Cleaning Out The DVR: Lethal Admirer (dir by Craig Goldstein)

Posted on June 24, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I recorded Lethal Admirer off of Lifetime on April 15th.

My friends and I have long debated which episode of Boy Meets World is the worst.

My friend Jen has often said that the worst episode was the one where Eric wanted to adopt a kid and she has a pretty good point, there. Some others have said that the worst episode was the one where Cory acts like an immature jackass when his mom dares to give birth on a day that he wanted to spend exclusively with Topanga and, again, I think they have a valid point.

Speaking for myself. I’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities.

First off, there’s the episode where Shawn joins a cult and Cory starts grabbing him and going, “This is a hug, Shawn! THIS! THIS IS A HUG!” The other one is the episode where Cory and Topanga crash a complete stranger’s wedding and Cory makes their special day all about him.

You know which one I’m talking about. Cory and Topanga know no one at the wedding. The only reason that they’re there is so they can get ideas for the own wedding. Still, Cory feels the needs to stand up during the ceremony and give a lengthy speech about how creepily obsessed he is with his fiancée and how he hopes that the newlyweds will be as much in love with each other as Cory is with Topanga.

The worst thing about this scene is that everyone at the wedding is touched by Cory’s speech. Nobody says, “And you are?” No one questions why some strange teenager is making the ceremony all about himself. No one asks why Cory is suddenly the world’s authority on love. Add to that, beyond Cory being incredibly self-centered, it’s just an extremely awkward moment. I mean, it’s bad enough to crash someone’s wedding but then to interrupt with some halfassed speech about yourself? You feel embarrassed for Cory, for everyone at the wedding, and especially for Topanga.

Well, believe it or not, Lethal Admirer contains a scene that is just as thoroughly awkward as Cory’s wedding speech. This scene also takes place at a wedding. Unlike Cory and Topanga, Lloyd (Drew Seeley) is not crashing the wedding. He was actually invited to attend by his friend and former co-worker, Megan (Karissa Lee Staples). The only reason Megan invited Lloyd to come with her is because her boyfriend, Chris (Brian Ames), broke his leg when he fell off a ladder. Megan considers Lloyd to be a friend and even wants to set him up with her sister (Courtney Hope). However, Lloyd is convinced that Megan loves him. As Lloyd explains it, his mother has always told him that he has to take big chances and Lloyd does just that at the wedding reception.

And, oh my God! Anyone who has ever had a friend declare their love at the worst possible moment will be cringing with flashbacks!

Of course, it’s not just that Lloyd has no clue about how to socially interact with people. It’s also that Lloyd’s a little bit crazy. In fact, he’s just crazy enough to have killed both Megan’s former boyfriend and her current boss. Remember that ladder that Chris fell off of? Well, that was no accident. Nor was it an accident that, after Megan moved across the country, Lloyd suddenly showed up in her new city. Lloyd is obsessed with Megan and Megan, for whatever reason, is pretty much clueless until it’s too late.

It’s a typical Lifetime movie scenario but Lethal Admirer is distinguished by a script that makes the very wise decision not to take itself too seriously. It never becomes a full-blown comedy like A Deadly Adoption but the script of Lethal Admirer features enough one-liners and random nonsequiturs to indicate that the filmmakers were determined to have a little bit fun with the typical Lifetime formula. I especially liked the interactions between Megan and her sister. Their relationship rang true.

Also ringing true was the character of Lloyd, who was definitely strange but also just charming enough that you could legitimately accept the idea of Megan wanting to be his friend. Drew Seeley provided an indelible portrait of a nerd scorned in this film. His little smile when Megan assured him that he could pass for an intellectual hipster was both deeply creepy and kind of sweet at the same time.

Lethal Admirer was a good Lifetime flick. If nothing else, it should be shown to everyone as an example of what not to do at a wedding.

Cleaning Out The DVR: I Killed My BFF: The Preacher’s Daughter (dir by Seth Jarrett)

Posted on June 24, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I recorded I Killed My BFF: The Preacher’s Daughter off of Lifetime on April 22nd.

Could you kill your BFF?

