It’s an indisputable horror classic, and one of the scariest gosh darn movies you’ll ever see. So, naturally, when the decision came to remake Dario Argento’s iconic “Suspiria,” they went to the guy best known for Southern coming-of-age stories?
“No, it doesn’t make a lick of sense,” David Gordon Green laughed with MTV News, revealing that he’s already written and hopes to direct a new version of the 1977 film. “But it’s wicked. I love it, plot holes and everything.
“‘Suspiria’ is a classic for me,” he continued. “I want to be scared. I want to be afraid.”
No genre has been more maligned in recent years than horror, particularly its seemingly ubiquitous off-shoot, the “torture porn,” of which “Suspiria” is surely a distant progenitor. The film, about an American student abroad in Germany who discovers that the dancing school she attends is actually home to a coven of Satanic witches, contains one of the most violent on-screen murders in film history – a grisly end Eli Roth on his best day couldn’t match for shock value.
But put it in the hands of an artist like Green and it suddenly becomes “some classy shiat,” the director enthused.
“It’s an opportunity to take all artistic excellence and be inspired by what was a low budget Italian 70’s gore movie,” he said. “Where the art world meets the violent and supernatural.
“I would love to get every geek that loves torture porn and every old lady in line to see ‘Phantom of the Opera’ to come and have this insane experience.”
Are you in? What do you think of Green directing a “Suspiria” remake? Sound off below.
I question if he has even seen the film, or has simply had it described to him.
Needless to say, this is a terrible idea, but merely the latest cash grab by cynical, revisionist hack directors and producers to cash-in on films their teen-aged target audience has never seen, but whose title they will recognize from dusty box-art in the cult and horror sections of their local rental shop.
Here's a tip: Directors remaking genre classics are simply in it for the money, but a big tip-off is when they claim to 'love' the original - if that was true, why would they be tampering with it? I'll tell you: $$$$$$$$$.
As for David Gordon Green... while he may be an "inspired" choice to remake this film, his attitude based on these few comments in the posted article do nothing but exude an air of condescension, which is insulting both to Argento's artistry, and those who are capable of appreciating it.
MTV, you have clearly failed to research Suspiria at all. As if that isn't bad enough, it seems that the director chosen to helm this remake knows absolutely nothing of Argento's work, Suspiria, or the artistry behind the lineage of films from which Suspiria is derived.
Neither do nightmares. That's what Suspiria is. It's one big nightmare. It's bizzare, it's surreal and it's scary. It isn't story-driven or what have you. Apparently he missed the whole point of the movie when he watched it. D'OH.
Has he even seen any other Italian horror films, or any other Argento films for that matter?
He's probably just doing it because he wants people to know who he is. He doesn't really sound like he's actually a big fan of it.