TV on DVD is, in my opinion, one of the greatest things ever made. I’ve watched so many different series in the past year than I ever have before. There are just so many options and not enough time. How did people in the 80’s and 90’s do it?  Many popular shows that had there initial run ten or twenty years ago are now available on DVD.

Right now my top three shows are: Desperate Housewives, Melrose Place, and Ugly Betty. People are always shocked when they hear this. I love such hardcore horror films (Cannibal Holocaust, Suspiria, The Beyond), but my favorite TV shows are girly as hell. It’s one of those things I can’t explain.

I’m guessing I love these shows because they give me that same punch of adrenaline as horror films do. Both Desperate Housewives and Melrose Place have equally tense moments that have you biting the shit of your nails. The entire first season of Desperate is a mystery/thriller all by itself.

A woman commits suicide and her four best friends try to figure out why she did it. Throughout their search for the truth two women are murdered, a husband is poisoned, and a house is blown up. Moments like these are what get my heart racing. Take away the comedic bits, edit a few storylines, add some more gore, and you have the next Dexter on your hands.

Desperate Housewives:

Twin Peaks of the new millennium

Melrose Place is a definite guilty pleasure. One of those shows that people hesitate to say they like, but I know that a good percentage of you were there when Kimberly blew up the apartment complex. How about the time Sydney and Jane buried rapist Peter Hart alive only to have him rise up from the grave like a zombie in a cheap horror flick? Even the prowler from season two seemed like homage to Brian DePalma’s Body Double. Melrose had something in it for everyone and that’s exactly why it lasted seven seasons.

Another reason to watch Melrose Place is that it had more deaths in one episode than your average horror film:

I wanted to share a paper with you that I wrote for Art Appreciation during my first year of college. If memory serves correct, I got an "A" on the project. I hope you all enjoy. You can also view a "documentary" I did on the director in ninth grade at the following website (this is part 1 of 8):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ALIytD4X0

Dario Argento:

Master of the Macabre

     Art isn’t something that can be found only in a museum. It is something that can be found all over the place. Art has the power to influence people and even change their daily ways of thinking. Although most people aren’t sure what exactly art is, they can still contribute their own work. The one person I have found that uses art in the most unique and daring way is Italian director Dario Argento.

    
Dario Argento is the master of Italian horror. His debut shocker The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1969) set him up to become “the Italian Hitchcock”. Although this is a very flattering nickname it is really a false accusation. Hitchcock was a very controlled director and Argento doesn’t allow himself to be censored. Argento has been known to be one of director John Carpenter’s (Halloween) biggest influences. The score from Halloween was even inspired by Argento’s film Suspiria.

           
     Deep Red (1975) is a remarkable achievement on all accounts. It was the first of Argento’s films to show his unique sense of style. The film is a brilliant mix of unique sounds and cinematography.  There are many close-ups, long shots, point of view shots, and wide ranges of colors (especially red). When it comes to art, Argento is a major player. He even goes as far as recreating an American painting called Nighthawks by famed artist Edward Hopper. The set piece is an amazing feature, shown within many scenes of the film. It is safe to say that Argento is a lover of art and takes it to the next level. 

     Censorship plays a major part in horror movies and movies in general. Most people will probably continue to put up with losing their right to view what they want to view while others will fight to keep censorship at a minimum. Hopefully, someday there will be a way to overrule censorship because horror movies are an essential form of amusement in America.

The Italian version of Deep Red is 126 minutes long. Most American versions are missing 22 minutes of footage or more. This includes most of the graphic violence, all of the humorous scenes, almost all of the romantic scenes between David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi and part of the subplot regarding the house of the screaming child. The film was also renamed Deep Red: The Hatchet Murders to give it a more grisly feel.

           
     Deep Red is one of those movies that loses much of its impact and style when shown in America. Argento’s brilliant screenplay is hammered down from a high-class film with plenty of character development and wonderful direction to a sort of cheap slasher flick in the vein of Friday the 13^th. Although the film made a decent profit at the box-office in America, it probably could have made much more if it were not for the many cuts. Why the American distributor could not see this, I have no clue.

