On March 7, 1975, a film destined to change the very idea of thriller films forever was released in Italian theaters: Deep Red. A hypnotic and brutal work that marked a turning point for Dario Argento’s cinema and opened a new season for the entire genre. And fifty years later, it continues to surprise and fascinate.
Some films that you remember, some others you can never forget. Deep Red is one of them: not only a masterpiece of thrillers, but a sensory experience that redefined Italian cinema’s visual and emotional language. Released in a decade crossed by strong social and cultural tensions, in which genre cinema was becoming more and more a ground for experimentation, Dario Argento’s film imposed itself as a turning point and reinvented the formula of the Italian-style crime-novel: it is the beginning of an aesthetic that fuses thriller, psychological horror, pictorial suggestions, architecture, psychoanalysis and rock music. It is a work that is not just watched: it is undergone and endured.
It is the work in which, after the trilogy of his beginnings – The Bird with the Crystal Feathers, The Cat o’ Nine Tails, and Four Grey Velvet Flies – Dario Argento makes a dizzying leap toward a bolder, visionary aesthetic. It is a film that looks to surrealism, Gothic, and even contemporary art.
Speaking of the trilogy, however, a curiosity about the film’s title: initially, to continue the “wild” sequence of titles, Argento declared that the title of the film would have been: “The Saber-Toothed Tiger,” only to confess later that he said it to “make fun of the press.” The first real provisional title was Chipsiomega (the union of the last four letters of the Greek alphabet), and finally, Deep Red was decided upon, given the primal hues in the sets, the cinematography, and the well-present reference to blood in the film.
The making of “Deep Red” is also the moment when Dario Argento discovers a new, more musical narrative rhythm. Not coincidentally, it marks the beginning of the legendary collaboration with the Goblins – the band led by Claudio Simonetti – who left an indelible mark in the history of cinema (and with whom he later worked on other films such as “Suspiria,” ‘Tenebre’ and “Phenomena”). Their soundtrack – created in less than ten days – is a hypnotic, pulsating sound experience that amplifies every tension. If the film rewrote the rules of the thriller, it also owes it to the Goblins’ music: it is not just an accompaniment, but a real invisible character, living, breathing, and affecting the viewer’s tension.
The genesis of this soundtrack is almost legendary. Originally, Dario Argento had asked Pink Floyd, but the negotiations didn’t go through. He then turned to Giorgio Gaslini, a famous jazz composer, but something didn’t work: the music did not return the atmosphere the director was looking for, and after several discussions, Gaslini abandoned the project… The production then sought something new, something disorienting. So, Claudio Simonetti and his young band, still unknown and called Oliver at the time, were involved in the project.
When Dario Argento heard the first tracks, he had no doubt: they were the perfect soundtrack for the film. Thus, the Goblins were born – a name suggested by the director himself – and with them a music that would revolutionize the relationship between sound and image in genre cinema. The result is a haunting, experimental, at times psychedelic score that blends prog rock, electronics, and gothic atmospheres. Goblin’s songs do not simply illustrate scenes: they anticipate them, contaminate them, amplify them. The main theme, with its eerie music box and tight riffs, became as iconic as the film itself.
The impact was enormous: never before had music played such a central role in an Italian horror film. It paved the way for a new way of conceiving the soundtrack, influencing filmmakers and musicians for decades. Among other things, the record won the Goblins the Gold Record Award and sold over a million copies in the first year alone, during which they remained at the top of the charts for 16 consecutive weeks.
The film was an immediate and resounding success: it was the most-watched film in Italy in 1975, smashing the box office and consecrating Dario Argento internationally as well. In a short time, it became a cult, studied, imitated, and revered. Many international directors have cited it as a direct source of inspiration: John Carpenter, for example, takes up its eerie use of music and the building of tension in Halloween; Quentin Tarantino, a great fan of Dario Argento, has repeatedly declared his love for the film, citing it in his dialogue and mise-en-scene; finally, Guillermo del Toro has always recognized Argento as a master of the imaginary, capable of fusing poetry and terror like few others.
But even on the Italian scene, Deep Red paved the way for a new wave of visionary and experimental cinema. Films such as Avati’s “The House with Laughing Windows” or D’Amato’s Beyond The Darkness, carry obvious echoes of Argento’s aesthetics. And in the 2000s, a generation of new filmmakers – from Gabriele Mainetti to Luca Guadagnino – has begun rediscovering that language, restoring cultural centrality to it.
But – for the few who still don’t know – what story does the film tell?
