10 Horror Movie Secrets We All Missed
1. The Door Handles Are High Up To Make The Characters Look Like Children - Suspiria
Dario Argento's 1977 horror masterwork Suspiria is filled with unsettling imagery designed to throw audiences off, but beyond its intentionally gaudy production design and neon-soaked cinematography, Argento insisted upon one specifically bizarre set adjustment.
Even if you've seen the movie many times over the years, you've possibly never noticed that most of the door handles within the Freiburg Dance Academy are at eye-level rather than waist-level as you'd typically expect.
This was an eccentric decision on Argento's part due to major creative changes which took place shortly before production began.
Originally, Argento planned for Suspiria to follow a younger group of girls aged 10-12 years old, but the movie's financiers naturally got rather nervous about seeing children slaughtered on-screen.
As a result, Argento had to reconfigure the project last-minute to support an older cast, yet he attempted to retain as much of the original script's fairytale sensibility as possible.
This included not only keeping the character dialogue mostly the same, but also having the door handles positioned at eye-level, just as you would expect to see if the central roles were indeed played by children.
In Argento's own words, "These things helped keep an atmosphere of innocence and purity."