Episode 58: Remake Reframe - Suspiria (1977) & (2018)

Hello, Internet, and welcome to Nobodies, the horror content podcast where we clean up the ugly things so you don't have to. Our bi-weekly show features two hosts and rotating guest content experts tackling the nitty-gritty complex horror topics with the hope of making the genre more approachable for frequent flyers and newbies alike.

The goal of this show is to highlight diverse voices and perspectives in horror. This is your reminder that there may be discourse on this show that will challenge the way you look at the genre. So let's get ready to get ugly.

I'm the ghost with the blog, lonely, and I'm joined by my co-host and partner in crime. I am Susie aka ProjectileVarmint and I've been holding on to some news to tell you and it kind of goes along with our episode tonight because it's Along the same lines of people involved, I might be joining a coven. Really? Like a real coven? How many people are in it?

Well, actually, I don't know if I'm going to, I am actually doing a coven, but I am going on this like personal wellness retreat and it is run by a lead witch from our local like apothecary. So I don't know. I'm just going to rub elbows with some witches at least. And as we'll see from the films tonight, absolutely nothing could go wrong. in that scenario that's exciting though you people always ask me you know you live in salem do you see other witches and i guess the answer is yes but

What I've always done with witchcraft, it's definitely been more of a solo path for me. Because I'm kind of... I have a blend between my Catholic guilt and my witchcraft views, so I kind of keep to myself. But a lot of people do engage in covens, and it's a form of community. It's just like a church, basically. well i don't know if this is like any witchery is going to be going on it's more of a connect with nature inner self

rebirth and meditation. So I will keep you updated. That is happening by the time this recording comes out, I think next weekend. Well,

We'll have to, listeners, let us know if you notice any major personality changes in Susie. Because this is, believe it or not, the start of a brand new season. that is right folks welcome to season three of nobodies

This episode marks our third year releasing content together. And I know we are a tiny show, but we are tiny but mighty. And I would love to share some stats with y'all on a reflection of where we're at, at the finish line of... season two so at this point we have had over 45 unique guests we've released over 50 episodes which means that's around 5 000 minutes of content and at the time of recording we have over

6,000 all time downloads and again we are a tiny show we are a tiny but mighty show and I don't know about you Susie but 6,000 is a great number I love that number You forgot to mention three different recording platforms we've been testing out. Yeah. So if anybody is a podcaster in any way, shape or form, you'll know that the death of Skype.

has shaken the old school podcasting community. So Susie and I are actually recording very close to our release date, which is not in our usual fashion because we've tried so.

many recording platforms but we will keep you all posted and if you have any recommendations give us a call but to celebrate the momentous occasion the release of season three I have prepared a little game for Susie so As you guys know, Susie releases all of our audio. She is the one who does all of the scrubbing and the cleaning to make sure that we all don't sound like a bunch of crazy people.

or maybe to make sure we sound like a bunch of crazy people. But either way, I have clipped four different audios from four different guests. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to play the audio for you. And I'd like you to guess the name of the guest. if you can get it the name of the episode or the topic of the episode and if they're talking about a movie what movie are they oh my gosh i can't even remember what i had for breakfast

So now you've got to remember three things. Not only the person, but also the episode and the movie. So are you up for the challenge? I guess. We're going to go from what I would call easy to hard. All right. Thank you. I was kind of like, I mean, I'm a straight man, but you know, anyways, the long hair, you just said that. I know what it is right away after he said college. That was when we were talking with the life changer guy. The life changer guy. Did he change our lives?

Definitely my life, Justin. What a guy. Yes, Justin. All right. And that was our shapeshifter episode. Not to be confused with the shapeshitting episode. Yes, I knew that. So like I said, easy to hard. So up first is our pal, Billy Dee. What do we have up next? This one. It's kind of, you'll guess who this is, but I don't know if you'll guess the episode that it's featuring. So this is our next one.

become a must listen podcast for me um so to actually be on it is you know like i told you i'm a little bit starstruck it's awesome and it's been so much fun talking to you guys in person after interacting with you online and it was awesome thanks so much Well, I know that's Mike, that horror teacher. Was it the J? Did we do a J horror one? I know we talked about some Asian horror. No, that was in the halls. Yes. So one of them happened to take place in Asia.

Yes, we did feature some Asian Asian horror in that episode. And the last time Mike was on the show during your call out, your call out sick, we did a whole bunch of Asian horror on video games. But I knew you'd guess it was Mike, but I don't know if you would guess that it was his first.

appearance with us so can you can you all believe it was many many moons ago when we first got mike on the mic i love that came back for the the october special the one where we did the alphabet Yeah, so I find it so interesting that I think we all knew Mike as somebody who was a commenter.

You know, he always like posted reviews and stuff, but I don't think we ever thought we were going to get him on the live show. And look at that. We've indoctrinated him entirely. I love that for us. And he's really smart. And he's just a doll. I could go on and on. But anyway. now we're going to go into our little bit we're getting harder now so this is our third audio clip we couldn't really control the setting and we couldn't control any of the extra stimulus that was going to happen

There's a moment in the film, this is not too much of a spoiler, where someone screams out. They go, hey, are you from YouTube? I was just going to ask. Okay, so I know it's the Andy Baker tapes. And I remember the guy's name was... like pretty hard to not hard to pronounce but it was a name that i we both kept messing up

Lada, Lada. Lada. It is our pal Brett Lada, the director of the Andy Baker tape on our vlogger horror episode. That was a fun one. That was a fun one. Much reflection to be done on that episode. You might have been black. blacklisted on some lists because of your um interpretation of the baby lap yes the uh homosexual um you know undertone of the entire film but you know what brett call and confirm

Because I know you're definitely listening to this show. Yeah, right. But all right, we're going to round it out with this is definitely gonna be a challenging one for you. This is one of my favorite episodes we ever released. So it'll be an easy one for me. But here we go. Wait, what? Can you just come on every show? I'm not a huge fan of Ty West at all. I don't understand it. Shots fired. I'll say this for shots fired. He's only made two good movies.

Okay, well, I know we must have been talking about House of the Devil because Ty West. Oh, this guy, this guy. You, you like it's religious. That was our religious horror episode. Yep. And his name just like flows off your tongue, but it's not flowing off mine. It's real Italian. It's our pal Donna Nelly. It sounds like we're in the, what's that movie? That really long ass freaking movie with the gangsters.

The Godfellas? The Godfellas. I don't know. Yeah, we're horror reviewers, not Criterion Collection reviewers. But looks like you got, what was that, two for four? 50%? I will take it. I will take that.

Awesome. Well, listeners, let us know, did you guess anybody that Susie didn't guess or did you guess before Susie? But the last thing I will leave you with is a pop quiz. So at the time of recording, do you know what our most streamed episode of all time is? I'm going to go with the one where we talked about the nostalgic horror, you know, like the kids horror with Rainier. Close. So at the time of recording that, so our.

