Badmovies.org Forum

Wednesday, May 03, 2006


The Dario Argento films Suspiria, Inferno and the currently in-production La Terza Madre(The Third Mother) make up a film trilogy called The Three Mothers, about three evil witches who rule the world with darkness, tears and sighs. The premise comes from a prose poem by English writer Thomas De Quincey, entitled Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow. The poem asserts that, just as there are three muses, three fates and three graces, so there are three sorrows, who fill the lives of humanity with dread. Together, the women are a living personification of death itself. Although only lightly touched on in the films, the poem seems to attribute each witch to a specific type of unnatural demise:


Mater Suspiriorum (the Mother of Sighs), aka Helena Markos. Location: Frieburg, Germany. Purpose: Inspires death through prejudice and hatred. Current status: her most recent incarnation, Helena Markos, was slain by a student of her dance academy.


Mater Tenebrarum (the Mother of Darkness). Location: New York, NY. Purpose: Inspires death through insanity. Current Status: Destroyed her human form, along with the alchemist Varelli, after a tenant of her building (the brother of one of her victims) caught on to her secret.


Mater Lachrymarum (the Mother of Tears). Location: Rome, Italy. Purpose: Inspires the death of youth by any means. Current Status: Still incarnate and spreading evil.


" Lo! here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated to my altars. This is he that once I made my darling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did he become idolatrous; and through me it was, by languishing desires, that he worshipped the worm, and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its darkness; saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolater, I have seasoned for thee, dear gentle Sister of Sighs! Do thou take him now to thy heart, and season him for our dreadful sister. And thou', turning to the Mater Tenebrarum, she said, 'wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do thou take him from her. See that thy sceptre lie heavy on his head. Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope, wither the relenting of love, scorch the fountain of tears, curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall he be accomplished in the furnace, so shall he see the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies, and so shall our commission be accomplished which from God we had, to plague his heart until we had unfolded the capacities of his spirit. "


-Thomas De Quincey, Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow

I'm hoping that Dario Argento has at least one more great film in him.

I honestly feel that everything he's done since Opera has been complete trash.

I'm looking forward to it.  I'm a huge Argento fan, and I'm always glad to see new stuff. 

As for everything since Opera being crap, I have to defend Sleepless.  It was a good thriller, and easily on par with his earlier stuff.  Other than that, I can't argue.

Pelts was really good i thought (an episode of masters of horror directed by argento)

Pelts completely made up for Jenifer.  I loved the "making of" featurette on Jenifer where he complains about how they made him take out all the penises.

BTW, for anyone wanting to pick up Argento's 1980 film INFERNO on DVD, Blue Underground is re-releasing it on widescreen DVD on February 28th.

If you pre-order it through Amazon it's only 11.98.

He's still got some juice in him (no gay jokes here, please). He proved it in several moments in "Non he sonno" and in most of "The Stendhal Syndrome".

I just keep on hoping he'll made the last Mother a bit more tough, because the two previous ones were very easy to defeat.