Deep Red with Live Score by Slow Knife at Hyde Park Picture House
Tom Grieve, Cinema Editor
From Italian maestro Dario Argento (Suspiria, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage), Deep Red is considered by some to be the ultimate giallo. Lurid, sleazy and stylish, the film combines off kilter plotting with gruesome murders, and set pieces that border on the avant-garde. Deep Red is also known for its pulsating score from prog rock band Goblin, however there is a twist to the upcoming screening at Leeds Jazz Festival as experimental rockers Slow Knife provide their own all-new, original soundtrack — in quadraphonic sound — to mark the 50th anniversary of the film’s release.
Originally released in 1975, Deep Red opens with a murder, shown only though the shadow of an arm projected onto the wall of a family home. The arm stabs an unknown victim before dropping a bloody knife into the foreground of the frame, where a child picks it up. The sequence is only a prologue to the main action, a typically slick, gory appetiser for what is to come as Argento borrows imagery from everybody from Edward Hopper to Alfred Hitchcock.
After the opening sequence, the action jumps to the present day as David Hemming’s (Blow Up) obnoxious jazz musician discovers the mutilated body of a renown psychic and is drawn to investigate her death. He enlists the help of an local journalist (Daria Nicolodi), and before long the pair of amateur sleuths are tracking a mysterious axe wielding killer across the streets of Rome.
Originally from Manchester but now based in Todmorden, Slow Knife have name checked Twin Peaks, Tom Waits and Sun O))) as inspirations, and previous works have utilised footage from filmmakers such as Maya Deren, Fritz Lang and Georges Méliès. Which is to say that they certainly seem to be tuned in to the right frequencies to be tackling Argento’s classic horror.
