Deep Red was a giant step forward for Dario Argento. Although he had been directing his own films for six years, his work was too often compared to Mario Bava's movies. With Deep Red, he truly came into his own and created what many feel is his masterpiece.

Known around the world mostly by its Italian title Profondo Rosso, Argento's best giallo contains wonderful set pieces and beautifully choreographed and imaginative death sequences. With its lurid colors and characters, as well as the traditional black gloved killer, Deep Red is a prime example of the Italian crime thriller.

As a child's lullaby plays, we see the shadows of two people in a house with a Christmas tree in the foreground. One of them is stabbing the other. The butcher knife is thrown on the floor and lands near the feet of a child.

In Rome, at the European Congress On Parapsychology, a conference is taking place on telepathy. Red curtains part, to reveal a three person panel in the crowded auditorium.

The moderator is Professor Giordani (Glauco Mauri), and the special guest tonight is Helga Ulman (Macha Meril), of Lithuania. They are joined by another expert on the subject named Bardi (Piero Mazzighi).

To prove her telepathic gift, Helga picks out a random man from the audience. She tells him the amount of keys he's clutching in his pocket, as well as his name. Suddenly the psychic feels a jolt. She calls it "strange and sharp, like the prick of a thorn." It's a feeling of death, she says.

As Professor Giordani and Bardi try to calm her down, Helga says that someone in the audience is sending her murderous thoughts. She says that the person killed and will kill again. She senses a house and blood, and hears a child singing. The person she's talking about quickly exits the auditorium, but we don't see who it is.

He goes into the bathroom feeling queasy. Another guy in the restroom offers assistance, but the stranger doesn't accept. We see him instead put on a pair of black leather gloves.

He waits in the bathroom until the conference is over. Hiding, he listens to Helga tell the professor that she is going home to write down her experience that evening. Furthermore, she tells him that she knows who the killer is.

In an overhead moving crane shot, we see various items in the killer's home: a toy crib, a voodoo doll stuck with pins, a gruesome drawing of person bleeding from a stab wound, a jeweled paperweight, a babydoll, a figure of a demon, and finally... a couple of knives. We also see the eye of this stranger, as eyeliner is applied.

Helga is in her apartment now, speaking to someone on the telephone. Suddenly, she hears a child's lullaby playing somewhere nearby. Her doorbell rings and she ends the conversation. As she approaches the door, she gets a dreadful premonition and steps back in horror. Somebody pushes the door open and strikes her with a meat cleaver.

Helga tries to crawl away, but the figure hits her again in the back and head. (Hunter: This is one of my all-time favorite scenes. Argento is brilliant at conveying our nightmares, and this is one I've had many times...someone kicking the door to my home open. Scary!)

Marc Daly (David Hemmings) is returning home at that precise moment. He recognizes a friend of his in the street and stops to talk to him. Carlo (Gabriele Lavia), has just left a bar and is drunk.

The two men hear the screams coming from Helga's apartment. Carlo leaves, and Marc looks up and happens to see Helga at her window. He sees someone come up from behind and smash her head, knocking her through the glass.

Hoping to save her, he rushes into the apartment building, where he is a tenant above her. However, it's too late. Helga's neck was severed on the broken window glass. Looking down at the street, Marc catches a glimpse of the killer rushing from building, wearing a brown raincoat.

The police arrive, and while talking to one of the officers, Marc wonders if they have removed evidence from the scene. There are paintings everywhere of ghastly, distorted faces. He has a vague recollection of seeing something which might have been a clue to the killer's identity.

Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi), a local reporter, shows up to document the scene. She guesses that Marc was the eyewitness to the crime, and leaves after taking his photograph. Marc goes back into the street, and finds his friend Carlo still wandering around.

Carlo saw the killer leaving the building, but didn't get a good look at him. Marc tells his still intoxicated friend that he believes he saw a painting when he first entered Helga's apartment, which then disappeared.

Both Marc and Gianna attend Helga's burial. It's a Jewish ceremony and they watch as she's put to rest. Professor Giordani and Bardi are among the mourners. As they leave the cemetary, Marc sarcastically thanks Gianna for plastering his face across the cover of her newspaper.

Later, Giordani and Bardi take Marc and Gianna back to the auditorium where they shared the panel with Helga. Giordani recreates Helga's telepathic incident and Bardi recalls seeing someone get up and exit the conference.

Alone together, Gianna questions Marc about his choice of career (he's a piano teacher who teaches jazz.) They spar verbally, and Gianna challenges him to an arm wrestling match. Of course, she wins. Hoping to figure out who murdered Helga, Marc leaves. He tries to see Carlo, but when he goes to the young man's apartment, his mother answers the door.

