Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Question:

Did any of you embrace Suspiria immediately after your first viewing? I find it's been pretty common to hear folks claim that it was a rewatch that convinced them it was great, myself included. It's my theory that it takes one viewing to get you acclimated, and then once you know what you're in for you can really settle in for your 2nd viewing.

I first saw it in my early 20s, back when my expectations about horror movies were a lot more rigid, and my underwhelmed reaction was "well, that wasn't what I was expecting". But in my defense, how could I have expected Suspiria? Who watches Suspiria for the first time and thinks, "Yep, that's exactly what I thought it would be"? Especially in the pre-internet 90s when stumbling upon an Argento film on TV was not something that happened.
So for a young Universal fanboy who preferred his horror films to be B&W and stodgy, Suspiria was a shock to the senses. I mean, I used to think Hammer films were too garish so you can imagine my distaste for Argento. Luckily I came around eventually, and seeing it on the big screen a few years ago is one of my favorite cinema memories.

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I think I first saw it in my early-20s, but it was in a horror-themed triple bill with House On Haunted Hill and another film I can't recall but which was in that similar kind of semi-ironic fun kind of horror vibe (and, as noted, the outsized nature of Suspiria has a certain air of camp about it) so my initial impression was about a or so. I think it was around the time that they started doing rep screenings for the 40th anniversary 4K restoration that I decided to give it another shot and really took in what a blast it was.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

I liked it a lot on my first viewing. Opened up hundreds of films that were new to me as possibilities.
But I loved it on my second.

But I get where you're coming from, if it's your gateway into 70s European Horror and all that that spawned, and it is for most people, I think, then, yeah, who's prepared for that?

I didn't see Suspiria until about 10 years ago. So after nearly a decade of hearing about it on RT, mostly in the context that gave me the sense it was a horror movie that even non-horror movie people cared about, I was primed for liking it. And it was a surprise watch in one of those 24 hour horror things I went to, so hundreds of other people, in a line-up where some of the movies that preceded it were Q, The Driller Killer, and X-tro. And then Suspiria came on (keep in mind, we didn't know what was coming up as they played, though the hint for Suspiria was Euro-horror classic, so I actually had my hopes that would be it), and man, it was a beautiful, crisp, 35mm print (this was at least a few years before the 4k restorations, because I remember then slumming around a few years ordering blu-rays of bad transfers from overseas). I managed to get through the entire thing without realizing the plot was complete nonsense. I think some of it was the mystery covered it up, and by the time you got "the reveal" (what reveal?), I was already under the spell of the movie.

When I watched Inferno later that year on blu-ray, by myself, by itself, with the knowledge that people cared for that one a lot less, the problems with the story were much more of an issue. But I warmed up to it with each subsequent viewing. So, I think my experience with Inferno matches what other people's experience with Suspiria was.

I had to look up the actual line-up, and had forgotten all of those were together. I swear, the first half of that year was probably the most crazy, strong line-up I've experienced at those things. The second half of that year... started to regress towards the mean.

Suspiria was the movie I was looking for my entire life, so when I found it, I was prepared. It was the Rosetta Stone that linked all the art house garbage I was watching with all of the B-movie poetry I was simultaneously awash in. As soon as it ended I put it on again. Then watched it the next two or three nights as well. It was a drug. From those opening drums rolls to the completely underwhelming climax, it was all mine. And I wanted every second of it.



How disappointing though when every person I showed it to was completely underwhelmed. So Suspiria was also the beginning of me beginning to understand I was seeing something in movies most mortals aren't terribly interested in. But that's their loss.

I loved Suspiria with my first watch, but I think I was at the perfect exploratory phase to be won over by that movie.


Inferno I definitely owe a rewatch though. I was a bit underwhelmed when I saw it (or rather, the movie felt like it miscalculated on the Suspiria magic), but I'd like to give it another shot.

But even so you did hate the score that first time which supports my theory that very few of us are completely ready for Suspiria when we first encounter it.


This theory probably doesn't apply to younger folks who have more info at their disposal and can come to it better-researched than I. Like where would I even find a Suspiria trailer to watch back in '92? I just had to rent it completely blind.


Another thing to remember is that I first watched it after having spent the 80s ignoring any and all slashers, so I didn't even have that base line to fall back on. So I was no doubt even less prepared than the average viewer.

Yeah, I don't think I'd watched a trailer, but I was definitely somewhat aware of what I was getting into. I'd seen snippets when a truncated version was played on some channel with a horror host (not one of the good ones), and the story had actually been referenced by a cartoon I'd watched as a kid (Martin Mystery, a Canadian cartoon from the early 2000s that was about a group of paranormal investigators, fun stuff if I recall correctly).

You know, despite people referring to Suspiria on RT, I had no idea what it was about nor its tone. The most I had seen was a screenshot or so (I seem to recall it was the face against the glass, or the yellow eyes through the glass - which... doesn't give you much).
I think just being primed that it was a euro-horror classic probably made the biggest difference. That and just all of the other stuff they showed. Like, I'm pretty sure I saw Possession the summer before...

It's hard to guess what my response would have been if I had seen it in my 20s. I remember seeing Naked Lunch (and Lost Highway) in college and being... confused. Because I basically wanted it to be something more straightforward in the connection between the real world and the fantastical world (something that we'd all get later with Pan's Labyrinth and by that point, such straightforwardness was less desired).

Granted, the first time I saw Naked Lunch, I didn't know much about Burrows, didn't know the novel, and didn't appreciate that there was no fantastical story going on, it was all supposed to be just a drug trip, no ambiguity intended on that front at all.

