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