"Director: Dario Argento"

• Deep Red | DVD | (03/01/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £20.99

  Flesh ripped clean from the bone... And the blood runs red... The bloody kills and red herrings come thick and fast as Dario Argento weaves a twisted web of sadistic intrigue in this classic Giallo from the genres golden era. A black gloved killer hacks a psychic to death but there was a witness... Marcus Daly an English pianist rushes to the scene but he's too late to save her. He sets out to solve the murder but at every turn the mysterious slayer strikes cutting off each line of enquiry with an acts grisly of violence each more shocking than the last! A surreal masterpiece from Dario Argento with a pounding score from cult prog rockers Goblin Deep Red will leave you battered and breathless!

• Two Evil Eyes | DVD | (23/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A double feast of haunting terror. Two of the high-priests of horror directors George A. Romero ('Night of the Living Dead') and Dario Argento ('Phenomena') each pay tribute to Edgar Allan Poe with screen adaptions of the master's most terrifying tales from the dark side. Romero's shock-filled story (The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar) centres on a greedy young wife's bid to trick her dying husband out of his millions and the terror that is unleashed when mysterious beings take possession of the old man's body. The inspiration for Argento's blood-curdling tale is Poe's The Black Cat. Skilfully grafting in chilling scenes from several of Poe's other classic stories Argento's trip into terror tells of a man's cruel obsession with his wife's cat that finally drives him to murder of the most gruesome kind.

• The Dario Argento Collection | DVD | (02/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Suspiria (1977): Inspired by Thomas De Quincey's 'Suspiria de Profundis' and co-written by Argento and his long-term partner Daria Nicolodi SUSPIRIA is Argento's undisputed masterpiece of Grand Guignol horror hitting new peaks of terror through its stunning photography (courtesy of Luciano Tovoli) eye-popping production design and terrifying atmosphere of dread - thanks in no small part to the great score from Goblin! Susy Banyon (Jessica Harper) is an American ballet student travelling to Germany to study at an exclusive dance academy in the Black Forest. After one of the students and her friend are hideously murdered in the first of Argento's breath-catching set-piece killings Susy discovers that the academy has a bizarre history and as the body count rises she gets involved in a hideous labyrinth of murder black magic and madness... Tenebrae (1982): Shortly after American mystery-thriller novelist Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) arrives in Rome to promote his new book (the Tenebrae of the title) an attractive young woman is murdered by a razor-wielding maniac who stuffs pages of Neal's latest novel into the mouth of his victim before slashing her throat. So begins a bizarre series of horrific murders the details of which strangely resemble the fictional murders in Neal's book. Baffled by the killings the local police believe the author may hold the key to solving the case and turn to him for help. Circumstances change however when Neal himself begins to receive death threats from the killer. Terror At The Opera (1987): When a young opera singer takes over the leading role in an avant-garde presentation of Verdi's Macbeth she triggers the madness of a crazed fan who repeatedly forces the diva to watch the brutal murders of her loved ones. Will the woman's recurring nightmare hold the key to the identity of this psychopath or does an even more horrific evil lay waiting in the wings? The legendary Dario Argento co-wrote and directed this savagely stunning thriller featuring some of the most shocking sequences of the maestro's entire career. The Stendhal Syndrome (1996): On the trail of a deranged serial rapist and killer Detective Anna Manni (Asia Argento) hides her own secret: she suffers from the Stendhal Syndrome a mental condition which makes her retreat into frightening hallucinations when confronted with works of art. Her quarry the sadistic Alfredo Grossi (Thomas Kretschmann) discovers her condition and uses it against Anna to reduce her to a helpless victim. Subjected to these savage relentless attacks Anna is a powerless witness as his murder spree continues. Now alone she has to face her own fears her own terrors and the terrible legacy of the Stendhal Syndrome... The Card Player (2004): Policewoman Anna Mari plays a dangerous game with a serial killer: if she loses she will be forced to watch the murderer take another victim...

• Phenomena | Blu Ray | (08/09/2014) from £21.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Italian horror maestro Dario Argento made his name by turning homicide into modern art with a cinematic flourish, but with Phenomena he takes his stylish mayhem in new directions. The film opens with the dreamy grace of a fairy tale: a young girl wandering the green meadows of Switzerland and discovering a gingerbread house, wherein lives a monster more modern than mythic, a psychopathic maniac who plunges the picture into a lush nightmare. Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly in her first starring role), a gifted young girl at a Swiss school, has a psychic link to the insect world and develops a connection with the killer through midnight sleepwalks. With the help of a lonely, wheelchair-bound entomologist (genre stalwart Donald Pleasence, who inflects his sonorous tenor with a gentle Scottish burr) she turns telekinetic detective, which only draws her closer to the killer's lair. The densely plotted story becomes muddled at times (this is the busiest film in Argento's oeuvre) but the lyrical cinematography and gorgeous nocturnal imagery--dreamy sleepwalks, nightmarish murders, hideous horrors that emerge in the dark of night--take on a poetic elegance not seen in his previous work, providing the tale with a kind of dream logic. This is a slasher film reborn as an exquisitely grim fantasy: Jennifer in Argentoland. --Sean Axmaker

