50 Years Ago, ‘Deep Red’ Made Dario Argento a Horror Master
It’s easy to remember Argento’s career arc as one that begins firmly with the giallo genre of Italian murder-mystery films in the early 1970s, but it’s not quite that simple. He spent years as a screenwriter contributing to everything from war films to comedies to Westerns (including working with Sergio Leone) before he ever directed a feature film, and even after a string of early giallo hits—the “Animal Trilogy” of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Cat o’ Nine Tails, and Four Flies on Grey Velvet—he wasn’t solely devoted to frightening, gruesome thrillers. His fourth feature film, The Five Days, was a dramedy, a departure from the films that built his early reputation, and a reminder that he could branch out and be a genre chameleon.
Then came Deep Red.
Released 50 years ago this month, Argento’s fifth feature as a director is remembered as many things by many fans. To some, it’s the greatest giallo ever made, the apex of everything the genre hoped to be. For others, it’s a precursor to the American slasher boom, building on Argento’s previous thrillers to do something even more gruesome and, ultimately, influential. For me, though, particularly after looking at the film in the context of Argento’s earlier giallo entries, it’s something simpler. It’s the precise moment Dario Argento evolved from a promising filmmaker to a true master of the horror genre, by not just following up, but expanding on what he’d done before to create something altogether more vivid.
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If you just look at the basic scaffolding of the plot, Deep Red starts to unfold in much the same way Argento’s previous three gialli do. There’s a mysterious killer hidden by a coat and black gloves, an ordinary man bears witness to their crimes, and their curiosity kickstarts a civilian murder investigation that culminates in a grand reveal and a final showdown. These are all key elements of many giallo, but even with that in mind it’s striking just how much Argento fell back on familiar ideas to get Deep Red kickstarted.
Like Four Flies on Grey Velvet, it follows a musician—in this case David Hemmings as conservatory pianist Marcus—who gets sucked into a world of mystery and murder. Like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, it opens with striking sets and images of violence. And like The Cat o’ Nine Tails, its inciting incident is a person revealing they know the identity of the apparent killer, only to die before they can reveal it. There are even repeated death motifs, including a new version of an elaborate car-related death that can be traced to the final kill in Four Flies. If you know Argento’s earlier work, and you step into Deep Red‘s world, you’ll find a lot of familiar territory.
This is in part because by the mid-1970s the giallo genre was pretty well codified in its native Italy, and Argento, having made three such films already, knew both his audience and his chosen medium. He’s not just repeating ideas, but playing with them, refracting them, then pushing them to new places. The Animal Trilogy films all showcase the sadism and twisted imaginations of their respective killers, and Four Flies in particular is evidence of Argento’s incredible talent for elaborate kills.
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But Deep Red seeks to take things beyond the bounds of those previous films by showing us something more of the killer, even when we don’t yet know who they are. As Marcus and his new friend, journalist Gianna (Daria Nicolodi, who would go on to become Argento’s creative and personal partner after this film), get closer to the identity of the killer, Argento punctuates their investigation with abstractions, shots of souvenirs and strange objects collected together in the same space where the killer paints their face with black eyeliner and zips up their black leather gloves for another night of mayhem.
These glimpses into the mind and heart of the killer will eventually make sense, but even before they click into place as clues, they’re striking, as much for their red backgrounds as for their simple psychological effectiveness. They’re chilling, not just for the sake of mystery, but purely for the sake of the chill.
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Then there’s the film’s final act, which completes Argento’s transition from giallo rising star to horror icon. As Marcus and Gianna get closer to their potential suspect, Marcus goes to investigate an abandoned mansion known as “The House of the Screaming Child,” which is itself an incredible giallo title. Meanwhile, their fellow amateur detective, parapsychology professor Giordani (Glauco Mauri) is stalked by the killer. At this point in Deep Red, Argento has firmly established what happens when this killer stalks someone. We know that while the main characters are investigating and another supporting character is alone, unaware that they’re being hunted, a kill is brewing, and Argento makes no secret of his wind-up. We can feel the tension as he cuts back and forth between Marcus and Giordani while the former explores what is essentially a haunted house and the latter realizes something is very wrong.
It’s here, for me, that Argento starts to pull away and assert himself even beyond elaborate murders and giallo genre conventions. In Marcus’ scenes, you have something satisfyingly Gothic, an old house with secrets hidden behind walls, a body in a hidden room, and a clue that nearly kills him. In Giordani’s, you have what looks like another classic giallo murder scene unfolding, right up until one of the most terrifying dolls you’ve ever seen comes creeping out of the darkness. It’s just a distraction so the killer can get the upper hand, but its very presence, combined with the haunted house vibes of Marcus’ investigation, is enough to catapult the film straight up into all-out horror.
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But there’s one more ingredient worth considering in Deep Red, one that I think signals to the audience that Argento is out to do something different this time around, something that will help define the next phase of his career and beyond. It comes during the very first murder scene. While on the streets of Rome, looking up at his own apartment building, Marcus witnesses his neighbor being murdered and rushes up the stairs to try and help. When he gets to her apartment, he walks down a long hallway lined with disturbing paintings, and as he passes one, we get a glimpse of a very human, very non-painted face in the far left of the frame.
Here, minutes into the film, is the identity of the killer, and if you’re observant enough, you’ll have the killer pegged the moment they return to the screen. This glimpse is, eventually, the final clue that helps Marcus realize who the killer truly is after a couple of red herrings point him in the wrong direction. It’s an intentional nod to the audience that, if you’re paying attention, you can be ahead of the characters. It’s also, to my eyes at least, a sign that Argento is interested in growing beyond the bounds of his previous gialli.
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By revealing the killer in the opening minutes, even in a glancing way, Argento tells us that, unlike his previous films, this is a thriller that will not hinge entirely on the whodunit element. Deep Red fits neatly into giallo conventions, yes. But it’s also so much more about atmosphere, fear, and the sheer brutality of Argento’s violent imagination than any of his previous films. It’s not that the atmosphere wasn’t there before, or that those films are free of striking visuals and elaborate kills. It’s that Argento matured in the years since he started making these films, growing more interested in evoking a specific kind of shock in his audience, the kind we get from a desiccated corpse behind a wall or a creepy doll running out from the shadows.
These elements are on some level a naked attempt to get a rise out of a giallo audience already very familiar with the tropes of the genre, but they’re also the rallying cry of an artist who’s growing more ambitious, and more devoted to horror imagery, over time. The Dario Argento who gave us Suspiria, Tenebre, Phenomena, Opera, and more simply would not have existed if he hadn’t taken these kinds of chances in Deep Red. That makes it a landmark film not just because of its status as a giallo classic, but because of its place as the linchpin in Argento’s filmography, the vital piece in which it all came together.
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