Nostalgia horror, our entry point to horror, Dark Children's, whatever you call that miniseries, that is pretty high up on our stream list. But our most streamed episode at the time of recording is, believe it or not, episode three. Three? Extreme horror and the... of watchability was none other than the infamous Jay of the Dead we just can't get rid of that guy I know it's literally like freaking Bloody Mary like how many times do we have to say Jay Jay of the Dead Jay of the Dead oh my god

I know, he's going to appear. Shocker, we don't have nine hours to record, so maybe not anyway. But yes, our most streamed episode at the time of recording is Extreme Horror. And believe it or not, we actually are now on YouTube. listeners oh my gosh and that is one of our most watched in quotes episodes on youtube so that's where we're standing right now but let's focus on the future welcome back to remake reframe

That's right. Our opening for this season will be another installment of the Remake Reframe series. You all really enjoyed our Nosferatu Remake Reframe, so we are here to bring you another one. In this series, we will be comparing recent remakes. And what better way to celebrate a femme-led podcast than with a weird... art house film about women and maybe a cult maybe witches or a haunted dance school we're not really quite sure maybe that will become clear to us at the end of this review

But tonight we are discussing the 1977 and 2018 versions of Suspiria. Before we butcher all of Italian film history, much to our friend Ian Irza's dismay, let's hear from some of you.

So we featured some voicemails on our last remake reframe episode. So I thought it'd be kind of fun to make it a tradition and feature some more voicemails on each installment of this series. So be sure to call in and you could be featured on an episode. So our first voicemail is from Mike, a.k.a. That Horror Teacher, and he's telling us his thoughts on our last remake, Reframe, which featured Nosferatu. Hello, Lonely.

hello projectile varmint this is mike aka that horror teacher and i had to call in and leave a voicemail so i could properly mansplain to you about nosferatu 2024 which i loved And obviously you guys just didn't understand what Bob acres is up to film bros. We call him Bob and.

No, I'm just fucking with you. Wouldn't it be weird if I was like that? Yes, absolutely. I actually did love Nosferatu, but I totally get that you guys did not. I honestly think it is one of the strange movies that it depends.

what your preferences are. I know that seems like all movies should be that way, but it's not. So I totally could see why someone loves this movie. I could see why you hated it. For me, I just thought it looked... so beautiful that that trumped almost any other issues i had with it because i could not believe how cool it looked um now i will say some of the things you guys liked are actually some of the things i didn't like and vice versa for example

I actually thought Aaron Taylor Johnson was the worst part of the movie. I didn't think he was good at all. And you guys have said you liked him pretty good. But again, of course not. So I totally understand. Respect your opinions as always. I really liked it. As I said, it was beautiful. I thought Bill Skarsgård was great. I will admit I have not seen the other two. I think I saw Nosferatu in a film class 1922, a long time ago. But this one I thought was awesome.

And while I don't agree with you, as always, I respect your opinion. And honestly, I just wanted to call to make that stupid film bro joke. So anyway, love you guys. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Mike is so girly pop. Love you guys. Talk to you soon. Bye. Also, Mike. Call back soon.

Mike, you have to, you know, as an English teacher, you should know your grammar in that sentence made it sound like you saw Nosferatu in a film class in 1922. I didn't realize you were that old. Would that be like commas or semicolons? Mike, let us know.

Proofread the transcripts of the episode. But, I mean, I can't even tell you what happened in Nosferatu anymore. I literally blocked it out of my memory. After watching all three Nosferatu films back to back, I cannot consume any more. Any more of it at all. any comment no oh um i'm over nosferatu and i watched it i saw it i forgot it

And it won't be making any of my top films either from the prior year or this year. But earlier on in the conversation, we also mentioned that we are now on YouTube. And our next voicemail is actually from one of our YouTube subscribers. Oh, my God. Can you believe? that we have subscribers on youtube we're like young people influencers

So this voicemail is from Jose from Miami. And our YouTube channel is a bit of an experiment right now. We've uploaded a few select episodes to see how they would do. One of them, again, was episode three featuring Jay. So... Jose watched that episode and here are his suggestions on another documentary that may fit the bill of extreme horror. Called Zoo, which I haven't seen it personally. I'm not sure if you girls have seen it, but definitely look into it. I mean.

If you want to watch it, I haven't watched it at all. It's a 2007 documentary that just talks about, like, you know, a case for a gentleman there or a guy who just, you know.

died because he was doing you know stuff with with you know a horse and uh it just talks about like the whole realm of that world and that's another thing that i feel like it could be exploitive and is exploitive to the nature of the whole animals and everything but yeah that's just my input on it it was a great podcast it flew very well and your topics were super like

I can't wait to hear more of your girls podcast. Thank you so much. I'm Jose from Miami and I hope more people will listen to your podcast more often. Okay. Thank you so much and have a great day. Yeah, listen to Jose and listen to us more often. So he's talking about the documentary called Zoo from 2007. And wow. I'm just like reading about it right now. The guy in the documentary died from internal injury sustained during a sexual encounter with a horse. But bestiality was not illegal.

In the state of Washington. What? There are so many, you know, I'm so glad we're talking about this because there are so many. low brow jokes that could be made about this but all we want to focus on are the ethical implications of literally having sex with a horse they're called zoo files I didn't know they had their own term. I feel like this feels a little dark webby to me. Zoo files and horse, um, horse interactions. I don't think that's on the agenda for tonight.

So if you want to talk to us here on Nobodies, you can comment on an episode or recommend a film or to fact check our sources. If you want to do any of those things, call us or text us at 617. four three one four three two two you know how long i've been wanting to say that but now it's time to get into our second installment of our remake reframe series

So to guide our conversation tonight, we're going to put some parameters on the conversation. So we're going to be discussing our general thoughts on each film and then go into some specific criteria from the original and the remake. For the original, our criteria that we're going to be considering is, do we think that this film even needed to be remade? Why or why not? How has it aged and has it withstood the test of time?

What is one thing from the original that you think would have been key to keep in the remake? And what is one thing from the original you think they should have changed in the remake? For the remake, we are going to be considering how true the remake was for the original from the better or the worse, and items in the film that were kept the same or changed for better or for worse, and whether or not it was a successful remake overall.

And finally, we will decide which of the two we think is a better film. But before we get into that, let's start on a very small hyper crash course on the giallo genre. Okay. we'll see this is where i i'm getting confused right away because we've never really gotten into the realm of Dario Argento on the show mostly because it's like a huge set of movies and in some ways it does have its own subgenre but

I have an argument that Suspiria is not a giallo. Do you want to hear it? Yes. Tell me because I'm still lost. Okay. I think giallos are set in like. reality and it's usually like a detective based murder mystery and this film is set more in like the supernatural with the witches. Giallos are more predictable and this kind of took a lot of twists and turns. Giallos like throw you clues and red herrings. They have like a formula they follow.

But this movie I think would be considered more of a gothic horror. I did my homework. you know because it's like mysterious it's in an isolated setting it has a haunting atmosphere and you know there's the supernatural elements the themes of darkness and decay what do you think

I mean, I do think it's closer to a gothic than it is to the stereotypical definition of a giallo, just as you described. Because I always think about giallos as the short crime films. I feel like Ian... and he's gonna be so mad at me um so ian does the whole black love mystery series on land of the creeps and he goes into this a lot more in depth there's like a whole subset of films that have very like knowledgeable criteria and

I think where Suspiria gets caught in the middle is that giallos are also considered to be mostly exploitation films. And I think at the time, the gore that was included in the original Suspiria was exploitative at the time. I think that's how we get here. But I agree with you that I don't think it fits the bill of a standard GLO entirely. So listeners or Ian, call in and tell us where you fall on the scale.

