Dario Argento's landmark horror film SUSPIRIA gets a 4K restoration from Synapse Films.

American Suzy Banyon (Jessica Harper, SHOCK TREATMENT) "decided to perfect her ballet studies in the most famous school of dance in Europe. She chose the celebrated academy of Freiburg. One day, at nine in the morning, she left Kennedy airport, New York, and arrived in Germany at 10:40 p.m. local time," just in time to witness the sudden departure of expelled student Pat Hingle (Eve Axén, LUDWIG) who is soon after brutally murdered along with her friend (Susanna Javicoli, BODY PUZZLE). When she refuses the offer of vice directress Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett, THE SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR) to stay at the academy in favor of a room in town with catty classmate Olga (Barbara Magnolfi, THE SISTER OF URSULA), Suzy suddenly and mysteriously falls ill and is consigned to bedrest with the school's walls. At sea amidst a student body of spiteful and materialistic classmates, Suzy finds a friend in meek Sara (Stefania Cassini, 1900) who reveals that she was a friend of Pat's who had been snooping into strange occurrences at the school – not unlike the shower of maggots that rains from the ceilings or the murder of piano accompanist Daniel (Flavio Bucci, PROPERTY IS NO LONGER A THEFT) after a tongue-lashing by stern instructor Miss Tanner (Alida Valli, THE THIRD MAN) – before she was murdered. When Sara subsequently disappears and Suzy learns something of the history of the academy from Sara's psychiatrist friend (Udo Kier, BLOOD FOR DRACULA) and witchcraft expert colleague (Rudolf Schündler, THE EXORCIST), she decides to solve the clue left by Pat of "irises."

Dario Argento's knock-out follow-up to DEEP RED, SUSPIRIA was a rock-scored quadrophonic stereo, Technicolor fairy tale that leapt off the screen with the hellishly bold colors of production designer Giuseppe Bassan (DEEP RED), the lighting of cinematographer Luciano Tovoli (SINGLE WHITE FEMALE) and the loud, relentless, throbbing score of Goblin. The plot penned by Argento and muse Daria Nicolodi (SHOCK) is simplistic but the adventure is in the journey as protagonist Suzy drifts through a series of violent and vivid set-pieces until discovering the deep, dark secret of the Tam Academy is as simple as counting footsteps. The gore – courtesy of TENEBRAE's Pierantonio Meccacci – is ladled on thick from stabbing an exposed beating heart and faces bisected by shards of glass to throat-rippings, slashings, and puncturings, but these "money shots" always appear within the context of setpieces rhythmically-edited to the bombast of Goblin's score (the main theme of which is as influenced by Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" as it would influence John Carpenter's score for HALLOWEEN). That Harper is able to make an impression as a complex and sympathetic heroine within this maelstrom – with able support from Cassini, Bennett, Valli, and Magnolfi (whose Olga really deserved her own film) – is a testament to the actress given Argento's disdain for the actor's process. Argento had conceived the characters as much younger, and their behavior is rather sexless for a school full of women in their late teens to twenties. In one of the featurettes, Olga's overt sexuality is compared to the imitative and exaggerated behavior of a child, but even the mildest of flirtation between dancer Mark (QUEEN MARGOT's Miguel Bosé, son of BLOODY CEREMONY's Lucia Bosé) and other girls is done with the assurance that it will go nowhere (ostensibly because he has no money and is under the thumb of Miss Tanner who has him run errands to pay for his tuition and boarding). The film manages to both assault the viewer's eyes and draw them into the depth of shots and the backgrounds with the arrangement of characters across and within the frame as well as architectural accents, set dressing, and Argento's eye for faces with supporting parts by Jacopo Mariani (DEEP RED) as Madame Blanc's nephew Albert who looks like he stepped out of a German medieval fairytale illustration, Giuseppe Transocchi (WEREWOLF IN A GIRLS DORMITORY) as the academy's hulking Romanian handyman, Franca Scagnetti (TO BE TWENTY) as the academy's cook, and the fur-coated, bewigged razor-wielding killer seen from behind in a handheld tracking shot turns to the side for a split-second revealing a very Roman nose that belongs to the director himself. SUSPIRIA would become part of "The Three Mothers" trilogy when Argento followed it up with INFERNO (1980), although the third installment would not arrive until 2007 (for better or worse) with MOTHER OF TEARS: THE THIRD MOTHER.

Released theatrically with a four-channel by Twentieth Century Fox offshoot International Classics in an R-rated edition that trimmed gore but created a nifty pulsing brain title card, SUSPIRIA was unavailable stateside after its theatrical release outside of repertory screenings with the only option being a Japanese laserdisc incompletely letterboxed at 2:1 until future Blue Underground president Bill Lustig undertook a new transfer from the Italian negative that was released on letterboxed laserdisc by Image Entertainment in 1989 as well as a letterboxed unrated VHS from Magnum Entertainment (who also put out panned-and-scanned unrated and R-rated editions). Preceding the film's DVD release was a late nineties cassette from Fox Lorber that unfortunately made use of a PAL master that was not only faded but less generously letterboxed and featuring only a mono soundtrack (this edition turned up on non-anamorphic, mono DVD in Japan shortly after). An anamorphic DVD turned up next in France but it was not English-friendly before Anchor Bay unleashed their new anamorphic transfer on limited three-disc DVD (two discs plus CD soundtrack) and single-disc editions featuring a English DTS 6.1 ES, Dolby Digital 5.1 EX, and Dolby Digital 2.0 surround as well as Italian and French mono dubs. While the colors dazzled, the multi-channel remix proved problematic, revealing some sounds and dialogue not heard in the matrixed remixing of the 4.0 track on the laserdisc while muffling some and losing others.

