07/28/10 - Inferno

Inferno (1980, 107 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080923/

I had really liked Suspiria by Argento which I had checked out way back in April and so I now finally got around to seeing the sequel "in spirit" of The Three Mothers Trilogy in Inferno. I was hoping it stacked up just as well.

The film initially follows Rose Elliot (Irene Miracle) as she discovers a book that tells about these three witches. After uncovering some spooky and weird stuff, she is brutally murdered, but not before sending a letter to her brother Mark Elliot (Leigh McCloskey) about her fear who then goes to investigate. There's a bunch of other people that play small roles here and there (and most die) but the following stand out a bit more: Kazanian (Sacha Pitoëff) as the the antique dealer near where Rose lived; Professor Arnold (Feodor Chaliapin, Jr.) who is later revealed to be Dr. Varelli who built the houses for the witches; and The Nurse (Veronica Lazar) of Professor Arnold who turns out to be the second witch.

First, as I go back and read my review on Suspiria I see there were quite a number of things that I liked: the main heroine, the music, and the cinematography. Well, Inferno matches up right there with Suspiria for about the first third or so of the film and that's it. The rest is completely downhill. But first, these positives. The music isn't quite as good as the Goblin-fused soundtrack that is Suspiria but for this first bit of the film, it's still very appropriate for what's going on and adds greatly to the mood and is probably the best aspect of the movie at this point. Next, the cinematography does a pretty good job here at adding very vibrant colors that are so bright that they're unsettling. While Suspiria seemed to mostly rely on blood red, Inferno mostly uses blue. Also, the first third of Inferno mainly features Rose who is, just like Suzy from Suspiria, a great mix of beautiful and helpless.

But then Inferno takes a turn for the worse. People start getting killed off so quickly that it's hard to care about anyone. Rose dies with some other people all in the span of probably twenty minutes. This leaves Mark as the protagonist of the film even though there's still some secondary females helping him out in this quest to find out what happened to Rose (but they all end up just dying). Anyway, the big flaw here is that Mark is not a female. Naturally, the helpless nature of the female in a horror movie is what adds a lot to the suspense and when you have Mark as this young guy that could easily take on someone coming to attack him, this certain element of suspense is just lacking. He makes a terrible protagonist but does a decent enough acting job with what he's given so I'm not blaming much of this actually on him but rather the script.

Next, that music that was so great in the first bit is completely abandoned once Inferno begins its downward spiral. At its worst is near the end where Mark approaches the final confrontation, deducing some clues that will lead him closer to Dr. Varelli. Anyway, as Mark is figuring some stuff out, this would be an important spot for the music to ramp up and add some great tension. Instead, there's just about the worst choice in the world as the song used includes "Inferno!" chanted repeatedly. It comes off as really stupid though and actually ruins the tension it should be trying to build.

Another complaint during this section is that simply too much stuff is going on. One of the great things about Suspiria was how simple it was. Not much really goes on but it's always unsettling. Here though, after Rose dies, there's a long section of confusion as to who the focus of the movie should shift to. Even once it goes to Mark, there's just this influx of murders of these other characters. I guess it's supposed to add more fear to Mark's situation or something but it just ends up being boring. I mean, at one point we have this character get attacked by cats (they honestly appear that they were just thrown at the character from offscreen) and another character gets eaten by rats. Neither of these are terrifying and don't really serve a good purpose at all. In fact, the rat death probably takes about five minutes (it's actually concluded when another guy runs up and kills the character with a knife). It's just boring and distracting.

And finally the ending is just stupid. Mark barges in to discover Professor Arnold and the big reveal is that this guy ends up being Dr. Varelli. But Dr. Varelli is just this architect and that doesn't mean much because he himself hasn't been built up at all throughout the whole movie so it doesn't add any suspense. The next reveal that there is a witch in the house is naturally important but then this is handled so quickly and poorly that the movie just stumbles one last time here at the grand conclusion.

Overall, I gave this film a 3/10. Inferno matches up really well with Suspiria - for a short bit. After that it just tanks abysmally and I was begging for the ending to arrive. I don't know now if I'll be checking out the last leg of this trilogy by Argento.

[Note: Due to a voting update, I have changed the rating of Inferno to a 02/10.]