Science Fiction, Horror, & Fantasy
SUSPIRIA
Wednesday, July 31st at 7:30 PM
With Maitland McDonagh, author of Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento in person
Considered by many to be one of the most terrifying and stylized horror films
of our time, Dario Argento’s giallo masterpiece Suspiria is a sure-bet to keep you glued to the edge of your seat
with all the lights on. Jessica Harper stars as Susy Banyon, an American
student who has enrolled in a German dance academy. In the very night she
arrives, two of the students are brutally murdered in a scene likened to the
shower murder in Psycho. It soon
becomes apparent that this is only the beginning of what is perhaps the most
terrifying nightmare ever created on film. (Italy,
1977, 98 mins, R, English Dub | Dir. Dario Argento)
Maitland
McDonagh
wrote the groundbreaking Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams
of Dario Argento, the first auteurist study of the influential Italian
horror and giallo filmmaker. Most recently, she interviewed Argento
onstage at Lincoln Center’s two-week retrospective of the maestro’s films.
McDonagh's books also include Filmmaking
on the Fringe and The 50 Most Erotic Films of All Time, and
her reviews and essays have appeared in Film Comment, Film
Journal, Time Out New York and other publications. Formerly publicity
director of New York City Ballet and Senior Movies Editor of TV Guide,
she has contributed numerous DVD commentaries, liner notes and companion
booklets, has appeared in documentaries and on film-festival juries, has taught
film at Brooklyn College and Hunter College, and lectures about horror and
erotica. In 2022, McDonagh was inducted into the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror
Award Hall of Fame as a “trailblazer who makes a difference.”
She currently reviews genre films weekly for Maitland on Movies (maitlandonmovies.substack.com).
