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.
Up Next in Witches
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Black Sunday
Directed by Mario Bava • 1960 • Italy
Starring Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Andrea ChecchiItalian maestro Mario Bava left his first indelible mark on horror cinema with this gothically stylized tale of witchcraft and revenge, loosely based on Nikolai Gogol’s oft-adapted short story “Viy.” I...
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Il demonio
Directed by Brunello Rondi • 1963 • Italy
Starring Daliah Lavi, Frank Wolff, Dario DolciFor his second film as a director, famed screenwriter and Fellini collaborator Brunello Rondi (LA DOLCE VITA, 8½) created this shocking and deeply unsettling folk horror nightmare that would influence a wave...
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Viy
Directed by Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov • 1967 • Soviet Union
Starring Leonid Kuravlyov, Natalya Varley, Vadim ZakharchenkoIn nineteenth-century Ukraine, a seminary student (Leonid Kuravlyov) is forced to spend three nights with the corpse of a beautiful young witch (Natalya Varley...