           
     When speaking of art, the one film in Argento’s vast career that stands out the most is 1977’s Suspiria. It is an amazing surrealistic, fantasy horror film. Suspiria is about an American Ballet student, named Suzie Banyon, who travels to Germany in order to attend a dance academy. The night she arrives one of the students is murdered in a very horrifying double murder sequence. As more and more clues are revealed, Suzie and her friend Sarah are sent head first in to a never-ending whirlwind of witchcraft and murder. Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was a major inspiration for this film. Argento adds in little references to the film such as the black forest, the witch, and the color. Even the door handles of the school are raised to the student’s shoulders as if to make them seem more like children. It’s quite interesting. 

     Suspiria was the last film in the world to use Technicolor’s three-band color system. Using this color system to his advantage, Argento was able to create the fantasy world of his film. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was the first full-length cartoon to be made with color. Seeing as how this would be the last film to be using the three band Technicolor system, Argento took it to the next level. Colors literally jump from the movie like 3D. The cinematography used in Suspiria is among the many other things that could be labeled as art. Many uses of the louma crane or even the steady shots of Suzie walking down a dimly lit hallway are quite stunningly beautiful to watch. It’s as if you are watching a cartoon with real actors. If you were to take a still from any scene in the film, it could be hung on a wall in a museum.

     Tenebrae was severely cut in America by ten minutes. The cuts of film were mostly the graphic violence. One scene consists of a woman’s lower arm being chopped off by an axe. The blood from her arm splatters everywhere and goes all over a white wall as she tries to run away. Other scenes consist of an axe splitting a man’s head open, throats being slashed by a razorblade and plenty of other violent cuts and slices from a butcher knife. The American version was renamed Unsane (what’s that supposed to mean?) and was never really given a chance in theaters. It was on the set of this movie where Argento stated: “The worst thing in life is to beat the censors. They are the really disgusting people.”

     Phenomena (1985) received worse treatment than Deep Red. The film was reduced from a good running time of 110 minutes to a measly 83 minutes. That is a loss of 27 minutes of character development and graphic violence. It was also renamed the horrible Creepers. This film also happened to lose much of its impact through the horrible cuts. Characters would pop out of nowhere, and plot twists were very hard to follow. Even when you did find out who the killer was, you did not quite know if that was the right person because of their motives being cut short. 

     Opera (1989) and The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) are two films from Argento that would make one fear art. In Opera a young opera singer named Betty is set to star in an updated version of the play Macbeth. It is a well-known fact among opera singers that the play brings bad luck. Sure enough a madman, obsessed with Betty, begins killing the people closest to her. To make matters worse, the killer forces the diva to watch the murders by strapping her down and taping needles under her eyelids. As Alan Jones states in the Dario Documentary An Eye for Horror, “In Opera, the message Argento is sending to his audience is: I don’t film these horrific scenes for you to close your eyes. I make these films so you can see them and feel the horror.”

Opera (1987) was the last Argento film to be shown in American theaters. This film was cut by 11 minutes that consisted of gore and character development. The film was also renamed Terror at the Opera, which makes it seem like nothing less than a stupid slasher flick. Every Argento film since Opera has not had theatrical distribution in the United States. They are all either released direct to video, or never come to the United States. These films are Trauma, The Stendhal Syndrome, Phantom of the Opera (Argento’s only bad film; shows absolutely no style or substance), Sleepless, and The Card Player. Thanks to Anchor Bay Entertainment, Americans are now able to view the Italian master of horror’s movies completely uncut and uncensored.

     Dario Argento is a very unique man who makes very interesting, if not unsettling, horror films. I advise anyone who has ever been a lover of horror or art to check out his films. Out of the sixteen films under his belt he has made less than a handful of below par films. Horror films will be around for years to come. As long as people want to be scared, and are willing to pay the outrageous theater admission prices, horror films will stay intact. The genre will have its ups and downs, good scary movies as well as bad ones, but it will always be a reliable source of entertainment. We can only hope there will be a shortage of censorship in movies in the years to come.