inferno

The cult of Dario Argento admirers was once a pretty exclusive club. But boutique labels like Blue Underground changed all that by not only making the Italian director’s films readily available on various digital formats, but giving them the sort of treatment you couldn’t imagine back in the bootleg VHS days. Now it’s Argento overload! Even a casual message board scan inevitably turns up a dozen debates as to which of his films ranks highest. Inferno always is one of the top vote getters. And one glimpse of this new Blu-ray edition you can see why. The Suspiria sequel boasts the same oversaturated color scheme – red, green and blue practically bleeding off the screen – and numerous set-piece murder sequences. But Inferno doesn’t even pretend to adhere to a plot. There’s a continuing story structure involving the book The Three Mothers which details the secrets of a witch’s coven spread across the globe (trust me, checking that sucker out of the library gets you in more trouble than Mein Kampf!) and the architect who constructed their elaborate dwellings. However, Argento shrugs off the script (as he would for the most part the rest of his career) in favor of nightmarish scenarios strung together by the most slender of narrative threads. From this point forward, logic left Argento’s films almost entirely. What we’re left with are moments of obscenely well-directed visions of violence. And they’ve never looked better than on Blu-ray with interviews from Argento and his lead actors in a trio of special features.