La Terza Madre

Excited to say, I had the pleasure of seeing Dario Argento's latest film Mother of Tears this past weekend. I was excited if for no other reason than to see one of his films in an actual theater. This is the monumental third and final chapter in his celebrated "Mothers trilogy". Suspiria and Inferno being the first two chapters. Argento's career has been all over the fuckin' place. His earliest works such as Cat O Nine Tails and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage being absolute classics and superb murder mysteries on every level.

He then seemed to reach a pinnacle in the 70's with Suspiria, with it's ear-melting soundtrack and eye-melting Technicolor. Things then seemed to slowly roll downhill from there. He hasn't been without his fair share of incredible films, such as Deep Red, Tenebre and I love Opera. But it's obvious that those films must be judged on a different scale. They have that cheese factor to them that requires they be judged as an "Italian horror film" in the same way one looks at grindhouse films. The struggle I have with this is I think some of his films rise above that. His earlier works specifically.

I went into MoT with very high hopes and some cautious optimism for a safety net. The film opens very strong and got my blood pumping and my hopes escalated. The movie was great. Let me just get that out now before I start picking away at it's flaws. But it's great on the Euro horror b-movie scale, not on the universal film scale. I'm sad about that, but I'll get over it. Argento is old and he has seemingly lost touch with what's cool, never realizing it's right in front of his fucking face [Deep Red, the mirror]. Is there nobody around to tell him that the style he was so great at back in the 70's is by definition "classic" now? And were he to apply that to a modern film it would blow minds. There were moments of this greatness in MoT, but every so often there was some touch of modern FX that just took a shit all over the screen. The film is beautifully shot and uses very little digital FX, but when they do happen they literally ruin the film for me. They are AWFUL. I would've loved to have seen a throwback to the first two films, complete with a Goblin soundtrack. Keep it as pure as possible. But instead, the film is an example of Argento's more modern evolved style...that nobody likes.

The film attempts to be epic in scope and while it fails to pull this off, I really enjoyed it attempting to do so. From a story standpoint it makes for a very fitting conclusion to the trilogy. It's just so damn full of holes and head-scratchers. Where are those creatures from the beginning? How did this naked chick get the talisman? Why is the cop here? How did he get out of those chains. [head explodes] Also, am I the only one creeped out by the fact that Argento uses Asia in so many of his films? Stendhal Syndrome: "Okay, now I want you to pretend you are raping her...HARD!". [Italian accent]

I am impressed by the fact they released the film unrated. After seeing it, it's quite obvious there is no way on Jobu's green Earth they could've released this as an 'R' rated film. It was GORY. While the pacing was somewhat slow and tedious, the shocking death scenes will keep this film alive as a worthy entry into Arengto's resume. I don't want to spoil any of it for you, but it's more along the lines of a Fulci film. I'm tempted to say I've never seen a gorier Argento film. It's gets gold stars for that fact alone. In the end I was slightly disappointed because I wanted this to be a great film, not just a great Italian horror film. It has some great things about it, but in the end it's full of holes and unforgivable problems that hold it back from greatness.