
Speaker 3: the house. He meets the caretaker of the house and
Speaker 3: the caretaker's daughter who The daughter is played by the
Speaker 3: creepy redheaded child from Footprints on the Moon.
Speaker 2: She's creepy here because she might be murdering lizards.
Speaker 3: Maybe stabbing needles through lizards for witchcraft.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, drawing all sorts of horrendous childhood artwork of murder,
Speaker 2: you know, and that's her specialty.
Speaker 3: Well, but we don't know who drew this. But he
Speaker 3: goes into the house and he finds a place where
Speaker 3: like he peels the plaster away from the wall with
Speaker 3: his fingernails.
Speaker 2: Oh god, that was giving me the all over those like,
Speaker 2: come on, Marcus, find it something. There's got to be
Speaker 2: a shovel or a well. He does eventually, eventually, but
Speaker 2: it's like several minutes of nails scrape thing before he does.
Speaker 3: He goes into a flooded basements. This gets I don't know,
Speaker 3: a scraper of some kind, and it reveals a child,
Speaker 3: a child's drawing on the wall of a murder taking place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very interesting looking a bit of art. And then
Speaker 2: as he leaves it, another little piece chips away and
Speaker 2: it reveals there's more to that painting. Yeah, he doesn't
Speaker 2: know about it, but we the viewer have privileged information
Speaker 2: that our protagonist is working on an incomplete understanding of
Speaker 2: the situation. So I rather liked that.
Speaker 3: Now we already mentioned earlier that while this is going on,
Speaker 3: there's been a parallel investigation with Professor Jordani. He went
Speaker 3: to the other murder victim's house, the one who died
Speaker 3: in the bathtub, and saw the message written on the wall.
Speaker 3: Was able to like figure out what that was by
Speaker 3: refogging up the bathroom after it had disappeared. But then
Speaker 3: Jordani is now not long for this world. He knows
Speaker 3: too much. Somebody's got to do something about that.
Speaker 2: Oh and his murder scene is bonkers, so it mirrors.
Speaker 3: A lot of people think this is a highlight of
Speaker 3: the film.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, I loved it, but it's bonkers. It's
Speaker 2: so set up more or less like Marcus is almost
Speaker 2: murder from earlier where Marcus is like in his study
Speaker 2: doing work, and then he hears something weird and he
Speaker 2: picks up something to protect himself from his table. Well,
Speaker 2: same thing here with our parapsychologist, except he doesn't get
Speaker 2: to shut the door on it. He sees something and
Speaker 2: then is seemingly attacked by a hideous ventrilocus dummy or
Speaker 2: automaton wind up vampire doll.
Speaker 3: He is, Yeah, he's in his study and he hears
Speaker 3: somebody whisper his name. Yeah, the whispered voice is very creepy.
Speaker 3: He arms himself with a knife, then he kind of
Speaker 3: feels silly, I think it, puts the knife down, and
Speaker 3: then bursting out of the closet is a clockwork doll
Speaker 3: that's like wheeling toward him on some kind of contraption,
Speaker 3: just like rushing toward the camera, making crazy noises, and
Speaker 3: it's like ah, and he attacks the doll and breaks
Speaker 3: its head open, revealing that it is a machine of
Speaker 3: some kind of like a giant wind up ventriloquist stummy
Speaker 3: is what it looks like. Yeah, so I incredibly unsettling.
Speaker 2: I guess the main takeaway is it's a toy doll,
Speaker 2: which is one of the things that the killer is into.
Speaker 2: But at the time as this was happening, I was like,
Speaker 2: is this is this a machine? Like is this a robot?
Speaker 2: Is this a psychic? Attack? Is our you know, we've
Speaker 2: already had one psychic in the film, and maybe this
Speaker 2: is our villain? Is our actual killer is a psychic
Speaker 2: And they're like, you know, telekinetically throwing puppets at them.
Speaker 3: I wasn't sure, but no, not necessarily, and we don't
Speaker 3: know why the puppet was used. But it's creepy, and
Speaker 3: then the attack comes from behind. That was a distraction.
