Rose Elliot (Irene Miracle) is a young woman living in an old building in New York City. Next door is an antique business run by a rather nasty and moody man named Kazanian (Sacha Pitoeff). Rose purchases a book from the antiquarian called “The Three Mothers”. The book was supposedly written by an alchemist named Varelli. The book talks about three evil sisters who rule the world with sorrow, tears, and darkness. They live in different homes that were built for them by Varelli. The sisters are named, Mater Suspiriorum, the Mother of Sighs, who lives in Germany, Mater Lachrymarum, the Mother of Tears, who lives in Rome, and Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness, who lives in New York. Rose believes that she lives in Mater Tenebrarum’s building. While trying to prove it, Rose is murdered.
Before she is killed, Rose sends her brother Mark (Leigh McCloskey) a letter asking him to visit. Mark is attending college in Rome. Mark accidentally leaves the letter in one of his classes. The letter is found by his friend Sara (Eleonora Giorgi). Sara goes to the library and finds a copy of the book mentioned in Rose’s letter. Sara ends up lost in the bowels of the library and comes upon a room filled with bubbling cauldrons and a mysterious figure standing over one of the cauldrons. Sara is attacked but escapes. When she arrives home, she phones Mark in a panic asking him to come over. Sara is murdered.
Mark finds part of Rose’s letter in Sara’s apartment. Mark then tries to contact Rose, but the phone call cuts out before they finish their conversation. He rushes to New York City but learns from her neighbor, Countess Elise De Longvalle (Daria Nicolodi), that Rose has gone missing. Mark finds himself surrounded by strange people and events. As the murders continue, Mark begins to believe that the story of The Three Mothers is based in fact and that there is an evil presence in the building that is killing everyone it encounters. Using the clues left in Rose’s letter, Mark finds a secret crawl space under the floors of the apartment building. Mark enters the crawl space.
“Inferno” was released in 1980 and was directed by Dario Argento. It is an Italian slasher, horror film and a giallo. There were three Dario Argento films in what would become the “Three Mothers” trilogy. The other two films were “Suspiria” 1977 and “Mother of Tears” 2007.
Gialli films run the gambit of psychological thrillers, slashers, murder mysteries and horror. The sets are a character themselves. Everybody has a different way to die. Sort of like the “Final Destination” films.
Cats play an important role in the film. They are harbingers of death and evil as well as victims of cruelty. In one scene, Kazanian puts some stray cats in a burlap bag and drowns them in Central Park Lake. The bag o’ cats actually contained a mechanical devise that moved around, giving the impression that there were real cats in the burlap bag.
The musical score was composed and performed by Keith Emerson. Boomers may recognize him as part of the band “Emerson, Lake, and Palmer”. All of the murderer's hands in the movie were Dario Argento's.
There were three keys to identifying the houses that held the poisonous secrets of the three mothers, or sisters. The first was the way the area smelled; the second key is hidden in the cellars beneath the houses. There you will find the picture and the name of the sister that owns that house, the third key can be found under the soles of the shoes.
It really didn’t make a lot of sense, but Dario Argento’s films are mostly about splash and not necessarily substance. Yes, they do have a plot. They are usually rather intricate, and this one does have quite a bit going on, but the plot is not the draw of the film, the horror is. Here the special effects are enhanced due to assistance from Mario Bava.