10 Minutes of Terror: Suspiria

So I'm daring to be different.

I'm shifting away from my list form for a while and desided to present a nice on going series for a change. Why? Because I CAN!
Well that and since I am constantly adding movies to my horror libarary, my top ten lists tend to change day to day, hour to hour, depending on how ADD I am feeling at the moment.

So I am naming this series "10 Minutes of Terror".
Catchy, huh?
This will be an on going series of posts about my favorite begining horror film moments.
Some horror films start slowly, have a long build up of character developement and tension that explodes in the last ten minutes of the film. Other films start by grabing your crotch, slaping you upside the face, and screaming "WATCH ME, FUCKER!!".

The later is what these posts are about.


I love a good opening sequence. Sometimes even more than a closing sequence. Because if the rest of the movie sucks, at least I have that first ten minutes to make it worth the ticket price. And I didn't even have to sit through 2 hours of dreck to get to it!
Granted, some of these openings vary in time. Some are only five minutes while others are close to twenty. But "10 Minutes of Terror" sounds so much better that "An Indefinite Amount of Time of Terror Near the Beginning of The Movie" so I am sticking with this title.


So to kick this off, I'm starting with an old school classic, Argento's Suspiria.
While Suspiria isn't one of my top all time favorites, its a gorgeous flick with some amazing gory visuals. The colors are bright and wild and the imagery is almost poetic. Suspiria feels like a modern day brothers Grimm story (which it should since Argento's inspiration for it was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). We have pretty girls, we have witches, we have bizarrely gory murders that you would only find in a fairy tale, and we have hands down the WEIRDEST soundtrack that has been stuck in my head for the last month.

Suspiria is one big pile of 'What the Fuck?". I'm still not quite sure what the hell happened in that movie but sure had a good time watching it happen!



The part that captivated me the most was the opening of the film...well it wasn't the EXACT opening but I don't think anyone who reads this blog wants to watch clips of a girl leaving an airport even if its shot OH so stylishly. This is about 5 minutes into the film when the most spectacular double murder I have ever seen on film occurs. Here's the clip from Ye Olde YouTube!




Now, while I'm not a gore hound, I'm usually alright with my gore. But this scene makes me flinch like a 3 year old. I don't know if its the colors, the acting, or just how surreal it all is but it makes me cover my eyes, EVERY time.

The entire scene starts with those intense colors, mostly blues in the beginning, then as the tensions grow they become brighter and brighter until the screen is splashed in just raw primary with the women so washed out they look like ghostly white figures. The murders themselves are just strange and almost convoluted. The window smothering, the stabbing, the hanging, and the glass all seem to fit together in this horrific ballet of insanity. Even the actors movements seem to be over the top and graceful, like a dying swan....a screaming, bloody, terrified, dying swan. Now I WOULD say this was the best part of the film but trust me, there is another murder that tops this one. I won't say more if you haven't seen the movie.



Suspiria is pretty old school so if you're a younger horror fan who has just started getting into it all this one might have slipped under your radar (I just discovered it a year ago). If you haven't seen it, its definitely worth the netflix rental.