Horror has never been a genre for the squeamish and easily frightened people. For many, horror films are thrown on for an annual Halloween marathon. These people, often teenagers and young adults, always have a blanket handy to cover their eyes at the moments that grow too tense for their liking. Dario Argento, an Italian horror filmmaker who mastered the art of the Giallo film, rebutted this common practice by creating a film that forced the victim to watch the horrors happening on the screen. So often our natural response is to avert our eyes from grisly occurrences, but Argento proposed a unique concept when he eliminates his character’s ability to do so. Released in 1987, Argento’s film Opera (also called Terror at the Opera) features a young diva named Betty (Cristina Marsillach) tormented by an unknown assailant. What makes this killer different is that before each murder, he tied up Betty and taped needles under her eyelids to prevent her from closing her eyes. This forced Betty to watch the increasingly gruesome killings as the film progressed. The gore grew more intense in nature and even alluded to classic films within the genre. Argento, who deservedly earned the nickname “Master of Horror,” ensures that his film is not full of senseless killing as most 80’s slashers have. His concepts encapsulate the thrill of the horror genre, and although we may yearn to close our eyes, our minds more often than not desire to peek at the carnage on the screen. 

Poster for opera (1987)

Gaining momentum in the 1960s, the Italian Giallo reached cinemas far outside of its European productions. Their visual flair and gruesome tactics made them quick cult classics beloved by many horror genre fans. Many directors of these films became well-known to the genre’s history: Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, and as discussed in this essay, Dario Argento. These films became so influential that many 80’s horror films utilized similar gimmicks and concepts from the Italian Giallo. One notable example of this was in one of the most famous horror films Friday the 13th Part Two (1981) in which a couple is speared while ‘making love’ in a bed. This scene, shot-for-shot, occurs in Mario Bava’s 1971 Giallo A Bay of Blood. Despite being responsible for one of the most memorable kills in horror’s biggest franchise, A Bay of Blood remains a lesser-known film in horror history. Released after Giallo’s heyday, Argento’s Opera comes after his major hits such as Deep Red (1975), Suspiria (1977), and Tenebrae (1981). Despite being a late entry to the genre, it benefitted by being released at the same time that Hollywood produced sequel after sequel of horror’s greatest hits. Argento gave audiences something new and original to look forward to.

After the success of major films like The Thing (1982) and Psycho (1960), it became clear that audiences enjoyed the thrill of not knowing the identity of a killer. This whodunnit scenario that Argento emanates in many of his films creates an additional layer of suspense to the slasher and is perhaps what makes him such a prominent figure of the genre. Opera takes this scenario and runs with it in an increasingly bizarre sequence of murders. What makes Opera in particular so essential to the genre is its exploitation of the human eye. Regarded as one of the most sensitive parts of the human body, eye trauma is commonly utilized in horror films to gain quick guttural reactions from an audience. Rather than outrightly damaging the eye, Argento chooses to make the possibility of eye trauma a constant fear throughout the film. In a lengthy study of Argento’s extended works, Maitland McDonagh explains, “What distinguishes Argento’s nasty imagination is his relentless emphasis on looking long and hard. Argento has complained that he’s annoyed when people shut their eyes at the gory parts of his films, and Opera is his taunting response to the squeamish” (197). The film’s young protagonist Betty is repeatedly captured and forced to have needles taped under her eyes. Although her eyes themselves are never punctured, the audience is in constant anticipation of Betty no longer being able to keep her eyes open. Despite her lover and coworker being brutally murdered and then mutilated long after their deaths, Betty manages to keep her eyes open through the carnage. Naturally, she blinks a few times, resulting in small cuts to her eyelids. In Stefano Baschiera and Russ Hunter’s Italian Horror Cinema, they concur, “If she blinks, her eyes will be mutilated and she will be blinded, but the close-up of her eyes is shocking in ways similar to other images of brutality that we are forced to view. The threat not only being forced to gaze but to gaze helplessly at the brutal destruction of another involves the external viewer who is situated in a related position, if he or she wishes to view the gruesome events or retreat in distaste” (98). Baschiera and Russ’s examination concludes that Argento’s strategy leaves the film’s viewers in a similar situation to Betty’s. Do they look away, or continue to watch? By seeing Betty’s inability to make that decision, the audience’s natural empathy also prohibits them from closing their eyes. 