But Dario Argento is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer, and he was best known for his work in the giallo and horror genre during the 70s and 80s. He is sometimes called the master of thrill or the master of horror. So I'll be honest, listeners. Susie picked the film for the last remake, Reframe. I picked the film.

for this re-ranked reframe. So if the episode bombs, I'm sorry. But when I was doing the research on Suspiria, I actually saw that it received mixed reviews during its original release in 1977. And at the time, it was harshly compared to two other... I don't really see... That's kind of like comparing apples to oranges, in my opinion. I don't know why it was compared at all to The Exorcist, because it's entirely different.

storyline though i do see in some places where it was compared to the sentinel because sentinel does tend to be a little bit skews art house and has some pretty exploitative gore especially at the end have you ever seen the sentinel susie i don't think i have

I think you might like it, even though you're not, it's like a cousin of The Exorcist. It is a little touch religious, a little touch possession, but it's quite fun. So anyway, Suspiria did not stack up to these two films. However, many critics did praise its visuals.

But they weren't fans of the poorly done English dubbing and the haphazard plot, which we will get to during our review. Since its release, though, it has developed a cult-like following for the nostalgia and the individuality of the visual prowess.

many people call this a key example of euro horror and it's a key time capsule of horror from that era and many cite the grandosity and the over-the-top nature of the film and the bare storyline as what makes it stand out i don't know it sounds like a stretch to me but we'll we'll duke it out in a second the village voice actually goes as far as to cite this as number 100 in their list of 100 greatest films made in the 20th century

the remake on the other hand was produced as an homage to the original and has polarized audiences since its release the director was even quoted saying that it quote made absolutely nothing it was a disaster at the box office End quote. Fans of the remake do liken it to works of Cronenberg and call it somewhat Lovecraftian in nature and do applaud its attempt to expand the original storyline and really lean into body horror.

So this is a pretty interesting switch from our Nosferatu episode. I think it's pretty... you know, unanimous that the original 1920 Nosferatu, though might not be everyone's cup of tea since it's a classic black and white film, we can all acknowledge the impact it had on the genre. I mean, it's fucking Nosferatu. And I feel like the 70s version

is quite beloved. I feel like a lot of people like it. But now we have two films that are already starting on the fence, a little shaky ground. So let's see if anybody comes out on top of this whole kit and caboodle.

All right, so we're going to start off in 1977, and this version of Suspiria sees an American newcomer to a prestigious German ballet academy, and she comes to realize that the school is a front for something sinister. amid a series of grisly murders. And right away, this movie opens up like just in your face. You have Susie Banyan walking from an airport in this like torrential downpour to the ballet school. And it's very like harsh and the winds.

blowing and i thought like right away i was thrust into this movie i'm like okay this is going to be a quick paced movie we're going to feel a lot But then it kind of took a lot of lulls for me to get to the end. And I don't know if the payoff was worth it for me. What about you? I think we have to address the elephant in the room right at the top. This is horrifyingly badly dubbed. And I have...

I have done so much research on this because I feel like, so I noticed that another prominent Italian film, I believe it's called The Church. We talk about it during the religious horror episode a few, you know, last season. A lot of Italian horror films are dubbed over in English. And you can't get the original. Right. So the point there is, some of them, this is the original that went to...

I don't know, like print or whatever, because I thought the same thing. I'm like, oh, my God. So this is just a badly dubbed version. Like, can I find the original elsewhere? Joke's on you. This is the original. And they put the badly dubbed version just in circulation. And there's something about the...

Basically, the way that it was filmed, the audio wasn't super strong on set, so they had to bring the actresses back into a sound booth or a sound studio and record over the audio. So I think this is a mixture of... Some of the scenes are filmed like in basically recorded over in post. And I don't even know if all the scenes were originally recorded in English, but either way. To talk about an opening thought, this is extremely, it's hard to get into. Yeah, it's hard to watch with that.

It's like not adding up. And if you're a subtitles watcher, then you're really fucked because then the subtitles don't match what they're saying. And then what they're saying isn't matching.

the movements of their faces so and it's also like a couple where it gets really bad there's some lines that don't time correctly with the scene so they'll still be talking and it'll have moved the camera will have panned to something else so that really takes you out of it but disregarding that within the first 20 minutes i think something that overwhelmingly stands out is what the film is known for which is this amazing imagery and visuals

And I think that's where the film gets a lot of its saving grace. I guess we can talk at length about what's wrong with the film structurally and narrative-wise, but it's hard to ignore how powerful this film is and how well it performs as an aesthetic piece. Like the repetitive design.

those motifs and the repetitive colors and shapes it well i feel like maybe the shining took a little bit from that i i when i was watching it it just made me think of like the carpet in the shining and some of the backgrounds in the shining and those like very 70s patterns really stood out and those bright right the bright red lights everywhere

Right. And I think this is one of the first film or oldest films I have, you know, in my films that I've watched that features color so correctly, like the color that is featured in each scene does directly. have an impact on what's going on so we see a lot of red in this film and that's because people are dying there's lots of blood so do we want to talk about our first kill in this scene is that olga olga

I don't know what her friend is. She goes through the ceiling. So, girlfriend is pushed through a skylight? But first, she's like... smashed her face up against the glass and the glass isn't breaking. And you just see this, like, it almost reminds me of when my kids like put their face against the car window and they're just like, blah, blah, blah. And I was laughing. I was laughing.

so then she goes through the skylight and we and she's also hung at this point i believe she's on a noose yeah she's hanging on a noose she goes through the skylight and there's just the blood so let's talk about the blood It is a beautiful cherry red, like, dare I say, cherry grenadine syrup. It is not any way, shape, or form realistic blood in any way. And I always wonder, like...

When people saw this film in 1977, did they feel that it wasn't realistic or were they were just like, oh my God, they pushed somebody through a skylight? What do you think? So just... I guess so. Yeah, no. It bubbled. The blood bubbled. It bubbled a lot when people died. Yeah, it saves all practical effects, probably. They were all coming out of tubes and stuff, and that's how the...

A lot of splatters were done in the early days, just pushing it through. It's not Olga. That's the more recent one. It was Pat. Pat Hengel. Pat. Okay, so Pat's a goner. and we're not even at dance school yet susie gets to dance school and weird weird things start happening so susie is from america um and People are very weary of this because they're in Europe. They're in West Germany. That's critical to the plot.

And she starts, you know, noticing some weird things are happening. She has to live in an apartment for a while before she's actually able to move into the school. And then we're introduced to sort of the headmistress and the people running the school. We have Miss Tanner. And Madame Blanc, who run the school. And there's also a dog. There's a German Shepherd dog.

And a piano, a blind pianist. That's our cast of characters. We got all the dancers and then these weird people running to school. So...