I’d like to think I could not. In fact, as of right now, I have at least six BFFs and I wouldn’t kill a single one of them. To be honest, I doubt that I’m physically capable of killing any of my BFFs. Four of them own guns, which would definitely give them an advantage over me. Way back when I was skipping school and shoplifting makeup, another one of my BFFs was training with the IDF. I wouldn’t even think of trying to kill her, largely because I love her, she’s like a sister to me, and I’m pretty sure she’s been taught a hundred different ways to stop me. So no, I would not kill any of my BFFs. And I wouldn’t kill any of my former BFFs, either. It’s not that I couldn’t, it’s just I imagine I’d be an obvious suspect and then there’s all the guilt and the damnation and all that.

However, there are apparently quite a few people in the world who are not only capable of killing their BFF but who have actually done it! There’s even a Lifetime show about it. I Killed My BFF always starts by detailing how wonderful the friendship was before the friends decided to commit murder. The identities of the murderer and the victim are not revealed until the final few minutes of the show so the whole point of watching an episode of I Killed My BFF basically amounts to spending 50 minutes of trying to guess who is going to snap first.

The show itself was so successful that it’s even led to a mini-movie franchise. The first I Killed My BFF film aired in 2015 and it was an instant classic. Now, three years later, we have a second I Killed My BFF film, The Preacher’s Daughter.

Who is the preacher’s daughter? Her name is Lily Adler (Megan West) and she seems like she’s perfectly happy being a leading member of her father’s (Joe Gretsch) congregation. She’s in charge of the youth ministry and she’s always very prim and proper. Little does the congregation suspect that Lily used to be a wild child who had an abortion when she was a teenager.

The congregation also does not know that Rev. Adler is estranged from his son, Jason (Matthew James Ballinger). After their mother commits suicide, Lily attempts to repair the relationship between her father and her brother but, instead, she just ends up spending a lot of time with Jason’s older girlfriend, Rae (Carly Pope). Soon, Lily is once again drinking and doing drugs. It’s not until Jason’s mysterious death that Lily turns on Rae and starts trying to recruit Rae’s teenage daughter, Scarlet (Katherine Reis), into the church.

It all leads to (you guessed it!) murder!

When it comes to The Preacher’s Daughter, it’s hard to avoid the fact that none of these people really seem to be BFFs. I mean, Lily and Rae do hang out with each other for a while but that’s mostly just because of Jason. And while Lily and Scarlet do become close, it’s debatable whether or not they could really be considered BFFs. If anything, it seems more like a mentor/protegé type of relationship.

But no matter! It was still fun trying to guess who would end up killing who. A sign of the film’s success is that you could easily imagine either Rae, Lily, or even Scarlet turning out to be the murderer. Megan West was memorably creepy in the role of Lily and there’s a baptism scene that deserves a place in the Hall of Fame of WTF Lifetime Moments. Joel Gretsch also does a good job as the charismatic but judgmental Rev. Adler and the film’s ending packs a nice punch.

I look forward to watching future installments of I Killed MY BFF with my BFFs. Hopefully, none of them will ever try to kill me…

Cleaning Out The DVR: Dangerous Seduction (dir by Jean-Francois Rivard)

Posted on June 24, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I recorded Dangerous Seduction off of the Lifetime Movie Network on May 5th! It’s also known as The Queen of Sin.

So, here’s the thing:

Posy Pinkerton (Christa B. Allen) seems like she should have the perfect life. She’s in her 20s and she’s already engaged to a doctor! Add to that, she’s a talented artist who has an up-and-coming career as a medical illustrator! Seriously, she can make a heart so realistic that you half-expect it start pumping blood through a body!

However, things aren’t always as perfect as they seem. For one thing, Posy is terribly shy and repressed. She rarely goes out or has any fun. Her fiance is the type who turns down a night of wild sex so that he can go to the hospital and check on a patient. I mean, seriously — what type of doctor does that!? (Other than a doctor who doesn’t want to get sued for malpractice, of course…) Posy’s even too shy to really pursue her career. Her best friend and cousin, Laura (Amber Goldfarb), says that Posy needs to have at least one wild fling before she gets married but Posy…

Well, Posy actually kind of agrees, even if she won’t admit it.

Things get complicated after Posy and Laura are the two last people to see a woman who is murdered shortly after she jogs past them. For Laura, it means meeting the handsome and single Detective Dagliesh (Sergio Di Zio). Who cares if the murder gets solved as long as Dagliesh and Laura get together!? They’re a cute couple! As for Posy … well, Posy is now being followed but she doesn’t realize it.

