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.

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

Dario Argento is the visionary Italian giallo director whose films such as Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Four Flies On Grey Velvet, Deep Red, Suspiria, and Inferno have shocked and disturbed audiences since the 1970s. Argento's films assault the eye with incredible colour schemes, transgressive twists, and bloody human carnage -- but that is merely the surface. In-depth analysis of Argento's narratives reveals an occult undercurrent seething with abjection, compulsion, paranoia, schizophrenia and sexual psychosis; Ae ^COMPLEXe ^OFe ^CARNAGE reveals and explores this buried syndrome of manias in four separate essays, and is illustrated with over 80 illuminating photographic images, including 40 in stunning full colour.

The Two Truths: Of Dario Argento's Opera and Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue is a wide-ranging exploration of the remarkable connections between the film-works of two seemingly disparate directors through discussions of psychology, philosophy East (from which this book takes its title) and West (including integral theory), physics, film theory and other systems related to reality, thought and consciousness. Art-horror director Dario Argento and animated fantasy film director Satoshi Kon receive treatment of comprehensive scale and astounding breadth and depth in this whirlwind analysis of their filmographies (and many other directors' works including Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch).Fans of Dario Argento will enjoy the meticulous investigation of Opera and its connections to other Argento films, including Tenebrae, Phenomena and The Stendhal Syndrome. The book starts out with an elucidation of some of the major themes in Argento's often-overlooked Trauma to set the stage for drawing out further connections to the films of other directors, starting with Magnetic Rose written by Satoshi Kon.For fans of Satoshi Kon, The Two Truths marks a first, including not only analyses of Kon's films at the high level of resolution they warrant but also in-depth summaries of both the Japanese source novel, Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis, and the Japanese-only companion audio drama Double Bind -The Looking Glass of Perfect Blue-.Author Gino C. Mongelli brings together diverse concepts and systems to present an important work in terms of both analysis of Argento's and Kon's filmographies and attending to our human abilities to think, self-reflect and grow.Themes specific to The Two Truths were heavily researched over three years, including poring over academic, filmic and other sources in five languages (especially English and Japanese). There are over 200 references cited including, among many others, Joseph Campbell, Freeman Dyson, Mircea Eliade, Richard P. Feynman, Sigmund Freud, Douglas Hofstadter, William James, Carl Jung, Hayao Kawai, R.D. Laing, Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Nietzsche, P.D. Ouspensky, Jordan B. Peterson, Chögyam Trungpa, Ken Wilber and Slavoj Zizek.The Two Truths is an augmented spin-off of the previously released The Delicate War: Knowing in oneself the angel from the beast through the films of Dario Argento. In that volume, discussion of Argento's Opera received one chapter. Here, that chapter and many other elements are remixed and expanded by over five times in length to bring out the similarly fractal qualities of Kon's Perfect Blue and to use those two films as a foundational hologram through which to explore most of the other films in these two directors' brilliant oeuvres.

An in-depth look at the films of Dario Argento, Italy's acknowledged master of horror and suspense, has made a career out of exploring the macabre poetry of images of violent death. He did not, however, set out to be a filmmaker. He established himself early on as a progressive voice in film criticism-lavishing praise on directors like Sergio Leone, who had yet to receive their due from the Italian critical establishment. His efforts attracted the attention of Leone himself, who invited the young critic to help develop the story for his next feature. The end result, Once Upon a Time in the West, is often cited as a masterpiece-and from there, Argento went on to enjoy success as a screenwriter before making the all-important switch to directing. His directorial debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, became a major hit and helped to popularize the floundering genre of Italian thrillers, also known as gialli. In the years since, Argento has established a high profile as one of Italian cinema's most commercially successful artists, earning a level of celebrity which is almost unheard of among film directors. His filmography includes such beloved gems as Deep Red, Suspiria, Inferno, and Phenomena, as well as more hotly-debated titles like The Stendhal Syndrome, The Phantom of the Opera, Sleepless, and Mother of Tears. Murder by Design: The Unsane Cinema of Dario Argento explores the full scope of his work as a writer, a producer, and a director. Lavishly illustrated and with newly conducted interviews with Dario Argento, as well as such colleagues as actress (and daughter) Fiore Argento, actress Sally Kirkland, actress Irene Miracle, composer Claudio Simonetti, and cinematographer Luciano Tovoli, the book provides a comprehensive overview of Argento's life, career, and rich cinematic legacy.

With the exception of die-hard aficionados of European or Italian horror cinema, most people may not have heard of giallo cinema or have seen many films in this subgenre of horror. Most academic film studies tend to ignore horror cinema in general and the giallo specifically. Critics often deride these films, which reveal more about the reviewers' own prejudices than any problem with the works themselves. As a counter to such biases, Mikel J. Koven argues for an alternative approach to studying these films, by approaching them as vernacular cinema—distinct from "popular cinema." According to Koven, to look at a film from a vernacular perspective removes the assumptions about what constitutes a "good" film and how a particular film is in some way "artistic." In La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film, Koven explores the history and evolution of this aspect of cinema, and places these films within the context of Italian popular filmmaking. He addresses various themes, motifs, and tropes in these films: their use of space, the murders, the role of the detective, the identity of the killer, issues of belief, excess, and the set-piece. In addition to being the first academic study of the giallo film in English, this book surveys more than fifty films of this subgenre. In addition to filmmakers like Mario Bava and Dario Argento, Koven also looks at the films of Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino, Pupi Avati, Umberto Lenzi, and others. In all, the works of twenty-five different filmmakers are considered in this book. Also explored are the inter-relationships between these films: how one influences others, how certain filmmakers take ideas and build off of them, and how those ideas are further transformed by other filmmakers. Koven also explores the impact of the giallo on the later North American slasher genre.

Continuing from the success of the first four Necronomicon books, volume five again seeks out controversial and transgressive cinema from around the globe. The dark underbelly of this tome reveals yet more perverse delights within cult, horror and erotic cinema. the cult film genre is still very popular with big budget releases such as Grindhouse 28, 28 Weeks Later and Hostel 2 showing with Residents Evil: Extinction, Rogue & Doomsday, all due at cinemas by December 07.