A retrospective of Italian auteur Dario Argento's films; The Argento Syndrome is an examination of a career marked by such genre classics as Suspiria, Deep Red, Tenebrae, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Opera. The Argento Syndrome is part academic study, with essays on every film, and part personal memoir, detailing the author's time in Italy on a trip to visit the set of Sleepless. Also included are several full-length interviews with such personalities as John Carpenter, Tony Musante, Luciano Tovoli, Leigh McCloskey and Asia Argento. Derek Botelho holds a B.A. in Cinema from Columbia College, and is a regular contributor to dailydead.com and has had work published with Dark Discoveries, Little Shoppe of Horrors, Moviement, and Fangoria.

Commanding a cult following among horror fans, Italian film director Dario Argento is best known for his work in two closely related genres, the crime thriller and supernatural horror, as well as his influence on modern horror and slasher movies. In his four decades of filmmaking, Argento has displayed a commitment to innovation, from his directorial debut with 1970's suspense thriller The Bird with the Crystal Plumage to 2009's Giallo. His films, like the lurid yellow-covered murder-mystery novels they are inspired by, follow the suspense tradition of hard-boiled American detective fiction while incorporating baroque scenes of violence and excess. While considerations of Argento's films often describe them as irrational nightmares, L. Andrew Cooper uses controversies and theories about the films' reflections on sadism, gender, sexuality, psychoanalysis, aestheticism, and genre to declare the anti-rational logic of Argento's oeuvre. Approaching the films as rhetorical statements made through extremes of sound and vision, Cooper places Argento in a tradition of aestheticized horror that includes De Sade, De Quincey, Poe, and Hitchcock. Analyzing individual images and sequences as well as larger narrative structures, he reveals how the director's stylistic excesses, often condemned for glorifying misogyny and other forms of violence, offer productive resistance to the cinema's visual, narrative, and political norms.

A retrospective of Italian auteur Dario Argento's films; The Argento Syndrome is an examination of a career marked by such genre classics as Suspiria, Deep Red, Tenebrae, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Opera. The Argento Syndrome is part academic

In 21 separate interviews, two with director Bernado Bertolucci, this well-known movie critic sheds light on what motivates film-makers in their work. Focusing on Italian directors as well as American directors of Italian descent, unearths a variety of personalities and dreams (including Roberto Benigni and Life is Beautiful).

The stylistic and bloody excesses of the films of Dario Argento are instantly recognizable—his films lock violent deaths in a twisted embrace with an almost sexual beauty. Narrative and logic are often lost in a constant bombardment of atmosphere, technical mastery, and provocative imagery. Setting the tone with earlier gialli films such as The Animal Trilogy and Deep Red, Argento has steadily pushed the boundaries; through his elaborately gothic fairytales Suspiria and Inferno, right up to his more recent contributions to Showtime's Masters of Horror series and the conclusion of his Three Mothers trilogy, Mother of Tears: The Third Mother. Along the way, his prowling camera work, pounding scores, and stylistic bloodshed have only gained in intensity and opulence. Argento continues to create inimitable and feverishly violent films with a level of artistry rarely seen in horror films. His high profile and mastery of the genre is confirmed with his role as producer on celebrated classics such as George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead and Lamberto Bava's Demons.

A group of sophisticated essays on how we experience film with all fives senses--and our sense of history .

In its heyday from the late 1950s until the early 1980s Italian horror cinema was characterised by an excess of gore, violence and often incoherent plot-lines. Films about zombies, cannibals and psychopathic killers ensured there was no shortage of controversy, and the genre presents a seemingly unpromising nexus of films for sustained critical analysis. But Italian horror cinema with all its variations, subgenres and filoni remains one of the most recognisable and iconic genre productions in Europe, achieving cult status worldwide. One of the manifestations of a rich production landscape in Italian popular cinema after the Second World War, Italian horror was also characterised by its imitation of foreign models and the transnational dimension of its production agreements, as well as by its international locations and stars.This collection brings together for the first time a range of contributions aimed at a new understanding of the genre, investigating the different phases in its history, the peculiarities of the production system, the work of its most representative directors (Mario Bava and Dario Argento) and the wider role it has played within popular culture.