When a killer wearing black gloves stabs a young woman to death in close-up moments before binding her with a cord and hanging the body in mid-air to the accompaniment of a thunderous Goblin score, the viewer has no doubt that theyre watching a film directed by one of the most distinctive filmmakers in Italian cinema. You can dismiss Dario Argentos pictures (particularly his later ones) as lacking logic or even basic story structure, claim his characters are cold and say that the psychology in his films is for the birds, but Argento is less interested in scripts than what happens in front of the camera. For him, camera movements are more important than plot twists. Sometimes, this approach pays huge dividends. In Deep Red (1975), Argentos POV camera prowls through dark corridors in much the same way as John Carpenter's would years later in Halloween (1978), and its not difficult to imagine Michael Myers as the Americanized version of that films black gloved killer.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
