Another month and another batch of new reviews up at Videovista.
Experience has taught me and I have learned my lessons well. My natural film-viewing habits tend to be very director-based. If I see a film I enjoy then my first reaction is generally to seek out that director’s other work. Similarly, I will not go to see a film in order to see a particular actor, or to see the work of a particular writer. But I will go out of my way to see a film by a particular director even if the subject matter does not initially speak to me. This relationship is one of trust. I trust certain directors to take me to certain places.
I do not trust Dario Argento.
Partly this is a reflection of the fact that he has had a very long career filled with many ups and downs but it is also due to the fact that I need to be in a quite specific frame of mind to tolerate the ostentatious silliness that characterises Argento’s style. As my review of Profondo Rosso suggests, I was in the right frame of mind to watch a stylishly directed and fiendishly well composed whodunit. Excellent job on the extras by Arrow too, who really are one of the best distributors out there when it comes to putting out old exploitation films.