Yes, I also saw it completely blind. I read it about it somewhere but only like a paragraph.
Everything about it just hit me like a truck.

I think I saw Naked Lunch in highschool, shortly after the book, and thought it was a travesty in all of the liberties it took with the text, and how it dared to be mostly a linear story more based on Burrough's real life instead of the nightmarescapes the book is almost completely composed of.



Now I realize I was a pretentious twat who didn't know what he was talking about. It's incorporation of biographical detail is really the only way that book is ever going to work on film. It retains the spirit of the text, while illuminating what the novel is actually about with all of its constant abstractions.


As usual, with most Cronenberg, he is a guy I almost always need a second viewing of every one of his movies to properly appreciate.

I think my personal preparation for it was having seen City of the Living Dead about ten years prior. A movie I didn't understand on first viewing, but just lingered in my like a brain tumor for a decade. Then, watching Suspiria, it kind of activated the understanding something like CotLD wasn't just strongly resonant trash. It was a piece of high level art.



The effect of Suspiria cannot be overstated.

My first experience with Fulci was Zombie, which left me pretty cold. It took me watching The Beyond a few years later to really click with him (I watched City of the Living Dead shortly after), and when I finally rewatched Zombie it went up in my esteem quite a bit.

My experience with Zombi was pretty unique.
There is (was) a Haunted House every year during October, which won The Travel Channel's show or The Scariest Haunted House In America. The line could easily run to 45 minutes, so they had entertainment while you were in line, including Pain Tribe, a group of extreme body-piercing folks who would hang from chains by their piercings and and put foot-long needle-like spikes through their cheeks (in one side of the mouth and out of the other) and so forth, but as the line approached the building they would be showing the goriest Horror movies projected the size of a theater movie on the outside wall of the building, before they did a stage show on the roof with crazy costumes and pyrotechnics.
The movie on the wall the first year I went was Zombi, I think they just had like the final 30 minutes on a loop. And I remember thinking, "Right, this is the shit I've somehow missed, that somehow eluded me all my life, and I need to find it." I had no idea what movie it was.
Then I saw Suspiria and got a sense that I might be on the right track and then I read someone talking about Zombi on RT and describing the eyeball scene and I was like, "That's it!!!"
And then I saw Zombi.

In the final 30 minutes, Zombie is a bit on a loop naturally.

The exact kind of idiosyncratic low-budget comedy that seems custom-built for cult status, Withnail & I readily earned a place in my heart with its tale of the titular actors (Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann respectively) trying to get away from their squalid London existence by visiting the country home of Withnail's eccentric uncle (Richard Griffiths) with...less-than-ideal results. The juxtaposition of theatricality and intellect with hedonism and paranoia makes for a heady concoction that manifests so beautifully in the film's flowery yet profane dialogue, to say nothing of the film's occasional unforgettable delve into physical humour. All of it is delivered with aplomb by such accomplished performers, especially Grant as the roommate from hell who will drink lighter fluid out of alcoholic desperation or insult just about everyone he comes across. This is all enjoyable texture that covers a bittersweet tale of a toxic friendship nearing its final days, which does admittedly veer into straight-up gay panic humour (especially when it comes to the subplot involving Griffiths showing up to the cottage with designs on McGann) but wins in the end with an indelible rain-swept soliloquy that underlines the tragic heart at the centre of a tale of stupid city boys with stupid country tastes.

2005 ranking: #30
2013 ranking: #8

I really liked (I wouldn't say loved) Suspiria from the first watch, but then I was about 11 and, let's face it, a gorgeous looking, weird film which doesn't make sense, populated by barely covered young women and the promise of nudity is exactly what I wanted to see. It's like a grown up's version of Scooby-Doo. Obviously it wasn't anything like as clear and gorgeous as it looks now, as it was on video, but I just ate all that stuff up from very early on and throughout my teens and early 20's.

The Terminator is still great. Showing it's age, but still great. I watched a reaction to it just the other day and it still has the power to both shock and get an audience asking questions. Also, I'm another who'll put it above the sequel, as much fun as that is, partly because of the effects, but mostly because the end doesn't seem/feel as dragged out in the first movie.

Withnail & I I've already addressed in the Comedy countdown. In short, not seen it, don't like the look of it. Almost certainly will never watch it unless I feel like punishing myself.

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I addressed Withnail & I in the comedy countdown, too, but I'm a pretty big fan of it.

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Much has been made of how Verhoeven's other ventures into Hollywood sci-fi action also functions as ruthless satirisation of the same, whether it's RoboCop underlining how increasingly militarised police are effectively made to serve corporate interests or Starship Troopers mocking the fascistic nature of jingoistic military narratives. Compared to those two, Total Recall takes a rather understated approach to deconstructing action cinema itself, especially when it gets none other than the most iconic action star of his generation to play the lead. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Quaid is bored of his everyday life and decides to get a fake memory of being a secret agent implanted in his brain...but then it turns out he really is a secret agent being targeted by killer goons. Or is this all just a dream? Verhoeven keeps it delightfully ambiguous in such a way where even the film's indulgences of R-rated extremity play like subtle indictments of the same, especially as things continue to escalate into the absurd and contrived. At this point, it becomes much easier to believe the interpretation that this is all a dream, but even that doesn't undermine the film's overall exercise in continuing as not just Verhoeven's spiritual successor to not just RoboCop but also screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett's exercise in following up the interplanetary anti-corporate approach they'd crafted in Alien while working off Philip K. Dick's original story. As hard as it is to properly quantify the best Schwarzenegger film, this is a decidedly worthwhile contender.

2005 ranking: #60
2013 ranking: #56