Argento's Three Mothers trilogy review, Part 2 - Inferno

Gort vs crap witches: Sexy Italian Pussy-Strokers

"The Fourth Beegee is stalked by a sexy woman suggestively stroking her ginger pussy... not like that..."

New here? Start with the first part of our review.

Three years after the release of Suspiria, auteur Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi decided to do a Lucas and expand the film into a trilogy. Gone were the fairytale trappings and youthful bent, to be replaced with an overarching plot. The opening of the sequel, Inferno informs us that, just as there are three graces and three fates in Greek myth, there were also three sorrows. These were three evil women who invented witchcraft and used it to rule the world from three stately houses they tricked an architect into building for them. The first house was the dance school in Suspiria and the first witch, Mater Suspiriorum - 'The Mother of Sighs' was destroyed by Eyebrows. The second, we discover, is the new home of a poet who makes the kind of life choices Miley Cyrus would be embarrassed by.

Genius Girl finds a book written by the architect who built the houses and decides to check out the abandoned basement of the building, then take a dip, fully clothed (in an outfit that goes very see-through when wet) into the flooded sub-basement to retrieve a dropped piece of jewellery. Bumping into an unexplained dead body, she rushes back up to her apartment and, rather than getting the hell out of there, sends her brother a letter asking for help before getting offed by another disembodied spirit. Meanwhile, in Rome, her brother - who appears to be the fourth Beegee - and his girlfriend receive the letter and find themselves stalked by an extremely sexy Italian woman suggestively stroking her ginger pussy... not like that...

Perverts...

There's a wonderfully-spooky scene of the girlfriend searching for the book in a seemingly-haunted library, which for some reason causes her to invite a random stranger to her apartment for - to quote Scott Pilgrim - "sex, casual sex". A spirit promptly gets stabby with her and her thwarted hump buddy. Meanwhile, Fourth Beegee heads to New York to investigate. He quickly finds that anyone who's read the book is getting offed in a creepy fashion. He manages to bumble his way into a hidden basement and confronts the second witch, Mater Tenebrarum - 'the Mother of Darkness', who enjoys cosplaying as the Grim Reaper. Fouth Beegee manages to kill her, before sulking off into the night - possibly to sing about what a Tragedy it is...

Inferno, like Suspiria, is slow and impenetrable, but lacks the first movie's charm. The art deco stylings are still present, but the look of the film is less intricate, while the deaths continue the downturn that started in Suspiria. The one thing that keeps the film interesting is the building up of the back story of the Three Mothers. Fans were desperate for a final instalment and were excited when Argento released a film called Tenebrae (Italian for "darkness" as in the Mother of Darkness) in 1982. Unfortunately, while this was a fantastic film - much better than Suspiria or Inferno - it had nothing to do with the trilogy.

Check back at DayHWStoodStill tomorrow for our review of the third part of Argento's trilogy - Mother of Tears.