Inferno (1980) review

(6/10)

This is the weakest of Argento's films that I have seen up to now. It's still very suspenseful with his usual style, but compared to his past, it's not as elaborate or developed.

PLOT:Two girls in both New York and Rome named Rose (Irene Miracle) and Sara (Eleonora Giorgi) both have come across and began studying a book called "The Three Mothers", which tells the story of three sisters that ruled supernaturally with power in several different parts of the world (one being the ballet school in "Suspiria"). Rose sends a letter to her brother majoring in musicology, Mark (Leigh McCloskey), to come and visit. However, when he arrives in New York, she's nowhere to be found, and now it's up to him to uncover the mystery of her disappearance and of the three sisters. It's a good plot executed kind of lazily.



ACTING:The performances in here are pretty great, I'd say. Leigh McCloskey played a pretty solid pary as Mark, our main character. It wasn't spectacular, but he did a pretty great job. Irene Miracle also played a pretty great leading part as Rose, his sister. The other shiners would be Eleonora Giorgi as Sara, Daria Nicolodi as Countess Elise, Alida Valli as Carol, Feodor Chaliapin Jr. as Varelli, Sacha Pitoeff as Kazanian, and Gabriele Lavia as Carlo.

SCORE:The score was of the usual horror goodness by Argento's favorite, Goblin. It was creepy, unnerving, and got the job done.

EFFECTS:The effects were also of Argento's standard. The blood effects looked similar to what they did in his past works, and he also used the alternating light color as he did in "Suspiria" to add creepy effect. These worked as well as they could for a film like this.



OTHER CONTENT:As I said before, this is the weakest of Argento's works that I have seen. The plot's not as developed, it jumbles up, and it's not as scary. Compared to his other works, the plot for this film is just underdeveloped. I spotted a couple minor holes and due to its development, it was also really jumbled. There was no solid plotline, so you spent most of your time confused and guessing who was who and what was going on. Also, it wasn't as scary. The creepy factor was the same, but it only had one or two good scares as compared to the likes of "Suspiria" or "Deep Red", which were abundant in them. This film does have a lot of flaws, but it's still very suspenseful and keeps true to Argento's basic style.

OVERALL,an ok Argento horror with a good plot, great acting, unnerving score, Argento effects, lots of suspense, and Argento's usual style, but the plot was underdeveloped, things got jumbled up, and it wasn't as scary as it should have been.