Deep Red (50th Anniversary)

Part of Dundead Film Festival 2025 - see the full programme and book a Festival Pass.

Dario Argento had made his name with a trio of vogueish, glossy giallo films from 1970-1971, but 1975’s hugely influential Deep Red was arguably the film with which he appeared fully formed. 

The film builds on the giallo tradition – stylish, blood-filled, cheaply-made crime/horror films, usually focussing on a ‘crazed’ serial killer with trademark black leather gloves. And while his masterpiece Suspiria would take the genre into supernatural territory, things stay just about true to that more terrestrial tradition in Deep Red. 

David Hemmings plays a jazz pianist who witnesses a murder and becomes obsessed with solving it. He is joined in his pursuit by a sparky young journalist played by Daria Nicolodi. Nicolodi is an icon of Italian horror cinema, appearing in five Argento films between 1975 and 1987 and co-writing Suspiria, and she is great fun here, gleefully poking holes in Hemmings’ chauvinism. This film also marks the first in a long line of collaborations between Argento and the composer Claudio Simonetti, whose band Goblin provide a typically brilliant, groove-filled soundtrack to the gruesome murders. 

Less psychedelically extravagant than Suspiria, Deep Red is nonetheless just as confident – Argento employs just about every trick in the book, from atmospheric, oppressive shadow-play, inventive set-pieces and captivating long tracking shots to eerie location work and micro-scale close-ups. And of course, buckets of deep red blood.