When Posy meets Jack (Richard de Klerk), she is immediately charmed. Remember that one wild fling that Laura recommended? Jack appears to be that fling. Soon, Posy is giving into an alter ego that she created for herself, the so-called Queen of Sin.

What Posy doesn’t know is that Jack works for someone who knows a little bit about sin himself. Charlie (Marc Thibaudeau) is a millionaire who deals with his ennui by hiring Jack and Stella (Inga Cadranel) to capture sex slaves, all of whom are eventually murdered by Charlie once he tires of them….

So, needless to say, there’s a lot going on in Dangerous Seduction but, in the end, it all becomes a fairly standard Lifetime kidnapping film. That’s not a complaint, of course. Lifetime generally makes the best abduction films and Dangerous Seduction deserves some credit for trying to do something a little bit different from the genre. The film starts off as almost a Fifty Shades of Grey type of film, with Posy exploring her sexual fantasies with Jack and then it becomes a murder mystery before ultimately ending up as a “let’s-escape-from-a-mad-man’s-mansion” film.

It’s nicely done. Whether capturing the shadows of Charlie’s mansion or the stark loneliness of a fresh crime scene, the films always looks great. (The film’s cinematography is credited to Sergio Di Rosa.) The actors all do a good job. Though Posy, with her constant self-doubt, can be a bit difficult to take, Amber Goldfarb is likable and fun as Laura and the between-the-lines romance between her and Dagliesh is fun to watch.

Lifetime always reruns their films a few hundred times so keep an eye out for this one!

What Lisa Watched Last Night #183: The Wrong Daughter (dir by Ben Myerson)

Posted on June 23, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched The Wrong Daughter on the Lifetime Movie Network!

Why Was I Watching It?

I think I must have missed The Wrong Daughter when it originally premiered on Lifetime. Maybe I was out spying on the neighbors or something. Who knows? Fortunately, Lifetime always shows their movies about a hundred different times during the year so, last night, I got a chance to catch up!

What Was It About?

Kate (Cindy Busby) has a lot to deal with! Not only is she trying to open up her own restaurant but she and Joe (Jon Prescott) are desperate to start a family. In the aftermath of another failed IVF treatment, Kate promptly starts repainting the nursery and talking about how she could turn the room into an office. (Interestingly, they live in a pretty big house so I’m kind of surprised she didn’t have an office already.) However, Joe has a solution! Maybe Kate could try to track down the girl that she gave up for adoption 17 years ago!

Meanwhile, 18 year-old Samantha (Sydney Sweeney) is just about to get kicked out of her group home. Abandoned by her mother when she was born, Samantha has never been adopted. Why not? Well, it might have something to do with Samantha being slightly psychotic. And while you may be thinking that Samantha is probably Kate’s long lost daughter, she’s not! However, her roommate is! When Samantha runs away and steals Danica’s (Sierra Pond) laptop, she discovers a message from Kate, announcing that she’s Danica’s mother and inviting Danica to come see her.

Soon, Samantha is at Kate’s restaurant, dressed demurely, claiming to be Danica, and working her way into Kate and Joe’s life. Meanwhile, the real Danica just wants her laptop back. Samantha, however, is happy being Danica and is willing to do anything — from bribing an old homeless woman to pretend to be the head of the group home when Kate calls to murdering anyone who turns their back on her — to remains so.

What Worked?

This was a pretty good example of the “killer imposter” genre of Lifetime films. Movies like this pretty much live and die based on the performance of the imposter and Sydney Sweeney did a good job playing the duplicitous Samantha. It was especially fun to watch her switch back and forth between being demure Danica and murderous Samantha.

What Did Not Work?

How naive can one person be? That’s kind of the question that I had to ask about Kate, who was both a savvy businesswoman and yet somehow was easily fooled by even the most obvious of Samantha’s lies. As much fun as it was to watch Kate get fooled over the phone by a crazy homeless woman, it was still hard not to wonder how that could have possibly happened in the first place.

“OMG! Just like me!” Moments

From the minute Samantha first climbed through the window of her group home, I started having flashbacks. That’s the same way that I used to sneak out of the house. When you’re growing up in the suburbs, it helps to be a good climber.

