- By the pricking of my thumbs,
something wicked this way comes.
[laughter]
- [gasps]
male narrator: Who's afraid of a wicked witch?
- [laughs] [both screaming]
narrator: Everybody.
- "The Witch" is a perfect example
of an atmospheric horror movie.
- [growls]
- It was one of the scariest films I've ever seen.
- [screams]
- Sometimes an evil witch
is just gonna come back and haunt you.
- [screams]
- What are you gonna do?
- Hello? - [screams]
- Who would've thought "The Blair Witch Project"
would work the way that it was.
It's disturbing.
- I mean, this was kamikaze filmmaking at its greatest.
It changed filmmaking.
[scary music]
- And it's always been that the witch has negative intentions.
She's punished at some point for having the power.
- You're a witch.
- A solitary witch is one thing,
but a group a women working together
creating power that's more than the sum of its parts,
is just...
exhilarating.
[cheers and applause]
- We were one of the first new waves of bringing witchcraft
and paganism to the future.
[glass breaking] - Aah!
- "Suspiria" just feels weird at all times.
- [screams]
- It's just so awesome.
- We don't have consider the rules and world of men at all.
- [grunts] - Aah!
- They're outside of all of our concerns here.
[screaming]
♪
- [laughs]
[eerie music]
♪
- [screams]
narrator: The witch is a towering figure
in the history of horror.
[voices moaning]
narrator: The archetypical evil witch
is everything mainstream religion
tells us a woman should not be:
a Satan-worshipping, baby-killing predator
who fears neither God nor man.
- [laughs]
narrator: Like all good monsters,
a bad witch does whatever she likes
whenever she likes.
[laughter]
That unapologetic,
very female power
frightens men and fascinates women.
♪
In real life, witches were non-conformist women
persecuted by religious fanatics.
They suffered horrible deaths for their imagined crimes.
- [screaming]
narrator: Perhaps society's collective guilt
fuels the stories we tell
about witches who come back for revenge.
[scary music]
- Oh, dear God!
narrator: Sometimes the vengeful witches you don't see
are the most terrifying,
and there few better examples
than "The Blair Witch Project."
- [Bleep]! Go! [screaming] Oh, God!
[screams]
- Who would've thought "The Blair Witch Project"
would work the way that it was.
The first time I saw that movie, I was in the hospital,
and I was doped up.
My son brought a VHS tape of it,
and he said, "You gotta watch this."
Halfway through it, I said,
"Turn it off, it's too freaky. I can't."
- Oh, my God, what the [bleep] is that?
What the [bleep] is that?
- I had the same experience.
I was like, "I have to turn the lights on."
I was so disturbedby the end of the movie.
- It's disturbing. That's right.
- I was, like,I get chills thinking about
how scared I was. - Yeah.
- [heavy breathing] - Come on!
I hear him downstairs!
- In "The Blair Witch Project," the witch,
it feels like it's everywhere.
- Hello?
- It's almost like the woods itself is the witch.
There's not just this one mysterious figure
that shows up.
The entire experience is mysterious.
- All right, come on. Into the house.
Come on. Come on.
narrator: "The Blair Witch Project"
wasn't the first found footage movie ever made,
but it was the first to become a massive hit.
- We have these three film students
going off into the woods to make a documentary
about what they believe is an urban legend
of the Blair Witch.
- Have you heard of the Blair Witch?
- Oh, yeah. That's an old, old, old story.
- So from the very beginning,
the interviews with the townspeople are all credible.
These don't look like actors.
These look like just people you would meet on the street.
And that crew is every bit as annoying...
[laughs]
As you might imagine a crew in real life might be.
- Oh, he licked it. God bless him.
- Yeah, there we go.
- They didn't cast, like, CW-type hunky leads.
They were, you know, the schlubs next door
or the people in the dorm room next to you.
- Packs are on. - We're rocking.
- We're ready to go. - Let's rock.
- All I knew when I was gunning for the job
and--and--and when I first got hired was,
it was a movie about three student filmmakers
who went out in the woods
to investigate the legend of the Blair Witch,
and they went missing.
- Actors Heather Donahue, Josh Leonard,
and Mike Williams
were given film equipment and a loose set of instructions,
then sent off into the woods.
- So they wanted to keep it as naturalistic as possible.
