The articles on here that get the most attention have been horror reviews or reviews of metal bands/albums, so you know how it goes, even if that’s not what I necessarily care the most about I got to keep putting up the horror film reviews, and here is yet another one.
Deep Red (1975) would have a very distinguished place in the history both of rock and roll because it was the first film in which legendary Italian horror director Dario Argento employed the services of an Italian progressive rock band called Cherry Five, whose name was for the film changed to Goblin. I’ve written this elsewhere, but one of the few rock and roll bands that still capture my attention in the vast sea of irrelevant crap is Goblin. Possibly it has one of the best soundtracks of any film I’ve ever seen. I’ve listed Joy Division, various black metal and doom metal type bands and Phillip Garrido as rock musicians of quality and expressed enthusiasm for the up-coming album with Metallica and Lou Reed playing together. However, Goblin might be my favorite band.
This is a relatively violent murder mystery with some supernatural elements sort of a silly trick ending, but generally a good film. It is incidentally, much the same silly trick ending that the nearly contemporary original Friday the 13th had. The driving soundtrack from Goblin really helps this film. The film starts with a lecture on the paranormal where I psychic demonstrates her mind reading abilities and then starts flipping out because there is a murder in the room. There are two pianists having a conversation on the street, one of which is the main character, the other turns out to be a gay alcoholic with a very weird mother, when they hear a scream which is, of course, the psychic being murdered. The main character and a female reporter start trying to solve the mystery, a number of people are killed, and then, we get the sort of ridiculous and implausible trick ending. This film is not Argento’s best nor widely considered to be, but it is a watchable example of Italian horror cinema of the time. For people that don’t like that sort of thing, there are a few very brutal murders in it. However, the Italian horror film Cannibal Holocaust came out around the same time and was banned in a few countries, Deep Red is nowhere near that level of gore. The best thing about the film is the score by Goblin. The idea of using a progressive rock band to score horror cinema was a stroke of genius on Argento’s part. It’s an okay movie, if you like Argento or Italian horror flicks of the 70’s and 80’s, then it is worth your hour and forty minutes to watch.
Another Argento film using a serial killer as a focus and an excellent Goblin soundtrack is the excellent Unsane (Tenebre) from 1982. That one has some equally implausible plot developments. The general plotline is that an American crime writer staying in Rome is stalked by a serial killer that uses a razor and kills people near the author. As the film progresses, the original killer stalking the crime writer is killed, and another killer steps in- the crime writer. Again it is not terribly plausible- although the general idea of the author being killed is that he has an ex-lover having an affair with his agent, and that he could take them out and get way with it because of the first killer, which sort of makes sense. Its also sort of made clear that the author had a previous history of sexual violence and violence towards women. There’s a whole bit about the author being sexually humiliated by a young woman in his formative years and taking vengeance on her. I’ve seen some critics say this film is some kind of brilliant psychoanalysis of violence. I think that is probably an overstatement. It’s a well structured thriller with some female nudity and themes of sexual violence and misogyny. He always had sort of a sexually perverted streak, but personally, I thought Argento handled supernatural or psychic elements very well in his films. That doesn’t come up in Tenebre. Oh well, it has Goblin soundtrack and some lovely Italian actresses naked.
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