Directed by Dario Argento
Written by Dario Argento and Bernardino Zapponi
1975/Italy
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime (free to members)
Helga Ulmann: I can feel death in this room! I feel a presence, a twisted mind sending me thoughts! Perverted, murderous thoughts… Go away! You have killed! And you will kill again!
This movie may be the best example of the Italian thriller genre known as giallo. It also involves many graphic and horrifically bloody murders.
The setting is contemporary Rome. As the movie begins, we see pianist Marcus Daly (David Hemmings) rehearsing with his jazz band. At the same time, mind-reader Helga Ullman is addressing a conference on the paranormal. Her speech is interrupted when she feels the presence of a twisted murderer in the room. Someone leaves the theater. The violence of Helga’s premonitions end her talk and she returns home. She tells one of the organizers that she thinks she may know the identity of the killer and will tell him the next day. Tomorrow will not come for Helga as when she returns to her apartment she is brutally attacked multiple times with a meat cleaver, suffers terribly, and is pushed out the window.
Marcus is talking on the street with his very drunk friend Carlo when they hear a scream then spot a figure in a brown raincoat fleeing the scene. Carlo leaves and then Marcus sees Helga breaking through the glass. She is his upstairs neighbor and he rushes to help her. She is beyond help. Marcus decides he must find her killer and for some reason the police don’t seem to mind as he merrily contaminates evidence. Pushy female reporter Gianna insists on tagging along.
This is one of those murder mysteries where successive prime suspects are murdered and eliminated from contention. I’m not going to go further into the plot except to say it involves a haunted house and many bizarre clues. So we get a set up for a murder, a progressively more brutal murder, then go on following random clues to the next murder until only one suspect remains. A lot of Marcus’s investigation seems to be founded on lucky guesses. Much of the plot defies logic making the atmosphere even more creepy.
This movie is super stylish and very scary. Argento is a master at making attacks come with a sudden jolt and then prolonging the scare with an inventive and truly horrible murder. The cinematography and score are excellent. If this is one of the best, I think I will skip the rest. Not for me.
I saw this just last week. I was actually able to follow it, and I wondered if it’s because it’s one of Argento’s more coherent movies or if I’ve just seen enough Argento that I understand his filmmaking better.
So I called my friend Giallo Danny. He’s seen every giallo ever made and is pretty good on foreign films in general (if they were made after 1975). He said Deep Red is one of Argento’s best films.
I thanked him and promised not to bag on Eyes Wide Shut ever again. He’s a big Kubrick fan and it’s very upsetting to him.
After I wrote my own review, I watched some video reviews on YouTube. I can see that actually this really a creative triumph of sorts. I don’t understand why we shifted from looking at the aftermath of murder to watching the murder itself in long gory detail. Watched Jaws last night and was pondering why I’m perfectly OK with shark attacks and not with Deep Red. I think that in Jaws most of the actual violence is suggested but Argento almost seems to luxuriate in all that blood.
Yes, even by giallo standards Argento tended to revel in the gore. Oddly enough his masterpiece, SUSPIRIA, is not a giallo. Although I guess you could call SUSPIRIA a supernatural horror film shot in the giallo style.
Mostly I dislike gore, in fact I dislike it a good deal, but for some reason I rather enjoy giallos. Those Italians are just so darned stylish.
But while I like giallos and I like some of Argento’s work I’m not a fan of DEEP RED.
Well, maybe I’ll give a few of the better known giallos another shot. I too like the style. I will have to just keep telling myself it’s only a movie!
THE FIFTH CORD is a pretty good giallo which isn’t too heavy on the gore and the sex.
Thanks for the tip!