Video Nasty July -Profondo Rosso (1975) and the kinds of movies targeted by the DPP list
Mary Whitehouse fucking hates Giallo movies; source: trust me bro
A strong contender for “greatest ever closed caption” emerges.
Welcome back to Video Nasty July - in which this horror-through-the-lens-of-storytelling Substack will zoom in on the story of a peculiar era in UK video distribution. If you missed the first two chapters of this story, check them out here, and also here.
This week, we’re taking a closer look at the kinds of movies that ended up on the Director of Public Prosecutions’ list, the ever-fluctuating list of 72 (give or take) films the Public Prosecutions office believed to be in violation of the Obscene Publications Act 1959. And we’re zooming in on one specific film maker, who had a number of titles fall afoul of the list: stack favourite Dario Argento.
Some spoilers for 1975’s excellent Profondo Rosso (aka Deep Red), with some warnings for mentions of blood (rest assured, it’s Argento blood so it’s essentially bright red paint). Also, as with last week, the story we’re dissecting is that of the video nasty era, so we’re not going to go too in deep on the storytelling of Profondo Rosso (although rest assured, one specific scene will crop up in a future One Good Scare and if you can tell me exactly which one it is I will credit you in that issue).
Profondo Rosso (1975)
AKA: Deep Red (for the sake of consistency, I’ll be referring to the film by its English title moving forward)
Directed by: Dario Argento
Starring: David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi, Gabriele Lavia, Macha Méril, Clara Calamai, Eros Pagni, Giuliana Calandra, et al.
Running time: 104 minutes (cut version), 127 minutes (“Italian version”)
Original release date: 7 March 1975
the plot, in brief
1956, Christmas. Tragedy in a family home as an unseen figure stabs another to death. A bloodied knife lies on the floor at the feet of a child.
1976, Turin, Italy. At a parapsychology conference, medium Helga Ulmann (Macha Méril) is overwhelmed by the “twisted, perverted, murderous” thoughts of an unseen audience member. She later confides in her colleague, Professor Giordani (Glauco Mauri) that she believes she can identify this mystery person, unaware that someone is listening in the shadows.
Later that night, on an empty Turin street, English jazz pianist Marcus Daly (David Hemmings) hears a bloodcurdling scream. Turning, he sees Helga from her apartment window, seconds before a black-gloved figure murders her with a meat cleaver. Marcus - who lives in the same building - rushes to her flat and finds her body. He soon becomes dangerously entangled in the investigation, and with the help of a journalist (Gianna, played by Daria Nicolodi) starts to uncover the truth of what happened on that Christmas night 20 years prior…
the DPP list aka Mary Whitehouse’s Burn Book
As mentioned, a rotating cast of 72 separate films appeared on the DPP list. The list was first made public in June of 1983, and modified on a monthly basis as prosecutions failed or were dropped. Before the list was compiled, under the terms of the Obscene Publications Act 1959, the police were empowered to seize videos from retailers if they were of the opinion that the material was in breach of the Act.
This led to certain police constabularies (notably Greater Manchester Police, which was was run by noted bigoted dickhead Chief Constable James Anderton) increasing police raids on video shops, with the choice of titles confiscated appearing to be completely arbitrary . One of those raids famously, and hilariously, netted a copy of Dolly Parton’s 1982 musical comedy The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas because (as we saw last week) people involved in these raids just didn’t fucking bother to do any research and saw the word “whorehouse” and went “PORN! ZOMGDAFUQ!”
Problems that would have probably be solved by, you know, just turning the cassette around and reading the actual blurb on the back. Just in case you were still of the opinion that any of this made any sense.
The Video Retailers Association was, understandably, alarmed by the apparently random seizures and asked for a guideline for the industry to be provided so that stockists could be made aware of which titles were likely to be seized. Thus, the DPP list came into existence.
The DPP list is divided into three sections. Sections 1 and 2 were the original list, and Section 3 is a supplementary list. We’ve covered what differentiates those lists, but what was actually on them?
Long story short, if you’re a fan of Italian horror movies and giallos, fucking dive in because the DPP list is a goldmine of them.
cannibals, slashers, nuns and the SS - oh my!
The DPP list is a strange mixed bag; on the one hand there are some truly bizarre curios on there which span a range of genres. American slashers, Italian giallos, N*zisploitation films, Spanish and Italian cannibal horrors (we mustn’t forget the other film that spawned this entire mess, Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust - and no, still not covering it, not even if you bought me a fucking house, please instead watch the brilliant Ryan Hollinger talk about it instead) (incidentally, I am tickled to discover Deodato was nicknamed Monsieur Cannibal in France, there’s something deeply endearing about this to me) sit amongst genuine horror classics such as the first two Friday the 13th movies, The Evil Dead, The Hills Have Eyes, Night of the Living Dead, Phantasm and Possession.
