When I first heard that Kevin Olson was putting on a blogathon over at Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies focused on Italian Horror this month, I jumped at the motivation to delve into a genre I’ve never tried before. I’m fairly new to horror in general, having only in the past couple of years actively sought out horror films to watch (and I’m still quite a wimp compared with most of my cowriters when it comes to horror), and until now I hadn’t seen any Italian horror at all. Dario Argento’s Suspiria has been on my to-watch list for quite some time, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet, so I figured this was both a great film to begin my exposure to Italian horror with, and a great excuse to catch up with a film that makes many best lists, horror-related or not.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from my first-ever Italian horror film, other than that one of my friends described it as more “vivid” than scary. And she was right. I was never scared by it; I was more alternating between stunned incredulity and boredom – but only during the narrative/exposition scenes. Because really, the story is both spare and pedestrian. An American ballet dancer goes to study at a dance academy in Bavaria, just in time for a rash of grisly murders. A little ill-advised detective work later and she discovers the school’s faculty are actually a coven of evil witches.

But Suspiria isn’t know for its intricate and subtle plotting, but for its series of flamboyant and visually arresting set-pieces. The first is truly spectacular, a literal maelstrom as an unfortunate girl is torn out a window onto the roof in a driving storm and brutally stabbed (over and over) before being dropped through a skylight to hang in the school’s main hall. Soon we’re witness to the worst aide dog ever, the perils of razor-wire floors, knife-wielding demon possessees, and wind-blown escapes that reminded me very much of Cocteau’s Orpheus and Godard’s Alphaville. Add in some of the most frantic and overpowering music I’ve ever heard in a film, and I feel pretty safe in saying that Suspiria is on the short list of films most likely to cause sensory overload. (It was a fascinating contrast with A Tale of Two Sisters, the Korean horror film I had watched earlier the same evening – Sisters is based on extremely subtle sound design, where you’re straining to hear every tiny noise, whereas Suspiria takes its sound design and beats you senseless with it. That’s not a judgement; both work very well, it was just interesting to see such opposite approaches.)

After getting Argento under my belt, a friend suggested I try some Mario Bava, starting with The Mask of Satan (aka Black Sunday). So I Netflixed that immediately. And he was right, I liked it a lot. I have a thing for great B&W cinematography, so a B&W film directed by a cinematographer-turned-director? I’m all there. In the middle ages, a woman and man are condemned for being witches/Satanists/vampires (I was never quite clear on all that – there was certainly some vampire-like stuff going on, but with a different mythology than your standard Dracula vamps) and executed. A couple of hundred years later, they’re reawakened by some overly curious travelers and wreak vengeance on the descendants of those who condemned them. It’s not nearly so over-the-top as Suspiria (no doubt partially a function of its 1960 date versus 1977) – in fact, it’s quite like any 1960 low-budget British horror film would be. There were a few visuals that reminded me of Plan 9 From Outer Space, of all things.

What set it apart and connected it to Suspiria for me, and begins to form an impression of Italian horror in general, is the underlying passion of it. Barbara Steele, who plays both the condemned witch and the lovely girl she tries to take over when she returns, isn’t even Italian, but she gives a fiery, passionate performance, even when her costars are giving her little to go on. Everything is just a little heightened, the shadows are a little deeper, the music is a little more hectic, the gestures are a little more pronounced – sort of Expressionist, but with an abandon that Germans just don’t seem to be able to pull off as believably as Italians. (Gross generalizations there, I know, but that’s about all I can do based on two films!)

So there it is, my introduction to Italian horror, courtesy of Dario Argento and Mario Bava. Suspiria is definitely the one of these two that will stay in my head the longest, but I think that when I choose what I want to watch next in the genre, I might lean toward Bava. Okay, that’s possibly because The Mask of Satan had a trailer for Black Sabbath on it, and that looked frakking awesome. Already in my queue.