Lessons Learned

Protect your laptop with you life.

Insomnia File #36: Punchline (dir by David Seltzer)

Posted on June 21, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

Last night, if you were up at 12 midnight and couldn’t get to sleep, you could have turned over to Movies TV and watched the 1988 film, Punchline.

Sally Field is Lilah, a New Jersey housewife who, in between getting her children ready for school and helping her husband (John Goodman) throw dinner parties, is pursuing a career as a stand-up comedian. Everyone says that she has a lot of stage presence but she struggles with her material. She’s even resorted to buying jokes from a seedy man who hangs out in a grimy diner.

Tom Hanks is Steve Gold, the youngest member of a family of doctors. When we first meet Steve, he’s getting kicked out of medical school for cheating on an exam. That’s probably for the best, though. Steve doesn’t want to be a doctor. He wants to make people laugh! Every night, he performs at a comedy club known as the Gas Station. Audiences love him almost as much as he hates himself.

Together … they solve crimes!

No, actually, they don’t. I wish they had but they don’t. Instead, in the tradition of A Star is Born, Steve ends up mentoring Lilah and helping her develop her own voice as a comedian. Lilah attempts to balance her loyality to her family with her friendship with Steve. It’s not always easy, largely because Steve isn’t exactly emotionally stable. On stage, Steve may be in control but offstage, he’s frequently selfish and self-destructive. Complicating things is the fact that, even as he watches her talent threaten to eclipse his own, Steve thinks he might be falling in love with Lilah.

Punchline is an uneven movie, largely due to the fact that, while one role is perfectly cast, another one most definitely is not. Not surprisingly, Tom Hanks is believable as a stand-up comedian. It’s not just that he’s obviously comfortable on the comedy club stage. Hanks also shows that he knows how to tell a joke. To put it simply, he has good timing. As played by Tom Hanks, you can look at Steve Gold and imagine people actually paying money for him to make them laugh.

But then you’ve got Sally Field. At no point is Sally Field believable as a stand-up comedian. That’s not so much a problem at the beginning of the film when Field is supposed to an inexperienced amateur. But, as the film progresses, we’re asked to believe that Lilah could conceivably win a spot on television over Hanks and there’s nothing about Field’s performance that suggests that would be possible. When we laugh at Sally Field’s jokes, it’s because she’s Sally Field and she’s talking about multiple orgasms. However, the comedy club audience doesn’t know that she’s Sally Field. Instead, they just know that she’s a comedian who has absolutely no timing.

Much like The Comedian and the Showtime TV series I’m Dyin’ Up Here, Punchline is one of those films that really goes overboard with the audience reaction shots. The only thing worse than listening to an unfunny comedian is then being assaulted by a shot or the sound of an audience dying of laughter. If someone’s not funny, showing some random guy doing spit take isn’t going to help. One thing that directors rarely seem to take into account is that laughter is rarely neat. It’s rare that a huge group of people both start and stop laughing at the exact same moment. There’s usually a stray chuckle or two to be heard, both before and after the punchline has been delivered. Even Tom Hanks, who actually is funny in the movie, is sabotaged by one scene where a group of patients at a hospital are way too amused by his act.

The film’s a bit too long and it takes its dramatic moments way too seriously but it’s almost worth watching for Tom Hanks. Hanks plays a real bastard in Punchline but you still care about Steve because he’s a likable bastard. As you watch the film, you hope Steve becomes a star even if he doesn’t really deserve it. I mean, he’s Tom Hanks!

Previous Insomnia Files:

4 Shots From 4 Summer Films: Ride With The Devil, Hitch-Hike, The Last Shark, The Impossible

Posted on June 21, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.

Today is the first day of summer so these 4 shots all celebrate films about summer vacation!

4 Shots From 4 Summer Films

Race With The Devil (1975, dir by Jack Starrett)

Hitch-Hike (1977, dir by Pasquale Festa Campanile)

The Last Shark (1981, dir by Enzo G. Castellari)

The Impossible (2012, dir by J. A. Bayona)

Here’s The Trailer For Welcome To Marwen!

Posted on June 20, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When it comes to Robert Zemeckis, there seems to be two different types of film lovers.