Speaker 3: The attack comes from behind and he gets like his
Speaker 3: mouth bashed on all the corners of the furniture. Do
Speaker 3: you notice how I feel like a lot of the
Speaker 3: murders in this movie are they're not. They're like things
Speaker 3: injuries that people might dream up accidentally having on their own,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a stark contrast with some of the violence,
Speaker 2: like some of the zombie violence that we discussed, say
Speaker 2: in in our recent look at Folci's What City of
Speaker 2: the Living Dead, where in that it's like zombie barfing
Speaker 2: up their entire intestine something like that. So it's certainly grotesque,
Speaker 2: but it's so grotesque that it's outside of our normal
Speaker 2: anxieties and experiences, whereas like ental trauma, that's like that's
Speaker 2: too real. That's just in factor, you know, because we
Speaker 2: can all we have all had thoughts about that or
Speaker 2: experiences along those lines, So that's that's more real to us.
Speaker 2: It's a common observation in horror, and certainly in horror
Speaker 2: cinema that it's like someone's arm can get cut off
Speaker 2: and it will mean nothing to you. But if someone
Speaker 2: gets like their palm sliced or something to that effect,
Speaker 2: a more minor injury. We'll connect with it viscerally because
Speaker 2: it's just more real. It's something that we can compare
Speaker 2: our own experiences to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so many of the kills in this movie are
Speaker 3: things that you could imagine happening to yourself by accident somehow. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, less decapitation and more more dental trauma.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So anyway, it's curtains for Jordanni, no more Jordanni
Speaker 3: to help. So we got I guess we've got a
Speaker 3: race toward the conclusion here. The way we get there
Speaker 3: is that Marcus realizes he has missed a clue. He's
Speaker 3: like looking at the picture of the villa from the
Speaker 3: book and he realizes there used to be a window
Speaker 3: on the house that's not there anymore. It's now just
Speaker 3: walled up. So he goes back to the house. He's
Speaker 3: like got to bash through this wall and find out
Speaker 3: what was behind where this window used to be. And
Speaker 3: this is like a whole action sequence.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Like he goes up, you know, goes up
Speaker 2: to the top floor, climbs out onto the outside of
Speaker 2: the house, bashes through what used to be a window,
Speaker 2: but is now a wall with a hammer and then
Speaker 2: begins to fall all off the house and has to
Speaker 2: steadily climb down the outside of the house in a
Speaker 2: really drawn out action sequence set to some really wonky jazz.
Speaker 2: I mean, I loved it, but this jazz is wonky.
Speaker 2: This is thick, it's aggressive, and it does kind of
Speaker 2: feel like the stuntman or whoever did the stunt, was like, hey,
Speaker 2: I climbed down the entire outside of that villa for you.
Speaker 2: You better not cut it, our gento. I nearly died
Speaker 2: for that, And so he didn't and cut it includes
Speaker 2: what seemingly the whole thing, but he successfully bashes through.
Speaker 2: We get in there, and what's inside the Christmas room
Speaker 2: the Christmas house side room.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, complete with the desiccated corpse.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, what is I read is a male corpse,
Speaker 2: so like dad corpse in a rocking chair. Perhaps I'm
Speaker 2: not sure it was a rocking chair. Then maybe that's
Speaker 2: old too much, just like a chair interpretation. But yeah,
Speaker 2: ancient remains of a dead body does not come alive,
Speaker 2: but much is revealed here.
Speaker 3: So Marcus gets knocked unconscious by someone unseen, The house
Speaker 3: catches on fire and then he awakes outside the house
Speaker 3: with Gianna standing over him. She she apparently found the
Speaker 3: note that he left for her, and then she followed
Speaker 3: him here and dragged him out of the house before
Speaker 3: he was quote a roast duck baby.
Speaker 2: Oh, and this is where he's like, Oh, that creepy
Speaker 2: redheaded kid. He notices in her room, what is she
Speaker 2: decorated her walls with. She's decorated her walls with drawings.
Speaker 2: It looked just like the one that he uncovered in
Speaker 2: the villa.
Speaker 3: I thought this was going to mean she was psychic
Speaker 3: and had psychically seen the image, but no, it's actually
Speaker 3: I think kind of a dumber and more convoluted twist
Speaker 3: than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that she what solid on? She read she saw
Speaker 2: it in the archives at a school. At her middle school.
Speaker 3: She's like, I was being forced to clean the archives
Speaker 3: at this middle local middle school. They say the name
Speaker 3: a lot of times, Leonardo da Vinci Middle School. I
Speaker 3: was at Leonardo da Vinci Middle School cleaning the archives
Speaker 3: and I saw this drawing and then I made a
Speaker 3: copy of it at my house. And they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: so if we just go to the school and find
Speaker 3: this drawing, it will tell us who the killer is yes.
