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Mother of Tears: The Third Mother

Schlock of the finest cult caliber

By TOM MEEK | June 4, 2008

3.0 Stars

Mother of Tears: The Third Mother

Italian horror impresario Dario Argento rounds out his “Three Mothers” witch trilogy some 30 years after he titillated gore fanatics with Suspiria, and its quick follow-up, Inferno. If you’re unfamiliar with Argento, you could think of him as a revisionist auteur akin to a young De Palma rechanneling Hitchcock, or Sergio Leone twisting the American Western into a quirky Italian import. (He helped pen Once upon a Time in the West.) In this finale, a woman gets strangled by her own entrails, a head pops like a grape in a door, and there’s a sadist orgy in a catacomb. It all takes place in Rome after an unwary art student opens an ancient urn, unleashing a Pandora’s box of misery, as people stab each other in the street and mothers toss babies from bridges. Argento’s daughter, Asia (The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things), plays the intrepid heroine who’s trying to thwart the covenant of darkness. It’s total schlock, but of the finest cult caliber. 98 minutes | Kendall Square

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