Prez: More of the Same!, sez Kerry! (May / Dario Argento)

I'll move on to something else soon, I promise. But these titles keep popping up that I feel I've neglected to mention along side these past few recommendations. I don't want to start any type of theme so early on here but since it is October, and you'll hear people pushing the same old tried and true scary movies at you until Halloween comes along, I think I'll continue pushing my own.

Now, this one wasn't just one of the best horror movies I'd seen in a while, but also one of the best movies I'd seen last year. May.



A great creepy little movie. And a performance from Angela Bettis as May that you immediately realize should launch this actress into many great things, and I believe she will be well known in a matter of time. Good performances all around in what is in some ways is a kind of Dr. Frankenstein story retold through a disturbed suburban teenage girl. A definite recommendation to put on the Halloween queue.

Also, in case you haven't heard of Italian horror maestro Dario Argento, here's a brief intro... And three movies that are all you really need to see in the order of their betterness...



The fist one there is The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. This is one of Dario's first movies and the closest to being as Hitchcockian as people like to refer to him as -- a normal guy is an accidental witness and gets in over his head. It has some great photography by Vittorio Storaro who went on to work with Bertolucci and Coppola afterwards. A great movie to simply look at but also an effective thriller--De Palma has clearly been more than a little bit influenced by this guy and after watching this you'll see that how Aregento moves a camera around has had an impact on a good number of directors.

Suspiria, the second one there is pretty much the prototype of the teen slasher picture. It also falls into the same catagory as some of Polanski's early movies, of an innocent girl going insane in new surroundings, growing paranoia, etc. Again, great visuals, great camera work... A classic, and the one that really brought Dario the ten years or so of minor fame he achieved in America.

(Have to pause here--this SNL monologue is pretty funny... Dr. Porkenheimer's Boner Juice... shit, that was good. Anyway...)

The last Argento movie I'll recommend to you here is Deep Red. His giallo triumph. I put it third because it gets a bit stranger and less linear than the previous films. This trend would continue more into to the 80s until he faded into low budgets and lose his grasp on his strengths -- which is great visual storytelling, which is still in high gear on this film. A great horror movie. Now all of these movies will have plots that will strike you as very familiar -- Deep Red has the whole psychic who knows what the killer is thinking plot -- but these were the one's that started it all and did them best.

These movies are really what DVDs do best. Take great movies that could previously only be seen off of crappy copies and chopped up frames -- here they are in their colorful and gory brilliance the way they should be.

(Holy shit! Tina Fey AND Amy Poehler doing the news together -- I swear people are reading my dreams. If only they'd get around to the one's that involve me...)