Ah-Ah-Argento #6: Deep Red

1975, d. Dario Argento - dvd

In my pale recollection of my first time going through some of Argento's filmography, Deep Red was a particular standout for one reason: the score. Goblin's intense compositions set the tone for horror movies for decades to come, though most don't realize it. To hear Goblin's main theme to the picture is to be reminded of an even more monumental composition, John Carpenter's main theme to Halloween. I love Carpenter, but yeah, it's evident he lifted perhaps the most famous sound in horror from Goblin's score to Deep Red. Good artists copy, great artists steal. 

(Now, to be clear, the Goblin score is largely pretty great, but it also sometimes descends into impenetrable prog rock, and on occasion doesn't fit the tone of the scene.)

But Carpenter isn't the only horror luminary to steal from this picture. It's hard to watch the opening sequence here, where a woman claiming to have telepathic powers, Helga Ulmann (Macha Méril, a real life russian princess) is on stage behind a table before a meagre audience in a theatre, and starts receiving horrifying thoughts that trouble and pain her.  I couldn't help but anticipate her vibrating until her head exploded - so much this reminded me of David Cronenberg's Scanners - but her head never did explode. She was pointing out that someone in the audience was possibly a murderer. 

Turns out Helga was right, and she is then targeted and murdered in her apartment. Her death is witnessed from the street by English jazz pianist Marcus Daly (David Hemmings), her downstairs neighbour. He rushes up to her apartment to help, but it's too late. He spies through the window a figure in a black raincoat and hat walking away.

Unable to get it out of his head, Marcus begins to investigate with the help of a plucky reporter Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nocolodi) and parapsychologist Professor Giordani (Glauco Mauri), though danger, and more murder, await him the deeper into the spiral he goes.

There's a reason Deep Red was cribbed by two of North America's greatest horror directors of the '70's and '80's, because it's a feast of incredible staging, framing, and cinematography. It's a vibrant work of horror that uses shadows as well as anyone has but also isn't afraid of colour. Practically every sequence is either visually stunning or creatively curious. Argento's penchant for point-of-view shots is on clear display and never more effective. 

Scripted with author (and Fellini collaborator) Bernardino Zapponi, Argento's Deep Red is still a giallo, but an apex giallo. The masterstroke of Deep Red is not its score, nor its visuals, but how effectively Argento makes every encounter Daly has in his investigation suspicious. Without leavening the paranoia, Argento shades every character in the story with just enough detail to make them a possible suspect. You would even think Daly himself a plausible suspect if not for the fact that we actually watched him watch Helga get murdered from the street three stories below. 

With all this going for it, it's then a shame that the story itself doesn't move as fluidly as it should. There are logical leaps that are made, which sometimes might be for pacing purposes, but other times just seems to either be hand waiving or not even considered. As is sometimes the norm for a giallo, there's barely a police presence at all, like some odd world where policing doesn't exist and it's up to the everyman to work through a crime. There's never a concrete reason as to why Daly gets as involved as he does in trying to solve Helga's murder, beyond it being necessary for the script that he does.

In spite of its arguably minor (but many) story flaws, Deep Red is deeply entertaining. It's a giallo that verges on slasher territory, dipping a cautious toe into horror and delighting in a few extreme death gags that are sometimes both grisly and hilarious.  After the disappointment of The Five Days it was a resounding return to form for Argento and an immense success. Its success would find Argeno bound to being a horror or horror-adjacent director for the rest of his career, but he always seemed pretty comfortable in that lane.