Directed by Dario Argento • 1977 • Italy
Starring Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci

One of cinema’s most potent hallucinogens, Dario Argento’s witchy freak-out is a sustained spectacle of outrageously stylized violence and eye-popping art direction. When doe-eyed American ballerina Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) arrives in Germany to study at a renowned dance academy, she stumbles through the looking glass into a maze of mayhem, murder, and maggots. It all takes place in one of film history’s most outlandish haunted houses: a riot of demonic neon lighting and surrealist-baroque décor complete with a barbed-wire room. Add the eardrum-shattering score by prog-occultists Goblin and you’ve got the most extravagant slasher movie of all time.