Marta (Clara Calamai) is an eccentric older woman with jet black hair and far too much make-up. She tells Marc that Carlo isn't home and tries to get him to stay. But Marc is insistent on speaking with her son. Marta gives him the name and address of the person Carlo is staying with. When Marc goes there, he is surprised to find an effete man living there.

Although he hadn't known that his friend was gay, he is nonplussed. Carlo is in the bedroom, once again intoxicated. He and Marc go for a walk together. Marc is still convinced about the existence of the missing painting from Helga's apartment, but Carlo tries to talk him out of pursuing his investigation.

That evening, Marc is home alone, practicing. As he is playing the piano, someone enters his apartment. He thinks he hears something, but tries to ignore it. Then he hears a child's lullaby coming from somewhere inside.

Sensing an intruder, Marc suddenly leaps up and pulls the living room door shut. Just then Gianna calls. He answers the phone and tells her that someone is trying to kill him. From the other side of the door, he gets an ominous threat.

The voice tells him "this time you're safe, but I'll kill you anyway...sooner or later!" Marc rushes to his window, only to see the stranger in the brown raincoat quickly walking away. (Jason: For me, this is truly one of the most frightening moments in the film.

Ironically, nothing happens. But, the suspense, the muffled voice of a killer inches away from Marc's face, and the abrupt escape of the maniac...this segment is the best!).

The next day, Marc goes out and buys a recording of the lullaby he heard the night before. He plays it for Professor Giordani and Bardi, and together they try and figure out its significance.

Giordani guesses it must be something the killer needs to hear in order to trigger his murderous impulse. Bardi recommends a book on folklore called Modern Ghosts and Black Legends of Today.

In it, the story is told of a house from which neighbors would hear a child's singing coming from. Apparently, an act of bloodshed had been committed in that house. Marc goes to the library, where he reads the passage Bardi was talking about.

The book was written by a woman named Amanda Righetti. Marc calls Gianna and has her find out the author's place of residence.

Amanda (Giuliana Calandra) lives in an isolated area outside of Rome. After bidding her maid goodbye by the road, she goes back into the house.

There she finds a naked baby doll hanging with a noose around it's neck. Someone then turns the lights out.

Terrified, she crouches down on the floor, holding a knitting needle. Thinking she is being attacked, she strikes, but ends up killing her pet bird instead. Amanda then gets up, but is hit in the head by the intruder.

She manages to make it to the bathroom, but the killer knocks her head against the wall. Then, he turns the hot water on and fills the bathtub.

Before Amanda can react, the killer dunks her head in the scorching water. (A scene which would be copied six years later in Halloween II).

Lying on the floor, her face covered with welts, she is able to write something on the wall because of the steam. When Marc arrives, he finds her body, but doesn't inform the authorities.

The next day, the maid returns and reports the murder to the police. Marc tells Giordani that Amanda's corpse was pointing at something. The professor decides to go to the murder scene.

While Amanda's maid is cleaning off the blood in the bathroom, Giordani notices that the steam from the hot water reveals a name scrawled on the wall. Amanda attempted to reveal the killer's identity before she died.

Meanwhile, using a photo in Amanda's book, Marc finds the house she wrote about. The most recent owner died a mysterious death, and it is now abandoned.

The realtor gives Marc the keys and although he and his daughter warn Marc about ghosts, Marc sets out to search for clues.

While wandering around the vast house, he notices something on a wall which has been covered with plaster. He chips away at it. Underneath is a kid's painting of what looks like a child stabbing an adult. There is a Christmas tree drawn as well.

Professor Giordani tries to reach Marc, but Marc is on his way home and doesn't get the call. Now the killer is in the professor's apartment. Giordani realizes this and picks up a knife.

Suddenly a hideous laughing, mechanical doll comes towards him. He strikes the doll, and it falls to the ground with it's arms flailing. The gloved killer comes up from behind and shoves Giordani's head against the fireplace and then a table, breaking his teeth. Then, he picks up the knife and plunges it into the professor's neck.

Marc tries to call Carlo, but his mother answers the phone. She tells him that her son isn't home. While talking to her, Marc is looking at the photo of the abandoned house.

He realizes that he missed something. There is a window in the picture, which he didn't see when he was there. He leaves a note for Gianna, then heads back to take another look.

Sure enough, the window is part of a room which has been sealed off. Marc climbs up the side of the house and uses a pick to chip at the wall. He nearly falls and decides instead to get to the room from the inside.

When he does, he finds something shocking. It is the skeletal remains of a corpse. As he approaches it, someone strikes him in the back of his head.

