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Inferno(1980) was the second film in the yet to be completed 3 Mothers Trilogy. The first film, Suspiria(1977) was about Mater Suspirium. Inferno(1980) deals with the evil mysteries of Mater Tenebrarum. The third film is to be about the character of Mater Lacrimarum. At one point after this film, Argento was planning to complete the trilogy with Jennifer Connelly as Mater Lacrimarum.The director decided to shift gears by using the music of Keith Emerson for the film's soundtrack. Its a change of pace after the hard rock pounding effects of Goblin. The music in Inferno(1980) is more of the traditional gothic sound. The music in this film is wonderful to listen to. Its the most overlooked soundtrack in an Argento picture.The cameo of Mater Lacrimarum is an essential part of this movie. Her appearence is to set things up for the story of the third film. The scene with Mater Lacrimarum is so unreal that it has the aura and feeling of a dream. Ania Pieroni is bewitching and impressionable as the beautiful and mysterious music student. Mater Lacrimarum is very much unexplained to the point that she is something out of a dream or fantasy.Inferno(1980) deals with occult themes such as alchemy and magic. Goes into the supernatural and the mysteries of the occult with better detail than in Suspiria. What this film says about alchemy and the supernatural is that they are elements of nature that are difficult to explain. Its in this form that Inferno is in the tradition of the great gothic works from the gothic era. The subject of alchemy was another thing that interested Dario Argento.Unlike the previous film which had a story, Inferno takes a different route by having no story. Inferno instead relies on the use of images and sound. Not liked by many because the film leaves many things unesplained and is too dreamism looking. Inferno(1980) is an inaccessible film to a mainstream audience as were the films of Lisa & the Devil(1974) and The Beyond(1981). I absolutely love this movie because its the closest thing there is to a recorded dream.Inferno(1980) is an important Italian horror picture because it was the last picture that Mario Bava worked on before his death. He ended in the same manner that he began when co directing I Vampiri in 1955. Mario Bava was involved in the special and visuals effects for the underwater and mirror sequences. He helped make these scenes a pleasure to view. A fitting end to a filmmaker that influenced a generation of directors around the world.The murder scenes are done with much creativity and panache. The murder of Sara is filled with good use of Verdi and memorable visuals. The death of Rose Elliot including a guillotine like window is cleaver. The murder of the Countess Von Adler is both sadistic and vicious. The murder sequence involving Kazanian is also sadistic as well as skillfully done.The weakest part of the film is the male protagonist played by Leigh McCloskey. The character of Mark Elliot is both bland and uninteresting. He is the main protagonist by default because the people who were protagonist material had been killed off. This shows that the strongest protagonist in a Dario Argento film is the female protagonist. This is one thing that hurts the film very much.Kazanian is excellently played by Sascha Pitoeff who had earlier co starred in another complex and confusing flick known as L'Annee Derniere A Marienbad/Last Year at Marienbad(1961). This is the most difficult film that Dario has partaken as a director. He poured every ounce of creative and imaginative ideas that he came up with and it drained him out of an big amount of creative energy. Its one of the main reasons that he hasn't done the third film in The Three Mothers Trilogy. As in Suspiria(1977), the ending here is one of the auteur's weakest.The main inspiration besides the De Quincey essay is the 1960s horror film, Horror Hotel(1961). In both films there is a female protagonist who disappears during the middle act. The two films includes a brother who searches for the truth about what happened to the sister. The best line in the film is from Kazanian when he says, "There are mysterious parts in that book, but the only true mystery is that our very lives are governed by dead people". The dream of Mark Elliot is the film's surreal moment and the image of the total esclipse as Kazanian is being murdered is mesmerizing and spellbounding.
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