Dario Argento was born of Italian/Brazilian descent in 1940. He is the son of the late movie producer Salvatore Argento (a prominent figure in the postwar Italian film community), and the brother of writer, producer Claudio Argento. It is said that Dario's first memory is sitting on the knee of screen godess Sophia Loren. Dario started his career as a movie critic for the Rome daily Paese Sera. Following on in the grand giallo tradition of Mario Bava, Dario Argento has proved to be it's most remarkable practitioner. Argento became a purveyor of stylish horror films, beginning with traditionally structured whodunits, with fiendishly clever solutions, he began writing and directing at the age of 24. His later forays into the cinema of the supernatural have also dazzled and stunned audiences. A long term partnership with Italian rock group Goblin, with which he sometimes collaborated, has produced some of his most menacing and exciting background scores. In fact his films have developed a substantial cult following worldwide. His overwrought graphic shockers consistently push the boundaries of epic violence into uncharted areas few dare follow. His films are quoted as being misogynistic, violent, perverse and sadistic. His work is often shocking and explicit. Dario's retorts are compounded by his sagely and complex manner.

Technically innovative and with a unique, often oppressively tense style, tantamount to hysteria, Argento has proved himself to be one of the pivotal directors of the horror film. He has created one of the best horror production houses in Europe. His style is fresh, daring and wildly imaginative. Argento's mix of gore, vivid colour and camera movement is one of the most unique in the field and is one of the most difficult to imitate. His work is greatly received in Europe where he is hailed as "The Italian Hitchcock" while he has gone largely unnoticed in this country. His distinctive directorial flair and fascination with voyeurism certainly owe a nod to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, but story development often takes second place to his cinematic flamboyance. Indeed, while Argento has been dubbed "the Italian Hitchcock," the stylized melodramatic excess of his films has led to comparisons with a fellow Italian filmmaker via another nickname, "the Visconti of Violence." He also has a trick of introducing campy, humorous elements, through visual jokes and/or amusing characters. Brian De Palma, Stanley Kubrick and a host of other directors have borrowed liberally from Argento's grandiose bag of tricks. His former wife Daria Nicolodi has starred in a dozen or so of his films. His daughters Fiore and Asia also appear in his films and projects.

After writing screenplays for other Italian directors, including a collaboration with Bernardo Bertolucci and Sergio Leone in storyboarding Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West (1968); (Dario contributed to the hanging flashback sequence and wrote the opening scene), Dario wrote the screenplay for One Night at Dinner which brought him to the attention of Goffredo Lombardo, head of Titanus, an Italian film company. Dario's body of work is considered to be of the giallo genre (giallo meaning yellow in Italian), which in turn came from the yellow covers of the penny-dreadful horror/thriller paperbacks that were sold in Italy. In 1969 Dario made an impressive directorial debut with the release of The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, for which he also wrote the screenplay, and was produced for his father Salvatore's own company. About an American writer who witnesses an attempted murder and becomes caught up in the investigation, the film is now considered a precursor to the slasher genre of the 1980's.

In Four Flies On Grey Velvet (1972) and Deep Red (1975), Argento once again used a murder mystery format to experiment with the limits of the horror genre, employing special effects and music to heighten tension. Deep Red was also his first collaboration with Goblin, the band of young Italian musicians who would go on to score most of his productions, either collectively or singly. In Four Flies On Grey Velvet, Argento's love of technical innovation was seen in the very final scene where he used a special industrial camera, imported from East Germany and capable of shooting a whole reel of film in less than a second for an ultra-slow motion finale. 1973 saw Argento's only to date non-genre-film - The Five Days Of Milan - described by Argento himself as "a very Italian story, a very bizarre comedy." It is believed never to have shown outside Italy and France which is a shame. This period also saw him trying to launch a project with the then thriving Hammer Films - a version of 'Frankenstein', the story being transposed to 30's Germany, paralleling the rise of Hitler. Despite having Timothy Dalton signed to the lead, the project never came to fruition.

While the first two installments of a proposed trilogy, Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980), had confusing plot devices, Argento's visual sense nonetheless managed to make the films compelling, even as the story lines became increasingly inconsequential. Suspiria was shot using intense out-dated colour stock for maximum saturation and mixed in a six-track surround stereo system. Argento's next credit was to be co-producer on George A. Romero's Dawn Of The Dead' in 1978, the kinetic sequel to the classic Night Of The Living Dead. Inferno was next, a sumptuously filmed shocker set around a New York apartment building with severe secrets in it's walls and basements. Although uncredited, Mario Bava, his mentor, provided some extraordinary special effects sequences, including a scene in a flooded ante-room, in one of his last assignments before his death.