Speaker 2: So now we have our late movie research mode. We
Speaker 2: have our mission for our protagonist and our punchy reporter.
Speaker 2: Here we know that at some point in the past
Speaker 2: a child has drawn creepy drawings of murder. They went
Speaker 2: to this middle school. This middle school has never thrown
Speaker 2: a single thing away. All the children's drawings are archived.
Speaker 2: They just need to, I guess, break into the school
Speaker 2: and go through all of these drawings, find the one
Speaker 2: they're looking for, and figure out who did it, and
Speaker 2: then they'll know the identity of the killer.
Speaker 3: Perfect, perfect plan, and that's what they do. They go
Speaker 3: there and they start going through the archives. They're being stalked,
Speaker 3: of course by the killer who's watching them from there.
Speaker 2: At one point she's like, should we call We should
Speaker 2: call the police and let them know we're here, which
Speaker 2: made me ask like, didn't you guys just like break in?
Speaker 2: Like I didn't think much about it when they did it,
Speaker 2: because you just do these things in movies like this.
Speaker 3: But guess, my guess is that the script didn't have
Speaker 3: that in it. And then they realized while they were
Speaker 3: shooting these scenes, they're like, wait, the police are showing up,
Speaker 3: but how would the police know, and they're like, oh no,
Speaker 3: we need to have Darius say we should call the
Speaker 3: police so that you know. So there's a reason. So anyway,
Speaker 3: they're there, and while they are there, they indeed discover
Speaker 3: the drawing, and on the drawing, I guess there's a name.
Speaker 3: And this lets Marcus put it all together. He starts
Speaker 3: calling out in the dark because he hears someone is
Speaker 3: there with him. He starts calling out, I know who
Speaker 3: the killer is. I know it's you. I found your drawing.
Speaker 3: Now now it all makes sense, and we get a
Speaker 3: big reveal. We also get the the idea that somebody
Speaker 3: has attacked Jianna, though we don't see exactly what's happened
Speaker 3: to her yet.
Speaker 2: Right right, But yeah, there's what seems like there's there's
Speaker 2: a death sequence, like she's stabbed or something kind of like.
Speaker 2: This is where we get a little bit of that
Speaker 2: eroticism of death here, the kind of like face she
Speaker 2: makes when she's being stabbed. But then the big reveal.
Speaker 2: It's Carlo. He pulls a gun on Marcus and he
Speaker 2: tells him that, hey, I wish you'd stay out of it.
Speaker 2: I stayed out of this. I tried to warn you
Speaker 2: away and you know, he's frazzled and Marcus is trying
Speaker 2: to reason with him. Then the cops show up, as
Speaker 2: we mentioned that they would, and Carlo is is he spooked.
Speaker 2: He runs off, and we get this long, drawn out
Speaker 2: and really disturbing sequence where Marcus runs into traffic and
Speaker 2: I don't want to go through all the details, but
Speaker 2: is essentially torn apart by the traffic.
Speaker 3: Yet again, like a horrible death sequence that you could
Speaker 3: imagine just being like a series of tragic accidents.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In my response at this point, again this was
Speaker 2: my first time seeing the film, I was like, well,
Speaker 2: the movie was great up until this point, but now
Speaker 2: it kind of sucks because, yeah, the movie ends with
Speaker 2: our our main non hetero character is the killer and
Speaker 2: ends up dying by being dragged behind a truck. You know,
Speaker 2: like that's that's gross. But there's more to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it doesn't make sense in multiple levels.
Speaker 3: It is. It is an unsatisfying conclusion, but there is
Speaker 3: another development coming.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think one of the things about it is
Speaker 2: that like it makes emotional sense at the time, and
Speaker 2: it seems like the movie's wrapping up so and you
Speaker 2: don't really have time to think about like all the
Speaker 2: ways this doesn't work yet, because you're being beat over
Speaker 2: the head with a long drawn out death sequence for
Speaker 2: the character here. It's only afterwards that we the viewer
Speaker 2: can begin to piece things together, and that Marcus can
Speaker 2: begin to piece things together.
Speaker 3: Right, So Marcus does what does he do here?
Speaker 2: Well? First, first of all, first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we find out that Gianna, she's not dead.
Speaker 2: She's going to be okay, just a fleshmom, she's pulling
Speaker 2: through it. But then he goes back to the square
Speaker 2: from before. The cafe is closed, which I thought was
Speaker 2: a nice that the bar there is closed. I thought
Speaker 2: it was a nice touch. Everything's dark and empty. It
Speaker 2: was dark and empty before, but now even more so.
