5 NSFW horror movies you should watch before Halloween
Suspiria (1977)
We couldn’t use Suspiria as the inspiration for this list without discussing the movie outright. Dario Argento’s brightly garish horror film is a masterpiece that was officially labeled a “video nasty” and was shown in cinemas heavily edited. The film follows a young woman named Susie (Jessica Harper) who starts to believe the ballet school she’s a part of is run by witches.
Outside of splattering red corn syrup everywhere, Suspiria is an utterly beautiful film with color liberally used to make a movie that was supposedly inspired by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Harper’s Susie is a sweet-natured babe in the woods who the audience comes to root for, especially when we’re subjected to the horrors and freakish delights the other ballet students are subjected to.
Make no mistake, Suspiria is gory and yet Argento makes blood spatter and glass shards look wonderfully composed. The story doesn’t necessarily make sense — something Guadagnino’s remake attempts to rectify — but that’s not the point of Suspiria. Like Susie, the audience is supposed to be whirled around by the insanity, unclear of what’s happening yet drawn into it regardless. Like any good fairy tale the horror is there to act as a grander allegory for the characters, it just happens to have a lot of goo slathered onto it.