When he wakes up, Gianna is standing over him. She had retrieved the note he left her and had set out to assist him. She tells Marc that when she got there, she found him unconcious and the house was set on fire. She managed to pull him to safety just in time.

At the realtor's home, they report the arson to the authorities. Marc notices a drawing hanging in the bedroom of the realtor's daughter.

The sketch is almost identical to the one he saw in the house: a child holding a bloody knife. The little girl tells him she found it when she was cleaning out the archives in her school.

Marc and Gianna decide to go the Leonardo Davinci school. It's late at night and there's nobody there. They go to the archive room and search through all of the children's drawings which have been saved over the years. Gianna leaves the room to call the police and let them know that they are there.

Finally, Marc finds another drawing similar to the other two he has seen. He hurries out to tell Gianna, but finds her with a knife protruding from her stomach. He tells her that he now knows who the killer is. The name was written on the drawing.

As the police arrive, Marc is confronted by Carlo. He points a gun at Marc and tells him that he should have stayed out of it. He is about to pull the trigger, but one of the officers shoots at him. Carlo runs out of the building and into the street.

A truck is passing by, and somehow Carlo's leg gets entangled in something hanging out of the vehicle. He is dragged a long distance as the two people driving the truck are oblivious. Finally it comes to a stop and an oncoming car runs over him. He dies a grisly death.

At the hospital, Marc is relieved to find out that Gianna has survived the attack. Walking home, he suddenly has a realization. Carlo was with him when Helga was killed, so he couldn't have been the murderer! He rushes into his building and into Helga's apartment which has been sealed off.

Looking at the paintings on the wall, he finally solves the puzzle which has eluded him since that fateful night. There is a mirror, and what he saw in it was the killer's face.

As he walked quickly and nervously through the apartment that night, he assumed that the face in the mirror was just another painting. The killer is there in the apartment. It turns out to be Marta, Carlo's mother. She tells Marc that Carlo had nothing to do with the killings. He was just trying to protect her.

In a flashback, we see what happened all those years ago. Carlo's father was going to put the boy's mother in a mental institution. It was during the holidays, and Carlo was playing a phonograph of a child's lullaby.

While his father had his back turned, Marta stabbed him with a huge carving knife. Carlo's father fell near the boy, but he was able to take the knife out of his back. The little boy picked up the knife, and that is the image he drew over and over again.

Marta lunges at Marc with a meat cleaver. She misses, and Marc is able to run into the hallway. She comes at him, but he trips her. The older woman falls and her necklace gets stuck in the elevator shaft.

Thinking quickly, Marc presses the elevator button and the elevator begins to move. The necklace strangles Marta, and eventually decapitates her. Marc is left sitting on the floor, looking at his reflection in the huge puddle of blood before him.

For the first time, Argento used music by the group Goblin to set the pace of the film. While most horror films contain subtle, moody and atmospheric music, Goblin's score was loud, pounding, and in your face.

Complementing Deep Red perfectly, Goblin's score increased the film's speed several notches and ensured that the whole affair would be one hell of a roller coaster ride. The complicated script was written by both Argento and Bernardino Zapponi, who had scripted some of Fellini's movies.

Argento has said he was never happier than when he made this film. The enthusiasm is evident throughout the finished product. Single during the filming, he met and fell in love with Daria Nicolodi, who played Gianna.

Their relationship would last a couple of years and she would go on to script Suspiria and star in a couple of Argento's other films. They even produced a daughter they named Asia, who would prove to be a star in her own right across Europe.

Fans often dispute whether Deep Red or Suspiria, which he filmed next, is Argento's greatest work. Together, they certainly stand as his twin crowning achievements. This period in his career is what gave him a lasting reputation as one of the premiere directors in the genre.

For years, most Americans were only familiar with the cut version of this film, which was missing at least twenty minutes. Anchor Bay has finally released the full version, which includes the extra footage in Italian (with English subtitles). It's been worth the wait!

Hunter: Finally, Dario Argento's giallo masterpiece makes it to DVD, complete and uncut! The movie is a revelation, with rich colors, awesome sound and better character development. In order to present the complete film, portions of it are in Italian with English subtitles. This is at times jarring, but makes for a more rewarding viewing experience (once you get used to the fact the characters speak in both languages often in the same scene). Go, Anchor Bay!

Jason: This near perfect giallo by Argento should be the standard by which all other Italian thrillers are measured. The acting is good, the plot moves along at a quick pace, and it's all emphasized by one of the most original scores to appear in some time.

The U.S. DVD release only confirms all the above. Argento has, in fact, given his audiences two clear choices: for surreal mysticism and beauty, watch his Suspiria. For a hardcore and well-constructed giallo, watch this modern classic.