Once again employing a routine murder mystery plotting device in Tenebrae (1982), Argento used the narrative structure as a departure point for a series of visually arresting murder sequences. The film contains one of Argento's most remarkable sequences - a perfectly timed Louma crane shot revolving around and over a three-storey house, in and out of windows to the pounding score, before revealing the killer breaking into the ground floor. Unfortunately 'Tenebrae' was picked up by a small American distributor who changed the title to the cheap 'Unsane' and replaced some of the superb music by ex-Goblin members Simonetti, Pignatelli and Morante with awful disco tracks. In the process destroying what is surely a masterpiece.

The remarkable 'Phenomena' (1984) was Argento's first English-language feature. The film was an European box office success, which New Line Cinema retitled Creepers. The film was ludicrously cut, in English-speaking markets, generally in versions between ten and thirty minutes shorter than the Italian cut. The story of a teenager with telepathic abilities who becomes involved in the hunt for a psychotic killer, it's sometimes confusing plot was supplanted by an engaging visual style which included eccentric camera angles, slow motion sequences, arresting lighting and energetic editing. Argento turned over the directorial chores to longtime collaborator Lamberto Bava, son of Mario, in 1985 for Demons, the tale of a demonic virus infecting a cinema audience through a chrome Devil's mask. The film was a worldwide success, prompting the rapid production of the less successful Demons 2 a year later.

Argento joined forces again with cult director George Romero in the episodic Two Evil Eyes (1990), this time, each directing an Edgar Allan Poe story; Argento handling The Black Cat starring Harvey Keitel, and Romero helming The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. Alas the failure of the film ended in rancour between the two directors, Argento being widely quoted in his dissatisfaction with Romero's effort. One of Argento's most baroque films came from this period as well, the Italian-made Opera (1987) which ORION Pictures idiotically retitled Terror At The Opera, and practically destroyed by adding numerous cuts. Opera was Argento's most technically complex film yet, a giallo set in an opera house. Here Dario explicitly drew upon Alfred Hitchcock (especially The Birds, 1963) in a technical tour de force which revamped The Phantom Of The Opera (1925). He resumed production duties on two films directed by Michele Soavi, who had been a camera assistant on several of Dario's previous films. The Church (1988) revolved around a cathedral, under which in a mass grave are buried the victims of a purge by the mediaeval Knights Templars, while The Sect (1989) featured Kelly Lee Curtis in an ambitious tale of demonic rebirth and a Satanic cult.

Dario directed his first American feature, previously announced as Aura's Enigma, 1993's Trauma was shot totally in the States. The plot revolved around a mysterious clinic where the two principles are attacked by a hooded maniac, decapitating the victims with a motorised wire-saw. His daughter, Asia played the female lead amid a totally American cast including Chris Rydell, Frederick Forrest, Brad Dourif and Hollywood veteran Piper Laurie. He has released a number of movies, including Five Days Of Milan (1973); (it has been described as his comic Wild Bunch, and is about the 1848 Italian revolution) and The Stendhal Syndrome (1996);(A graphic giallo shocker about a policewoman (played by Asia) who is afflicted by a rare disorder concerning works of art. When a serial rapist and murderer she is pursuing discovers this, he decides to make her his next victim). The Phantom of the Opera, is Dario Argento's unique version of the classic novel by Gaston Leroux, Asia stars alongside Julian Sands.

Dario has even acted in a couple of movies, Scusi, Lei E Favorevole O Contrario (Excuse Me, Are You For Or Against?) and a bit part as a paramedic in John Landis' Innocent Blood (1990). Dario is arguably the most regularly censored director in modern screen history (according to Film Threat magazine) and is quoted as saying "It's like they are killing my children." In 1994 Dario was given a Lifetime Achievement award at the 2nd Montreal Festival International Cinema Fantastique. Dario has also worked on three series for Italian televison. The Door of Darkness was shown in 1972 and Argento wrote and directed two of the four episodes. He also introduced all four episodes. In 1987, Giallo came to the small screen. Three minute films were shown to contestants and they had to guess how they would end. Dario directed nine of the short films and supervised the other fifteen. On Turno di notte (1988), Dario served as a contributor and creative consultant. There is also a number of documentaries on Argento and his movies, Dario Argento's World of Horror, Dario Argento: Master of Horror and Dario Argento: An Eye for Horror. Dario has even opened up a store and museum in Rome called Profondo Rosso. The store is comparable to Forbidden Planet in London, and has memorabilia from many horror, sci-fi and fantasy movies. In the basement of the store there are special effects from some of Dario's movies.

Dario's latest film is a classic giallo, filming took place in Turin. The film stars Stefano Dionisi, Max von Sydow (superb actor and star of The Exorcist), Chiara Caselli, Rossella Falk and Gabriele Lavia. The film's script was written by Argento, Franco Ferrini and Carlo Lucarelli. Goblin have worked with Argento once more on the film's score. The film's Italian title is NonHoSonno (I Can't Sleep). The English language title is now Sleepless. The film has proved a big success. It has been hailed as a return to top form from Dario.
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