Watch Dario Argento: An Eye for Horror For Free

Blistering performances.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This is the one hour documentary made by Film Four in 2000 which was originally screened as part of an Argento season. On the plus side, there's plentiful interview footage with Argento, who goes into why he makes the films that he does (in his own Italian too, so none of his broken English), and other assorted and varied interviews with the likes of Michael Brandon, Luigi Cozzi, Alan Jones, Daria Nicolodi (briefly) and even Asia Argento. These interviews are fresh and entertaining, and even Tom Savini gets to talk at length about his various effects shots.However, I think they should have studied and perhaps reviewed Argento's movies a little more closely. Most of them are mentioned but not examined and some aren't even featured - THE STENDHAL SYNDROME for one. The documentary promised exclusive footage from the set of SLEEPLESS, which we get, but again it isn't even mentioned in Mark Kermode's voice-over. Nonetheless this is a watchable little item for fans of the genre, and professionally done.

Now ten years old, this documentary spans Argento's career, from his film critic days right up to some of his latest work. Unlike Soavi's documentary, which focused on "Phenomena" and a few Argento interviews, this is far more of a complete biography. (Both films are good, but the focus is different.) Here we learn that Argento hates actors, and prefers the look of a scene over performances. He also does not like directing because he prefers to be alone. Being surrounded by people asking him questions annoys him.The documentary asks, but never fully answers, what might be a psychological question: why he killed his wife Daria several times, but never killed his daughter Asia -- only raped her and has her naked in multiple films. The answer is potentially disturbing and best not to explore.Overall, this documentary is very in-depth, extensive, informative and has such varied interviews, notably from people early in his career, or modern masters of horror like John Carpenter or George A. Romero.

Decent but hardly a comprehensive documentary on the Italian horror maestro – despite the involvement of the man himself, his closest collaborators (a number of them family members) and admirers (including contemporaneous genre exponents).We're shown Argento at work on his then-current production, SLEEPLESS (2001): being a self-confessed loner, he demonstrates a Hitchcock-like aversion to the actual shooting process; at the same time, though, he shrugs off the epithet of "Italian equivalent to the Master Of Suspense" which is often attached to him – claiming that their individual styles couldn't be more different! However, when it comes to discussing his filmography, it rather skimps on important titles: even his influential debut THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1970) merits no more than a nod, whereas the popular TENEBRE (1982; with its famously elaborate Louma crane shot) is by-passed entirely – as is, unsurprisingly, Argento's disastrous version of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1998)! That said, both DEEP RED (1975) and SUSPIRIA (1977) – still his most accomplished films – are justly given their due; incidentally, the latter is mentioned as being the first part of an as-yet-uncompleted trilogy: actually, the director has just been showing the now-completed film on the festival circuit (hopefully, "The Three Mothers" will be a decisive step up from the mostly disappointing work he has churned out of late).As I said, interviewees include the likes of Daria Nicolodi (ex-wife, frequent actress, occasional co-writer), Asia Argento (daughter, frequent star), Fiore Argento (daughter from his first marriage, occasional bit-part actress) and Claudio Simonetti (member of the Goblin band, who were responsible for several of the most memorable soundtracks to his films and which represented an integral part in their eventual success). Also on hand are director George A. Romero (with whom Argento collaborated on DAWN OF THE DEAD [1978] and the two-part Poe compendium TWO EVIL EYES [1990], which I just watched), Romero' s regular effects creator and occasional actor Tom Savini (who, alone, worked on Argento's TRAUMA [1993] as well), Piper Laurie (star of TRAUMA) and director John Carpenter (himself perhaps the closest to being Argento's American counterpart, and who admits to being a fan of the Italian's work). One surprising but most welcome speaker is Michael Brandon, star of what is perhaps the director's most requested vintage title – FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET (1971; if only because, due to tangled rights issues, it's yet to receive an official DVD release), which I was lucky enough to watch (albeit via a poor-quality bootleg) while in Hollywood in early '06 and actually consider to be merely average!