It is the three of us filming each other
and recording sound of each other
and we would have no direct interaction
with the directors of the film while we were making it.
They gave us a GPS, and they had programmed in waypoints
which were hatch marks on the map,
and we were to find our way to these different waypoints.
So we knew we were gonna encounter things;
we just didn't know what those things were gonna be.
- What?
- Some of your stuff is hanging all over the ground!
- No way.
- They're all over the place. - Holy [bleep].
- The special effects, if you wanna call it that,
rocks and twigs, you know? [laughs]
Things hanging in the woods are so simple
that they feel true.
They don't feel like something that, you know,
a set designer's gonna come up with.
- Hello?
- They find clues that the Blair Witch might be real.
- You don't think this is strange?
- They start to be kind of stalked.
They find themselves lost in the woods,
and it seems to be due to a supernatural force.
- [cries]
- They start to act irrationally.
- Help!
- They end up going in circles.
- Turn that thing off! - [Bleep].
- Then they start getting picked off
kind of one by one.
- [heavy breathing] - Come on!
Josh!
- In the end of course, they're all dead.
[thumps]
And that's how the footage supposedly came to us.
- [heavy breathing]
- It's that beautiful moment when she's on the ground,
and she's weeping and shuddering...
that actress was terrified
and put all of that work into the camera,
and it came right at us,
and we wanted to help her.
- I'm scared to close my eyes.
I'm scared to open them.
- I think without Heather's monologue
and that weird framingof that shot,
I don't think the film works.
- I am so, so sorry.
[whimpering]
- I think that very iconic moment made the film,
and added so many stakes
and so much relatability to the film,
and Mike and I had no idea
that she filmed that
until we saw it for the first time in a theater.
- I'm gonna die out here.
♪
narrator: Made for $60,000,
"The Blair Witch Project" grossed $250 million
at the box office.
- [heavy breathing]
- It was the first movie that used the internet
to sell tickets basically,
to use the internet to create a marketing campaign,
and it was brilliant.
It had never been attempted before.
narrator: The film was marketed as a true story,
a deception supported by a convincing website.
- I thought that film was real.
I walked out of there going,
"We have to find-- we have to find these people.
Where are they?"
- I hear him. I hear him.
I hear you. Josh!
- It feels like you're there.
It feels like something that would happen.
- [screams]
- "Blair Witch" nailed it.
- [screaming] [thumps]
narrator: "Blair Witch" is part of a long tradition
of treating witchcraft as a force of evil,
but some movies show us
witchcraft can be a force for good
if it's in the right hands.
- [screaming]
narrator: In the movies, witches wear many faces.
[scary music]
Ugly and beautiful.
Repellent and irresistible.
♪
But for most people, the all-time iconic witch
arrived in 1939,
in the form of actress Margaret Hamilton.
♪
- If we were doing a Rorschach test and you said witch,
the first thing I would say back to you
is the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz,"
a film that millions upon millions of people have seen.
♪
I think she is the personification of a witch.
- I'll get you, my pretty,
and your little dog too! [cackles]
narrator: The merciless Wicked Witch of the West
is one of the most recognizable creations
in cinema.
Green face, hook nose, pointed chin--
she represents one of the oldest villains of folklore:
the evil crone.
- [laughs] - Oh!
narrator: And like many horror archetypes,
she's the product of cultural anxiety.
- [laughing]
- Aging, especially for women, is terrifying.
If our bodies are our primary form of currency,
then as we age, we lose value.
One way that women are kind of contained in society
is by being expected to focus on being appealing
and so the crone is terrifying
because she has no interest in that.
- Aah!
[mysterious music]
- [barking]
narrator: But in the modern times,
witches have become dynamic figures of female power.
[laughter]
Like the glamorous Witches of Eastwick.
[laughter]
[whimsical music]
Repressed women liberated when they embrace their passions.
[dramatic music]
At first they fill the traditional witch's role
of being Satan's concubines...
[scary music]
But when they pool their power,
they put the chauvinist devil in his place.
- [screams]
♪
[moans]
- I put a spell on you.
[mysterious music]
And now you're mine.
narrator: The three witchy sisters
of Disney's "Hocus Pocus" had a classically evil goal:
to drain out the souls of children.
