Recently in Melbourne, horror film and
music fans alike could hardly contain their excitement. In a world first, Italian
prog-rock icons Goblin performed their intense, complex and mesmerising soundtrack
to Dario Argento’s surrealistic nightmare SUSPIRIA while the legendary film
played. It’s an interesting proposition having live musicians perform while
watching a masterpiece like SUSPIRIA, especially when such a film combines
striking visual language, dreamlike narrative and nail biting terror all
masterfully commanding the full attention of the audience.
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The U.S. might not be familiar with him, but Richard Crouse
has very much been the face of popular film criticism in Canada for at least
the past decade. He’s been featured on radio, television and in newspapers
across the country, and has written several books; his latest, RAISING HELL:
KEN RUSSELL AND THE UNMAKING OF “THE DEVILS,” charts the history of the
still-controversial 1971 film.
In all my travels to horror events and goings-on, I get
asked one question more than any other: “What is the scariest movie you’ve ever
seen?” One would think that if this is such a common question, I should have
some brilliant answer ready…some perfect title I can whip out and have the
whole room agree, “Yes, this film is in fact scary as hell.”
Ask anyone about the SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT series, and
they will probably laugh, then either defend it or decry it, possibly offering
the same examples to back their pro or con stance ("It's awful, it has a
killer Santa!"/"It's amazing, it has a killer Santa!"). But
they might be surprised to discover that the series has five installments (six
with the recent remake), as it's the sort of title that a lot of people know
but haven't actually sat down to watch, let alone follow it to direct-to-video
land with the bulk of its sequels (only Part 2 played theatrically, and barely
at that). It didn't help that the lesser known entries were given a poor
release on DVD via Lionsgate, who dumped VHS transfers of the third, fourth,
and fifth installments onto a multi-pack of bare-bones discs and slapped a
killer Santa image on the cover, despite the fact that none of the films
contained within featured a killer Santa.