This is where, and we're not even that far into the movie, this is where the plot starts to lose me. I'm not sure if this is where it lost you, Susie, but like, yeah, weird things are happening, but we are really given no... way to figure out we don't and we also don't have any clues like we're so waiting for us to figure out why this is happening no there's maggots falling from the ceiling people are getting like

breathless and hurt and you don't know why anything's happening and this is where it almost turns into a fucking slasher they make all the girls so dumb and helpless and they literally act like all the people in the slasher movies that make terrible decisions and like go in the wrong door and go through the wrong window yeah i couldn't i couldn't get into the the flow here

And one thing that's different in the original versus the remake is that. Let's not talk about that yet. Let's talk about when we get to the remake. Well, I just want to mention that there's men in this movie. There's no men in the other movie.

there's no boys oh oh in the dance school yeah there's boys in this dance school somehow between 1977 and 2022 we kicked them out of the day they're not allowed to do ballet in 2020. 12 or whatever the remake is made but yes so we have all these weird things that happen and we're not really we're not given any clues to really figure out why they're happening or what's going on eventually we

We're introduced to the psychiatrist. Again, if you're having trouble following this, that's because it's hard to follow. Eventually, Susie is introduced to her. Not our Susie. Susie from the movie. She's introduced to... pat our friend who fell through the skylight her psychiatrists somehow somehow because that's fun you when your friend dies you like go find their psychiatrist that's that's what you do and he talks about how the school was established

by someone named Helena Marcos, who was allegedly a witch. And why would he know that? Yeah, and also, why do we need, like, they make a whole point in talking about how this is a psychiatrist. Why does he need to be a psychiatrist to know the history of the ballet school? No, no. So...

This is where we're supposed to start figuring out what is happening here. There's witches in the school and the witches are using the girls for something. But do they ever explain what they're using the girls for? No. No. And that's why, you know, having a conversation about both of these films is confusing at the same time, because what we'll get into in the remake is that they attempt to try to explain this. So if you watch these back to back.

It can be challenging to remember like, oh, did they talk about this in the original or the remake? So eventually Susie, our main character, is going to try to find the witches. But why? Why would she stay in that school after? People are dying. She's been there a week. She's like supposedly BFFs with that girl Sarah, even though she's known her for like four days.

Like, why is Susie staying there? They don't give her any reason why she needs to be there. We don't know her backstory. So we don't know that like, oh, she's escaping from some terrible situation or she's got nowhere to go. It's just like, just believe us.

us believe us that Susie needs to stay there and also like I think that's such a great point because that's not the case in the second film because we have nothing about Susie we don't know anything about her literally nothing she we see her get off the plane and gets to the school, and then the story begins. We have no... Girlfriend doesn't even have a personality. What?

i disagree with that i just i feel like she was like pretty empowered and she stood her ground and she was like no i'm not doing that i'm doing this no i am gonna do that i'm gonna follow that I think she had, like, maybe not a well-established personality, but she definitely had a presence. And we'll talk about the comparison of the Susies. But this Susie seemed a lot more in charge of herself and her autonomy.

I will agree with that. The one lens I will add is that I feel that it is an example of women's autonomy through the lens of a man. Yeah, and in the 70s. Yeah, because she's still very dumb. Like she makes a lot of decisions that don't make sense. And I think especially considering she's an American in a foreign country, she has zero self-preservation instinct given this like whole situation. But basically Susie discovers that.

There's a hidden room, because of course it is. It's an Italian film. There's a hidden room where Madame Blanc has been plotting... something this whole time we don't know what i still don't know what we still don't know what it's not explained at all like we see things happening like we see some people in robes we see some dead bodies but it's all like

You have to put the story together yourself and guess basically what's happening. At one point, I thought there was a werewolf in this movie. I thought the first death was done by a werewolf because it was like a really hairy arm. And then I'm like, okay, this is where we're going to get to see the werewolf. There's like, spoiler alert, there is no werewolf in Susbiria. It's just a werewolf looking witch. Right. So then we get into this whole thing where, you know.

We're told that they're witches, but they don't look like witches in any way. Like, I feel like they may have been going for like Roald Dahl witches. Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. But the film ends. Susie escapes. She's blown up the entire school and she escapes into the rain where she began, which is very poetic because when she gets there, when she gets off the plane, it's pouring rain and that's sort of like...

I wonder if that's supposed to be like an omen of things like she can't get to the school because it's like pouring rain and they won't let her in. And now she's leaving and it's pouring rain. So I'm sure there's something poetic about that. But did we understand that? Oh, God, no.

Poeticism? No. So let's think about some of our questions. So now that we've talked about the plot, do you think this film should have been remade? And why or why not? Absolutely think it should be remade because we need... a backstory for susie we need to know what the witches are doing in that school why they need the girls and i just wanted to know more and i think if i had more i would have appreciated the original a little bit more, but right now I can only appreciate it for the visuals.

I'm kind of torn because I agree with you completely that there's a lot of room for this to be remade and for the story to be expanded. But also, I don't know. I haven't decided what side of the fence I'm on when it comes to remakes that expand upon the original story.

like it's sometimes it's really successful and sometimes it's not so i would say did this need to be remade maybe to the question how has it aged dare i say it's aged quite well given it's i mean it didn't start super for the things that it was good at it's still good at the things that it was not great at it's still not great at but I feel like in terms of you know when we think about art house horror and the visuals I feel like it has aged well and it still stands out what do you think

Oh, 100%. I think that the visuals in this movie are what Art House should look for and, like, look back at to try and, you know, inform some of their decisions. Honestly, I think some of the art house films that have been coming out in the past five, ten years are garbage.

True, true, completely. I feel like the new wave art house that we know of nowadays, it's aiming to be this, but ultimately... it just isn't it doesn't hit with the same you know I think vibrance is a really good way to describe what's happening here so In terms of the original, what is one thing you hoped they would keep and one thing that you think they should change in the remake?

Oh, I watched Suspiria, the original, before the remake. I hadn't seen it. And I wish they had kept the color and the pattern. We lose that completely. in the remake. One thing I wish they had gotten rid of is The dubbing, how about that? True, true. Or do the entire film in Italian and make us read the subtitles. I would have appreciated that 100% more.

I would say I agree with you that I feel like the color palette and the overall aesthetic of the film, I feel like they should have kept. Because when we get into the remake, you'll find that the aesthetic is totally different and we lose that entirely. And if you didn't...

If you watch the films in reverse, like if you watch the remake and then the original, you wouldn't even think that they're the same. They're in the same family because the aesthetic is so different. In addition to that, I do think... The setting, like the sets and the style of the school was really cool in the original because it creates the school as a character in itself, which I love. And I want to say in the remake, they do, you know, keep it.

uphold some of that one thing to change is the way that the witches were characterized because we only know that they're witches because someone tells us they're witches those are witches There are some ladies in power, so that means there must be a witch. That's basically what happens. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, it's like, oh, they run this secretive little school, so it must mean that they're witches. Yeah, like in West Germany, women? What? They're doing something on their own?

They must be witches. Obviously, clearly. So I would love to see some characterization that gives us any inclination that they are... Like even supernatural beings, we really don't see anything other than the werewolf farm later on. So those are my thoughts. But any last remarks on the original before we talk about the remake?

