Dario Argento is widely heralded as the dark king of giallo cinema—that strange, surrealist style of Italian-produced thriller popular in the ’60s and ’70s—and a pioneer of the modern slasher film. From his Hitchcockian debut The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970) to his blood-soaked, expressionist masterpiece Suspiria (1977)—probably the most famous Italian horror film of all time—Argento has exerted an enormous influence on genre filmmaking the world over. Known for his architectural fascination and highly stylized mise-en-scènes, his haunting soundtracks (featuring legendary artists like Goblin and Ennio Morricone), and ravishingly lurid use of colour, Argento is a master of the set piece, his murderous action sequences staged with operatic flair and nightmarish intensity.

Our series presents five defining classics that changed the face of Italian horror. Glove-handed serial killers, vertiginous camera angles, baroque death scenes: it’s all there in The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, a film which took the giallo baton from genre pioneer Mario Bava and elevated it to new heights of suspense. The success of that first feature would see Argento return to the world of giallo time and again, culminating with a pair of masterworks in the hallucinatory Deep Red (1975) and the dazzlingly self-reflexive Tenebrae (1982). Away from the murder mysteries that define giallo, Argento’s creative imagination was unbounded, exemplified in the phantasmagorical extravagance of the immortal Suspiria and the Freudian fever dreams of Phenomena (1985). These are films of unshakeable images and unfathomable terror. Get ready to sink into the macabre, liminal landscapes of a horror maestro.