A young policewoman slowly goes insane while tracking down an elusive serial rapist/killer through Italy when she herself becomes a victim of the brutal man's obsession.
A young man tries to help a teenage European girl who escaped from a clinic hospital after witnessing the murder of her parents by a serial killer and they try to find the killer before the killer finds them.
Director:
Dario Argento
Stars:
Christopher Rydell,
Asia Argento,
Piper Laurie
An elderly and retired police detective and a young amateur sleuth team up to find a serial killer whom has resumed a killing spree in Turin, Italy after a 17-year hiatus.
Director:
Dario Argento
Stars:
Max von Sydow,
Stefano Dionisi,
Chiara Caselli
A musician is stalked by an unknown killer who's blackmailing him for an accidential killing of another stalker. But is everything what it appears to be?
Director:
Dario Argento
Stars:
Michael Brandon,
Mimsy Farmer,
Jean-Pierre Marielle
A Rome policewoman teams up with a British Interpol agent to find a crafty serial killer whom plays a taunting game of cat-and-mouse with the police by abducting and killing young women and showing it over an Internet web cam.
A college film student, obsessed with the works of Alfred Hitchcock, investigates a murder committed in the apartment building across from his and suspects that his seductive neighbor hired a girlfriend to commit the deed.
A newspaper reporter and a retired, blind journalist try to solve a series of killings connected to a pharmaceutical company's experimental, top-secret research projects and in so doing, both become targets of the killer.
Director:
Dario Argento
Stars:
James Franciscus,
Karl Malden,
Catherine Spaak
Gory remake of the Gaston Leroux classic story, only this time, the phantom is not disfigured, but a man who was raised by rats deep under the Paris Opera House.
Director:
Dario Argento
Stars:
Julian Sands,
Asia Argento,
Andrea Di Stefano
Two horror tales based on short stories by Edgar Allan Poe directed by two famous horror directors, George A. Romero and Dario Argento. A greedy wife kills her husband, but not completely. A sleazy reporter adopts a strange black cat.
A young girl, with an amazing ability to communicate with insects, is transferred to an exclusive Swiss boarding school, where her unusual capability might help solve a string of murders.
Director:
Dario Argento
Stars:
Jennifer Connelly,
Donald Pleasence,
Daria Nicolodi
Anna Manni is a policewoman trying to capture a vicious serial rapist and killer. The problem is that she suffers from "Stendhal's syndrome", a psychosomatic disease that gives her dizziness and hallucinations when she is exposed to the sight of paintings and artistic masterpieces. When the maniac lures her into a trap inside Florence's famous Uffizi museum, her troubles are just beginning...Written by
Giancarlo Cairella <vertigo@imdb.com>
The painting that Anna literally steps into is a Rembrant painting of 17th Century policemen, entitled 'Night Watch'. The painting that causes Anna to faint in the museum is by Brueghel, it's called 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'. See more »
Goofs
Though featuring prominently during the film's opening sequence set at the Uffizi in Florecne, Peter Bruegel's 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus' is actually housed at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels. See more »
Alternate Versions
The 2005 UK DVD release, by Arrow Pictures, has had all previous cuts waived and represents the full-length English version, although like all English releases it omits the two scenes exclusive to the Italian version. The 2010 Arrow reissue is the full uncut version. See more »
What makes up the singular pleasure that is Dario Argento? Maybe it's the crossroads where High Romanticism and hardcore porn meet. (I'm referring to the feeling of his work--not the images.) Argento seems doomed, like Peckinpah and like Lynch, to have summed up his world-view in a single masterpiece, the 1977 SUSPIRIA; the thrillers that came before and the low-budget shockers that came after may offer delights, but nothing close to that unity of vision.
Seeing THE STENDHAL SYNDROME projected in Los Angeles, I was struck with newfound sympathy for the Star Wars fans protesting way too much in favor of THE PHANTOM MENACE. If you love THE STENDHAL SYNDROME, you love Argento, and that is that--you may see the flaws, but they don't ruin your pleasure. The picture has too many Achilles heels to enumerate here, but what's important is that nobody in world cinema today is wrestling with his soul in the psychosexual mire the way Argento does. He puts his misogynistic demons and his almost sentimental compassion right out there; and only Cronenberg has such a direct pipeline to his own unconscious. Not to mention the fabulous, cascading images--Argento's stock-in-trade is Victorian Liebestod, Edward Gorey gone porno, and THE STENDHAL SYNDROME has sequences that rank with his best.
The sketchy thing about STENDHAL SYNDROME, like the maestro's TRAUMA, is his use of his daughter, Asia Argento, in scenes one cannot imagine a father watching, much less filming. Whatever memoirs come down the pike twenty years later, it must be said: Argento for certain lets it all hang out, and the land-mined terrain he maps is, to my taste, thrilling.
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What makes up the singular pleasure that is Dario Argento? Maybe it's the crossroads where High Romanticism and hardcore porn meet. (I'm referring to the feeling of his work--not the images.) Argento seems doomed, like Peckinpah and like Lynch, to have summed up his world-view in a single masterpiece, the 1977 SUSPIRIA; the thrillers that came before and the low-budget shockers that came after may offer delights, but nothing close to that unity of vision.
Seeing THE STENDHAL SYNDROME projected in Los Angeles, I was struck with newfound sympathy for the Star Wars fans protesting way too much in favor of THE PHANTOM MENACE. If you love THE STENDHAL SYNDROME, you love Argento, and that is that--you may see the flaws, but they don't ruin your pleasure. The picture has too many Achilles heels to enumerate here, but what's important is that nobody in world cinema today is wrestling with his soul in the psychosexual mire the way Argento does. He puts his misogynistic demons and his almost sentimental compassion right out there; and only Cronenberg has such a direct pipeline to his own unconscious. Not to mention the fabulous, cascading images--Argento's stock-in-trade is Victorian Liebestod, Edward Gorey gone porno, and THE STENDHAL SYNDROME has sequences that rank with his best.
The sketchy thing about STENDHAL SYNDROME, like the maestro's TRAUMA, is his use of his daughter, Asia Argento, in scenes one cannot imagine a father watching, much less filming. Whatever memoirs come down the pike twenty years later, it must be said: Argento for certain lets it all hang out, and the land-mined terrain he maps is, to my taste, thrilling.