[witches inhale and sigh]
They were scary and powerful, but somehow lovable.
- I suggest we forma calming circle.
- I am calm!
- Oh, sister, thou art notbeing honest with thyself,
are we?
[scary music]
- It is a fine line figuring out how evil
to make the witches,
how playful to make the surroundings,
and they have to be a threat.
- [snarls] [kids screaming]
- But they can't be unpleasant.
- [screaming]
[rock music]
- But the real turning point
in the representation of witches
came with a horror movie aimed at teenagers.
[eerie music]
♪
The young women in "The Craft"
embraced the Earth-worshipping magic of modern day pagans...
- [whispering]
narrator: With a healthy dose
of supernatural special effects.
♪
[knocking]
- Hi, I got clean towels for everyone.
- Aah!
Oh, my butt.
- What's going on in here? - Nothing, why?
- Are you girls getting high? - No, Mom.
- [laughs]
- "The Craft" gave us outcasts
who kind of came into their power,
despite or maybe even because of that outsider status,
and it gave us this model
of girls who could be kind of badass
and kind of goth and just different.
- "The Craft" is about four girls,
three who have been together for a while,
and a new girl arrives at school, Sarah Bailey...
- Do you guys mind if I sit with you?
'Cause I'm supposed to find the lab group.
- She meets this group of outcasts
and finds a place where she can maybe fit in,
and it turns out that this group is witches.
- Aid us in our magicalworking on this May's eve.
[thunder cracks]
- We see that they each have a kind of issue.
- Don't hit your headon the board.
- Racism...
The scarring of Neve Campbell's character's body.
- [groaning]
- Intimate partner violence, some domestic violence.
- Stop!
- We see that by working together,
they can kind of create this power where
they're more than the sum of their parts.
narrator: Like modern Wiccans and Pagans,
these girls don't worship Satan.
They draw their power from nature.
all chanting: Fire, water, air.
- I think witch's power is so important
is because it's rooted in strength.
Witchcraft and Paganism,
it's rooted in a connection to the Earth.
- As above...
- It is respect for the Earth.
- So below.
- But the idea was to take the religion, Wicca, seriously.
If you get all of the little details right
about this religion,
you can take a few liberties
and make something supernatural happen,
and it's more believable.
- Ours is the magic, ours is the power.
[rock music]
- They start practicing witchcraft more intensely
and getting magical results,
and they're intoxicated by the results,
and then they want more. [both screaming]
- It's analogy for female sexuality.
If you notice, as their powers get stronger,
our skirts get shorter.
Society's always been scared of women
and their sexuality.
And teenagers, that's their burgeoning sexuality
when it hits,
so the witchcraft kind of an analogy for that fear
that we have
of women coming into their power.
[scary music]
narrator: At first, the girls' new power is liberating...
- [laughs]
narrator: But they soon begin to abuse their gifts...
- [gasps]
narrator: First with small acts of revenge...
- Just keeps falling out.
- [screaming]
narrator: And then with murder.
[thumps] - [screams]
- Nancy's character is the addict.
She's the one who can't restrain her use of the power.
When she gets a good feeling she needs more of it.
♪
narrator: "The Craft" uses witchcraft
as a metaphor for drug use.
- [screams]
narrator: But it also uses
the tight knit circle of a witch's coven
to explore the world of teenage girls...
♪
A time when your best friends
can become your worst enemies overnight.
- There you are.
We've looking everywhere for you.
- As teenage girls, they're hitting the age
where you start to get pitted against each other.
Instead of having sisterhood,
we started to go, "There can only be one!"
And that's insane.
- [laughs]
♪
- When you're a teenager, your brain just isn't right.
You're chemically not balanced,
and then you add in the social constructs
and the way that they're trying to navigate that
and interact with one another.
There is something, like, an element of violence to it,
even if it's never physical, it's, like, emotional violence
that you deal with as a teenage girl.
[laughter]
I think the horror genre is actually a great genre
to explore those concepts
because you can make physical
what a lot of girls are feeling internally
all the time.
- [screams] Stop it!
[heavy breathing]
narrator: "The Craft" was a frothy blend
of adolescent angst
and modern witchcraft.
"Hereditary" mixes similar ingredients
into a much darker brew. - [screams]
narrator: In the movies,
the wicked witches of olden times
were easy to spot.
