Media and Music: How Suspiria (1977) Fuels Fear Through Italian Synth-Rock Band Goblin
Suspiria’s visceral, unsettling score was the perfect co-star for Jessica Harper as Suzy Bannion, as she uncovers the secrets of a prestigious German dance academy.
In Media and Music, our writers take a deep dive into how movies use scores and songs to engage viewers, give new meaning and tone to some of our favorite scenes, and establish themes. It almost goes without saying, but there are spoilers abound.
Written by Olivia Abercrombie
Images courtesy of Luciano Tovoli
Leaving America and flying across the world to attend a prestigious dance academy in Germany seems like a dream come true, but it quickly becomes a nightmare for Suzy Bannion as she witnesses classmates mysteriously disappear, maggots rain down from the ceiling, and unexplainable deaths. With our final girl Suzy desperately searching for answers about the deaths of her classmates, she risks her own safety to uncover the secrets of her school, the aptly named Tanz Akademie, backed by Italian band Goblin's eerie synths.
Suspiria (1977) is a master class in classic horror. Director Dario Argento enlisted Goblin to create a score that incites tension in seemingly innocuous moments and elevates the most intense scenes. While the plot of this movie is not very deep — a girl discovers a secret witch cult at ballet school — the score and cinematography create a truly wicked film that has influenced the horror genre for decades.
To achieve the other-worldly ambiance of the soundtrack, Goblin used instruments atypical to the genre such as the bouzouki, tabla, and celesta. These unconventional sounds add layers of experimentation to the score and create combinations of sounds that the horror genre had never heard before. Using these unique instruments helped Goblin create the ritualistic sounds of drumming, the mesmerizing keyboard, and the stinging guitar that define the soundtrack and help create the foundation for future horror soundtracks.
The film opens with the title track’s striking notes. Its alluring cascade of bell chimes denotes Suzy’s curiosity about her new surroundings as she exits the German airport into the pouring rain. “Suspriria” grows more intense as she nears the dance academy, bathing her in the intense deep red lights of cinematographer Luciano Tovoli. A cacophony of other-worldly synthesizers, stinging guitars, heavy drums, and eerie whispers unnervingly complement the otherwise innocent scene of Suzy in the cab. The moment the cab enters the forest, Goblin hisses out the word “witch.” Hinting at what is in store for Suzy.
The death of the first victim, Pat Hingle, is foreshadowed by the ominous shrieks of “Witch.” Synthesizers mixed with hisses and echoing drums feel almost ritualistic as Pat flees from the academy into the woods. Just as the score calms and we think she has found refuge in her classmate's apartment, the haunting shrieks return with “Sighs.” Characterized by primal, almost animalistic screams and an erratic guitar, the soundtrack fully creates the suspense in the scene until a hairy, disembodied arm shoots through the glass window and drags her through the glass to repeatedly stab her to death.
The rest of the innocent deaths in the movie are all marked by the howls of “Witch,” creating a musical motif. When the blind man, Daniel, is killed, screams dominate the scene as shadows on the buildings surround him. His guide dog then attacks Daniel after being spooked by something in the dark, his dog seemingly possessed by an evil force. The haunting wails also follow Sara Simms as curiosity gets the best of her, as she tries to run from the evil that lurks in the academy before her untimely demise.
The film's climax hits when Suzie discovers the presumably dead directress of the academy, Helena Markos, is actually alive – or just undead (probably the better description). As she confronts Helena and eventually kills her to escape, Helena’s title theme, “Markos,” plays. This track is ironically the most upbeat of the entire film and devoid of the earlier screams, signifying the end of the coven’s control of not only the academy but the film itself. Instead, the song incites victory rather than fear through heavy synthesizers that nod to the 80s-synth music to come a few years after the film’s release.
The intertwining of the score and the character's actions makes it feel like they are experiencing the sounds with the viewer. This dissolving of barriers between viewer and character poses the question if the soundtrack is non-diegetic or if we are hearing fear pour out of the character's inner thoughts. This question is not outright answered. However, the use of suspenseful music became a staple of the genre and even influenced the most well-known horror score of all time, John Carpenter’s Halloween. While the movie relies on the score to create the horror, the simplicity of the unnerving creation that Argento and Goblin executed will continue to haunt horror fans and inspire directors for decades.