Tomb

It’s the underwater room that really grabs me. A lot of weird stuff happens in Inferno (1980), but it’s the pleasingly surreal sight of Irene Miracle swimming languidly through a submerged sitting room that will always be the film’s most indelible image.

Presented as a sort of vaguely connected followup to the horror hit Suspiria (1977), Inferno places even less importance on story and narrative than its famously incoherent predecessor. Don’t worry about why things happen, though: The film seems to tell us. Here are some bizarre images; let us watch and be surprised, as criticizing Inferno for its randomness feels like criticizing a dream.

Despite Inferno’s disdain for logical explanations, the evil forces at work are given a nice, scholarly introduction at the very start of the film. Rose (Miracle) studies an old book entitled The Three Mothers, which essentially gives us a narrated Wikipedia entry on the bad guys right off the bat. When the book explains that Mater Suspiriorum, “the Mother of Sorrow,” resides in Freiburg, Germany, the horror-savvy members of the audience think, “Yep, she got stabbed in the neck at the end of Suspiria. One down, two to go.” The film’s other two evil Mothers include Mater Tenebrarum, “The Mother of Darkness” (located in New York City, making her the villainess of this particular film) and Mater Lachrymarum, “The Mother of Tears” (located in Rome). This last evil sorceress managed to survive until the seriously belated final film of the trilogy, the very disappointing The Mother of Tears (2007). But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. OK — so there’s an evil magic lady in New York, and that’s bad. Got it.

Rose immediately figures out that the book is talking about her own New York residence, so naturally, she goes down to the basement alone to check things out. Finding a hole in the floor, she promptly drops her keys down it. Dang. Well, there’s nothing else for her to do but kick off her shoes, jump in the hole and swim around a fully furnished underwater room for a while.

On paper, it’s hard to convey the dreamlike appeal of this scene. We’re barely 10 minutes into this movie, and already, there’s an elegantly dressed lady silently exploring a sunken sitting room, complete with furniture, paintings and carpeting. It feels a bit like the scene in Trainspotting (1996) where Ewan McGregor climbs into a toilet, and finds himself in a surprisingly roomy and well-lit alternate dimension where he can peacefully swim about. Our realistic expectations of the world are temporarily suspended for a fascinating little Jacques Cousteau moment of underwater exploration.

After this strong beginning, Inferno actually manages to hold the viewer’s interest quite well, with a series of near-random events that might or might not have anything to do with Mater Tenebrarum’s evil plans. One woman is attacked by a horde of housecats. Another guy gets attacked by a pack of rats while trying to drown a sack full of cats in Central Park. While he’s struggling, a random hot dog vendor hears his cries, comes running across the surface of the pond, and finishes the poor guy off with a butcher knife! We never see the hot dog vendor again, or find out why he did that.

The soundtrack of Inferno is as random as its content, switching carelessly between classical music, silence and pounding prog-rock from Keith Emerson. Some viewers detest this soundtrack, but I find it oddly appealing and dynamic. The visuals are striking, as one would expect from a followup to Suspiria, and fans of vivid colours and odd architecture will find much to admire here. The only real letdown is the fiery finale, in which the Big Bad winds up looking like a rather cheap Halloween costume.

Fie on petty criticisms, I say. Such nitpicking has kept Inferno virtually unknown for many years, despite its many pleasures for fans of surreal horror. Blue Underground has announced a Blu-ray release of Inferno for next March, and that’s good news.