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Dario Argento’s DEEP RED Screens Midnights This Weekend at The Tivoli

By Tom Stockman | May 6, 2018

“I can feel death in this room! I feel a presence, a twisted mind sending me thoughts! Perverted, murderous thoughts… Go away! You have killed! And you will kill again!”

Dario Argent’s DEEP RED (1975) screens midnights this weekend (May 11th and 12th ) at the Tivoli Theater (6350 Delmar Boulevard) as part of their Reel Late at the Tivoli Midnight series.

Like all Dario Argento’s films, you have to be ready for completely off-kilter characters and plot machinations. Once you have excepted those eccentricities, though, DEEP RED is one of the most rewarding experiences you can have watching a horror film and I think it’s Argento’s best. I saw the 90 minutes cut of DEEP RED at least a half dozen times (mostly at the Drive-in under its alternate title THE HATCHET MURDERS) before I saw the full, 127-minute version when it was finally restored by Anchor Bay on VHS in the ‘90s. The longer version certainly fills in some of the plot holes, but the shorter variant is the film I fell in love with and is the one I still prefer. That said, if you’ve never seen DEEP RED on the big screen, you owe it to yourself to catch it this weekend at The Tivoli

Unlike most who-dunit/slasher films, the killer in DEEP RED is not easy to recognize. Also unlike many films from this genre, it is truly frightening in its set pieces.DEEP RED contains excellent performances from David Hemmings as the pianist searching for answers, Daria Nicolodi as the reporter always willing to give Hemmings a helping hand, Gabriele Lavia as Hemmings alcoholic friend Carlo, and Clara Calamai as Carlo’s mother. The driving Goblin score blares as whoever gets in the killer’s way meets an ugly end by sledgehammer, scalding water, knitting needles, knives, etc. Oh…there is also a head flattened by a truck and decapitation by necklace.