The final installment of the “Three Mothers” trilogy. A young American art student, Sarah, “unwittingly opens an ancient urn that unleashes the demonic power of the world’s most powerful witch. As a scourge of suicides plague the city and witches from all over the world converge on Rome to pay homage, Sarah must use all her own psychic powers to stop the ‘Mother of Tears’ before her evil conquers the world.”After waiting 28 years for the third feature in Dario Argento’s Mother trilogy, die-hard fans (like myself) flocked to theaters to catch Mother of Tears. The anticipatory set-up, for example reconciling in advance that the film will look entirely different, and probably less sexy, than the first two Giallo classics, Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980), induced anxieties in viewers that many of us hoped would enhance the film’s horror and suspense. So revered are Suspiria and Inferno that one needs an extremely open mind to avoid instantly turning Mother of Tears off, now that it’s available on DVD, and chucking the disc out the window, insulted by its comparison to the previous two movies. From scene one, in which a psychotic, villainous monkey stalks Asia Argento, playing protagonist Sarah Mandy, through Rome’s Natural History Museum, one realizes this film can only go downhill. Without the colored lights, the stylized 1970s horror aesthetic, or the terrifyingly fetishtistic speed metal/electronica soundtrack pounding during the chase, the mood is simply corny. Regarding the monkey, try to remember that an oddly elegant and intelligent crow ate an eyeball to great effect in Argento’s, Terror at the Opera. Argento has always favored animals to represent unwilling witnesses. The plot itself is also typically Argento and does follow-up: After a tainted red tunic is discovered in a cemetery, the third and last witch, Mother Lachrimarum (Moran Atias), is awaken from her catacombs beneath a mansion that she and her two deceased witch consorts, Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness/Shadows, and Mater Suspiriorum, the Mother of Sighs, long ago recruited an architect to build. The Mother of Tears has beef with Sarah Mandy, due to Sarah’s heritage, and the unholy black witch relentlessly pursues Mandy until Mandy is forced to fight head-on. Mandy’s boyfriend, Michael Pierce (Adam James), is not much help, nor is Padre Johannes (Udo Kier), which makes sense; Argento’s films are all about empowered female characters, vengeful victims and ruthless criminals alike. Perhaps the flaw here is Argento’s casting of his daughter, and her inability to render that illicit sexual tension that the puerile Suzy Banyon (Jessica Harper) once did in the halls of her bewitched boarding school. Even Mother Lachrimarum’s young recruits, such as the Gothic and Lolita-style Katerina (Jun Ichikawa), are dumb-looking with their colored contacts and peacock hairstyles. There is only one character, the elder white witch Marta Colussi (Valeria Cavalli), who has the sexual draw to enchant Argento style, but she is short-lived. The CG effects employed throughout, especially in regards to the ghoulish antics happening amongst the Goth witch posse, are just plain bad. Only a few shots of gore really spook, and to be fair, they are lasting images. But the only semi-interesting this about the Mother of Tears DVD is the interview extra with the man himself, who is still master even if he makes a few stinkers. –Trinie Dalton
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March 19, 2010
#1
This movie sucked. I should send Dario Argento a bill for this. I want my $15 back!!!
March 19, 2010
#2
This is seriously the worst movie I have ever seen. For being a newer movie the editing was off, the picture was grainy, and the audio was garbage. The acting was probably the scariest part of the whole film. I rarely ever write reviews (this being the second one) but a film this bad, I had to. This is a warning to all that are curious DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME.
March 19, 2010
#3
I was in tears about the fact that I bought this movie.Maybe I just don’t get Italian horror,but here goes…
A coffin is dug up at a church.A small box is attached to the coffin.The box has satanic symbols on it and is sealed with a chain and an old cross. Naturaly the box is opened.Not good.It is sealed again and sent to a museum in Rome.Sarah(Asia Argento)and her boss open the box.Sarah goes to get a book and upon returning,finds her boss getting her guts torn out and eaten by demonic beings.Then(I s#!t you not..)a monkey chases her around the museum.WHAT?!!!Anyway,the mother of tears has been released and a wave of violence sweeps across Rome.You know this because they keep showing news reports and background shots of people slap-fighting and pushing each other.Seriously.The fight between Xander and Harmony was more violent.Evil witches start chasing Sarah.She is helped by a good witch.Good witch and lesbian lover are killed when(I s#!t you not again..)the monkey drops a rope though the skylight,climbs down and leads demonic guy to their bedroom.Very gruesome death.Sarah follows witches.Sarah kills witches.This is supposed to be the most fearsome of the three mothers,but she is seen for a total of maybe 5 minutes.And then she’s gone.Like that.I don’t see what the great danger was.This is not even close to “Suspiria”.Lots of supernatural stuff going on,and some gratuitous nudity,but the most interesting thing in this movie was that damned monkey.I sat through the entire movie waiting for the little guy to make another appearance.He shows up at the end,but is never explained.Maybe the next movie will be called Monkey Of Tears.
