Chicagoans Found A Rare, 35mm Print Of 'Suspiria' & It's Coming To The Big Screen

By Stephen Gossett in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 21, 2017 10:20PM

'Suspiria' / IMDB

The cult horror classic Suspiria is back on cinephiles' minds (honestly it's never far) thanks to the Tilda Swinton-starring remake due out this year, but there's even more exciting news related to Dario Argento's original giallo masterpiece. A rare, 35mm, uncut Italian print of the 1977 original was just unearthed, courtesy of our city's very own Chicago Cinema Society.

The story begins almost like a horror flick itself: it was found inside storage at an old, shuttered cinema in Italy, where it had been untouched since right around the film's original release.

Chicago Cinema Society notes, "After a brief inspection to assess the overall condition of the print, it appears as if it had only been screened a handful of times at most. The print is in excellent physical condition with no substantial wear, uncut heads and tails, minimal fading and no vinegar syndrome."

As fans know, there are a lot of suboptimal, truncated versions of Suspiria floating around out there. This is the good stuff.

"Once we had the print in our film archive, we then made a very careful inspection to determine which version of Suspiria we had obtained," Chicago Cinema Society wrote. "We were stunned to find that the print is a completely uncut 6 reel print with a run time of 98 minutes in Italian language."

The major find will be screened at several theaters across the country over the coming year, including a TBD date at the Music Box in the fall.

If you've never seen Suspiria—a candy-colored, spectacularly garish, Goblin-soundtracked chronicle of murder at an exclusive German ballet academy—let this be your intro.

The local standout exhibition crew also uploaded some samples of the print to give a taste. Keep in mind, they're recordings of projections, so there's some screen flicker. Don't let that dull the excitement.