One Good Scare: Suspiria (1977)
with music by THE GOBLINS
Spoilers from the jump, trigger warning for some gore.
Everything in Dario Argento’s 1977 classic Suspiria is intentionally designed to put you on edge. The film operates in a heightened space of real unreality; every colour is vivid and primary, the soundtrack (by Italian prog-rock band Goblin) is LOUD and present with you from the first second, the sets are a design fever dream. It is the mark of a film maker who knew exactly what he wanted and what he wanted was for you to know throughout that something is wrong.
Into that wrong something walks Jessica Harper’s Susie Bannion. The film legitimately opens on a dark and stormy night, as Susie arrives in Germany from a lengthy flight from the US in torrential rain and wind. After a struggle to get a taxi, she sits, sodden, watching the world pass by the car’s window. As they approach the Tanz Akademie, the prestige co-ed dance school Susie is about to attend, the taxi drives through a woodland area, and it is there that Susie (and we) catch a glimpse of a woman running away frantically.
And this is how we meet Patricia Hingle.
the scare
There’s a couple of moments from this film that I could have picked, but personally I think this scene is the best example of the heightened, spiky feeling Argento wanted to achieve.
Patricia (or Pat, played by Eva Axén) has run away from the Freiburg Tanz Akademie, arriving soaked with rain and riddled with panic at her friend’s apartment. Her friend tries to comfort her, allowing her to stay on her couch for the evening. She asks her repeatedly what happened (even thinking she may have been kicked out) but Pat feels unable to explain what transpired. In the bathroom, Pat tries to dry off but is frightened by the window flying open. Locking herself in, she tries to calm down.
But she keeps being drawn to the window. With a lamp in hand, she tries to see outside - which is a mistake because that’s when a pair of eyes flit into view. Pat tries to get a better look, and this is when an arm burst through the window and grabs Pat. The music goes completely frenetic as the hand pushes Pat into the window, smooshing her face as she tries to scream. Pat’s friend hammers on the bathroom door, begging her to let her in before running into the hallway and knocking on every door in a futile quest to get help.
Pat’s assailant eventually pushes her face through the glass, pulling her out onto the balcony where she is stabbed so many times, the killer actually manages to pierce her chest open. While the killer ties Pat up, her friend is running through her apartment complex, still screaming for help. She ends up in the lobby, where to her horror, she sees Pat’s lifeless, bloodied body falling through the skylight before she herself is impaled by shards of glass.
what makes this scare effective
In a movie full of moments that will make you go WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, this one stands out because so much happens in such a short span of time and in such a visceral way that it just knocks you out.
Yes, it’s ridiculous and over the top. Pat’s friend is running through the corridors of her apartment building like Kate Bush in the video for Wuthering Heights, screaming THERE’S A MURDERER. The blood looks like acrylic paint. Pat’s killer, and I cannot stress this enough, stabs her so many times you can actually see her still beating heart (WHICH IS STABBED SEVERAL TIMES IN TURN). All of this happens while Goblin’s soundtrack is fucking screaming in your ears, drums and yelping and guitars and murder, and all of it culminates in a skylight (one that’s zoomed in on twice as Pat enters the building, like Chekov’s skylight except the third act is a whole five minutes later) shattering as Pat’s body dangles from a rope and her friend is pierced to a gruesome death by its shards.
It’s such a concentrated burst of OH MY GOD, so early on in the film and with so little verbal explanation that you can’t help but feel completely out of breath by the end of it. And what sticks the landing is that the film then goes quiet for a long stretch of time immediately afterwards. It continues to be punctuated by these extreme moments throughout until the last act of the film where it properly is let off the leash as Susie discovers the horrible truth of the Tanz Akademie and the coven of witches at its centre.
In the wrong hands, this scene does not work exactly for the reason it works in Argento’s hands. Yes, it’s over the top to a ludicrous degree, but it works because Argento knows what he wants to do with it. Breathless, operatic and screamingly in your face, Pat Hingle (and friend)’s death is an alarming signpost of the dangers that live in the walls of the dance academy, and a piece of visual artistry which makes you feel exactly the way Argento intends you to feel: deeply uncomfortable at every turn.