This documentary about the great master of European horror and fantastic films offers an immersive exploration into the life and legacy of the director of Suspiria. Using the writing process of his next film as a starting point, Dario Argento Panico immerses us in the mind of the Italian genius, and offers testimonials from other filmmakers who love his work, all key names in today's world of cinema including Gaspar Noé and Guillermo Del Toro.
Dario Argento was born on September 7, 1940, in Rome, Italy, the first-born son of famed Italian producer Salvatore Argento and Brazilian fashion model Elda Luxardo. Argento recalls getting his ideas for filmmaking from his close-knit family from Italian folk tales told by his parents and other family members, including an aunt who told him frighting bedtime stories. Argento based most of his thriller movies on childhood trauma, yet his own--according to him--was a normal one. Along with tales spun by his aunt, Argento was impressed by stories from The Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen and Edgar Allan Poe. Argento started his career writing for various film journal magazines while still in his teens attending a Catholic high school. After graduation, instead of going to college, Argento took a job as a columnist for the Rome daily newspaper "Paese Sera". Inspired by the movies, he later found work as a screenwriter and wrote several screenplays for a number of films, but the most important were his western collaborations, which included Cimitero senza croci (1969) and the Sergio Leone masterpiece C'era una volta il West (1968). He is known in italy as Master of Horror.