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. 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. This book 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, it places Argento in a tradition of aestheticized horror that includes De Sade, De Quincey, Poe, and Hitchcock.

To his legion of admirers Dario Argento is a horror legend of the greatest magnitude. And to his genre filmmaking contemporaries he's an inspiration and an icon. Now the maverick auteur, lauded as the Italian Hitchcock and the horror Fellini, has written his autobiography, revealing all about his fascinating life, his dark obsessions, his talented family, his perverse dreams and his star-crossed work. With candour and honesty, 'Fear' lifts the lid on the trials and tribulations of Argento's glittering career during the sensational golden era of cinecitta.

The stylistic and bloody excesses of the films of Dario Argento are instantly recognisable. Vivid, baroque and nightmarish, 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. It's a body of work which deals explicitly with death and violence, all the while revelling in perversely alluring stylistics and shot through with an unflinching intensity. 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 TV's Masters of Horror compendium 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. This Kamera Book examines his entire output. Hailed as one of horror cinemas most significant pioneers and the twentieth century's major masters of the macabre, 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. His work has influenced the likes of Quentin Tarantino, John Carpenter and Martin Scorsese, to name but a few.

Dario Argento is the undisputed master of Italian horror cinema. His films disrupt what is often perceived as an inflexible divide between the artistic and the commercial, high art and exploitation, forging a surprising, exciting, inimitable signature style.

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.

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.

The release of Italian director Dario Argento's Deep Red in 1975 saw both a return to form for the director and the crystallization of tropes of the giallo genre. While the film's immense popularity in Italy spawned a wave of copy-cat formula thrillers, this enthusiastic reception was not replicated by English-speaking audiences on its theatrical release. With its loosely woven narrative and hyper-stylized violent set pieces, Deep Red was critically panned in the United States and the UK as clichéd and exploitative Euro-schlock. Tracing the film's history of censorship, re-edited releases, and its subsequent celebration by cult film audiences, this book considers how these competing discourses have helped to transform the film's cultural status and to fashion it as an exemplar of cult cinema.

Beginning with a discussion of Levana, the ancient Roman goddess of childbirth, De Quincey imagines three companions for her: Mater Lachrymarum, Our Lady of Tears; Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs; and Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness.

In his first collection of poetry, novelist Kevin Killian views the horrors of the AIDS pandemic through a narrow prism, the films of Italian horror maestro Dario Argento. Argento Series is structured like a horror film, populating deadpan reportage with badly drawn "characters" whose grisly deaths nevertheless come as an apocalyptic shock. For twenty years Killian's friends have been dying like flies--four flies on gray velvet, to borrow one of Argento's titles. And not only his friends, but millions of untold strangers, a catastrophe of such enormity that poetry itself gasps in its wake, deaf, blind, and speechless. Killian's poems are deceptively simple, quiet, and lyric, until the creaky melodrama of the giallo makes its entrance, screaming, like a virus--then the language shrieks and trembles. Argento Series is a testament to human suffering, a curse on the bureaucratic blindness that allows it to spread and grow, a call to political action unlike any other.