[chatter]
But what do modern day wicked witches look like?
[horrific musical sting]
Perhaps like the shadowy coven
in Ari Aster's harrowing film, "Hereditary."
Though they are never clearly seen
until the film's explosive conclusion...
[buzzing] - [heavy breathing]
[screams]
- Mommy, please, I'm begging you.
I'm begging you to stop!
narrator: Their presence is always felt.
- [grunts]
- One of the first images that came to me
when I was developing "Hereditary,"
was that of the dollhouse
and this artist who was, you know,
making these very true to life replicas
of, like, the spaces in her life.
That just felt like an appropriate metaphor
for this film about a family that ultimately has no agency.
Ultimately, they are like dolls in a dollhouse.
narrator: The family is grappling with the death
of its icy matriarch.
They don't realize grandma was the leader of a witch's coven
that worships a demon named Paimon.
And she won't let a small thing like dying
get in the way of her plans for her granddaughter,
a strange 13-year-old named Charlie.
- [clicks tongue]
- I really wanted to be in a horror movie,
specifically as a character that wasn't, like,
the one running around scared,
so I could kind of figure out what that person is thinking
and, like, why they're doing the things they do
and how their brain works.
I don't think like that,
I wouldn't normally, like, cut bird heads off...
narrator: Charlie's peculiar behavior
is explained by the fact
that she and the demon share a body
thanks to grandma's black magic.
At first, "Hereditary" seems to be about
a woman who doesn't realize her child is possessed.
- You're going. - Why?
- Because it'll be fun.
Because you'll get to hang out with other kids.
narrator: But then Charlie and her brother Peter
go to a party,
she has an allergic reaction...
- I think my throat's getting bigger.
narrator: He tries to rush her to a hospital
and things take a tragic turn.
[tires screech]
- Ooh! [coughs]
[gasping]
I was excited to get decapitated.
I've always wanted to die in a film or a show
in some, like, very overdramatic way
and getting decapitated,
it's, like, one of the best ways to go.
It's so dramatic. It's so, like, extreme.
[tires screeching]
- The head comes off,
but it's handled in a very kind of tasteful way,
and part of the fun of that
was knowing that we were gonna stay with Peter
for a very long time,
go home with him, go to bed with him,
and then drop the head eight minutes later.
- [crying]
- That's where we reveal what the movie actually is.
narrator: Charlie's death triggers
the already dysfunctional family's collapse.
- She's gone forever!
And what a waste.
If it could've maybe brought us together or something.
If you could've just said, "I'm sorry,"
or faced up to what happened,
maybe then we could do something with this,
but you can't take responsibility for anything!
So now I can't accept.
- There were just some horribly
emotionally draining moments where you--
Toni Collette is so good in that movie, and you just--
all you wanna do is find a way
for her to release her of her pain.
- [cries]
- [crying]
narrator: But pain is precisely the emotion
the witches use to manipulate their victims.
- [gasps]
- The movie's about a family that in many ways
is kind of following each other into madness,
especially Toni Collette's character
and Alex Wolff's character.
They're really kind of pushing each other there.
- Why did you try to kill me? - I love you.
I didn't! I was trying to save you!
- Why did you try to kill me? [both crying]
- You are sick.
narrator: Once the coven
has pushed the family over the edge,
the film explodes into a supernatural orgy
of violent death.
- [screaming]
- By the time you get to the end
of the movie,
and Toni Collette's, like,
levitating and sawing her own head off
with that horrifying look on her face,
[terrifying music]
I didn't know what to do.
Like, I didn't even know where the movie was going.
- [screams]
[thump]
- I love when movies, you know,
kind of embrace a more operatic sensibility.
Why not just go off the rails and just go there, you know?
You know that you're gonna be alienating
a large section of the audience,
and you know that people are kinda gonna get off the ride
at that point, but for me...
- Oh, my God. - It's okay, it's okay.
- I just didn't care.
- It's okay, it's okay.
narrator: Like the coven in "Hereditary,"
demonic women in "The Witch" are rarely seen.
- [grunts] - [screaming]
narrator: But they know exactly
how to drag a family to hell.
- [bleating] [both grunting]
narrator: In colonial America,
the face of a witch often look like this...
