The Big Picture
- “Deep Red” is a violent and stylized Italian horror film that disrupts our wholesome Christmas memories.
- The film combines a jarring editing style with childhood imagery to explore the theme of a broken childhood during the holiday season.
- “Deep Red” has had a lasting influence on the horror genre, inspiring iconic death scenes and establishing Goblin as a renowned film score band.
It’s unlikely you’ll hear the term “Christmas giallo” very often, as this particularly brutal and stylized subgenre of Italian horror doesn’t have much crossover with the warm yuletide season. Christmas horror usually utilizes the aesthetics of the holiday season to either parody it and all that it brings, as is the case with the Silent Night, Deadly Night films. Or it takes a much more psychological approach, using and abusing our collectively wholesome Christmas memories in order to disrupt our warm and fuzzy associations with this time of year, as is the case with the classic slasher Black Christmas. Dario Argento‘s 1975 classic Deep Red employs the latter approach. While the movie doesn’t completely take place during the Christmas season, the entire premise and the motivations of the central character are all rooted in Christmas.
What Is ‘Deep Red’ About?
After attempting to break away from horror with 1974’s The Five Days, Argento returned to the genre that kicked off his success. Italy was in the midst of a horror renaissance preoccupied with sharp knives, black leather, and close-ups of eyeballs (so many eyeballs). There was visceral, violent intimacy to the giallo that seemed to really appeal to horror fans, not only in Italy but worldwide. Deep Red would prove to be Argento’s last entry in the subgenre (Suspiria is largely not considered an example of giallo as it lacks many of the genre’s trademarks and is more aligned with supernatural horror, though it retains a similar, equally vibrant style) before returning to the well with 1982’s Tenebrae.
The film opens with a shocking murder taking place on or around Christmastime, though the victim and the perpetrator are both obscured. A bloody knife falls to the floor against a string of bright lights, and in true giallo fashion, the blood is a bright, striking shade of red. Most giallo films take a sensationalized approach to the violence happening onscreen. The subgenre rarely goes for realism or naturalism in any capacity.
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Following the traumatic events of the opening scene, we are transported to a parapsychology conference where a psychic medium predicts that there is someone in the crowd who has “perverted, murderous” thoughts. She is soon proven right, as our protagonist, Marcus Daly, played by the excellent English actor David Hemmings, witnesses a woman getting chopped up in her swanky Turin apartment and subsequently cut up by jagged glass as she falls through her window, limply hung and skewered. Daly sees a cloaked figure walking away from the scene and decides that he’s going to make it his mission to solve the murder. Further creative killings ensue, including a death by scorching hot water that puts a similar scene in Halloween II (1981) to shame. This scene is particularly brutal, proving beyond a doubt that no one does violent and creative deaths like the Italians.
What Makes ‘Deep Red’ a Perfect Christmas Slasher
The Christmas season is so baked into the DNA of Deep Red that isn’t immediately apparent. As is common with giallo flicks, the movie has a jarring, kinetic style of editing that assaults the viewer with fragments of childhood. There are shots intercut at seemingly random points in the film of doll heads and toys in various states of destruction. The implications are clear: Argento and co are telling a story about a broken childhood. What’s a more childlike time of year than Christmas? Across cultures, it has a slew of wholesome associations, from presents, candy, and hot beverages to family gatherings and a general sense of warmth and safety. Deep Red is about what happens when what should spark only joyful and comforting memories has been irrevocably spilled with blood. Without giving away the ending, Deep Red is about a childhood that is inextricably linked to violence and senseless murder.
The killer uses a variety of elaborate, often mechanical omens to signal that he is ready to kill again. These are often anticipated with a sinister childish jingle that resembles the type of song heard in a jack-in-the-box or music box. Both jack-in-the-boxes and music boxes are staples of the holiday season, showing up as either presents in themselves or fun trinkets used to brighten up one’s home. They bring a childlike whimsy and innocence that Deep Red cleverly subverts. It is examples like these that aren’t always direct references to the holiday season, but which nonetheless carry such strong allusions to the Christmas season that make Deep Red an excellent Christmas horror film.
‘Deep Red’s Influence Can Be Felt in Many Other Horror Movies
Deep Red has remained one of the most influential and important Italian horror films. As previously mentioned, the 1981 sequel, Halloween II, has a death that was clearly inspired by the bath scene in Deep Red, and modern horror auteurs like James Wan have taken direct influence from it. Saw‘s Billy the Puppet is a nod to the mechanical doll in Deep Red, and the games the killer plays in the movie could act as prototypes for many of Jigsaw’s traps.
Deep Red also marks the first collaboration between Argento and the rock band Goblin, a partnership that would last for decades. Goblin’s career as a film score band is arguably due to Deep Red‘s fantastic score, which gives the film a vibrant, urgent, and propulsive tempo. Suspiria’s classic score likely would’ve never exist in a world where Goblin didn’t first score Deep Red to establish its relationship with Argento. Deep Red‘s score is just as propulsive, though it isn’t nearly as iconic as the classic score from Suspiria. Goblin essentially set the template and standard for Italian horror films with its score for Deep Red, forever altering the sound of the genre.
Argento’s crimson masterpiece has inspired filmmakers and genre fans alike for nearly five decades. However, while it may already be in the canon of horror classics, it deserves a place alongside your copy of Black Christmas or Krampus considering how big a role the yuletide season plays in the film’s story. The movie is about lost innocence and set against a Christmas background, but it proves that a good Christmas horror flick doesn’t need to be saturated in holiday imagery to be effective.
Deep Red is available to watch on Shudder in the U.S.
Watch on Shudder