Speaker 2: And Carlo is not there. Of course Carlo is dead.
Speaker 2: And then he realizes what couldn't have been Carlo. Carlo
Speaker 2: was out here in the square with me when Helga
Speaker 2: was being murdered up there. So he goes back to
Speaker 2: the crime scene, helps himself in, you know, tears the
Speaker 2: type of side, and he starts looking around. He starts
Speaker 2: thinking about that missing painting, where's that missing painting? And
Speaker 2: then he finds it. He realizes there wasn't a missing painting.
Speaker 2: What I was looking at is still here. It's not
Speaker 2: a painting, it's a mirror, and the mirror was reflecting
Speaker 2: somebody standing just out of sight that was hiding from him,
Speaker 2: but the individuals being still, and he thought that they
Speaker 2: that it was a painting of a person.
Speaker 3: Really good twist, by the way. I mean that one
Speaker 3: the first time I saw that. That worked so well
Speaker 3: for me, the painting to mirror reverse.
Speaker 2: Same here. Yeah. I'd see plenty of films where the
Speaker 2: big revelation is feels completely telegraphed and you're like, come on,
Speaker 2: go ahead and say it. You figured it out, We
Speaker 2: figured it out ten minutes ago, But not here. Just
Speaker 2: excellent bait and switch. The true killer is revealed because
Speaker 2: of course the killer shows up to kill Marcus now
Speaker 2: and it's Carlo's mom.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so when Carlo earlier pulled the gun, it's
Speaker 3: not that he was the killer, it's that he knew
Speaker 3: it was his mom and that Marcus was about to
Speaker 3: was about to turn her in, and he was trying
Speaker 3: to protect his mom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we get the full Christmas murder reveal where
Speaker 2: we find out that what happened was that Carlo's father
Speaker 2: wanted to send Carlo's mother back to the hospital. I believe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're saying that, the doctors, I mean, it suggested
Speaker 3: that she had previously been been hospitalized, maybe for like
Speaker 3: a mental condition, and that she you know, they were
Speaker 3: asking her to go back again. The doctors were saying
Speaker 3: that she would benefit from going back again. But she's refusing.
Speaker 3: She says no, and he's trying to convince her. He's saying, look,
Speaker 3: it'll be good for you, and she's saying no. And
Speaker 3: then she pulls a knife out of a drawer and
Speaker 3: she kills him.
Speaker 2: Right, so now we know what happened. Like, she's the killer,
Speaker 2: She's the one that was in the audience, she's the
Speaker 2: one that's been going around. And she even completely exonerates
Speaker 2: Carlo and says Carlo was never the killer. And she
Speaker 2: goes to kill Marcus. There's a fight, and then the
Speaker 2: way things finally go down is we get this death
Speaker 2: by elevator necklace situation. Decapitation via necklace via elevator and
Speaker 2: it gets.
Speaker 3: Caught in the elevator as it's descending and then pulls
Speaker 3: tight against her neck.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, really really grim. A lot of blood is produced,
Speaker 2: deep red blood, and we end with Marcus or my
Speaker 2: cut of the film ended with Marcus staring down and
Speaker 2: seeing his own reflection in that pool of blood. And
Speaker 2: then we close and we at least I got the
Speaker 2: text on the screen. You have been watching Deep Red? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You?
Speaker 3: In case you forgot yeah.
Speaker 2: Or I guess if you walked in late. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's the thing we have to think about movie theaters.
Speaker 2: People may have come in late or snuck into the
Speaker 2: theater and didn't know what they were watching. So now
Speaker 2: you know you have been watching Deep Red. I would just.
Speaker 3: Say that that twist the first time I saw it
Speaker 3: really got me, like I did not see it coming
Speaker 3: and it was effective.
Speaker 2: So if I'm understanding everything correctly. Then trying to piece
Speaker 2: everything together again, Carlo is a hard drinking pianist, barely
Speaker 2: holding it all together. His mother attends a parapsychology conference. Helga,
Speaker 2: the psychic detects her past crimes and then makes the
Speaker 2: move to kill her. Does and then the rest of
Speaker 2: the murders are her cover bring up her crimes. Carlo
Speaker 2: then tries to protect her when Marcus is investigating.