The audience gets an external view of the eyes on the screen and an internal one. Argento utilizes the camera as an eye to represent the perspectives of the killer, Betty, and even the birds throughout the film. Numerous early horror films utilized scenes from the antagonist’s point of view, for example: Black Christmas (1974) and Halloween (1978). By including the villain’s perspective and the victims, Argento enhances the cat-and-mouse chase between the two. One of the more notable perspective changes occurs when a man named Daniele Soave enter’s Betty’s apartment as an officer to watch over her. Still dealing with the effects of needles poking at her eyes, she puts in some eye drops. The camera then cuts and acts as Betty’s line of sight. The frame is blurry, with water-like drops down the edges, and this appears to be the eyesight one has after using eye drops. This perspective shows Betty not being able to see Daniele Soave’s face as he comes inside, which becomes essential later on when she questions whether it was the killer who entered her apartment. This transition again puts the audience in Betty’s place, witnessing the events through her eyes. 

But perhaps the most symbolic use of the eye occurs within the theater where the play’s opera occurs. Throughout the film, Betty’s character sings the lead role in a production of Macbeth. This production, unlike any others, utilizes real birds during its performances. The film’s opening makes the presence of these crows quite known, “The film’s first, surprisingly witty image is of a bird’s eye that fills the screen, a theatre reflected in an anamorphic curve on its convex surface” (McDonagh 198). The birds return numerous times as witnesses to the crimes committed by the killer, and even become victims themselves when some of them are mutilated. They become essential to the film’s unique conclusion, where Betty and her director Marco (Ian Charleson) set them loose in the theater to find the killer. This is done because crows infamously remember those who do them harm, a theory proven true when the camera switches to their point of view as they descend upon the madman. This swirling sequence shows the return of the crows and the theater itself. The theater utilized in the film is the Teatro Regio in Parma, Italy. This theater is ocular in shape, with the chandelier at the top making its ceiling appear similar to the shape of an eye. This recurring image concludes when the crows plummet onto Betty’s assailant and peck out his left eye. Although the most grotesque appearance of eye trauma throughout the film, the audience’s gaze remains on the screen due to the torture occurring at the same time as the killer’s reveal. Although they may wish to pull the blanket over their faces, their desire to discover the antagonist’s identity prevents them from doing so. This brilliant decision on Argento’s part helped him succeed in getting his viewers to watch the disturbing occurrences within his scenes.  Horror has never been a genre for the faint-hearted. For decades, it’s been a tool used by men wanting a girl to grab him out of fear, or to scare young people from doing something that may have fatal consequences. But, as Argento reveals in Opera, horror wants you to look at the screen and revel in its intense practical/special effects. Weeks of effort go into the goriest scenes of these films, giving Argento a valid reason to be frustrated at audiences ignoring the best parts. Returning to Italian Horror Cinema, “Dario Argento is described as a director with a personal style even by those critics who reject his films: they often reproach his presumption of taking inspiration from great foreign directors, though do not deny that he created a new, albeit despicable, trend” (211). Argento’s utilization of the eye as both a physical and mental way to connect viewers to the darkest depths of the horror genre is an effective bridge between fantasy and reality.

WORKS CITED

Argento, Dario, director. Opera. Orion Pictures, 1987.

Italian Horror Cinema, edited by Stefano Baschiera, and Russ Hunter, Edinburgh University Press, 2016.

McDonagh, Maitland. Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento, University of Minnesota Press, 2010.