One of my favorite directors! I love 80% of his movies and even the bad ones have a scene or two that are worth seeing.
My Halloween movie fest continued last night with a re-watching of Mother of Tears, the third film in the Three Mothers trilogy. When I first watched the film I pondered if it would get better on rewatching. Nope. It was actually more painful on the second viewing. What a rambling mess of a film with awful acting and dialogue all around. No screengrabs for this film. It doesn’t deserve that level of respect.
My plans to watch a bunch of horror movies in the run-up to Halloween have not been going to well. I did manage to re-watch Dario Argento’s Inferno the other day. I have always considered this to be one of Argento’s weaker films of this era, but the more I watch it, the more I like it. It has much of the wonderful colored lighting, expressionist sets and dynamic compositions that made Suspiria so great. Also, despite the flawed and incoherent plot, there are plenty of memorable scenes.
For some reason I especially like this scene where our hero, Mark, gets bewitched during his musicology class by The Mother of Tears…
This is only a brief cameo from the third mother, but it’s very effective. Too bad the actual movie about her, Mother of Tears, was so mediocre. They should have just looped this scene for 90 minutes and released it as a feature.
Inferno takes it its time in getting to the main villain, Mater Tenebrarum, but the scene in which she reveals her true identity is one of my favorites in Argento’s entire body of work…
Mark, don’t be lured into her fiery trap!
Without giving away the surprise, the shot above is so, so well done. Apparently, this is some of Mario Bava’s special effects handiwork. Good stuff. I encourage anyone who appreciates films simply for their beauty to check this film out.