No, I think we're ready to move on to Suspiria the remake from 2018. And again, I didn't see this until I watched it. about four hours ago so suspiria from 2018 a darkness swirls at the center of a world-renowned dance company one that will engulf the artistic director an ambitious young dancer and a grieving psychotherapist

Some will succumb to the nightmare. Others will finally wake up. That is a good IMDb synopsis right there. All right. So my opening thought, let's hear your opening thoughts first. Looking at the two films, I think what stands out the most, as we've mentioned, is that this remake is starkly different in aesthetic, in storytelling, in characterization, acting. It's just totally different.

I think what stands out is the fact that it really, it truly took what was happening in the original and tried to make something of it. So you see that this.

we've given backstory to all these people they make a significant like push to give each character some kind of interconnecting piece in the story so they don't feel like useful people in the or not useful people in the ensemble you're each person matters in the story which is not the case in the original like you said the original often plays like a slasher these people don't actually matter we're just killing people off as they come whereas

This film, we have a couple of key characters that we learn about. We see how they act and they see how they think. The cast of witches in this film is much bigger. And there's also a very, very deep political overtone on this film. There's a lot of conversation on... Basically, I believe it's World War Two is kind of what's happening here. So it's described as the German autumn. So it's a period between.

or the end after the war we're in berlin i'm sorry you guys know i'm not good at history so political overtone is really strong in this if there was a political undertone in the original i didn't catch it but then again i didn't catch much so those are my opening thoughts totally different we have a significantly bigger amount of information to talk about with the remake and i was surprised by the political lens that it took i didn't hate it but i was surprised by it

What about you? Okay, so I watched half of this movie last night and I finished it four hours ago. And my opening thoughts yesterday were, this is a pretentious art house film. It's not even art. It's overdoing the art. It's a spectacle. But then by the end of the movie, I was like, i get it i see what they're trying to do they're trying to modernize the old version but still keep it in the 70s which seems like a weird juxtaposition but strangely it

It worked so well. I think the cinematography was completely different using grays and dull colors, but at the same time, it was also just as beautiful as the original. And I just want to take a look at the director and I'm going to just butcher his name, Luca Guadagino. And we first see him with that movie. Call Me By Your Name with Chalamet in 2017. And that is like artsy gobbledygook. And I think most people know him from Bones and All, which he's still going in that same art house direction.

So he directed Suspiria between Call Me By Your Name and Bones and All, which just... It doesn't seem like it fits in like procession from first, second to third film. But I think I'm like diverging here and going off the path. But I don't know. It makes me wonder if he really has his own style. And if he does, I want to see this style instead of. Call Me By Your Name and Bones and all, I'll let you know right now I love this film.

just a point on his style i think you're hitting the nail on the head that he doesn't really have a style because he also did challengers yeah most recently so that's like all over the show so it looks like he has an affinity for like more sexual and like relationship based films which is I guess a common thread throughout all the films he's done and he has an affinity for art house but he's kind of all over the you know

the sphere here he's done yeah yeah so I don't know I think that's interesting in a director I in terms of whether I like Suspiria so coming out of it I found myself very frustrated with its pacing What? But this film was freaking long. This film was almost two hours long. It had like flashbacks. We talked about the dubbing in the last film.

Yeah, so we talked about the dubbing in the last film. One note on this film is that it's in multiple languages. So I believe there's at least three or four languages spoken in this film. There's English, German, French, and potentially one other. So...

Even if you're not, you really have to pay attention is basically what I'm saying. You have to pay attention to this film. You have to watch when the subtitles appear because they'll be in the middle of conversation and transition to a different language. You really have to be paying attention. And I think maybe that's a piece, this film makes you work for it when it comes to, you know, watching what's going on and understanding the story as they're handing it to you.

But I was frustrated with it coming away from it after watching it the first time. Now, especially sitting here comparing it to the original, I would also say that I didn't hate this at all. I think I gave this a three out of five overall.

it deserves a lot of credit for trying to build a story out of nothing. So we wanted to compare the two Susies. So do you want to talk a little bit about this? Yeah. So we've got Susie and they're also spelled differently. Dare I say, I think. The one in the first film is S-U-Z-I-E and this Susie is S-U-S-I-E. Thank God I am the first one.

Okay, great. So you clearly like the first one better. So tell us what's going on with our new Susie and what is her issue? Okay, well, first of all, the biggest failure of this movie is casting... Dakota Johnson as Susie Banyan. That was the worst mistake possible. She is like this mousy, no. facial acting no nothing in her eyes just dead i hated her i absolutely hated her and i'm gonna regret saying this but

I thought Mia Goth was amazing. And I think Mia Goth should have played Susie Banyan in this because Susie Banyan, Dakota Johnson comes to the dance Academy. She's got no personality. We see like flashbacks of. her and her mother's on her deathbed. And, you know, there is some kind of familial trauma there. And it just doesn't translate into Dakota Johnson. It was terrible.

And they also made her extremely weak and just small as opposed to our original Susie Banyan who had like presence and like took control. Yeah, I agree. It's a really good.

kind of look at the two of them so we we learn a backstory about this susie that we don't learn about the prior so the backstory we have as you mentioned is her her trauma from back home we find that she's from a mennonite family in the midwest so she comes from a conservative religious background she's got some mommy issues that's a big recurring theme here and she's basically run away she's been dreaming of going

the dance school her entire life I was the only thing that kept her moving forward during her trauma and now she's here now she's at the dance school and you know I agree completely because if Susie had any sort of uptick here like if she had a you know a a change of heart or she became stronger as the movie went on i think i would feel differently about her but

I think we're to assume that she has some sort of transformation, but she really doesn't. She's still very one-note, whereas the other dancers around her, especially the ones that we've come to know, they... start becoming like manic and crazy and they're big big actors and have big big reactions and she's just there dakota johnson is just there like mia goth i think i agree is great in this

I think she plays the character of Sarah perfectly. I think she plays a perfect role in this piece. And knowing what we know of Mia Gopp's ability to do that explosive character very well, I think she could have done.

Susie but I think it would have been very similar to Marrowbone I think we would have gotten a repeat of that as opposed to you know something worthwhile but that's just my opinion so and then they cast Tilda Swanton in the role of like the witch who wants to take over so in the dance academy there's this witch marco who is trying to steal power from the dancers and they're maybe doing some kind of ritual to like

give her strength and power so she can be like the head mother witch and Tilda Swanton is kind of like her frenemy adversary that also wants to be the the lead witch and I just thought it was so odd to cast Tilda Swanton because she She's this androgynous, almost, I would say sci-fi fantasy.

character actor and then we have her playing a witch which didn't make sense and she can act and she acts big and putting Dakota Johnson next to Tilda Swanton next to Mia Goth just made Dakota Johnson seem like even meager.

