Frankly, I rather doubt that Argento has much in the way of musical skills. He collaborated with Goblin on Suspiria and Dawn of the Dead, but I gather he basically functioned as a producer rather than a composer out right.
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When I met Dario Argento in my teens, we talked a bit about Goblin and his experiences in music. He started his involvement with movies because his father Salvatore, who was in publishing, was friends with Ennio Morricone. So Dario studied a bit under Morricone, but didn’t feel that he had the aptitude to be a serious music composer so he started writing screenplays. But he said that he is still very much into music and sound but needs to work with others to help him realize those ideas. At the time (late 80s) he was on an Iron Maiden binge.
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Speaking of music, has anybody ever seen At Close Range ? I landed on it right at the beginning last night and, seeing young Sean Penn, decided to check it out. The opening sequence is just him driving his truck, but the accompanying score is “Live To Tell,” the Madonna song, but minus the vocals. “Wow, that’s weird, but oh yeah, they were married back then,” I thought to myself. It was a cool movie with a great cast–Walken, Mary Stuart-Masterson, Crispin Glover, Chris Penn. But the entire score was all variations on “Live To Tell.” Pretty weird, but hey, I think it’s a cool song so I was OK with it. Turns out it was originally composed by her producer to be a film score before Madonna hired him, which is why it’s much more dramatic-sounding than her usual stuff.
Another weird thing is that in the very first scene, Penn pulls his truck into a small town-square location that’s centered around a large square monument with a statue on it. I was like “Oh, it’s just like Marietta, GA or Franklin, TN.” When I was looking at the IMDB page for Madonna info, I scrolled past the location listing: Franklin TN. That scene was shot about a block from the theatre I went to every week to see Rocky Horror as a teen. Small world, huh, @SpunkyTWS?
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Hmmm… His father was a film producer, not a publisher, and it’s widely attested that he was a published film critic before he left high school, and this was what led to his screenplays. There may have been some music study in there somewhere, but I rather suspect that if Argento had studied under Morricone, he would mention it in interviews because (thanks to Goblin) music invariably comes up in his interviews.
I suspect he was bullshitting you.
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They aren’t mutually exclusive. He was in his 50s by the time he produced movies. Nowadays everybody is a publisher, maybe “entertainment journalism” was a more accurate title for that era. Anyway, he was in print media, like newspapers and magazines.
He did mention it in an interview, when he and I talked about it. He also said that he wasn’t very good, which might be why he doesn’t brag about it.
Also, his English was really bad, so I would attribute miscommunications about this stuff to that rather than bullshitting. We spoke about his father because he had just died recently and Dario depended upon him a lot, this also related to questions I had about how he started directing.
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Watched Krampus last night. It was…okay, but a bit lacking in the comedy part of horror-comedy. I was hoping for something a bit more like Gremlins, perhaps, rather than just a PG-13 horror film.
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I haven’t, but I’ve always liked that song, too. One of her better songs, I think.
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Watched this one last night… it was pretty fun. William Shatner was in it, too:
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This sounds interesting to me:
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Before it gets taken down by the copyright bots…
13 Ghosts from director William ‘there is usually a gimmick’ Castle. A fun comedy horror and child actor Charles Herbert steals this film. Also with Margret Hamilton having fun with a role as the house maid/caretaker.
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Yoink.
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Watched Spectral on the old Netflix tonight.
Very straight-to-video.
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I don’t need to watch it, I saw the trailer. 
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In the Loop
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This must be what he means
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Watched Yoga Hosers last night. I liked it, but I tend to like Smith’s work. Johnny Depp was horrible in it, literally, the worst part of the movie. But Harley Quinn Smith and Lily Rose Depp were great as the Colleens. Felt more like his older films in tone.
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We watched The Matchbreaker the other night. Pretty stupid movie - maybe it was just hard for me to identify with the main characters (so young!) - but holy hell Christina Grimmie had wonderful screen presence and a phenomenal voice! Her brutal murder this year was an incredible loss.
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How did I miss this!?
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I recall that my thought while watching that was roughly “while there is a slim possibility that I might have had the guts to try and do what Ed did, there’s no chance in hell that I’d have the brains and cunning to successfully pull it off”.
That dude is smart.
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