I am two months late on this, but I wanted to make a comment regarding this post. Appropos of GIALLO, the latest production from Dario Argento (MOTHER OF TEARS), the Blood-Spattered Scribe remarks:
In a way, Dario Argento is like an absentee father for horror fans. No matter how many times he forgets our birthday, bounces a child support payment, or not show up to take us to the zoo, we still love him because…he’s Dario! Just watching 5 minutes of Suspiria or Bird with the Crystal Plumage and we forget all about…well, just about every other picture over the last 10 years.
I like the absent-father metaphor, but I have to object to the time frame: Argento’s last ten years have not been his best, but they have been a considerable improvement over his work in the ’90s. After the brilliant period that culminated in 1982’s TENEBRE (his masterpiece), Argento delivered over a decade of disappointments, with only an occasional flash of the old brilliance. He seemed on the verge of becoming, like John Carpenter, a filmmaker churning out the same old thing over and over without any new inspiration.
Then in 1998, Argento descended to the absolute nadir of his career with PHANTOM OF THE OPERA – which was almost enough to make even hardcore fans abandon their idol. In retrospect, PHANTOM seems like a brilliant career move – a film so bad that everything afterward, per force, seemed like a comeback. SLEEPLESS was a return to form – not necessarily vintage Argento but close enough to be respectable, and the fine performance by Max Von Sydow certainly helped. THE CARD PLAYER’s depiction of online poker was seriously flawed (it’s supposed to be about matching wits, but it comes across like random chance), but the film was slick and effective. DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK did not feature the expected bravura visual stylings, but the low-key approach was matched with a reasonably effective thriller scenario that avoided overt brutality in favor of an homage to the American master of suspense. And of course, MOTHER OF TEARS trounced the upstart gore films of the new millennium, putting the young upstart filmmakers in their place.
So yes, Argento is like a absent father whose past neglect we overlook because we remember the good times, but over the course of the past ten years he has at least been trying harder to be attentive. So I think we should forget the past and let bygones be bygones – as long as he doesn’t announce plans to make PHANTOM 2.