Over the last thirty five years Dario has directed sixteen films, many of them falling into the Italian genre known as Giallo, meaning Yellow. This is a reference to the lurid Yellow covers of murder mystery novels popular at the time and just like the novels, Giallo movies are a heady mix of gritty American detective caricatures blended (and in Dario Argento case quite often literally) together with a European, Baroque viscosity of violence and excess.

To say that Dario's moves are visual is putting it mildly. Less concerned with character or plot he focuses on the visually disturbing. Probing the human mind, (again, quite often literally) for the things that make people squirm and writhe. He languishes in the cruel and mindless violence that would leave normal people at a loss as to how they would remove such thoughts from their minds should they ever have sprung up there in the first place.

He is, after all, the man who showed us what it would be like to be held down while a woman in red high heals repeatedly stamps and stamps on our mouths. Or what it looks like for a woman to be torn apart by barbed wire. Or, how it might look if an old cripple is eaten half to death by hungry rats, only to survive to be hacked apart by a random, cleaver wielding maniac. As to what Dario has to say on the mater it's this.

"I like when people are disgusted, because it means you've made an impression on them.”

No ambiguity there.

Subtlety is not his forte. In fact it seems to abhor him almost as much as his films abhor their viewers. And when it comes to the lusty, beautiful women in his movies he is really quit clear. I quote "I like women, especially beautiful ones. If they have a good face and figure, I would much prefer to watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or man.”

Of the Sixteen film directed by Dario Argento, Deep Red and Suspiria are considered to be his best work. Suspiria, made in the seventies, was the first in “The Three Mothers” trilogy he planed to make about three ancient witches living in three modern cities. In the eighties he made the second movie in the series called Inferno. The third

Film in the series is finished and is currently awaiting release. Three other films Argento made in the early seventies, The Cat O Nine Tails, Four Flies on Grey Velvet and The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, have been linked together in the minds of the people who admire him and are commonly referred to as the “Animal Trilogy”

There is no doubt that Dario Argent is a master at what he does and like him or loath him he has inspired many of the best know horror makers around the world today. John Carpenter has said that he was greatly influenced by Dario's work when he was making his own, Horror epic, Halloween. In fact it could be said that if Edgar Allen Po had had access to the technology that Argento does now he probably would have films every bit as gruesome.

To sum up I will leave with the words of the Maestro himself.

"Horror by definition is the emotion of pure revulsion. Terror by the same standard is that of fearful anticipation"---Dario Argento

It doesn't help when wifey catches the bridegroom on the floor, naked with Andrea Rau. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Andrea is dead, a straight-razor having slipped and somehow killed her while Karlen was sexually grappling with her. We are not shown where the razor cut her, there are no cuts and just a little blood. This is not what one expects in a vampire movie. Andrea Rau is sexy whether she's alive or dead. She surely has the most sensuous, thick, pouting lips of any star of stage or screen, made even larger by a generous helping of dark red lipstick. Too bad more of the movie couldn't have featured Andrea Rau and less the fading late 30's glamor of the Countess who appears in dozens and dozens more shots than her young understudy does.

This film looks and feels like a sequel. Unfortunately, there was no previous movie. Maybe one should have been made, but wasn't. And too late now to do it, 35 years after the fact. As an example of the "sequel" feeling: there is an old retired police inspector, reduced now to peddling around the countryside on a bicycle, with knowing looks in his eye, who certainly is aware of what the dread countess is up to, and shadows her. He obviously knows the bloody countess from some past run-ins, but nothing more is said about it, and his threat is quickly put to a violent, slightly comical end. Nothing ever comes of him. There is also a Germanic sort of stuffy, puffed-up desk clerk in the dreary abandoned hotel who remembers the countess from 40 years earlier, when some wicked, unelaborated events took place. He remarks that she looked just the same 40 years ago as she does today, but nobody believes he could be talking about the same person. We're left wishing we could have seen that movie.

There is a stark lack of people in this film. The seaside hotel has fewer people in winter than the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King's The Shining. Some of this makes no sense at all. The young honeymoon couple indulge in a wonderful gourmet dinner in a dining hall totally empty except for themselves. Hard to believe there is a kitchen staff there slaving away in back for the sake of one or two diners, but we have no idea where this fine meal came from, or who served it, since there are no waiters or waitresses, either. It could've been take-out.

The highest point of intense sexual tension occur when Lady Bathory puts her hands all over the young hubby, played by Karlen, while wifey understandably freaks-out, watching in growing horror from 10 feet away as the Countesses' caresses become more and more intimate while she and her male prey (although she prefers females), recite a litany of the bloody deeds of the historical countess, 400 years earlier. There is a powerful sense of how eroticism, torture and violent bloodshed all come together, as both Bathory and hubby grow ecstatic during what they are saying, lines such as: "pinched their nipples with silver tongs!" Unfortunately, it doesn't get any better than that in this movie; so the best part is nothing but a tease.

A cheap and quick exit is made at the end which will leave most viewers unsatisfied. This is followed by a twist as we are shown that the evil lives on. But it is only a vague suggestion of violence and bloodshed, as during most of the rest of the movie, things are suggested but very little is shown. In the entire film there is only one brief scene of vampires feeding on newly-spilled blood, but it is rather unconvincing, since their victim had his wrists cut when a glass punchbowl that they were pressing down on his face broke into two parts, each of which just happened to roll down and sever his wrists.

Seeing this almost incomprehensible 'Director's Cut' makes me sort of want to see the cut version which was originally shown in the U.S., which ran 12 minutes shorter. Maybe less was more, in this case. The version I saw is marked NOT RATED, although there is some female nudity and quite a bit of graphic groping around, mostly by the young newlyweds in the early scenes. But probably not a film for the youngsters!