Agreed. So just to backtrack for a second. So listeners, as you've gathered, we learn a lot about these witches that we did not learn in the prior film. So in the last film, we just were told.

hey these are some witches up in that dance school and that's kind of where the story ends here we're actually introduced to the coven basically the coven of witches who are living in and running the school and what i find really interesting is that in all of the witches, whether there's some key leaders who kind of appear as, you know, the...

leads of the school so they're all the ones who are in charge are called mother whatever so we've got mother marcos we've got um madame blanc yeah so we've got a couple other people who are trying to basically be made the head of the coven to decide what happens to the school and the magic and everything.

And we learn all of this because we get to see the coven communicating with one another. They all sit at a table. We watch them vote repeatedly about something. We don't know what they're voting about in the beginning, but we later find out it's to decide who should be in charge. And all of the witches have their own role in the dance company. So some of them are like choreographers. Some of them are like the security.

They make sure nobody comes in who's not supposed to be there. Some of them make the costumes that have their own like magic properties to them. It's really cool. You get like a whole.

like ecosystem here that we don't get in the original and a hierarchy right and that's a huge part hierarchy is such a good theme in this film as well because there's the hierarchy amongst the coven and there's the hierarchy that emerges amongst the dancers and Susie rises to the top of the hierarchy for some reason so I

Is that because her father's a demon? Was her father Satan? I missed all of that if that was the case. So I was going to ask you, why do they pick Susie? Well, Susie is... Something is different about her, and Tilda Swanton can tell that right away. And she starts being able to telepathically communicate with her, knowing that, you know, she's a strong...

person, maybe something more. And then we find out that Susie was chosen to be a new vessel be the body for the the head supreme witch and in turn for that she'll have no personality left it will just be like a vessel but at the end of this movie The tables just get flipped and we find out Susie Banyan is actually the mother witch. And this demon type character comes up from the depth of who knows, hell maybe. And we find out that Susie's mother on her.

deathbed confesses a sin saying her youngest daughter Susie was a sin she smeared on the earth which to me gave me the impression well this is religious and she's a sin she's either like born from something not good incest or you know somebody other than her husband or maybe satan that's what i got from it well i've missed that i mean i thought so

I think that all makes sense, especially in the... Because the big reveal is that... So the whole movie, we're told that something's very special about Susie. All the witches think she's very special. They treat her differently. She gets the lead in the... I was going to say the musical. The lead in the musical. No, the lead in the dance number. And all of her friends start freaking dying. So clearly she's special. But we aren't really told why for a long time.

But we get these flashbacks. So Susie throughout the film is falling asleep. And she's having these dreams. And a lot of them are flashbacks of her time back home. And throughout that, we see that Susie was abused pretty regularly by her mother and tormented by her mother. I don't know. I just thought that...

I thought this was like a Carrie situation, but I guess you're right. But there were sisters. There were so many other children. Yeah. Why would it be her unless... And I guess in Carrie... she's a sin as well that's the whole point she was conceived out of wedlock so maybe you're right that might i guess that makes sense so the whole movie is basically about the witches kind of telepathically communicating with and

Preparing Susie to become the new vessel for the mother witch. And surprise, she's ahead of the game and is actually the head of the coven all along. And then she destroys every single person or witch that had voted for Marco. witch to be the head mother she's like that was a beautiful scene because they they shoot susie like looking at the women and then the screen flashes with them voting marco with their hand up marco marco and every time you see one of the witches

voting for Marco to be the head witch, then Susie comes and just decimates them and kills them. And I loved every minute of that. So I think that's a great segue into the body horror of this film. So the body horror in this film...

is incredibly impressive. Some of the best I've seen. Such a great precursor to some of the arthouse films that would come before this. I look at some of the... So this is 2018. The films that would come... immediately following or right alongside this are hereditary midsummer and then later we get talked to me

And if you think about some of the body horror that's in each of those really heavy hitting art house films, this is right in the same alley or dare I say like an immediate like ancestor. So we have the witches who.

are able to connect to the dancers through different ways so a big part of this obviously because we're in a dance studio physicality and like the body is a big part of the characterization of each of these girls they're always stretching obviously they're always dancing so their bodies are actually turned against them so throughout the the you know the film

The girls, the dancers, are having these mental breakdowns. They are either catching on to the fact that the school is run by witches or they're catching on to something that it's not.

Something's not right here. And once they start protesting or deciding that they're going to speak out against Madame Blanc, things start to happen. So they're sort of taken away from the company without any... kind of explanation and we get basically these horrible excruciatingly like long body horror scenes so it's almost like they're linked they're linked to another character and what that other character is doing affects them in a excruciatingly painful body horror way.

Right. So in one scene, they use Susie as like the linkage between her and another student, Olga. So every movement that Susie makes on the.

on the floor when she's dancing begin to physically impact Olga so like twisting her every time Susie jumps like her bones like Olga's bones will snap out of place or every time Susie hits the floor like her Olga will be slammed onto the floor and as Susie's doing like contortions like her body is like contorting the wrong way and you see like her vertebrae and her bones and you hear the cracking and there's i think she's in a room with mirrors as well so there's

You're getting that really distorted view, not only of the human body like distorting itself, but you're also seeing multiple reflections of it. And it's right in your face. There's no room for imagination. Bones coming out of the skin, the face just like almost melting off. It's terrible. And then Susie finishes the dance and the witches come in and put these giant like hooks, like fish hooks. Fish hooks, yeah. And they stick it in her.

And they go slowly. You see that slowly going in there. And then, yeah. Drag her away. And this is just one of the major... body horror kind of scenes in the film we also have one with mia goth so mia goth's character sarah becomes really close with susie throughout the film sarah was also friends with pat who kind of went

Missing earlier on in the film and was kind of on to the witches. And that's where we get the whole side story here with the psychiatrist. But anyway, Sarah starts to discover the coven. She starts to figure out what's going on here. But ultimately. Sarah meets her demise as well so she do you want to talk a little bit about that one when she's in the catacombs yeah well she finds all of the prior dancers that have been taken by the witches like Olga and Pat

They're just like almost shells in themselves and hollowed out. You can tell that they've been almost completely drained of all of their life, but they're still hanging on for whatever reason, maybe to feed their power to Marco.

them and tries to run away to you know get help maybe and her leg breaks but somehow they heal her and they're like okay now you're gonna go dance in front of all these people so she's almost linked again to Susie and through this interpretive dance she ends up just like zombie almost like zombie dancing and then she also gets like this compound fracture in front of everybody and they drag her off and she becomes one of the hollowed out

energy givers and then as you already talked about susie there's the big finale at the end where everybody is kind of decapitated and exploding and all of this and at the end there's a really poignant scene with sarah and Olga and Patricia, who are the girls that have kind of gone missing throughout the film. So they're there at the Sabbath and they are basically disemboweled in front of everybody and left to die.

throughout while this is happening while all of the story is being revealed we find out susie's a witch the whole time they're just sitting there dying and susie basically gives them a choice like would they prefer to live or die And it's one of the only choices that the dancers get to make the entire film. And it gives Susie a little bit of, like, you almost feel like she has some empathy, even though she hasn't really shown. any kind of empathy throughout the whole movie because she is

given all of this power, I think by being in the academy and she's like rising to the top and she's being very selfish. And I don't know if they planned for her to, you know, have an ulterior motive the whole time or she was actually engrossed with all the power. she was getting and at the end she kind of has a transformation where she becomes like the mother and the caregiver to these dancers and you know treats them how a mother would.

yeah love well yeah like motherhood is a big yeah like both nurture like nurturing their needs yeah their need was to die because they were in pain and they just had too much yeah There's like symbolic and figurative and actual motherhood as a big piece of this and how those relationships kind of interact between the characters. So the only other piece I wanted to kind of touch on is the...

the political overtone we have in the film so there's a side plot that basically happens so since the film is taking place in um west berlin There is talk of the war and there's often a reference to the school surviving the war and how the school was one of the only things that women were allowed to partake in and a place for them to be safe during the war. I guess it's basically hinted that because they were witches, they were able to keep them safe.

from the war so that's often referenced and then we have our psychiatrist character so we have a psychiatrist in this film too but he gets his own backstory now he has we learn a lot more about him but after he's talking about the film I think the psychiatrist unfortunately means a lot less in the grand scheme of the story other than to add to the political overtone. Do you think we needed that political overtone in this movie?