Speaker 3: I guess we never find out how early he knew
Speaker 3: about what was going on unclear there. Yeah, but at
Speaker 3: least by the end of the investigation, he intervenes and
Speaker 3: points a gun at at Marcus to stop him from
Speaker 3: getting his mother.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now I still don't know entirely what to make
Speaker 2: of the baby dolls. Oh yeah, the creepy automaton, some
Speaker 2: of the other fetish items. Why she had to play
Speaker 2: the song each time? Was she playing the song because
Speaker 2: the song played during the Christmas murder?
Speaker 3: Maybe she was like wanting to revisit the murder in
Speaker 3: some way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But as far as unanswered questions goes, those are
Speaker 2: fine ones to have. It's like, all the actual logistics
Speaker 2: are there on the screen. And yeah, I think the
Speaker 2: film handles its bait and switch twist rather nicely, because
Speaker 2: you know, early on we established that Carlo as an outsider,
Speaker 2: someone living on the edge of society, and especially given
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies, established his sexual preferences in a lifestyle
Speaker 2: seemingly within the context of the film as a red
Speaker 2: flag so that the moviegoer might then suspect him. This
Speaker 2: is a common trope, certainly in films of that time,
Speaker 2: and and you know, for decades to come. Though in
Speaker 2: the process they actually take a fair amount of time
Speaker 2: to establish this relationship with Massimo. Is something genuine and
Speaker 2: comforting that you know that you know, could go one
Speaker 2: or two ways, Like there's so much misdirection you could
Speaker 2: easily think, well, maybe that's misdirection trying to make me
Speaker 2: think that Carlo isn't the killer. But anyway, when it
Speaker 2: seems that Carlo is the revealed killer, we get this again,
Speaker 2: brutal and violent downfall, and then we feel I think
Speaker 2: the movie goer is made to feel all the worse
Speaker 2: when they realize, oh, well, he never was the killer.
Speaker 2: So the film seems to exploit seventy genre film expectations
Speaker 2: of a character like Carlo, and then in subverting it,
Speaker 2: you know, for plot's sake and for shock's sake, does
Speaker 2: seem to relish and making the film go or analyze
Speaker 2: their own prejudices and stereotypes real life and or cinematic.
Speaker 2: So you know, you might say it holds a mirror
Speaker 2: up to the viewer.
Speaker 3: Oh very nice, the mirror. Yeah yeah, yeah. I don't
Speaker 3: honestly know how intentional all of that is in terms
Speaker 3: of that kind of reversal of prejudices or expectations about
Speaker 3: a character, but possibly. Yeah, anyway, I mean I get
Speaker 3: like lot in.
Speaker 2: Order, only progressive in that it and so that it
Speaker 2: can further the bait and switch. I don't know, but
Speaker 2: I mean I'll take it. I'll take it where I
Speaker 2: can get it.
Speaker 3: I guess. Yeah, I can't quite tell if it is
Speaker 3: intending to be progressive in that sense or not, but
Speaker 3: it's I mean, it certainly doesn't have a lot of
Speaker 3: the kind of nastier elements like that that you would
Speaker 3: get in a lot of other Jalla films of this stuff.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, in closing, I would absolutely agree Deep Red
Speaker 2: is like the total package when it comes to Jallo.
Speaker 2: It has, it has everything, and it delivers everything pretty
Speaker 2: much flawlessly and with tremendous style.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, really good stuff. Some of the other good
Speaker 3: ones if you're looking for I haven't seen these in
Speaker 3: quite a while now, so I guess I should hesitate
Speaker 3: to recommend. But I don't know. I remember the other
Speaker 3: the other Argento Jello I was talking about Bird with
Speaker 3: the Crystal Plumage being really good. There's one I think
Speaker 3: it's by Bava called All the Colors of the Dark
Speaker 3: that I remember liking a lot. So there's some other
Speaker 3: really good ones out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Blood and Black Lace is tremendous and has some
Speaker 2: of just the most atmospheric stalking scenes you could ever imagine,
Speaker 2: like to the point where it feels like, oh, this
Speaker 2: inspired alien, I mean Bob inspired alien in other ways
Speaker 2: as well, but like the scene where the killer is
Speaker 2: stalking one of the main characters in the basement. Tremendous stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and when they're eating dinner and the black glove
Speaker 3: comes out of his stomach, that would be good.
Speaker 2: That would be good.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think that's got to do it for today.
Speaker 3: We've gone long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've gone long. We'll cut some of this out,
Speaker 2: you know, but yeah, we got a little got a
Speaker 2: little into the spirit of things for Jallo January, So
Speaker 2: at this point we'll give you the regular rundown here.
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