the mother of tears Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I was just about to eat lunch when ComingSoon.net directed me to this super violent and gory clip from Mother of Tears, the latest flick from Italian horror legend Dario Argento. Now I've lost my appetite. Before you click on the link (which brings you to an exclusive from ShockTillYouDrop.com), be warned: you may lose your lunch or have some serious nightmares or both. Also, it's likely not very safe to watch the video at work.

The film is the final installment in Argento's The Three Mothers trilogy, which also includes the horror classics Suspiria and Inferno. Mother of Tears stars the filmmaker's goth-sexy daughter, Asia Argento (unfortunately best known in the States as Vin Diesel's co-star in xXx), as an American studying abroad at the fictional Museum of Ancient Art in Rome. She unearths a sort of Pandora's box-like urn that unleashes a witch known as the Mother of Tears and the apocalyptic chaos that comes with her.

Reviewing from the Toronto Film Festival last fall, Cinematical horror hound Scott Weinberg called the film, "the master's best flick since ... hell, since at least the mid-'80s ... fans of the old-school Argento splatter-fests will find a handful of truly gruesome sequences here, while those who are on the lookout for a bleak yet tongue-in-cheek tale of the apocalypse will most likely appreciate what's in Tears." Now we can see what Scott meant by "truly gruesome."

Mother of Tears opens in limited release this Friday.

The Toronto International Film Festival ended Saturday, but the deals keep trickling in. The latest: The Weinstein Co. has picked up DVD rights to The Mother of Tears, the latest film by legendary Italian horror director Dario Argento. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film will be handled theatrically by Myriad Pictures, which produced it. The plan is to pop it into select theaters sometime early next year.

The Mother of Tears is the campy and bloody finale to Argento's unofficial trilogy that also includes Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980). Our resident gorehound Scott Weinberg liked it well enough, calling it "Argento's most satisfying experiment in a few decades." It stars the director's daughter Asia Argento (an actress and occasional director in her own right) as a museum curator in possession of an evil urn. I like The Hollywood Reporter's description: "Beautiful witches appear, and a scary monkey chases the unfortunate curator." It's bad enough to be chased by a regular monkey, but a scary one?! Forget it!

Dario Argento has directed about 20 films and written 20 more. Most of them have appeared in the United States in some form, often as midnight screenings or at cult-favorite film festivals. Asia Argento, a chip off the ol' block, wrote, directed, and starred in 2004's controversial The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.

You might recall that last year's opening Midnight Madness title was a little movie called Borat. Things were going swimmingly until the projector broke down and chaos ensued. Our own Kim Voynar was on hand to report all the details. This year the honor went to Dario Argento's The Mother of Tears, which debuted Thursday at Midnight. Argento did not enter the theater riding on a donkey, but the crowd did reportedly sing "Happy Birthday" to him before the movie began.

I'm surprised that non-horror experts Stephanie Zacharek of Salon and David Poland of The Hot Blog liked the film, though they each take great pains to explain why. Zacharek admits that she doesn't "have a taste for contemporary horror pictures" -- she was "dismayed at the protracted, sadistic quality of the violence" in the remake of House of Wax -- nor has she seen any of Argento's recent work. Still, she feels that The Mother of Tears "is so unapologetically loopy and lush and ridiculous that I found it irresistible." Though she acknowledges "some sick stuff" in the movie, she prefers "Argento's sick violence" because it's "of the old-school kind." The movie "is sick as hell. But at least it's got class."

As Poland notes, he was "deeply offended" by Eli Roth's Hostel 2. He then describes some of the violence and nudity in The Mother of Tears and asks, "So why isn't it pushing my buttons? Because you can feel the feelings of the man sitting in the director's chair. And while there is a real cruel streak, towards both sexes, in Eli Roth, you get the distinct feeling that while he is raising the stakes endlessly, Dario Argento is just having a nasty good time. ... It feels like good clean fun."

Cinematical's Scott Weinberg will have the final word for us -- will it be "sick," "classy" or "fun"? The festival's official Midnight Madness blog has information on the pre-premiere party. The blog itself is filled with posts on the films, breaking news, photos and videos -- including some archival interviews with Maestro Argento.