INFERNO, released on this day

Released on this day--7 Feb.--in 1980, Dario Argento's INFERNO. Argento is one of the towering figures of Italian horror, a master of bloody, visually stunning cinematic nightmares. He has--unfortunately, in my view--opted to spend much of his career in the gialli, a particularly Italian subgenre that has restricted his potential, but he has sometimes taken a dive into supernatural horror territory, for which his skills are, by far, best suited.

The most celebrated example is SUSPIRIA, widely--and correctly--regarded as one of the greatest horror movies ever made. SUSPIRIA was the first film in a trilogy of tales dealing with three evil "mothers" who secretly rule over the Earth. SUSPIRIA covered the Mother of Sighs. The second film in the run, INFERNO, dealt with the Mother of Darkness and is the most dreamlike of the three. Argento goes full Euro-fantasist in this one, cutting the chord to rational narrative entirely in a way that tends to alienate American audiences (a subject probably worth its own thread here). The result is a baroque, beautiful, savage film that drifts along like a nightmare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbKgG_TC_To