[tense music]
The face of Thomasin,
the teenage protagonist of Robert Eggers' "The Witch."
- Tell us why you went to the wood.
- I promise. - I care not.
♪
- "The Witch" is the scariest movie
in its residual effect on me, maybe ever.
- [gasps]
- I felt contaminated
by the evil of that movie. [laughs]
♪
narrator: Set in 1620,
"The Witch" tells the tale
of a family banished from the Plymouth colony
because the patriarch is too unbendingly religious
even for his fellow Calvinists.
The family sets up a homestead in the wilds of New England,
and are targeted by the baby-killing witches
that live in the woods.
♪
- Mmm, boo! [laughs]
[baby laughing] There you are.
[chuckles]
Mmm, boo!
[eerie music]
Sam?
♪
- When the baby disappears...
you can imagine being completely out there
without any kind of real sort of civilization around you,
to sort help.
It's just a few of you and the family in the woods.
♪
- [barks]
narrator: "The Witch" was shot entirely in natural light.
both: Black Phillip, Black Phillip!
narrator: With the actors wearing costumes
made from period appropriate fabrics.
Everything feels real.
- [sighs]
- Black Phillip is the name I give, he goes along with--
- I cannot abide your songs. - Please you, Mercy.
narrator: Even the film's dialogue is authentic,
much it taken
from actual transcripts of the Salem Witch Trials.
- Take your leave.
♪
- Free us from the shaman's omen,
would you do unto us, Father. Amen.
narrator: Thomasin lives in a world of religious dread
where Satan is real.
- [grunts] - [screams]
narrator: Witches are his unholy consults,
and temptation and corruption
lurk around every corner.
[scary music]
♪
- [heavy breathing] Come on.
narrator: After her young brother
is seduced and murdered,
the family begins to suspect Thomasin is responsible.
- [screams]
narrator: Her emergent womanhood
is as unsettling to them as Black Phillip,
the Satanic goat.
- Baa, baa, baa.
- Horror loves to exaggerate.
So the idea of the girl going through puberty
as a source of horror...
- [heavy breathing]
- And as a source of female power
is something that shows up in a lot of horror films.
- [cries]It is you!
- [crying] I am your daughter.
- The devil is in theeand has had thee.
- Here's this good person who is being consumed by an evil
that she cannot escape. - [screaming]
- She only wants to be good and only wants to do what is right.
- [heavy breathing]
- And the idea of becoming usurped by evil...
- I am no witch.
- Is one of the scariest ideas that you can think of
from a theological or religious point of view.
- Please, Father.No, it's not safe!
- But at the same time the movie is very critical
in saying, "This is what religion
"and religious hysteria
"and religious repression also inevitably does
to young agile minds."
- Aah![grunts]
narrator: Betrayed by her family,
Thomasin loses everything
and must make a terrible choice.
♪
- [whispering] Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?
- Yes.
♪
[women chanting]
- I don't think joining a Satan worshipping group of witches
is seen as necessarily a good thing...
[women chanting]
But the fact that it's seen as preferable
to the patriarchal society that it was in
is a much more powerful damnation, I think,
about society.
- She ultimately gets to have her power,
um, and that ending is just a great revelatory ending.
narrator: Some women reluctantly become witches.
[eerie chill blows]
Others happily walk the path.
[laughter]
[chatter]
narrator: The nice ladies of the Royal Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
are not what they appear to be.
- [grunts]
narrator: They are, in fact, child-hating monsters
led by the diabolical grand high witch...
[dastardly music]
A misshapen crone without a drop of decency.
- The witch who dares to say I'm wrong
will not be with us
very long!
- Aah!
narrator: Directed by Nicolas Roeg,
produced by Jim Henson,
and based on the book by Roald Dahl,
"The Witches" takes a very old school view of the dark arts.
[eerie music]
- Roald Dahl and Nick Roeg pulled no punches.
Witches are evil; they report to the devil...
[eerie musical sting]
They live to kill children.
- Real witches have no toes.
- The opening of "Witches"
is this beautiful little six-year-old girl...
[dramatic music]
Cursed into a painting.
- Gazing at us.
- Until she dies of old age,
locked and trapped in the painting.
- One morning, she was gone.
- It's really terrifying.
