It Stinks! Dario Argento

I usually try to write only about that which I love in this blog because I feel the Internet is filled with enough negativity as it is. After reading through some old posts however, I couldn't help but notice my hyperbole is growing stale and my adjective choices (being of the positive leanings) have grown quite repetitive. So, in the interests of mixing it up, breaking out of my rut and plain old exorcising nasty demons, I present the inaugural "It Stinks!" entry. Let's begin by deflating that sallow, greasy bag of Italian hot air, Dario Argento.

To these jaded eyes, Dario is far and away the most over rated genre film maker to ever come down the pike. I understand that his influence on vastly better film makers has been monumental and his films are stylish and gleefully violent at times. This doesn't excuse how pointless they are, not to mention thinly written and atrociously cast. In fact, I don't recall a single line from any of his films off the top of my head. I don't need Aaron Sorkin pounding the keys for my misogynistic murder movies or anything, but good god man! He let Adam Gierasch and his wife script the final entry in his three mothers trilogy for the love of Jeff! But, "it's not the script that matters!", protest his ardent devotee's, "it's all about the lyrical style." Now, I consider myself a huge fan of style over substance. I've even written at length in these pages about my interest in a break from slavish adherence to predictable narrative machinations. So the fact that Argento's angles, colors and lighting leave me cold is most troubling.

I have put a lot of effort into enjoying Argento, hell, I'd settle for tolerating him at this point. Problem being, I have yet to find his films the least bit compelling. I find the protagonists as one dimensional as the victims and the victims as perfunctory and unimpressive as the killers. Take Deep Red for example. To me, this is the most embarrassingly over rated genre film perhaps of all time. I know of very few people who don't consider it an out and out masterpiece, usually the same people who bemoan art house pretension and movies without effective plotting. I hate to break it to everyone, but Deep Red is a crushing bore. Like all Argento's Giallo films I've had the displeasure to slog through, it begins with some uncharismatic asshole stumbling onto a murder I have no interest in seeing solved. Then follows some painful attempts at humor and romance, glacially paced and violently boring exposition, a half decent murder every 38 minutes and it's all capped off with a reveal of the killer that makes you shrug and say "Whatever man, anything to wrap this shit up." There isn't enough style in the world to make these boiler plate, sub-CSI mysteries the least bit interesting to me.

I won't outright assert the man has had no positive effect on cinema though. He did produce Dawn of the Dead (though butchered it with his tone deaf cut), Phenomena admittedly has a fun, ghastly charm to it and Inferno has that one great scene in the alchemists basement, but other than that, the dude is pretty much a total wash for me. Perhaps it's because I didn't see Suspiria (my first foray into his films) until a scant three years ago and my expectations were too astronomical. Whatever the reason, after immersing myself in his career and forcing myself to choke down his back catalog out of some misplaced sense of obligation to the horror genre, I can finally admit to myself that I find the films of Dario Argento to be tedious swill.

No longer will I groan my way through the Golgothan march of Opera, surely the ugliest movie ever made in such a beautiful setting. Never again will I endure the repugnant, pointless unpleasantness of Tenebre. I will not abide the blistering banality of Deep Red solely to groove on the funky Goblin track during the credits. I would sit through a thousand Katherine Heigel rom-com's before again subjecting myself to his animal trilogy, a troika of cinematic sleeping pills that verily challenge you to complete them. To put it as kindly as I care to, Dario Argento is an energetic hack left unchecked in his shallow end of the sandbox for far too long. When I see genre enthusiasts saying terrible things about Romero and demanding he hang it up while giving this buffoon a pass, I weep for the dispensation of the modern horror fan.

But, to each his own and all that. I'm not singling anyone out in particular with this inflammatory screed. This invective toward the "Edgar Allen Poe of Italy" (Jesus, that reminds me how belligerently awful his Black cat with Keitel was) has been building up in me a long time. Given my ever swaying opinion though, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if I was all about the dude in another three or four years. Well, only time will tell.