Inferno is a 1980 Italian supernatural horror film written and directed by Dario Argento, and starring Irene Miracle, Leigh McCloskey, Eleonora Giorgi, Daria Nicolodi, Sacha Pitoëff (in his final film role) and Alida Valli. The plot follows a young man's investigation into the disappearance of his sister, who had been living in a New York City apartment building that also served as a home for a powerful, centuries-old witch. A thematic sequel to Suspiria (1977), it is the second installment of Argento's Three Mothers trilogy. The long-delayed concluding entry, The Mother of Tears, was released in 2007. All three films are partially derived from Thomas de Quincey's 1845 work Suspiria de Profundis, a collection of prose poetry in which he proposes the concept of three "Ladies of Sorrow" (Mater Lachrymarum, Mater Suspiriorum and Mater Tenebrarum), concurrent with the three Fates and Graces in Greek mythology.
The film was internationally released by the American studio 20th Century-Fox, who had released Suspiria theatrically in the United States under their "International Classics" banner. Principal photography of Inferno took place largely in studio sets in Rome, though some location shooting also occurred in New York City. 20th Century-Fox released the film in Italy on 8 February 1980, though its release in the United States was shelved for unspecified reasons. In 1986, a year after Fox had issued the film on video in North America, they gave it a limited theatrical release for one week in New York City. Because of its limited release, the film was unable to match the box office success of its predecessor.
While initial critical response was mostly negative, its reputation has improved considerably over the years, and it has been praised for its surreal visual elements and atmosphere, though it has received continued criticism for its incoherent plot. Kim Newman has called it "perhaps the most underrated horror movie of the 1980s." In 2005, the magazine Total Film named Inferno one of the 50 greatest horror films of all time.
Plot Rose Elliot, a poet living alone in NYC, finds an ancient book titled The Three Mothers. The book, written by an alchemist named Varelli, tells of three evil sisters who rule the world with sorrow, tears, and darkness and dwell in separate homes built for them by the alchemist. Mater Suspiriorum, the Mother of Sighs, lives in Freiburg. Mater Lachrymarum, the Mother of Tears, lives in Rome, and Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness, lives in NYC.
Rose suspects that she is living in one of the buildings and writes to her brother Mark, a music student in Rome, urging him to visit her. Using clues provided in the book as a guide, Rose searches the cellar of her building and discovers a hole in the floor that leads to a water-filled ballroom. She accidentally drops her keys and enters the water to find them. After she reclaims the keys, a putrid corpse rises from the depths, frightening her into screaming and beginning to drown. Rose gets out of the water and manages to escape, but is still being watched.
In Rome, Mark attempts to read Rose's letter during class. He is distracted by the intense gaze of a beautiful student who leaves suddenly; Mark follows, leaving the letter behind. His friend Sara picks up the letter and later reads it. Horrified by the letter's contents, she takes a taxi to a library and finds a copy of The Three Mothers and takes it with her. Sara is attacked by a monstrous figure in a laboratory within the building, who recognizes the book. She throws the book to the ground and escapes. Returning home, she phones Mark to tell him to come and asks a neighbour, Carlo, to keep her company. The lights go out, and both Sara and Carlo are stabbed to death by a gloved killer. Mark discovers the bodies and two torn fragments from Rose's letter. After the police arrive, he walks out of Sara's apartment and sees a taxi slowly driving by. In the back seat of the vehicle is the music student, staring at him intently again.
Mark telephones Rose but cannot hear her clearly. He promises to visit just before the connection fails. Rose sees two shadowy figures preparing to enter her apartment. She leaves through a back door, but is followed. She is grabbed from behind by a clawed assailant and guillotined across the neck with glass from a broken window.
Arriving in New York, Mark goes straight to Rose's building, where he meets Carol, the concierge, and some of the residents, including a nurse who cares for elderly Professor Arnold, a wheelchair-user who cannot speak. Mark encounters the sickly Countess Elise De Longvalle Adler, who tells him that Rose has disappeared. After the two find blood on the carpet outside Rose's room, Mark follows the trail of blood. He becomes ill and falls unconscious. Elise sees a black-robed figure dragging Mark away, but the figure stops and comes after Elise. While trying to escape, she is attacked by a swarm of vicious cats, and the figure then catches up with her and stabs her to death. Mark staggers to the house's foyer, where Carol and the nurse put him to bed.
Mark asks Kazanian, the antique dealer who sold Rose "The Three Mothers," about his sister's whereabouts. However, the man provides no information. That night, Kazanian drowns several cats in a Central Park pond and falls into the water. Hundreds of rats from a nearby drain crawl over him, gnawing his flesh. A hot dog vendor hears Kazanian's cries and rushes over, but proceeds to kill him with a knife. More strange deaths occur in the building, while Carol and Elise's butler, John, plots to take advantage of the Countess' death by stealing her valuables. A shocked Carol finds John's corpse in Elise's apartment and drops a lit candle, which starts a fire. Attempting to put out the flames, she becomes entangled in burning draperies and falls from a window to her death.
