Little White Lies magazine

On Saturday, April 19, down at the Coronet Cinema in Notting Hill, a triple treat awaits fans of Italy’s one-time horror maestro Dario Argento, thanks to a one-off event hosted by FILM4 FrightFest.

For not only will his latest feature Mother of Tears get a full airing on the big screen before its straight-to-DVD release on the Optimum label, and not only will it be accompanied on-screen by two other Optimum DVD releases (Jamie Blanks’ antipodean survivalist horror Storm Warning and Jonathan Endsleigh’s anthropological nightmare Welcome to the Jungle), but the king of giallo himself will also be in attendance to introduce his film.

As the long-awaited third part of Argento’s ‘Three Mothers’ trilogy, Mother of Tears comes with a history. In the early ’70s Argento had already been cementing his reputation as a master manipulator of baroque filmic spectacle with Hitchcock-inflected, gore-drenched thrillers like Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Cat O’ Nine Tails, Four Flies on Grey Velvet and Deep Red, but none of his (or anyone else’s) films quite prepared viewers for the uncanny aesthetic exuberance of the first ‘Three Mothers’ film, Suspiria (1977), whose dark, fairytale phantasmagoria exploded on the retina in a swirl of disturbingly vivid colours.

It was, and remains, a triumph of mannerist horror – and while the first sequel Inferno (1980) suffered from a disappointingly daft ending, it still featured several memorable set-pieces (including the eeriest underwater sequence ever committed to celluloid).

Argento’s career has been in slow decline ever since, but if his two most recent features - the straight-to-DVD The Card Player (2004) and the made-for-TV Do You Like Hitchcock? (2005) - seemed to represent the last nails in the filmmaker’s coffin, then Mother of Tears sees him beginning to claw his way back from the grave, not unlike the long-buried witch who gives the film its title.

Finally appearing some 30 years after the original Suspiria, and timed no doubt to cash in on Argento’s recent reemergence as one of Showtime’s ‘Masters of Horror’ (as well as tying in with a 2008-slated Hollywood remake of Suspiria), Mother of Tears never quite matches the visual delirium of its two predecessors – but nonetheless, for die-hard Dario-lovers, its true place will always be on the big screen, with Claudio ‘Goblin’ Simonetti’s score blaring ominously through a proper speaker system.

And if you don’t like it, this event offers a rare opportunity to tell the director exactly why in person.

To book Day passes at £15 call 020 7727 6705. Please note tickets for individual seats are not available. For full programme and timetable log onto www.frightfest.co.uk

Check out Issue 17 of LWLies, on sale April 26, for an interview with Dario Argento himself.