[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Deep Red (1975)

Seen by many as Dario Argento's masterpiece, starring David Hemmings as a pianist who witnesses the murder of a psychic in a top floor Rome apartment before becoming the killer's target himself.

There are some ingenious murder set pieces. Standouts being the initial hatchet kill witnessed by Hemmings and a man getting dragged to pieces through Rome tied to the back of a truck. The score by Argento regulars Goblin is one of their very best, in particular the strikingly catchy haunting main theme, whilst Argento's almost continuous use of a fluid camera, always on the move, puts his many Italian imitators to shame. What also works is Argento's use of a muted palette - not just for the timid Hemmings to hide away in - but how it comes into it's own when blood is spilled in glorious dripping crimson, an almost a juxtaposition in comparison to the grays and blacks colouring the majority of the film.

Yet for me it doesn't quite grip as much as Tenenbrae, the classy giallo Argento made seven years later in 1982. At over two hours it's too long and flabby. So many scenes, especially those between Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi add nothing to the film other than to give Nicolodi, Argento's then wife, screen time whilst Hemmings fails to grab my attention in the way Tony Musante does in The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970) for example - a film from which ideas were certainly re-used in Deep Red. I don't think Hemmings case was helped by his participation in a comedy sequence early on as he slips and slides about in Nicolodi's tiny car.