The Second Mother: Inferno

Living in a sinister apartment building in New York City, the poet Rose Elliot (Irene Miracle) unwittingly draws supernatural attention when she purchases a copy of The Three Mothers from local antiques seller Kazanian (Sacha Pitoëff). That volume was penned by an alchemist, and it divulges some of the secrets of three mysterious witches who have scattered across the globe—one in Frieberg, Germany, another in Rome, Italy, and one in New York City, USA. The building she occupies is the home of one of these witches, and as she seeks out the mystery of its power, she finds herself in trouble indeed.

There is only one recourse. Call in her brother Mark (Leigh McCloskey) from Italy to come help. Unfortunately, when fighting witches, one cannot trust the tried and true forms of communications. Letters can be destroyed, phone calls tapped or interrupted … Rose has unwittingly signed her own death warrant by getting too close to the truth. As she reaches out for help, she draws other people in harm’s way as well. Mark’s friend Sara (Eleonora Giorgi), the kindly neighbor Carlo (Gabriele Lavia), and even Kazanian himself. Across the world, there are strange, sinister people harboring secrets galore, and a few who might be more than they seem. Will anyone solve the mystery before death claims them all? And just what are these Three Mothers, really? Simple witches or forces somehow more powerful? Chaos, madness, and black magic reign under the fat, full moon in Dario Argento’s Inferno (1980).

No lie, Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) is one of my favorite supernatural horror movies of all time. I have the vaguest of recollections of seeing parts of it on cable when I was young and impressionable, particularly the spoiled food in the attic dripping maggots down on the students. I have a clear recollection of the culmination of that scene, which features squirming larvae in a hair brush. It was weird back then. I came back to and subsequently fell in love with the picture somewhat late, after I was married and we’d bought a DVD player together, and Anchor Bay was releasing all kinds of Italian horror flicks from the 1970s and 1980s. Suspiria blew my mind with its rich colors, its bizarre soundtrack and soundscapes, its nightmarish situations and logic, and it’s gruesome fairy tale horrors … Hell of a movie that.

When the sort-of-sequel Inferno hit DVD, I was all over it as well, and … and discovered I was underwhelmed. Disappointed, actually. I adored parts of it, but there was a lot I was left wanting for. Pretty much like a majority of viewers after the first watch. I got obsessed over the mythology though, the weird Three Mothers lore that fed in from both Thomas De Quincey’s writings and Argento’s masterful Suspira. It’s taken me time to come to enjoy Inferno for what it is (instead of what I’d wanted it to be), and I don’t love it nearly as much as I did the predecessor. It’s a fascinating exploration of cinematic lunacy, sure. Creative mayhem out the whazoo with some memorable kills, some wonderfully weird lighting, and an antagonist that shows her true face by busting out from within a mirror (an effect suggested and designed by the great Mario Bava himself).

Inferno is a near perfect example of dream logic gone way too far. The naysayers will have plenty to say nay too: This is the kind of movie that introduces sketches of characters, has them perform a series of tasks that don’t make a lick of sense, and then suffer miserably for their deeds. However, there’s a series of images that imprint themselves on the brain and refuse to go away. There’s the opening sequence, an ornate letter opener splitting pages in a copy of E. Varelli’s book, The Three Mothers, followed by a strange New York City street scene that could only have come from hallucination or dream. There’s the curious venture into the underground of a sinister apartment building, the discovery of a submerged chamber holding filthy secrets and filthier corpses … bodies that might still have some kind of undead life to them. There’s a scene set in some kind of cellar to a library where pots bubble with thick fluids, maybe a bookbindery combined with an alchemist’s workshop occupied by a demonic figure with truly horrifying hands who threatens to dunk a woman’s face in a boiling vat for stealing a book. There’s a fellow who wanders off to check fuses and winds up finding his fate instead. There’s a woman who flees suspicious figures in New York, only to wind up in a labyrinth of windows, walls, and doors amidst an uncanny thunderstorm, who encounters yet another demonic horror who likes guillotines. The list goes on and on. How these sequences meet up is rather difficult to explain. They sort of happen, one after another. The links between many of them are tenuous at best. To make things even more disjointed, the film jumps back and forth between New York and Rome, requiring viewers to pay close attention to setting details to figure out where the hell the action is taking place. As well, there’s a massive set of characters, some supernatural and some normal. And that mythology is best when it is hinted at through hoary old texts and whatnot.

Here’s what I’ve pieced together. The two remaining mothers have domiciles in Rome and New York. They are alive, well, and quite able to deal out doom to anyone who threatens their plans—as unknowable to mortal minds, apparently, as God’s. Each of the mothers is attended by mortal servants, as well as (at least) one demonic entity whose hands are furry and clawed (much like the creature that kills the two girls at the beginning of Suspiria, in fact). Magic can blow open windows, send invisible spies and monsters, lull the strong into a kind of dull witted sleepiness, convert the weak willed among us into butchers who are capable of crossing many an obstacle to get their prey (one seems to run across the surface of a lake), and possibly extend lifetimes. The Mothers particularly hate young women … or love to kill them for being snoops. Once you agree to serve a mother, they will not let you die until your usefulness has passed.

Some of the picture’s wonkiness can be explained by the fact that it features input from three directors. Lamberto Bava directed additional unit stuff and an uncredited Mario Bava added all kinds of lighting, camerawork, and input to the thing for the simple fact that Argento had a bad case of hepatitis and was away from production for some time. The three are each solid directors, but they are very different in their outlooks and output. Putting them together results in the strangest stew imaginable. The rich flavors will not be for everyone, of course, but it’s a hell of a thing that doesn’t try to be like any other horror film I’ve ever seen.

There are some inspired performances. Daria Nicolodi is nothing short of magnetic as the strange resident of the New York building, Elise De Longvalle Adler. And Alida Valli is once more the grinning servant of darkness that she was in Suspiria. The unbelievably gorgeous Ania Pieroni excels as the mystery music student who strokes her pussy in public (pussy cat, I mean, get your head out of the gutter). Fulvio Mingozzi once again plays a taciturn cabdriver who says much without uttering a single line of dialogue. And Luigi Lodoli is creepy AF as the demonic bookbinder in the library’s cellar. Feodor Chaliapin, Jr. glares as the mute man confined to a wheelchair who wants to talk to Mark. Veronica Lazar is charming and eerie as a nurse who’s more than she seems. Eleonora Giorgi gives us her best Nancy Drew gone to hell performance, while Irene Miracle makes swimming in a New York City basement look … appealing. Leigh McCloskey wanders around in a daze for most of the movie, but we can forgive that because it’s such a stylish one.

I might have had mixed feelings about Inferno before, but I’ve grown to appreciate the thing over time. It is one of those movies whose parts are greater than the whole and achieves a kind of wonky grandeur in spite of itself by defying every single expectation a horror film audience member might have. Can I recommend the film? Without doubt. It’s a challenging picture, however. Bizarre and WTF and creative as all get out. Watch it once to get exposed to the weirdness, watch it a second time to try and parse out your real feelings.

#

Inferno is available in DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD editions. I caught it during Criterion Channel’s celebration of ’80s Horror, which kicked off in October.

Next week, we take a look at The Boogeyman (1980), which just saw release on Blu-ray through Vinegar Syndrome. It is also available in DVD and VOD editions.

Writing for “The Second Mother: Inferno” is copyright © 2023 by Daniel R. Robichaud.

Disclosure: Considering Stories is a member of the Amazon Associates. Under that program, purchases made using the Amazon.com product links in any of our articles can qualify the Considering Stories site for a payment. This takes the form of a percentage of the purchase price, and it is made at no additional cost to the customer.