Giallo is quite robustly represented, with genre mainstays such as Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava and Sergio Martino all popping up. But one name particularly stands out to me, because I am me and I am nothing if not trash for this man’s work: Dario Argento.
Argento has titles across all three sections of the list: Tenebrae (1982) makes it onto Section 1, Inferno (1980) sits on Section 2 of the list and Suspiria (1977) sits on section 3 along with today’s main course, Deep Red (1975).
and oh boy what a delicious main course it is
Full disclosure: I fucking loved Deep Red. It is Argento making giallo his bitch; a complete mastery of the usual ingredients of the genre spiced with that titular Argento style. Black gloved killer? CHECK. Male outsider witnessing a murder and becoming the target of the killer while he attempts to solve the murder? CHECK. Operatic violence? You best believe it. Absolutely unhinged kills? Oh boy, you bet.
Add to that Argento’s visual style (psychedelic camera angles, THAT blood, dread emanating from every frame, interior design straight out of the pages of Psychedelic Villain Interiors for You Monthly) along with this being his first collaboration with both Daria Nicolodi (who he met during casting and was in a long-term relationship with until 1985) and Italian prog rock band Goblin (as you may expect when that name pops up, the soundtrack fucking rips) and it makes for a truly exciting experience.
Deep Red stars David Hemmings (who had his big breakthrough a decade earlier in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup) as English jazz pianist Marcus (mainly referred to as Marc throughout the film). Hemmings’s truly startling blue eyes help give Marcus the look of a man a little bit lost in his surroundings. It’s easy to connect the dots in your head: perhaps Marcus only recently emigrated, and he’s still trying to find his footing. Perhaps he’s struggling to bed in to his new life. Or perhaps the opposite is true, maybe he’s been living in Turin for some time and is still not quite at home.
He has one friend, who we meet when Marcus is walking around an empty Turin piazza at night. Carlo (Gabriele Lavia), a troubled man with an addiction to alcohol is sat near a massive statue, on a break from his bar job. The two chat for a while (you can see the bar Carlo works at in the background and it both looks like the Italian version of the bar from Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks and like nobody inside is moving at all - on several occasions in the film it looks like everyone in the background of a shot is either frozen or moving like an NPC in a video game, which adds to the eerie vibe) and just as Carlo moves to make his way back inside, a scream is heard.
Carlo brushes it off and the two say goodbye. Marcus turns and happens to look up to an apartment window, where Helga Ulmann (Macha Méril) is desperately trying to get someone, anyone’s attention. We meet Helga earlier in the film - she is a psychic medium who, while speaking at a parapsychology conference, is disturbed by a malevolent presence in the audience.
Said malevolent presence has seemingly followed her home, and Marcus witnesses Helga being murdered by the black-gloved killer. As he lives in the building himself, he rushes up to Helga’s flat and finds her mutilated body. The police arrive, and Marcus thinks one of the paintings in the apartment has gone missing in the intervening time, but can’t quite pinpoint what it is that is missing.
Reporter Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi) (imagine if Mieke from De Lift had a glamorous Italian cousin with a knack for eyeliner) takes a photo of Marcus at the scene of the crime, which then gets published in the papers. This squarely puts him into the crosshairs of the killer, and after a terrifying near miss at his house, Gianna offers to help him investigate.
Marcus visits Carlo’s home, as he had spotted Carlo on the street while he watched the killer (clad in a long trench coat because of course) stalk off into the night. Thinking Carlo may have an answer, he drops in and instead finds Carlo’s mum Martha (Clara Calamai), an eccentric former actress who is the absolute spitting image of Moya Brady, the actress who played iconic serial killer Breda McQueen on British soap Hollyoaks.
From there, Marcus and Gianna try to stop the killer while getting to the bottom of Helga’s murder, but it proves a lot more difficult and complex than either of them had imagined…
there's someone in the house... absolutely trying to kill me, ya'know?
Deep Red is not a perfect movie but it also kind of is. Schrödinger’s Movie, if you will. It has some deep flaws and at least one of the deaths was absolutely not needed. But it’s also one of Argento’s best movies. It’s a perfect balance of all of his trademarks, it’s genuinely a compelling story and while not everything fits together in the end, you will not leave Deep Red as an unsatisfied customer.
The DPP list was a flawed document befitting of the extremely flawed law that spawned it. And next week, we’ll look at a movie that possibly best hammers home just how much unnecessary damage the list did.
But for now, go see Deep Red. And Tenebrae. And Inferno. And if you haven’t seen Suspiria yet I will stare you down until you watch BOTH VERSIONS.