I think it could have been done better without introducing that character. I don't think the character was necessary. I think we still could have had a great conversation about the Soviet Union, about the impacts of World War II. on the arts, the impact on culture in Europe following World War II. We could have had all those conversations. We didn't have to introduce this character because we get this whole backstory about the psychiatrist. He starts investigating the coven.

Starts talking with Susie. No one actually likes him. Can we just, like, make that very clear? And that's actually Tilda Swanton in makeup. Oh, yes, that's right. That's right. So... She's playing two characters, the Madame Blanc and then the psychiatrist. And he's supposed to be investigating, basically. He goes to the police. He tries to get people to come look at the school. Nobody listens to him. Nobody likes him.

And basically we get this side story where we find out that his wife, unfortunately, was taken and killed in a concentration camp during the war, which is terrible and horrible. It was a pretty big side storyline, too. Right. It took up a lot of detail. Probably like 45 minutes worth of the film was just him. Well, I don't know if it was that much, but it was a chunk of time where they did go into his backstory and his interactions with the characters. I feel like it.

With all of his screen time cut out, we could have had a much more succinct movie. But... We get this tragic story that she was unfortunately killed in a concentration camp. And then the witches are basically playing with him and playing with him mentally. They make him have a vision that he's found his wife when in reality, he has been in the basement the whole time. and he will now witness the witch's Sabbath. And I believe he dies. I think that's the end of his life. No.

Did you watch the end of the movie? He goes back to his house. They let him go. And then Susie Banyan goes and does another motherly, empathetic gesture and erases all his memory. Well, I missed that. And then he can't remember.

that happened or maybe that wasn't empathetic and she just wanted to be saved and not have him come snooping around again. But we are forgetting one major theme that I can't believe you didn't bring up. It's the theme of religion in this because there's one line that really stood out to me and it was about our dopey therapist guy. He says, you can give someone your delusion. That's called religion.

oh yeah i did catch that i think because i didn't like our therapist character very much and i felt that the i felt like the religion we were talking about too many religions like i am kind of bored of the the storyline where There's always Christianity versus everybody else. And I think that's kind of boring. You know? I was wondering if the storyline with Susie Banyan being almost brainwashed and indoctrinated by... Yep.

the dance school and it was almost like mimicking the story of how she was probably brainwashed and you know indoctrinated by her mother and then they go into this idea of delusion and i'm like all right so they're basically telling us that religion is delusional right I think that's exactly right I think because at this point I want to say that conversation with the psychiatrist happens either like a quarter or a halfway point in the film so we aren't fully into Susie's like

total indoctrination into the school. And I think that's exactly what... we're supposed to be left with is this idea that the witches believe that this is happening so it is you know what i mean like the the belief that it's happening is part of the power and i think a great example of this is throughout the film in the

practices and everything the girls are always laughing they're always laughing talking and having a great time and then as the film progresses they're screaming in the background and i think that is an example of like the the power of the group like it's like a It's almost like there's the characters and then the dance company itself is its own character as well. And then the school is its own character. It's like layers. Oh.

We are veering off our script here. One of the questions we have is how true was the remake to the original and was that for the better or the worse? This is completely different from the original. I think the only thing they have in common is there's a belly company and some witches. This version gave us a rich backstory, even though it was... for a dull character like Susie Banyan but it also gave us this very strange modern retelling but

taking place in the same 1970s, which I thought was super creative the way they did the interpretive dancing. So I think this was so much better than the original. And it's going to be a divisive film.

So I have no idea where you're going to fall. So, obviously, if the question is how true was the remake to the original, I mean, I guess it was as true as it can be when you had such a bare bones storyline. True, true, yeah. Like, you know what I mean? They were true to... what the film was trying to do we have an american girl coming to a dance school chaos ensues she escapes which is which is she escapes so with what they were given it's true but

Obviously, the biggest change is they've added significantly to the story, and I do think it was for the better. Of the two films, I do prefer this one. I do prefer the remake. And I think most of what they did did improve the film. So adding backstory to those characters. giving us the answer telling us what the heck is going on with these witches and talking a little bit about their magic their lore why are they doing this it kind of creates the world and creates the universe that we're in

And understanding why people are making the decisions that they are. And instead of going the slasher route with... you know just very basic slasher kills people getting stabbed that sort of thing they went body horror which i thought was really really interesting and really really stood out and it was impactful it was creepy it was weird whereas the slasher stuff i mean

Slasher kill is a slasher kill. Someone gets their head chopped off. Someone's getting stabbed. There's blood everywhere. It is what it is. And the blood is not cherry red in this film. It is blood colored. It's very, very deep red, especially in the climax where everybody's getting blown up and stuff and there's blood dripping all over the walls. So we talked pretty extensively already about what things were the same and which ones.

were changed but were there any that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention i just want to reiterate that i would have left out personally i would have left out the whole wore overtone in the way that they explained it through the therapist. If it was just what was going on around the dance studio would have made more sense than

Well, maybe not make made more sense, but it would have worked better and shortened the runtime just a bit. I agree completely. So I feel like they could have done the same storyline better using. dancers in the company so olga the first dancer that's killed in the uh body horror segment It's explained that she's from the Soviet Union, but then it's just never addressed. So they could have easily leaned into that a little bit more.

to have some sort of commentary about how the dancers were treated differently or how the tension still existed post-World War II. I feel like that could have been a very easy implementation there. But, I mean, I do think the... I wonder if the therapist character was just, or the psychiatrist character was just an opportunity for them to use a double bill for Tilda Swinton. Yeah. Maybe that was going to be like the hook, the, they're like little secret. Do you know?

Maybe it was supposed to be a twist all along and we weren't supposed to know. And then they got rid of the twist. So who knows? No. Oh, I don't like that idea. But did you know that David Gordon Green was slated to direct this before?

this director could you imagine what kind of movie we would have had it would have been like in in halloween the the 2018 one where they're like evil dies tonight and they kind of tried to go that almost artsy approach to it, especially in Halloween Kills, it would have been so artsy for artsy sake. And I can't even imagine what kind of movie we would have gotten. My favorite part of David Gordon Green's horror directing is somehow we're always talking about the power of love.

