Dario Argento

Early Life

Image- IMDB.com

Dario Argento was born to the famous Italian producer Salvatore Argento in Rome, Italy in 1940. His ideas for film-making began early in his childhood. Scary stories told to him by various family members fascinated him and sparked his interest in the macabre. While still attending high school, he began his career writing for a number of film journal magazines. After his graduation he started working for the Rome Daily Newspaper as a columnist. Not forgetting his love of film, he went on to become a screenwriter working on such films as Cemetery Without Crosses (1969) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).

His first-ever directed movie was The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970). Movies that followed were The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971) and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971). After a short departure to television he returned to making giallo-styled thrillers with Deep Red (1975) and Suspiria (1977) becoming some of his finest work. He would continue directing horror movies throughout the 1980's with Inferno (1980), Tenebrae (1981) and Phenomena (1985).

Harsh reviews at the time prompted Argento to shy away from directing and begin producing. He returned to the giallo in 1987 with Opera. The movie was cursed by an array of casting and technical issues, as well as the death of his father and breakup with his longtime girlfriend during its production. In the end it failed at the box office.

He ended up moving to the United States and began working with George A. Romero, who he had worked with before on Dawn of the Dead in 1978, again on Two Evil Eyes (1990). He eventually returned to Italy in 1995 where he continued directing thrillers, such as The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) and Sleepless (2001). He completed Mother of Tears in 2007, which along with Suspiria and Inferno marked the long-awaited completion of his "Three Mothers" trilogy.