...if you enjoy his movies. Throughout his lengthy career as one of Italy's most famous horror directors of the "giallo" genre, I enjoyed about five or six of Dario's films. "PROFONDO ROSSO", "BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE", "FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET" and "SUSPIRIA". His last good movie was "TENEBRE" which was somewhere back in the early 1980's.The films he has pumped out in that time and now have all been regarded as either disappointing or "trash". The last film of his that I saw was "TRAUMA" which was painful to sit through. It seemed like somewhere overnight he just lost his 'spark' and 'touch' as that unique director with the nightmarish cinematic vision he had held for the good part of his career.The narrator of this documentary is obviously one of Dario's biggest fans. He gushes over a lot of his later movies as if they were cinematic treasure (including "TRAUMA" and "TWO EVIL EYES"). He also refers to Dario's daughter, Asia Argento, as "Ah-jee-a", which is a pretty unique spin on the word "ASIA" if you ask me!For Dario's fans, you will be shocked to see some of the interviewees they dragged out of semi-retirement/obscurity for this documentary. Those of you wondering whatever happened to Daria Nicolodi (who was featured in about four of his movies) gives some brief insight regarding her marriage to Dario and why she decided not to appear in any more of his films (she didn't think there were any more creative ways to kill off her characters!). She appears in this documentary as how you might have imagined her to look these days, but unfortunately she is wearing a big pair of sunglasses the entire time so you can't see her eyes (and we all know how much information you can gather just by looking at a pair of eyes).Another big surprise was seeing Jessica Harper (from "SUSPIRIA") who I swear looked exactly the same nearly 25 years ago! Except for the turkey waddle and the turtle neck she was wearing to try and disguise it, she has really kept herself looking well in all this time. Looking at her resume on the imdb, she hasn't completely disappeared from the film industry, but I guess I just hadn't seen the right "straight-to-video" or "made-for-television" movies that she has done in that time.The same goes for "straight-to-video perennial" Michael Brandon who offers some trivial commentary on his involvement in the film "FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET" and how after the filming wrapped, he was invited to a spooky mansion where Dario surprised him with a goodbye party. Juicy information for Dario enthusiasts, boring for everyone else who tuned in just to learn more about Dario. The only other actress from any of Dario's films who adds her two cents to this documentary is Piper Laurie who goes into great detail about her "brilliant death scene" in "TRAUMA" where she was apparently placed on a spinning chair to make it look like she was getting her head sliced off as her head spun around. I got a few chuckles out of Tom Savini who comments on that particular scene, and you can tell he really digs his craft with special effects.Horror director John Carpenter, Alice Cooper, George Romero and Keith Emerson also offer further insight and their personal opinions of Dario Argento. There are some brief notes from Dario's daughters, Asia and Fiore (both who have starred in his films). The best piece of information here is Asia explaining her nudity scene in "TRAUMA" and how she was uncomfortable with it, especially being directed by her own father and how she wasn't quite sure what was going through his mind to make him want to direct a scene like that. However, there is no animosity from either daughter toward their father and it seems like they all share a great deal of understanding.Some small tidbits include Dario's first big break in the "spaghetti Western" genre with his screen-writing credit of the ultra-violent "ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST" which is also regarded as one of the best Western films of all time. I was also surprised that he was involved with "DAWN OF THE DEAD" as an uncredited contributer. Later, both he and George Romero would collaborate on a series of short films in the lackluster "TWO EVIL EYES".Dario enthusiasts will get a kick out of the violent scenes that are sprinkled through the documentary from "SUSPIRIA" (the dog attacking the blind man), "PROFONDO ROSSO" (the killer getting her head sliced off after her necklace gets caught in the elevator) and of course the above-mentioned scene involving Piper Laurie getting her head lopped off. For a one-hour documentary, this was satisfactory. However, I expected a lot more insight to Dario's career when he hit his peak in the late 70's. The narrator chose to examine the latter part of his career, which in my opinion, was and IS pretty much finished.