- [gurgles]
narrator: Despite its dark undercurrent,
"The Witches" is one of those rare films
that actually is fun for the whole family.
- [snarling] [couple screaming]
narrator: But in 1990,
some were not amused.
- Get the mice.
- The Witches of America or the Wiccans
were protesting the movie
for such a negative portrayal of witches,
and they're absolutely right.
[laughter]
Yeah, somebody goes and says, "Witches, uh,
those witches were really negatively portrayed."
Good, then, let's have a conversation
because that's the way a lot of people used to feel.
[laughs]
- Bye.
[laughs]
- [laughs]
- Why are you laughing?
I'm not laughing.
Is something suddenly funny?
narrator: When it comes to unrepentantly evil witches,
Rob Zombie's "The Lords of Salem"
is hard to top.
- Oh, that felt good.
narrator: These women come armed
with a subversive message about female power.
- "Lords of Salem," I feel, is Rob Zombie's best film.
It's a really good story. It's a nightmarish story.
narrator: Sheri Moon Zombie plays Heidi Hawthorne,
a radio DJ in Salem, Massachusetts.
- I have no info on where this came from.
All I know is the group is called The Lords.
narrator: She's tricked into playing a mysterious record
that awakens the latent witchiness
in the women of Salem.
Heidi's descent into darkness
is sped along by the coven
that lives in her apartment building.
- I came up with this coven of witches in Salem...
[crowd screaming]
- That were destroyed
by Jonathan Hawthorne,
and then we jump to modern day
where this modern day coven of witches
choose Heidi Hawthorne,
who's a descendent of Jonathan Hawthorne
to be the--the vessel by which, you know,
the Antichrist comes back, and the witches return.
- [screaming]
narrator: Unlike most witch movies,
"The Lords of Salem" is actually on the side
of the murderous witches and their satanic agenda of evil.
[laughter]
- The witches are the heroes in this one again, as usual.
[laughs] That's why I created
the character of the--Torsten played
of the German black metal guy
ranting against Christianity
just to get a little more in there.
[laughs] Just to complain about it all.
- Our philosophyis to expose the lies
of the Christian whoresand Jesus,
the true bringer of death.
- [laughs]
narrator: The men in the film are secondary characters,
oblivious to the deadly
and very female energy building up in Salem.
[scary music]
- I wanted the whole movie to feel like it was a dream.
Is this really happening, does she think this is happening,
is this just a drug dream, or is she crazy?
- [snarls] - [screaming]
[horrific musical sting]
- [heavy breathing]
♪
narrator: The film culminates with a hellish ceremony
as the witches summon the return of the Antichrist
through Heidi.
♪
- I like the ending a lot,
because I've always been a big fan of Ken Russell movies,
and I like crazy [bleep].
- [speaking foreign language] - [screams]
- 'Cause I thought, like, well, if--if you have someone
who their entire soul is being stripped away
because they're being dragged to hell by witches
and forced to give birth to Satan...
[witches chanting]
- What is that gonna look like? [laughs]
- In the burning rivers of the dead.
- Ultimately, we see this as a kind of act of revenge
against this patriarchal culture
that found women's power threatening.
[eerie music]
And so it was this
generations-long act of revenge
and sort of asserting this power
as something that can't be contained so easily.
♪
- [laughs]
narrator: If Rob Zombie's "The Lords of Salem"
is a black metal dirge...
- [screaming]
narrator: Dario Argento's "Suspiria"
is the witch movie as high opera.
- [screams]
narrator: Filled with drama,
music, color, and unforgettable violence.
- [laughs]
[eerie music]
narrator: In 1977's "Suspiria"...
♪
Writer/director Dario Argento combined witchcraft
with a violent murder mystery.
- Aah!
narrator: To create a dreamlike masterpiece
of horror.
- [squeaking]
narrator: To this day, there's nothing else quite like it.
[loud droning music]
- [screams]
- "Suspiria" just feels weird at all times.
[thunder cracks]
As soon as she walks out of the airport,
the music's going, the wind's blowing way too hard,
and everything's, like, psychedelic,
you're like, "The [bleep] is this crazy movie?"
It's just so awesome.
- You wouldn't understand.
It all seemed so absurd.
[eerie music]
narrator: Suzy Bannion, played by Jessica Harper,
has come to Germany to attend a prestigious dance academy.