Mark uses a clue from Rose's letter to discover that beneath each floor is a secret crawl space. He follows hidden passages to a suite of rooms where he finds Professor Arnold, who reveals, via a mechanical voice generator, that he is in fact Varelli. He tries to kill Mark with a hypodermic injection. During the struggle, Varelli's neck is caught in his vocal apparatus, choking him. Mark frees him, only to be told that he is still being watched as Varelli dies. Mark follows a shadowy figure to a lavishly furnished chamber, where he finds Varelli's nurse. Laughing maniacally, she reveals to him that she is Mater Tenebrarum. She transforms into Death personified. However, the fire that has consumed much of the building enables Mark to escape from the witch's den. Debris crashes down on Tenebrarum, destroying her.
Cast
Production Development In 1977, Suspiria had been an unexpectedly big box office hit for 20th Century-Fox, released in the U.S. under the studio's "International Classics" banner. Capitalizing on the commercial success of the film, Argento and Daria Nicolodi, who had co-written the screenplay, announced that Suspiria was only the first of a proposed trilogy which they referred to as "The Three Mothers" trilogy. The basic concept of all three films is derived from Thomas de Quincey's Suspiria de Profundis, a sequel to his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. A prose poem of the book entitled "Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow", details how, just as there are three Fates and three Graces, there are also three Sorrows: Mater Lachrymarum (The Lady of Tears), Mater Suspiriorum (The Lady of Sighs) and Mater Tenebrarum (The Lady of Darkness). As the title suggests, Suspiria focused on Mater Suspiriorum; the evil sister featured in Inferno is Mater Tenebrarum. The concluding chapter of Argento's trilogy, The Mother of Tears (2007), is about Mater Lachrymarum.
When Argento proposed Inferno as his follow-up to Suspiria, 20th Century-Fox agreed to co-finance the production. The film was budgeted at USD $3 million, and Argento's producer brother Claudio secured additional co-production money from Italian and German consortia.
Nicolodi devised the original story concept but received no on-screen credit for her work on the screenplay. Nicolodi explained that she did not seek credit because "having fought so hard to see my humble but excellent work in Suspiria recognized (up until a few days before the première I didn't know if I would see my name in the film credits), I didn't want to live through that again, so I said, 'Do as you please, in any case, the story will talk for me because I wrote it.'" Working from Nicolodi's original story notes, Argento wrote the screenplay while staying in a New York hotel room with a view of Central Park.
Filming The filming of Inferno took place mainly on interior studio sets in Rome, but a short amount of time was also set aside for location shooting in New York, including Central Park. Sacha Pitoëff's death scene was filmed on location in Central Park during the summer of 1979. William Lustig, who was credited as the film's Production Coordinator, recalled:
During the film's production, Argento became stricken with a severe case of hepatitis, and had to direct some sequences while lying on his back. At one point, the illness became so painful that he was hospitalized; filming was then restricted to second unit work, some of which was done by Argento's mentor Mario Bava. Argento has called Inferno one of his least favorite of all his films, as his memories of the movie are tainted by his recollection of the painful illness he suffered.
Design and effects Argento invited his mentor, Mario Bava, to provide some of the optical effects, matte paintings and trick shots for the film. Some of the cityscape views seen in Inferno were actually tabletop skyscrapers built by Bava out of milk cartons covered with photographs. The apartment building that Rose lived in was in fact only a partial set built in the studio—it was a few floors high and had to be visually augmented with a small sculpture constructed by Bava. This sculpture was set aflame toward the end of production and served as the burning building seen in the climax.
Bava also provided some second unit direction for the production. Maitland McDonagh has suggested that Bava had his hand in the celebrated watery ballroom scene, but that sequence was shot in a water tank by Gianlorenzo Battaglia, without any optical effects work at all. Bava's son, Lamberto Bava, was the film's assistant director.
The film's fiery final sequence was shot without a stunt performer filling in for Leigh McCloskey. After the production's principal photography had been completed, Claudio Argento asked McCloskey if would be willing to perform the stunts himself, as the stuntman hired for the job had broken his leg. The producer assured the actor, "It'll be absolutely safe". McCloskey agreed, and when he arrived on set the following day, he observed "three rows of plexiglass in front of everything and everyone is wearing hard hats. I'm the only guy standing on the other side of this!... Needless to say, I did it all on instinct... I still feel that blast of the door blowing by me. When they tell you in words, it's one thing, but when you feel that glass go flying past you with a sound like a Harrier jet, you never forget it!"
Music
Dario Argento chose progressive rocker Keith Emerson to compose Infernos soundtrack because he "wanted a different sort of score [from that by Italian prog group Goblin on Suspiria], a more delicate one".