There are those who feels that, as a director, Zemeckis makes films where relatively thin and sentimental stories are used as an excuse to show what he can do with CGI.

And then there are those of us who love Zemeckis’s brand of sincere, effects-driven storytelling. I was in tears by the end of The Walk and, as much as I tried to resist, the trailer for Welcome to Marwen brought tears to my mismatched eyes as well.

Of course, it helps to know something about the true story that this film is based on. Welcome to Marwen was inspired by a documentary called Marwencol. Here’s the description of Marwencol‘s plot, which I lifted from Wikipedia because I’m lazy:

On April 8, 2000, Mark Hogancamp was attacked outside of a bar by five men who beat him nearly to death. After nine days in a coma and forty days in the hospital, Mark was discharged with brain damage that left him little memory of his previous life. Unable to afford therapy, Mark creates his own by building a 1/6-scale World War II-era Belgian town in his yard and populating it with dolls representing himself, his friends, and even his attackers. He calls that town “Marwencol,” a portmanteau of the names “Mark,” “Wendy” and “Colleen.”

Mark was initially discovered by photographer David Naugle, who documented and shared his story with Esopus magazine and then his work was shown in a New York art gallery. But having the label of “art” applied to his intensely personal work forces Mark to make a choice between the safety of his fictional town and the real world he’s avoided since his attack.

It’s hard to think of any actor that embodies wounded humanity quite as well as Steve Carell. (You even felt kinda sorry for him in Foxcatcher.) Welcome to Marwen (which was originally announced as The Women of Marwen) has been mentioned as one of two Oscar contenders featuring Steve Carell, the other being Beautiful Boy.

Here’s the trailer:

Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone Return In The Trailer for Creed II!

Posted on June 20, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Way back in 2015, Creed was a huge surprise, a Rocky spin-off that paid homage to the films that came before it while, at the same time, establishing its own identity. After their acclaimed work in Fruitvale Station, Creed made a star out of Michael B. Jordan and definitely led to Ryan Coogler getting the chance to direct Black Panther. It also brought an Oscar nomination for Sylvester Stallone, something that, before the film’s release, nobody thought would ever happen.

Well, we all knew that there would inevitably be a sequel. Today, the trailer for Creed II was released and … well, to be honest, its looks pretty conventional. Coogler did not write or direct the sequel. Instead, the directing was handled by Steve Caple, Jr. while the script was written by Stallone himself. In this one, Creed steps into the ring to fight the son of the man who killed his father. It looks like the film is designed to be crowd pleaser but you have to wonder if it will have any of the attention to detail and the subtle wit that distinguished Coogler’s film.

Oh well. At least it’s always enjoyable to watch Michael B. Jordan did his thing.

Here’s the trailer:

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Deceiver (dir by Jonas Pate and Josh Pate)

Posted on June 19, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have long contended that the most annoying serial killer of all time was Paul Michael Stephani, a resident of Minneapolis who killed three women in 1980.

Stephani was known as The Weepy-Voiced Killer. (Even his nickname was annoying.) Whenever Stephani committed a murder, he would promptly call 911 and confess while sobbing. As you might expect would happen to someone who was enough of a dumbass to call the police right after murdering someone, Stephani was eventually captured and convicted. Sentenced to 40 years, Stephani died of cancer while in prison and nobody misses him.

Unfortunately, because all of Stephani’s 911 calls were recorded, he’s recently become a very popular subject for true crime shows. It’s not there’s anything particularly interesting about Stephani’s crimes. It’s just that it’s easy (and cheap) to build a show around the sound of him whining on the phone. As someone who probably spends too much time watching true crime realty television, I’ve had to listen to Stephani’s voice more than anyone should ever have to. Making it even worse, there’s currently a show called Evil Calls, which uses a recording of Stephani in its commercials. I’ve actually stopped watching Investigation Discovery just because I’ve gotten so sick of hearing that loser whining, “Please don’t talk, just listen… I’m sorry I killed that girl. I stabbed her 40 times…”

However, the Stephani tapes do provide one valuable service. The sound of Stephani’s pathetic voice reminds us that most serial killers are not the urbanely witty and intelligent figures that we’ve gotten used to seeing in the movies. Most real-life killers are whiny losers who kill for very basic reasons and who are stupid enough to call 911 and confess. Movie killers are a different breed all together.

