April 16: Get Me Another — A sequel.

I love Dario Argento. Love his movies. Have his book. A coffee mug from his shop Profundo Russo is in my office. I’ve watched all of his films so many times I can act them out without a script.

But man, Mother of Tears.

Also known as La Terza (The Third Mother); Mater Lachrymarum, The Third Mother and Mother of Tears: The Third Mother, this is the third movie in the cycle of The Three Mothers. The Three Mothers come from “Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow”, a section of Thomas de Quincey’s Suspiria de Profundis. Just as there are three Fates and Graces, there are also three Sorrows: Mater Lachrymarum (Our Lady of Tears), Mater Suspiriorum (Our Lady of Sighs) and Mater Tenebrarum (Our Lady of Darkness).

Starting with Suspiria and continuing with Inferno, these are the stories of the three ancient witches who are close to ruling our world. At the beginning of the 11th century, they started of witchcraft as they rose from the Black Sea, making their way across countries, making money and gaining power as they kill everyone around them.

In the late 19th century, the Three Mothers had E. Varelli, an Italian architect based in London, design and construct three buildings for them to conduct their magic. The architect learned too late that they were evil and the places he made have become so corrupted by their evil that the very land around them is cursed.

The first of the mothers is Mater Suspiriorum, the Mother of Sighs, the Black Queen Helena Markos of Suspiria. After writing a series of books on the dark occult arts, Markos started the Tanz Akademie outside the Black Forest. As her power and wealth increased, the locals began to suspect her, so she faked her own death in a fire and passed control to the dance school to her greatest student, who was also Helena Markos.

The second mother is Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness, is the youngest and cruelest of the Three Mothers and the main antagonist in Inferno. Her home is in New York City where she keeps E. Varelli as her slave.

This brings us to The Mother of Tears, as the other two Mothers have died as their homes burned. Before Suspiria, Elisa Mandy (Daria Nicolodi) battles Markos, who killed her and her husband. This left Mater Suspiriorum “a shell of her former self.” This movie is about Elisa’s daughter Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento) and her battles with Mater Lachrymarum in Rome.

Mater Lachrymarum, the Mother of Tears, Palazzo Varelli.is the most beautiful and powerful of the Three Mothers. We first saw her in Inferno as she attempted to use her magic on Mark Elliot as he studied music in Rome.

Directed and written by Dario Argento (along with Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch), this begins with the Catholic Church finding a magical runic that increases the powers of Mater Lachrymarum. It is sent to the Museum of Ancient Art in Rome, where Sarah (Asia Argento) and her boyfriend Michael Pierce (Adam James) work. Sarah discovers the tunic, along with Giselle (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) when they are attacked by the followers of the Third Mother. Sarah only survives thanks to a voice in her head.

Mass suicides, murder and insanity take over Rome, as Michael is killed, his son is eaten by witches and the coven plans on doing the same to Sarah. After being followed by Detective Enzo Marchi (Cristian Solimeno), Sarah learns that she has power and the guidance of her mother, which helps her to bring the entire plan and building down on the final of the Three Mothers.

Why did this movie take so long to be made? In 1984, Nicolodi claimed that she are Argento had written a script. That script was not used and neither was a 2004 script that Dario wrote. When the movie was finally made, its distributor, Medusa Film, asked for the film’s sex and violence to be edited.

Critics were not kind — they never are to Argento — and he said, “…the critics don’t understand very well. But critics are not important – absolutely not important. Because now audiences don’t believe anymore in critics. Many years ago critics wrote long articles about films. Now in seven lines they are finished: ‘The story is this. The actor is this. The color is good.””

I’m honestly not sure how I feel about this movie. Sure, it goes for it and goes even further. But nearly everything Argento has made since, well, forever feels like it doesn’t have his heart in it. It doesn’t mean that I always hate what I watch but it makes me sad. The inventive camera work, the shock of what will happen next, the look and feel are gone, replaced by something else. As to whether or not that’s good, well…it’s different. It’s something I think about all the time.

To be honest, I kind of prefer Luigi Cozzi’s The Black Cat, which is an unofficial sequel to Suspiria and Inferno about a director making his own sequel to those movies and being cursed by the actual witches. It’s also a total mess but it feels like Cozzi is in love with making it which is what I look for when I need to see something go off the rails.

You can watch this on Tubi.