Profondo Rosso

Profondo Rosso

There is an illness out there in the horror world. Put your hand up if you are losing confidence, and possibly patience, with the maestro Argento. Put another hand up if you feel that your inner love of gialli, gore, and super Italian music is fading. Jump up and down in a tantrum if you wish your old friend from the south will get his act together for his next film. Yup, thought so, you're suffering from Darioargentoitis.

The last Argento flick I really appreciated was maybe Sleepless. Oh wait, I do remember seeing The Card Player at Dead by Dawn and enjoying the pure silliness of it. Poor Claudio Simonetti, it must have been cringing for him to sit in the audience through our laughs… One thing I do know and will never forget is Dario's roots. You cannot beat and no one will ever beat Profondo Rosso.

Everyone in the horror world should know this film. If you don't, well get your finger out and buy this DVD (more about that later). It drips with style, plot, and perhaps most importantly, the red stuff. The music is unforgettable, everyone loves Goblin huh? The effects are brilliant for the period, killings are gruesome and fun especially when accompanied with the jangling jazz… OK, I think you get the idea that I am really biased and lean very much towards this film, let's get on with a quick plot summary.

Profondo Rosso (a.k.a. Deep Red) is a whodunit murder tale with the main players, English pianist Marcus Daly (David Hemmings) and journalist Daria Nicolodi (Argento's ex Gianna Brezzi), following the blood trail. Marcus witnesses a nasty murder of German physic Helga Ulmann (Macha Meril) and joins Daria to find the killer. He eventually remembers seeing a painting at the murder scene or was it the face of the killer? Many clues are put in front of them and the killer starts playing games with Marcus. Carlos, his friend, tries to warn him to leave the trail alone but of course he continues. The police are far from being helpful, blood continues to flow until a wonderful climax where in typical Argento style we finally find out who the killer really is.

Profondo Rosso is a few stages above Dario's previous "animal trilogy" (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Cat O' Nine Tails, and Four Flies on Grey Velvet). It shares their imagery, style, and camera work. But at the same time adds humour, more degrees of style, blood, and detective work. I just love the music pumping through the murder scenes, the intelligent camera movement, the vibrant colours, and genuinely funny jokes.

The film is full of style really adding to the story telling. A good example is the camera work - it is just beautiful. One famous scene that illustrates this is when Marcus is composing a Jazz number on his piano, he is harassed by the (now legendary) children's lullaby. The camera sweeps to the keys of the piano, it follows the sweat on his brow, and pushes the intensity of the scene with close up shots.

The film is also really quirky, the wit is just brilliant! There is lots of flirtatious humour between Marcus and Daria (you just can't help smirking). Who can forget the tiny car, or when Daria slow-dances out of an apartment after playfully arguing with Marcus? We also see Carlo's mother being eccentric with Marcus, and there are unique moments such as Carlo's feminine friend hovering around his flat, what's that all about?

Oh and don't overlook the tribute to art. At the beginning of film we see Marcus near a bar, Dario has mimicked the famous American painting Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. Genius!

Ok, Profondo Rosso is not perfect. It's a little dated, the English dubbing is pretty bad, and the film can be a little silly at times (in a 1970's silly kind of way). On a personal level, showing a fine-looking woman like Gianna smoking long horrible brown cigarettes doesn't add any brownie points in my book… :-)

DVD-wise, we get 2 disks - the Director's Cut at around 126 minutes and the Theatrical Cut at 105 minutes. For this review I only dived into the longer version, but it's nice to see the shorter version bundled with the DVD.

This DVD package looks to be the version completists have been waiting for. Doing a quick search on the net indicates that fans have been waiting for a version of the film with its original opening and ending credits for years. Denmark's Another World Entertainment has finally delivered this version.

Unfortunately (and it is a big one) due to cost-cutting they didn't release a proper PAL version and transferred the print from NTSC to PAL. Boom! We get a fuzzy, pixelated print that could have been so much better. So just for this single flaw please do hang-on to your old Anchor Bay/Blue Underground DVD. I have the French Wild-Side release which has been converted to PAL too, and I even found it clearer than AWE's release. Don't get me wrong, the print is OK to watch, I just get an overall feeling of disappointment….I'll wait around for the next "complete" DVD to see if there are any improvements print wise. Hell, if other DVDs offer something that the others don't I'll probably get them all anyway! Like releases before, some scenes are only in Italian. The long version offers full Italian 5.1 and 2.0 audio tracks as well as an English 2.0 audio track. English subtitles are only available during the forced Italian scenes, so unless you know the Italian lingo, you're required to watch the whole movie dubbed in English. The shorter version has just English 2.0 and 5.1 tracks as audio. There are additional Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Swedish subtitles on both disks. For the long cut the English 2.0 is sharp enough. I'm not enough of an audiophile to notice any problems. One thing for sure is that the soundtrack is incredible! The music pounds out the speakers throughout, the jazz themed songs of Goblin never fail, and the creepy children's lullaby is put upon us at perfect moments. If you can get the OST cheap, you won't be disappointed! Extras on disk 1 include an Italian trailer, an English trailer, and an excellent English commentary with Thomas Rostock (the guy that made this release happen). He gives us great insight to the film and he really flaunts his stuff!

Disk 2 offers us the documentary "An Eye for Horror" narrated by UK TV old timer Mark Kermode It's an interesting and insightful documentary to watch with George Romero, John Carpenter, William Lustig, Asia Argento, Tom Savini etc. giving us their thoughts. We also get a "filmographies and biographies" section, a "trivia" section, and slideshows. In addition there's a four page pamphlet which is in Danish.

Another World Entertainment have done a good job here, true fans giving true fans a DVD well worth adding to the collection. This DVD package is essential for the hardcore purists, but if you have any of the Anchor Bay, Blue Underground, or Wild-Side releases then your best to try to get this one cheap.

Well done Another World!

Review by Broonage.


 
Released by Another World Entertainment
Region 2 - PAL
Rated 18
Extras :
see main review
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