Dario Argento's next film after Suspiria (not counting Romero's Dawn of the Dead where he worked as editor and composer) was the second film in his Three Mothers trilogy, Inferno. This film expanded on the mythology of the Three Mothers, and moved the action to New York (although there are a few scenes of some importance in Rome as well).
Rose has some problems with her apartment building. There's a strange smell all through it, it seems to be full of feral cats, and there's a flooded ballroom below the basement that's full of rotting corpses. In fact, according to the book she's been reading, it appears that Rose is living in the home of one of the Three Mothers. Rose writes to her brother Mark in Rome to tell him of her fears, but Mark never gets to read the letter - first he is distracted by a strange, beautiful woman in his music class, and then a friend who finds and reads the letter is killed in her apartment that evening (after she has a strange encounter in what appears to be an alchemist's lab in the basement of a library).
Mark decides to visit Rose in New York anyway, but even then he arrives to late as Rose has been killed just before he gets there. Mark stays to investigate his sister's "disappearance" anyway and soon falls ill while exploring the building, while all around him people act strangely and then die, as the secrets of Mater Tenebrarum's New York home are revealed.
When I first watched Inferno, many many years ago, I was only just starting to learn about film and film theory and so had certain ideas in my head; that everything in a film had to be connected and make sense, for example. So for years afterwards I was baffled by the brief appearance, partway through the film, of a hanged woman randomly in one scene. I was convinced I had missed some important plot detail that would explain who she was. It's only now that I understand - there's no reason for her whatsoever. Inferno is the fever dream, the brown acid trip of Argento's films. It's not means to make any sense in parts; just to unsettle the viewer.
The film has many of the familiar tropes of Argento's work - a protagonist newly arrived in the area who soon falls ill, cryptic riddles that are the key to everything, and many scenes lit by red or blue lights. And of course the setpiece killings. Oh, the setpiece killings. My personal favourite is the man who is eaten alive by rats then hacked to death by a hot dog vendor while lying helpless in a river (after trying to drown a bag of cats, so really, fuck that guy). The ending, however, does fall a little flat - it trips over the line between creepiness and absurdity with its final reveal, which spoils things a little.
Surprisingly, Goblin weren't involved in the soundtrack for Inferno; instead Argento had Keith Emmerson compuse the soundtrack as he wanted something "different" to Suspiria. The different composer does give the film a differnt feel, as I mentioned above, but it was not to everyone's tastes. Personally I found it to be technically sound, but maybe a little too loud and jarring for my tastes.
Strangely, Inferno found itself on the UK's "video nasties" list in the 1980s, although it was not one of those successfully prosecuted. The reasons why appear to have been lost to the sands of time, but it may have had to do with two scenes that fell afoul of the UK's animal cruelty laws - a fake cat has its head bashed against a table in one scene, and a cat eats a mouse in another. It is now available uncut (although the mouse-eating scene appears to have been removed pre-submission, so if you were looking forward to those 5 seconds I have to disappoint you).
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