March 19, 2010
#4
Mother of Tears or La Terza Madre is an Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento (Tenebrae, Suspiria). It is the last film of a loosely connected trilogy created by Argento. The first film is Suspiria and the second is Inferno. Argento’s influence on horror and slasher films is undeniable and it is hard for me to criticize him openly, but this was a shameless and shallow effort to say the least. Suspiria is arguably a masterpiece of the horror genre for its visual style, soundtrack, and unnerving suspense. Here though, Argento abandons those strengths in favor of gratuitous nudity and often completely ridiculous, albeit at times shocking, murder sequences. There are endless complaints about this film but most of them are quite superficial and apparent only moments in. Examples include; misplaced accents, unconvincing and often wooden acting, unlikely dialogue, and a plot that is not even worth engaging.
Sarah is played by Asia Argento (Dario’s daughter). She is an American studying in Rome. She helps uncover a relic that unleashes the Mother of Tears and all of her evil powers unto the world. Worshippers across the city begin lashing out in order to honor her return and all out chaos starts.
The only thing that creeped me out about this movie was the fact that Dario Argento’s film contains a gratuitous shower scene starring his own daughter. This is something he has done before and it just gives me the creeps. At least more so than a women being choked with her own intestines which is really just so ridiculous it becomes funny, but then again maybe that’s your thing. I regretfully but confidently refuse to recommend this movie to anyone, even the hardcore fans.
March 19, 2010
#5
I have always been a HUGE Dario Argento fan. The only movie he ever made that I didn’t like (until now) was his Phantom of the Opera debacle (not Opera, but Phantom of the Opera–it’s terrible). In my opinion, Deep Red, Suspiria and Tenebre are three of the greatest horror films ever made. Inferno, part two in the Three Mothers trilogy, is also very good. I even loved his recent films The Card Player, Do You Like Hitchcock and Sleepless.
So what happened here? Mother of Tears starts off creepy enough. And then the train derails. Completely. What began as a somewhat satisfying sequel turns into one of the cheesiest horror films I’ve seen in a long time. First, the music sucks, big time. Viewers will quickly tire of hearing Claudio Simonetti saying “Moooottthhhherrrr” over and over and over again, set to the endlessly cheesy score. The acting is also atrocious, all around. Asia, who is normally not bad, phones in an abysmal performance. She is also starting to look a lot like a junkie; and the older she gets the more she looks like her father–not a good thing. Dario also continues his very disturbing habit of filming his own daughter nude.
What begins as an eerie sequence of mounting events in which random crimes wreak havoc on Rome while our hapless protagonists are pursued by creepy-looking punk witches devolves into a really bad film in which a cartoon “good witch” (Asia’s mother and Dario’s ex wife) appears to dispense magic advice and naked women eat kids under the orders of their leader, the Third Mother. Dario’s casting decision regarding the Third Mother was a death blow to his film. First, the woman can’t act, plain and simple. Second, she looks like a reject from an Andy Sidaris film. About the only thing we learn about her throughout the entire film is that she has really bad implants. The movie gets so damn corny I started to think I was watching The Howling II and not a sequel to Suspiria.
The real killer here is that there is not a single, solitary scene in the whole film that is in any way “Argentoesque.” Argento is known for his “cinematographical flourishes.” Such ingenious use of the camera is what earned him the reputation of being “The Italian Hitchcock.” Here, unfortunately, there is nothing whatsoever to back up this reputation. Opera had the notorious “bullet through the peep hole” sequence. The Card Player had “the man in the ashtray” scene. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage had the man trapped between glass doors. Sleepless had brilliant shots of the inner workings of a lock and of an answering machine, as well as the awesome shot panning along the carpet. Tenebre had the famous scene where the camera travels all the way around the apartment complex before entering a window and capturing a murder. Deep Red had, well, every single solitary scene in Deep Red is an exercise in ingenious cinematography. Here, nothing. Suspiria and Inferno are both famous for their use of rich color. Why did Argento make the terrible choice of filming part three using natural light? He used natural light in The Card Player, and, nobody really liked it. In the end, this film is a real stinker. Its ending is rushed and quite laughable. I was saddened when I heard what the critics had to say about this film. It’s even sadder that they were right. This one’s a real turd.
After some of Argento’s recent efforts, many have begun to say that he’s lost it. I disagreed entirely, until I saw Pelts. This piece of crap, however, convinces me. Argento has fallen into the same trap that many other horror directors today fall into. He used to know that mood and atmosphere are what is scary, that to scare an audience one needs to sustain a mounting sense of tension and dread, of creepiness and terror. This is done through pacing, flow and build up. Gore is not scary. It can add to a horror film, but it is not by itself in any way scary. To a seasoned viewer in fact, excessive gore and nothing else is actually quite silly. Less is more. Making people jump is also not scary. Today, horror films have been abandoned in favor of “startle films.” I thought Argento was too smart to fall into this trap. I guess not.