Take the 1997 mystery Deceiver, for instance.

In Deceiver, Renee Zellweger plays a world weary prostitute. We only see her in flashbacks, largely because she was murdered before the film’s opening scene. Her name was Elizabeth, which brings to mind Elizabeth Short, the legendary Los Angeles murder victim who is better known as the Black Dahlia. Much like the real-life Black Dahlia, Elizabeth’s body was cut into two pieces and left in a park. (According to the film’s imdb trivia section, Elizabeth was also named after Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist who pioneered the study of false memories.)

Suspicion immediately falls on James Walter Wayland (Tim Roth). The youngest son of a wealthy and powerful South Carolina family, Wayland is an infamous alcoholic. Wayland admits that he knew Elizabeth. He even took Elizabeth with him to a fancy party, all the better to offend his parents. Wayland may be a black-out drunk with a history of erratic behavior but he also swears that he didn’t kill Elizabeth.

Two detectives are determined to trick Wayland into confessing. Detective Edward Kennesaw (Michael Rooker) is a respected veteran, the type of detective who can get a confession out of almost anyone. His partner is Detective Philip Braxton (Chris Penn), who is a bit less impressive. As we’re informed early in the film, Braxton graduated at the bottom of his high school class and has been waiting for a promotion for quite some time.

From the minute that Kennesaw and Braxton start to interrogate Wayland, it becomes obvious that Wayland is hardly your typical murder suspect. He’s certainly more impressive than the Weepy-Voiced Killer. He’s witty. He’s smart. He’s cocky. He admits to being an alcoholic and to suffering from black outs and seizures but he also claims that, unlike every other man who Elizabeth dealt with, he actually cared about her. Wayland also reveals that he knows some details about Kennesaw and Braxton. He knows about Kennesaw’s troubled marriage to a woman (Rosanna Arquette) who has a history of cheating on him. He knows that Braxton is in debt to a local bookie (Ellen Burstyn). And, as the interrogation continues, Wayland starts to suggest that one of the interrogators is hiding an even darker secret.

Deceiver‘s a frequently fascinating film to watch, even if it’s not always easy to follow. If there’s any film that would seem to demand multiple viewings, it’s this one. The majority of the movie takes place in one darkened room and directors Joan and Josh Pate do a wonderful job capturing the claustrophobia of that setting. (Fortunately, there’s enough flashbacks to keep the film from getting too stagey.) Roth, Rooker, and Penn all give intensely stylized performances. They may not feel realistic but they fit in perfectly with the fever dream atmosphere of the film. Roth, in particular, gives a performance that is both mannered and intriguing. It even feel appropriate that his Southern accent is in no way convincing. It just makes sense that Wayland wouldn’t sound like anyone else in the world.

It’s a heavily stylized film, full of odd dialogue and skewed camera angles. It’s a film that often feels like a journey right to the center of an extremely twisted mind. (Of course, the movie is designed so that you’re never quite sure whose mind you’ve entered.) There’s nothing realistic about it but that’s okay. It’s certainly preferable to watching a movie about The Weepy-Voiced Killer.

4 Shots From 4 Daria Nicolodi Films: Deep Red, Shock, Tenebre, Opera

Posted on June 19, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today is Daria Nicolodi’s birthday!

Daria Nicolodi has been called the “unsung hero of Italian horror” and it’s an apt description. Along with starring in several of the films that Dario Argento directed during the first half of his legendary career, Nicolodi also was responsible for the story of and co-wrote the script for Suspiria. (Nicolodi has always said that Suspiria was based on a true story involving one of her ancestors.) Argento’s decision to give the lead role in Suspiria to Jessica Harper, instead of Nicolodi, is often cited as the beginning of the end of their relationship.

(It’s also a shame — actually, a more accurate description would be to say that it’s a goddamn crime — that Nicolodi apparently will not have even as much as a cameo in the upcoming Suspiria remake.)

Nicolodi also appeared in films directed by Mario Bava, Luigi Cozzi, Michele Soavi, and several other distinguished Italian directors. In Scarlet Diva, she was directed by her daughter, Asia Argento.

This edition for 4 Shots From 4 Films is dedicated to Daria Nicolodi!

4 Shots From 4 Films