Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Deep Red (1975)

Marcus: It seems there are just some things
you can't do seriously with liberated women.

I was watching Arrow's lovely new blu-ray of Deep Red last night, it'd been a long while since I sat down with this one, and laughed to myself that that line there about "liberated women" would make for a funny sarcastic one of these posts, and here we are. I forgot how much of this movie is specifically about straight dudes being confronted with an upended gender spectrum - it's timely in that way. There's actually an extra on the disc, a brand new little doc called Profondo Giallo, that talks about the film's themes and deep-dives into that stuff that's worth checking out.

I like Deep Red a lot but I've never grown to love it like I do several of the films that came right after it in Argento's output, and I think I pinpointed my issue with the film down to its source last night - I find David Hemmings dreadfully dull here. He's basically going through the same motions he did with Blow Up several years earlier but to far lesser effect. Give me Jessica Harper or even this film's second-in-command Daria Nicolodi any day.

Visually of course Deep Red is a feast - the camera-work, the colors - but it always drags for me. I'd be fine with losing half an hour of it to be honest. Anybody have any thoughts?

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