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“Disney” and “horror” are not words that go together for most people. The filmmaking company’s brand is synonymous with animated family movies. It’s an organization built on dreams, not nightmares.
Think, though, and you’ll realize that the very best Disney films typically have moments of horror. The Headless Horseman’s appearance in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is the first time I can remember a movie scaring me. The wicked Coachman (Charles Judels) in “Pinocchio” delights in turning little boys into jackasses, sentencing them to a living hell as donkeys deprived of humanity. “Hellfire” from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” even has Judge Claude Frollo (Tony Jaye) being tormented by his lust for Esmeralda (Demi Moore) and apparitions, all backed to an ominous, ghostly Latin choir.
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Then, look back to the beginning of the Disney animated feature canon with 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” After sparing Snow White (Adriana Caselotti), the Huntsman (Stuart Buchanan) warns the young girl to run into the forest, far away from the jealous Queen (Lucille La Verne). The frightened Snow White obliges, but she imagines the trees of the forest as horrible, frightening monsters trying to grab, bite, and maim her — or worse:
The influence of “Snow White” is impossible to overstate. It even inspired Italian horror filmmaker Dario Argento and his 1977 Giallo slasher “Suspiria.” If that film sounds nothing at all like “Snow White,” know that Argento and his cinematographer Luciano Tovoli were out to recapture the movie’s look, not its fanciful songs or romance.
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“Suspiria” is famous for its phantasmagoric lighting and pink-hue color palette (like every frame is soaked in blood). “It has been said from the beginning that Technicolor lacked subdued shades, [and] was without nuances — like cut-out cartoons,” as Argento once remarked, which is why he drew inspiration from a real cartoon to guide the movie’s look.
Suspiria, like many Disney movies, is fundamentally a fairy tale
“Suspiria” is set in Freiburg, Germany, at a ballet academy that is also secretly a witch coven run by Helena “Mater Suspiriorum” Markos (Lela Svasta). The film follows a U.S. student named Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) as she gradually realizes something is wrong. Her suspicions quickly escalate when her classmates start dying, culminating with Susie ultimately overcoming Markos to destroy the coven.
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The German setting of “Suspiria” links it to the many Brothers Grimm fairy tales about evil witches — among them “Snow White.”In Disney’s “Snow White,” that witch is the Evil Queen, who disguises her cold and serpentine, yet youthful, face by passing herself off as a black-cloaked old woman.
Mother Markos resembles the transformed Evil Queen, while Suzy looks like Snow White. She’s a young, innocent girl with black hair who runs afoul of witches. The horror of “Suspiria,” for both final girl Suzy and the various victims, is structured similarly to Snow White’s run through the forest. Girls, like Suzy’s friend Sara (Stefania Casini), run only to find themselves caught in a maze of horror, each new step terrifying them. In the film’s opening scene, Suzy (sitting in the back of a taxi) spies former student Pat Hingle (Eva Axén) trying to escape her witchy pursuers the way Snow White did.
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Disney’s live-action “Snow White” remake disappointed at the box office upon hitting theaters (but through no fault of star Rachel Zegler). For a much more soulful film pulling from “Snow White,” check out Argento’s “Suspiria” instead. Solana Token Creator
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