Suspiria (1977)
Suspiria is probably the title that first draws most curious viewers into Argento’s films, and maybe even into the entire realm of Italian horror, with good reason. Ostensibly it’s about an American dancer (Jessica Harper) who enrolls in a ballet academy in Germany, only to discover it’s run by witches. But the gorgeously brutal Suspiria—which was co-written by Nicolodi, though she doesn’t appear onscreen in this one—is really about someone whose entire reality becomes subsumed by a paranoid, maggot-filled, murderous nightmare she can’t wake up from. In short, a masterpiece.