It begins in Rome, during a conference on the paranormal, in which psychic Helga Ulmann (Macha Meril) is suddenly shocked by a presence in the room: she claims to perceive the disturbed mind of a murderer sitting in the audience. A few hours later, she is brutally murdered in her apartment by a mysterious individual armed with a cleaver. Jazz musician Marcus Daly (David Hemmings), a young Englishman living in the city, accidentally witnesses the murder from the street while in the square with his friend Carlo (Gabriele Lavia) and runs to the scene of the crime, but arrives too late. He is sure, however, that he saw something important at the crime scene, a detail that escapes his memory, so he decides to investigate on his own, convinced that the police will not be able to solve the case. Alongside him comes Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi, who met Dario Argento on the set, and who would later on become his wife), an enterprising and ironic journalist, who documents the investigation while an ambiguous complicity arises between the two. Following a trail of clues, Marcus enters an increasingly disturbing spiral of macabre paintings, childlike music played by music boxes, mysterious architecture, and evanescent presences. Each track seems to bring back a dark episode from the past, buried under years of silence. The common thread is a children’s song, which seems to announce every murder and which Marcus discovers is linked to an old abandoned house near Turin. There, exploring the ruins, he finds a wall-covered fresco depicting a forgotten crime: a shadow holding a knife, a body lying on the ground. But the discovery brings him closer and closer to the truth and danger. Meanwhile, other deaths follow one another in increasingly brutal fashion: every witness who might provide a piece to the puzzle is eliminated. Marcus’ mind becomes obsessive: there is something he has seen but cannot remember. The final twist comes when he returns to the scene of the first crime and finally realizes what he had noticed that night…
Deep Red filming locations Itinerary
The film is set in Rome but was largely shot in Turin, a city known for its esoteric atmosphere, and which Dario Argento described with an emblematic phrase:
“The place where my nightmares feel better.”
The filming took place under conditions that were anything but simple: some scenes were shot at night, with frigid temperatures and fast pacing, while others required real handcrafted stratagems to create special effects that are emblematic today.
Many of the film’s other locations, however, are in Rome, the scene of the director’s early successes.
I designed an itinerary to discover the film’s main locations, thus also visiting lesser – known but no less evocative – corners of both cities.
The itinerary on the locations of Deep Red in Turin takes about 40 minutes on foot (excluding time for stops, photos, maybe a coffee in Galleria San Federico…), so it is more than doable during a trip, even a short one, to the Piedmontese capital.
First stop is Teatro Carignano, site of the lecture by the medium Helga Ulmann in the film, and Turin’s oldest theater. It became a full-fledged theater in 1716, after Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy-Carignano (hence the theater’s name) had the small venue he had purchased thirteen years earlier enlarged and equipped with a stage, loggias, and decorative apparatus. Initially, it hosted private performances for the royal family, but from 1719, the first performances open to the public began to be staged. In 1786, a fire destroyed it completely, but it was rebuilt, designed by architect Giovanni Battista Ferroggio, in just six months and has remained virtually unchanged since then.
It is possible to visit it with the event “Scena Aperta” (Open Stage), a series of tours guided by a group of actors who tell anecdotes and curiosities behind the scenes of the theater (here you can find the calendar and tickets).
We then arrive at “Galleria San Federico”. In the film, we see Marc and Carlo walking through the gallery in the scene where Carlo warns Marc to abandon the investigation. Opened in 1933, it houses the historic headquarters of the “La Stampa” newspaper and Rex Cinema, at the time the largest and most modern cinematograph in Turin. The cinema still exists today, renamed Lux Cinema after the war and completely renovated in 2004.
Next stop is Piazza C.L.N., where Marc lives and where many important scenes take place. The square is also the location of one of the most important places in the film: the Blue Bar, a bar where Carlo performs and where the two friends often meet. In reality, the bar does not exist and was built specifically for the film and to pay homage to Edward Hopper, an American painter to whom cinema is partly indebted: his cuts of light, compositional choices, and care for framing have been echoed in many films. In particular, the bar in Deep Red is inspired by the painting I Nottambuli (Nighthawks), from 1942: the large windows, the blue color… even the actors, when they are here, remain virtually motionless throughout the scene, precisely to recall the painting.
The twin fountains that are often framed in the film, on the contrary really exist: representing the Po and the Doria rivers.
The square is also sadly famous for the darker side of its past. In fact, during the Nazi occupation, it was in this very square that the German security police command was established, choosing the elegant “Albergo Nazionale” as its headquarters. Here, starting on September 17, 1943, SS Lieutenant Alois Schmid arrived from Vienna to lead the Turin detachment of what was one of the most feared repressive forces of the Nazi regime, wanted by Heinrich Himmler in 1936. The hotel, which was requisitioned by the Germans, became infamous as a place of brutal interrogation and repression, where some eighty SS soldiers operated alongside collaborators of the Italian Social Republic. With the end of the war, the building returned to its original function as a hotel, remaining active until its final closure in 2008.