SUSPIRIA was a long time coming to Blu-ray as well, with Japanese, British, and Australian editions derived from an HD master approved by Tovoli in which something went wrong between the grading and the final output with excessive contrast resulting in blown-out highlights and some off colors and bleeding (a shot of Daniel's dog waiting outside the academy is as red as the wall it is in front of). Synapse commissioned a new raw scan to be made from the original camera negative which had to undergo extensive restoration, and their effort was beaten to the market by an alternate restoration utilizing the scan Synapse had paid for, resulting in a lot of bad blood and thousands of pages of forum discussion even before the screencap comparisons. One again approved by Tovoli, Synapse's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen transfer – available in a sold-out six thousand copy steelbook three-disc set with CD soundtrack as well as subsequent standard two-disc and single-disc editions – is an intoxicating experience, almost as if viewing the film anew. Primary colors are as rich as they can be without bleeding, contrast as high as it can without clipping (whites dazzle while blacks are bottomless), and a wealth of textures and detail are now visible (the lettering along the walls of the secret corridor are now readable). The blues and reds pop but just as rich now are the various golds and browns from set accents to Harper's clothing during the climax. Just as exclusive to the Synapse edition as the grading is the original discrete 4.0 English mix in DTS-HD Master Audio. Produced before Dolby Stereo standardized LCRS mixes to mono center dialogue, left and right music and effects, and mono surround effects, dialogue is just as directional as dialogue – helped by the fact that there are very few shot-reverse-shot conversations in which the voices of characters would confusingly bounce back and forth between channels – while effects and music truly surround the viewer (whereas with Dolby Stereo the left and right channels would sometimes bleed into the dialogue channel and vice versa). The Italian track is offered in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 with the standard center mono dialogue channel. That surround mix is fairly enveloping but not as unpredictable and involving as the 4.0 track. Optional English subtitles for the Italian track English SDH subtitles for the English track are available. Seamless branching allows the film to be viewed with English or Italian opening and closing credits.

Disc one features the film-only accompanied by a pair of audio commentary tracks. Author Derek Botelho ("The Argento Syndrome") and film historian David Del Valle appear on the first track in an animated discussion about the film's fairytale aspects – noting that German fairytales were bleaker and more violent than their Disney counterparts which also removed their function as cautionary tales – and Botelho observes similarities to the Frank Wedekind's 1903 novel "Mine-Haha, or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls" (adapted in 2004 by Lucile Hadzihalilovic as INNOCENCE). Botelho also compares the opening of the film to that of Argento's later SLEEPLESS but counters popular opinion that SUSPIRIA does not surpass its first twelve minutes. They cover such familiar background as Daria Nicolodi's contribution – also noting that she does not make a cameo in the opening – to the story (and Argento's discounting of the degree of her collaboration), his input on the Goblin score, Fox objecting to the original conception of the ballet students as 12-13 year olds, their handling of the film under the banner International Classics and their subsequent funding of INFERNO which they released internationally under the Fox banner but did not put out in the US until its video release in the eighties. Their discussion encompasses Argento's debt to Jung and Fritz Lang – Bennett starred in two of Lang's classics and Valli was married to him – expressionism, Lewis Carroll, M.R. James, and even the Universal horrors (the film's doctor derives his name from the character played by Bela Lugosi in Edgar G. Ulmer's THE BLACK CAT), while Del Valle also draws parallels between the film and Donald Cammell's later WHITE OF THE EYE. The audio commentary by SO DEADLY, SO PERVERSE author Troy Howarth covers a lot of the same material but in a more scene-specific manner than the other freewheeling discussion; as such, production anecdotes are more likely to underline what is happening onscreen. We learn that dubbing artist William Kiehl performed the narration in the English version and Argento in the Italian, that editor Franco Fraticelli's assistant and later regular Lamberto Bava editor Pietro Bozza was in charge of editing the English export versions of Argento's films (including DEEP RED and PHENOMENA), and that the film was the number one requested home video release when Magnum Entertainment finally put it out on VHS. Back-to-back listening of the tracks will probably not be rewarding, and in that case the order of listening may effect ones attitude towards whichever track is played second.

Disc two opens with "A Sigh from the Depths: 40 Years of SUSPIRIA" documentary (27:07) featuring Botelho, special features producer Rob Galluzzo, GIALLO co-screenwriter Sean Keller, former Fangoria writer/current Blumhouse editor-in-chief Rebekah McKendry, and David E. Williams who penned an article on Tovoli's photography for American Cinematographer. Galluzzo frames the discussion with somewhat superfluous comments on the film and Argento while Botelho provides anecdotes, McKendry discusses the fairytale and coming of age aspects, Williams the technical aspects of the photography, and Keller on Argento's research into the occult and supposed genuine belief in witches (noting that Argento shot GIALLO and other films in Turin because it has the highest concentration of practicing witches). "Do You Know Anything About Witches?" (30:06) is a visual essay by Michael Mackenzie who covers the narrative of Argento's giallo success, his failed historical comedy, meeting Nicolodi on DEEP RED, and the story of her grandmother who attended a music school whose teachers practiced witchcraft. He suggests that the brief involvement of police in the opening and then having nothing to do with the subsequent deaths and disappearances was a way of Argento saying goodbye to the genre while he sought to move into horror by breaking with the convention of gradually introducing the macabre into the everyday by doing the opposite. He also makes the insightful charge that MOTHER OF TEARS resorts to DA VINCI CODE over-explanation, which seems accurate when one contrasts that film's A to B to C find the witch's lair journey to the more intuitive and roundabout explorations of Suzy and INFERNO's Mark.