Deep Red, or, Butterflies, Termites, and Zebras

I’m fully prepared to acknowledge that you have to be in the right frame of mind to watch Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso, or Deep Red. I can absolutely recognize what other people see in it. I can imagine that it might’ve lived up to my high expectations if I’d watched it at a different time. I went in fully prepared to enjoy a lurid suspense thriller with all of the elements I love in Suspiria: bold colors, striking visuals, surreal and dream-like story, and absolutely phenomenal music. And at the start, Deep Red seems like it’s going to deliver. It opens in a grand theater, and the camera moves through the lobby, past a few bored Italian men who’ve stepped out for a minute, and through huge deep red curtains to reveal a packed house watching three people alone at a table on a stage. A man with the most perfect mid-70s prog rock hair is explaining how it’s established science that many species use telepathy to communicate: butterflies, termites, and zebras. But it rarely exists in…