Three creepy classics

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Les Diaboliques

(1954, dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot).

Clouzot’s influential masterpiece found horror not in crumbling Gothic ruins but in the most banal and everyday environments. An austere bathroom is the setting for the central “murder”, a detail noted by a certain Mr Hitchcock.

Inferno

(1980, dir. Dario Argento)

A sequel, of sorts, to Argento’s smash hit Suspiria, and perhaps the most eye-poppingly beautiful of Italian horrors. Forget the plot. This is horror as lurid fever dream. Utterly bewitching.

The Beyond

(1981. dir. Lucio Fulci) If Bava and Argento were Italian horror’s feted darlings, then Fulci was its disreputable king of gore. Derided as a ‘video nasty’ on its release, The Beyond has seen its stock dramatically rise in recent years. A surreal and deranged classic.