Finally, the most important location in the entire film: Villa Scott, or rather the Villa of the Screaming Child. Located on Corso Giovanni Lanza, the villa is now privately owned by a London real estate group, but can be admired from the outside.
At the time when Dario Argento was to shoot the film, the Villa housed the Sisters of the Redemption and a girls’ boarding school. So a problem arose: they were willing to grant the villa for the shoot, which lasted seven nights, but the production had to find them a
place to stay. So they decided to pay them all a nice stay in Rimini!
An expression of typical early 20th-century Turin elegance, the building – the work of Pietro Fenoglio – is rich in Art Nouveau – inspired details: soaring loggias, arched bay windows, large windows, and floral motifs that embellish every corner. The main entrance is dominated by a dramatic curved staircase, enhancing its sophistication. The villa blends Art Nouveau elements with neo-Baroque accents, as if to recall the legacy of Savoy architecture. The result is an eclectic and original building that reflects both Italian and international influences.
Deep Red filming locations in Rome
The itinerary in Rome on the locations of Deep Red is quite articulated, because it ranges from one point to another of the city (if you find yourself visiting the Capital for the first time, I recommend the itinerary dedicated to Vacanze Romane), some scenes are filmed on anonymous streets, private palaces, and many of the main scenes were filmed inside the “de Paolis” Studios in Via Tiburtina, including the final scene. I will therefore mention only the places worth visiting.
The first is the Mausoleum of Constantina, which is used for the first scene of the film, in which Marc is seen rehearsing with the group. Built in the fourth century AD as a burial place for Constance, daughter of Emperor Constantine, it initially belonged to the complex of the nearby Basilica of St. Agnes Outside the Walls, and is one of the best-preserved examples of early Christian architecture. It is circular in plan, with a central dome supported by a ring of columns, and is one of the earliest examples of a centrally planned Christian mausoleum. The interior is most famous for its original mosaics, some of which feature pagan motifs reinterpreted from a Christian perspective, such as harvest scenes that could symbolize the Eucharist (and which for years led to the false belief that the site was a temple dedicated to Bacchus). In the Middle Ages, the mausoleum was converted into a church, and today, although it no longer has a regular religious function, it can be visited, and outside the complex, there is a memorial stone dedicated to the victims of the Breach of Porta Pia.
From Nomentana we move to Eur, to the National Museum of Folk Arts and Traditions, which in the film plays the part of the “Library of Folklore and Popular Traditions” where Marc goes to look for traces of the Screaming Child’s Villa.
Now an integral part of the Museum of Civilizations, it houses numerous collections, born out of the work of ethnologist Lamberto Loria, for whom the museum was originally named, in the late 19th century, which tell the story of daily life, crafts, religious rituals, and traditions of different Italian regions. Among the most interesting exhibits are traditional costumes, jewelry and amulets, work tools, ceramics, glass paintings, historical nativity scenes (including an 18th-century Neapolitan one), as well as thousands of prints, photographs, and audiovisual materials. The museum is organized by themes-such as “Living and Dwelling,” “Rites and Feasts,” and “Land and Resources,” offering a true journey through time among customs, craft knowledge, and symbols of Italian popular culture.
Alongside the permanent exhibitions, the museum regularly hosts temporary exhibitions that dialogue with the contemporary world, highlighting artists and works that reinterpret the traditions of the past in a modern key.
Finally, a little gem.
It is not a location in the film, but is closely related to it and worth a visit: the Deep Red Store, which was opened in 1989 by Dario Argento at Via dei Gracchi 260.
During a trip to London, Dario Argento discovered Forbidden Planets, stores that we now call “nerdy” (and which I adore, I go into any similar store anywhere in the world), and he was so fascinated by them that he wanted to bring something similar to Rome. He succeeded in realizing his dream in 1989, with the opening of the Deep Red Store, a hangout for horror and mystery fans, but especially for lovers of genre cinema. There you can find lots of books related to movies (many of which you can only find here), genres (even something on westerns), scripts, but also gadgets, action figures, masks, and much more. The real treat, however, is the museum located below the store: The Dario Argento Museum of Horrors. A small museum (you can visit in 10 to 15 minutes) where the director himself has reconstructed some scenes from his most famous films, written or directed, using even the real sets of the films. You will find yourself catapulted into scenes from Phenomena, Opera, The Church, Demons and Demons 2, The Stendhal Syndrome, and others.
A place so evocative that even Tim Burton visited it!