At some point, we're always like, kumbaya, there is somebody killing us. That's okay. Power of friendship. so we would be like at the end of the film it wouldn't have ended with Susie like blowing everybody up it would be like Mia Goth on the floor and she would have been like Susie this isn't you and then she would have just

burn down the school in probably like the first one or something or she would have called the police and saved everybody because it would have been kumbaya that's so funny imagine we would have gotten a totally different movie you're right that is so crazy i probably would have hated it too but

So we talked about things that were the same, different, better or worse. So overall, not just a successful film, but do you think this was a successful remake of the original? That's a hard question. I think it is a successful remake because we needed that backstory for Susie Banyan to give her like some life. We also needed to know why the fuck these witches owned a dance company. And that was thoroughly explained to us.

But I don't know if this movie is even like a successful remake just because it was so different. What about you? I am in the same camp as you. I really don't know because. I think I haven't decided where I'm at in the remake spectrum of... Is a remake good because it says the same thing but better? Or is a remake good because it takes something that was already said and transforms it? Because...

I guess it depends on what you think. So I can't remember. Did we think Nosferatu was a good remake? Did we? Did we think? I don't think we did. I don't think we liked it.

i don't know why don't we go i know right like isn't that sad we don't even remember what we said that's how you that's how you could tell the reality of our lives we just have too much going on but i think that's where i'm torn i don't know if i think if we if they made a frame for frame almost perfect reproduction of the original Suspiria, it would have bombed the box office just as much as this one did.

Because I think it would have been boring. I don't even think you would have gotten 60 minutes of film out of that. At least this one was interesting. This one was interesting. I gave it a lot of points for creativity for building on something that wasn't there. The director also did a significant amount and the people on production and writing.

for this film that there's significant amount of research on Dario Argento's sort of reality and the lore that connects all of his films so there's like the three mothers all of that goes back to Dario Argento's original films so they clearly were really trying to do this here it really felt like a passion project in a lot of ways and I want to say it leans more closer to a successful remake if you are a

a fan of the original but ultimately when it kind of we're not talking about whether it's a successful film but

The film is really polarizing with critics, and it bombed the box office. It was really, really bad. It didn't do well, and a lot of people, just like you did, Susie, criticized that the historical and political... overtone was unnecessary in comparison to the rest of the narrative and and like interpretive dance that's what this version gives us and that is also a very polarizing type of dance and I think that kind of might have shunned from how much dancing there was in this version.

true it's like i feel like we're talking about climax again climax is an extreme version of this because in climax i mean you could say like what the fuck were they dancing for like drugs yeah okay but what else at least in this film there was amazing like a meaning for why they were dancing and with the magic and they were actually planning on doing a show so there's an explanation for the dancing but i agree with you it's same thing with singing some people get really turned off by

I like seeing like lots of singing. It just takes them out of it or dancing, especially in this form when it's very trans like. So I think we're safe to say that we're on the fence about if this is a successful remake.

Which is okay. Which is okay. I think, and that brings us to our closing thoughts for tonight. Overall, which of the films is better? I think we both kind of said this already, but if you wanted to summarize, obviously you think the new one is better, right? Oh, I do. I think this one really dealt with the themes of transformation in a better way. It dealt with the theme of power and the abuse of power in a much more clear way and also symbolic way. And it really brought in that.

that rich theme of motherhood that i think you know started us off in the beginning of the movie and also came full circle till the end so i love this version i will recommend this version too everyone but i also think it's important to see the original because of the aesthetics i agree i think though the first one

has its flaws. I think if you are one of those people who are committed to understanding the horror genre and where certain things came from, particularly in Art House, I think it's worth it to give the first Suspiria a watch. Can't guarantee you'll like it. And if you are a fan of any of the themes that we talked about tonight, I think the 2018 version is worth watching. I don't think it's a bad film at all. Like I said, I gave it a 3 out of 5, whereas I gave the original a 2 out of 5.

And I think it's worth watching at least once. And I think what gets me about this film is because the press was so bad, I don't think anybody wants to watch it. Like, I think people think this is a bad film. That's why they've never watched it. At least that's the way I thought of it. That's why I didn't watch it. Yeah, I heard it was notoriously bad. So since we already kind of answered which film we thought was better already, let's do one more.

one more spur of the moment question. If we remake Suspiria, you and I were remaking Suspiria, what would you want to make sure we kept the same from the 2018 version? I wish they had kept the dynamic Susie Banyan as an actress. I think that actress was much better. I wish that we had a better lead like in the original. And she worked with what she had.

She was great with it. And Dakota Johnson just couldn't live up. So who would we cast as Susie in the new movie? You know, what do we think about Anya Taylor-Joy? Ooh, yeah. good she does look she has that face that can emote a lot so i think anya taylor joy and she's like the the hot thing right now in horror and i want her to like go above me I agree. And I think Anya Taylor-Joy has such a unique face that...

She can sort of play any time period very well. But sometimes I feel like depending on how they dress her, she can look a little bit more modern. So we would have to just be mindful of the rest of the set or we would have to change the timeline of the film. Like we would have to make it to modern day, which I don't think would translate well. Who would you pick? I do think Anya Taylor-Joy is a very, very solid suggestion. I would say Sophie Thatcher.

Ooh. The lead in Heretic, or one of the leads in Heretic. She's also a hot thing right now. And I think she's super fun. Obviously, she's the lead in freaking Campanion. That's the big film right now. I'm here talking about heretics. You have a similar look to Anya Taylor-Joy when her hair is blonde. Yes, it's that... they have like almost like a fairy face yeah like a like a fairy elfie look to them and i think um we've seen two really strong performances from sophie thatcher

And they've been very different. So in Heretic, she was much more kind of reserved, calculated, like more of a quieter, but also brought a lot of power and emotion to what she was doing. And then in Companion, it goes full 180, and she's... bubbly and big and just like a lot a lot of fun like really clear comedic actors so i think there'd be a lot of room with that um i haven't seen her in yellow jackets which is a show that's been recommended to me many a time but okay so our new film

Our biggest priority. So Suspiria Remake 2027 will feature Anya Taylor-Joy or Sophie Thatcher. Give us a call and we'll cast you. There's no, it'll be a passion project. No compensation required, but.

I think that's about time. It's about time. We've talked about two films for a really long time. It's time to close out. All right. So.

This is a fun one. Thanks for picking Suspiria. And you know what, listeners, if you want to pick our next film, call in, leave us a voicemail. That's up to you. And maybe I'll be the one listening to it. Who knows? But when I am not here, I'm... might be out in the woods under a moon with some witches i'll let you know in a couple weeks and other than that i'd probably be found on filmstagram at projectile underscore underscore varmint

And you can find my horror reviews and rants for lonely souls over on Instagram at Lonely Horror Club. I try to post reviews whenever I can and cause problems on filmstagram. Whenever possible. You can also find my writing on my website, LonelyHorrorClub.com. Thank you, dear internet, for tuning in to episode 58 of No Bodies, our first episode of season three. As always, sources, additional reading, and all that fun stuff will be in our show notes.

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