She enters a world of supernatural terror.
- [screaming]
narrator: And over the top violence.
- [screaming]
- The first, like, ten minutes of "Suspiria"
is really unsettling,
and you don't really know thelogic of the universe we're in.
The sets are kinda, like, fantastical and amazing.
- [screams]
- Incredible eye candy, incredible music.
- [screams]
- And also the shocks are--
it's so extravagant and gory
and unsettling.
- [screaming]
narrator: After traumatizing the audience
with a brutal double murder,
Argento follows Suzy into the academy.
- Suzy Bannion, our new student.
- Oh, yes.
narrator: Suzy becomes the target of the sinister witches
who run the school.
[unsettling music]
♪
- Witch!
♪
- One of the really notable elements of "Suspiria"
that is more contemporary than at the time the movie was made
is that it is female-centric.
The protagonists and the antagonists are all female.
- There isn't a patriarchal oppressor in "Suspiria."
- [speaking foreign language] Who's there?
- The power of this movie is matriarchy,
and the hero's journey of it
will have nothing to do with a woman
standing in the face of a man trying to oppress her
or hurt her
because we actually don't even have to consider
the rules and world of men at all.
- Witch!
- They're outside of all of our concerns here.
♪
- Witch!
narrator: In "Suspiria," plot takes a back seat to style.
- [gasps]
[screaming]
narrator: The film is like a surreal nightmare
filled with gorgeously photographed murders
set to a heart-pounding and groundbreaking soundtrack
by the band Goblin.
[tense music]
♪
- In terms upsetting some of the conventions
of film scoring,
I think "Suspiria's" a really good example...
- [screaming]
- Because a lot of the time,
the music really takes a central,
kind of forefront position.
- [screaming]
- And I think a lot of the negative response to that film
is his aestheticization
of these really horrific acts of violence.
- [screaming]
[horrific musical sting]
- What Dario Argento was really doing,
he was making an adult fairy tale.
It's amazing to see that his inspiration for it
was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves."
[thunder cracks]
He wanted the color scheme of a Disney film,
and he--he got it. - [gasps]
- It's another externalization
of the fears and the anxieties
that the main character is going through.
- [screams]
- It really was supposed to be, like, a fairy tale,
and originally he wanted young children to be in the film.
He's got the door handles really high on the doors
because he wanted to create certain things
that it seemed as though they were little girls in some way.
♪
narrator: Eventually,
Suzy uncovers the dark secrets of the academy.
[suspenseful music]
And she fights for her life
against the coven's invisible queen
and her zombie slave.
- [laughing]
narrator: Like a fairy tale,
good ultimately triumphs over evil.
- [shouts]
- [agonized moaning]
- [gasps]
- That movie was taking the modern slasher genre
and turning it into high art,
and I feel like the horror genre
is just now really beginning to catch up
with the simple idea
of high aspirational art
in American horror cinema.
[chilling music]
♪
Luca Guadagnino's recent update of "Suspiria"
swaps Argento's bright colors for muted earth tones,
and a serpentine plot.
♪
- I like the original "Suspiria,"
just 'cause it's gorgeous,
but I will say in the remake,
I felt like they made much better use of the dancing.
[eerie piano music]
- [moaning and crying]
[eerie music]
♪
narrator: Rather than pitting Suzy against the witches,
Guadagnino puts her in the middle of a battle
in between Madame Blanc and Helena Markos,
good and evil witches vying to run the academy.
[horrific musical sting] - [screams]
[scary music]
- I liked that struggle for power
between these two feminine forces.
You have essentially, like, an election drama
between Markos and Blanc
that culminates in a black Sabbath scene
that's like, "Yeah, give me election drama
"with people's heads literally exploding off their bodies
in a chamber covered in women's hair."
I'll watch that seven out of seven days a week.
- [moans]
♪
- It's not common in other genres
to see women as powerful and dangerous.
- Find him.
- [screams]
- And to watch them take back that power and use it
to break free
is really exciting.
narrator: Young
or old,
cruel or kind,
witches embody the magic and mystery of femininity.
They command our respect.
- Oh, God!
narrator: And remind us
that the people who brought us into this world...
Can also take us out of it.
- You're doomed forever!
- [screams]
[thumps]