• Inferno | Blu Ray | (08/09/2014) from £21.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Dario Argento's sequel to Suspiria, his first and to date only American hit, is an even more incoherent nightmare fantasy. Laden with symbolic imagery and fantastic explosions of death shot in candy-colored hues, it's a bloody feast for the eyes. Mark (Leigh McCloskey), an American music student in Rome, rushes home to New York after a frantic phone call from his sister only to find an empty apartment and obscure clues about a supernatural presence in her spooky building. It all has something to do with the mysterious Mater Tenebrarum, one of the "Three Mothers" of Argento's murky mythology, and the fun house of an apartment house she inhabits, complete with a fully furnished underwater ballroom, miles of secret tunnels flooded in red and blue light, and hidden passageways under the floorboards. Meanwhile, there's a killer running around stabbing beautiful women for who knows what reason, a crippled bookseller attacked by rats, and a homicidal hot-dog vendor in Central Park. Why? It's best not to ponder such mysteries--Argento obviously isn't as concerned with making sense of his meticulously staged murders as he is with lighting them with just the right hue. Dramatically it's inert, a parade of quirky but faceless victims dispatched with elaborate care, but it's beautifully designed and executed, a spectacle of elaborate set pieces and magnificent decor orchestrated with a complete disdain for narrative logic. --Sean Axmaker

• Two Evil Eyes | DVD | (17/03/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Talented horror veterans George Romero and Dario Argento each contribute an adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story to the feature length 'Two Evil Eyes'.

• Sleepless | DVD | (11/12/2006) from £24.98   |  Saving you £-11.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Dario Argento's 2001 feature Sleepless didn't receive a cinematic release in the UK, and it's not hard to see why. The movie often feels like Argento on auto-pilot, rehashing images and ideas and camera angles from his more inspired films like Suspiria or Tenebrae. The dialogue is leaden, the plot is a plodding whodunnit (and most of the time it's hard to care who) and the acting, with the exception of the veteran Max von Sydow, is mostly atrocious and crudely dubbed. But then again, no one ever came to an Argento movie for the plot or the dialogue, and least of all for the acting. The key to his mastery has always been the atmosphere of a nightmare that he conjures up, with all its jagged imagery and complete absence of narrative logic. The less sense it makes, the scarier it gets. Sleepless never attains anywhere near a level of nightmarish intensity, but it has its moments--especially the least rational ones. Although the plot involves no elements of the supernatural, and everything is finally (if cumbersomely) explained, it's episodes like the first killing (where the murderer traps his victim on a speeding train he couldn't possibly have boarded) that strike most effectively home. The action involves a retired police inspector (von Sydow) lured back to investigate a series of killings in Turin that replicate murders he was assigned to 17 years earlier. As always with Argento, knives figure prominently, as do prowling steadicam tracking shots, old dark houses and females butchered in any number of gory and far-fetched ways. The film looks unfailingly good, courtesy of its rich dark palate of colours, Ronnie Taylor's sinuous camera, and Argento's favourite group Goblin contribute an edgy, insidious score. On the DVD: Sleepless on DVD comes with a clear, sharp transfer that's a pleasure to watch, with no loss of detail even in the many underlit scenes. Picture is matched for clarity by the terrific 5.1 Dolby Digital sound. This, unlike the truncated US and German DVD releases, is the full 117-minute original, shown in 1.85:1 widescreen. The two-disc set includes a generous helping of extras: stills gallery, the theatrical trailer (in Italian only, though), a 15-minute "making of" featurette, plus an informative one-hour documentary, Dario Argento--An Eye for Horror, narrated by Mark Kermode and previously shown on Channel Four at Christmas 2001.--Philip Kemp

• The Stendhal Syndrome | DVD | (21/05/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

  On the trail of a deranged serial rapist and killer Detective Anna Manni (Asia Argento) hides her own secret: she suffers from the Stendhal Syndrome a mental condition which makes her retreat into frightening hallucinations when confronted with works of art. Her quarry the sadistic Alfredo Grossi (Thomas Kretschmann) discovers her condition and uses it against Anna to reduce her to a helpless victim. Subjected to these savage relentless attacks Anna is a powerless witness as his murder spree continues. Now alone she has to face her own fears her own terrors and the terrible legacy of the Stendhal Syndrome...