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THE MOTHER OF TEARS
Directed by Dario Argento
Written by Argento, Jace Anderson & Adam Gierasch
Produced by Dario & Claudio Argento
Director of Photography, Frederic Fasano
Edited by Walter Fasano
Music by Claudio Simonetti
Released by Myriad Picture/The Weinstein Company
Italy/USA. 98 min. Not Rated
With Asia Argento, Cristian Solimeno, Adam James, Moran Atias, Valeria Cavalli, Philippe Leroy, Daria Nicolodi, Coralina Cataldi Tassoni & Udo Kier

After a wait of 27 years, the third film in Italian horror maestro Dario Argento's “Three Mothers” trilogy, The Mother of Tears arrives – a throwback to the director's glory days as a whacked-out knock-off of Hitchcock working during the flood of Italian horror of the ‘70s and ‘80s. That is, when it's at its technical best. (The other two films are the incredibly violent and visually flamboyant Suspiria and Inferno.)

The director's daughter, Asia Argento, plays Sarah Mandy, an art student working in a museum in Rome who comes into possession of an old, sacred urn, which opened by her clumsy assistant, summons the return of Mater Lacrimarum (Moran Atias), the last of three powerful witches who have been spreading death and chaos for centuries. This, in turn, makes Rome a total nightmare of robberies, murders, rapes, and lots of witches arriving for a big ceremony. As Mandy is targeted for extermination by the witches, she has to come to terms with her own supernatural powers passed down by her mother (played by the actress's real-life mother, Daria Nicolodi), which she uses to stop Lacrimarum at any cost.

In case this is not totally clear, don't fret. Practically all of Argento's fare, from Deep Red to Suspiria and especially Phenomena, are tough cookies to crack plot-wise. This isn't to say that Argento doesn’t offer obvious expositional points at times. (When Mandy is about to enter the catacombs, which has a sign above saying it's the catacombs, she says, "These are the catacombs!").

Those not used to Argento's methods of scaring the pants off a crowd with intense shots of gore, extended sequences of maintained, dolly-tracked suspense, and over-the-top flights of fancy coupled with the inane exposition may be out of the loop completely. But for those who know the man's methods of madness, it's a lot of delirious, campy fun, with shots of bodies and throats and heads dismembered and wounds punctured in places that cannot be printed here, and even a cool walk-on part from cult star Udo Kier as a sick priest.

As long as you don't go looking for quality acting from most of the cast (aside from Asia, the only noteworthy presence is a monkey) or memorable music (the one thing sorely missing from the classic Argento formula are his collaborators Goblin), it serves up the goods for fans of hardcore, X-rated Italian horror like few others this decade. To put it another way, this was the first time at a press screening where I have seen a fellow critic jump up in his seat in total shock and panic from a simple "boo" scare from a monster hiding behind a bed. Jack Gattanella
June 6, 2008