I wanted to get back to my style of 20 years ago after a long period of exploring horror and fantasy themes.

No, it’s interesting to remake a film for the contemporary audience today. I think it’s a good idea; it needs to respect the original idea. Don’t just take the title and change everything else.

You must push everything to the absolute limit or else life will be boring. People will be boring.

Each film I make changes me in some way. When I start the picture I’m one person and by the time I finish I’m another.

When I was a teenager, I read a lot of Poe.

The psychiatrists examine you and ask you about your life and work, and then they decide whether your film can be shown or not. It’s a horrible experience.

I’ve never gone into analysis. But Freud opened a door, I know.

This is my life – I want to tell stories. There is something huge inside me that pushes me to tell stories, and tell stories for an audience and everybody.

The Opera was a very cold film, a hopeless and dark film, no hope, no love.

Even in the former Soviet Union, they have good copies of my movies.

I want to do what I want when I want to do it not be dictated to by audiences.

To try and raise a budget for a film that is strictly for adults and both strong and graphic in content is not easy, especially when there is pressure to spend serious money on good...

It irritated me that my fans kept wanting me to retread old ground.

I’m appreciated more abroad. In America, Japan… and in the United Kingdom.

I remember when I was very young, I had a fever – a long rheumatic fever in bed for four months. And in the days, I stayed alone with the maid. I only had my...

Horror by definition is the emotion of pure revulsion. Terror of the same standard, is that of fearful anticipation.

If you don’t like my movies, don’t watch them.

We had many good directors – John Carpenter, Brian De Palma – but things have become polluted by business, money and bad relationships. The success of the horror genre has led to its downfall.

It’s incredible that they censor films. It’s sad.

Goblin was a new band and this was their first major work. The oldest of them was only 18. They were very talented and I wanted to give them a break.

Horror is like a serpent; always shedding its skin, always changing. And it will always come back. It can’t be hidden away like the guilty secrets we try to keep in our subconscious.

I’m very interested in portraying homosexual man and woman in my films because I’m interested in their lives and their problems.

In Italy the censor is very old and there are many judges and psychiatrists who analyse you.

‘Deep Red’ (1975) is my favorite movie. The character David Hemmings plays is very much based on my own personality. It was a very strong film, very brutal, and of course the censors were upset....

My life and career is my own adventure.

Masters of Horror

Paradise is too perfect for humanity.

In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul.

But you know, as you say, the original versions of my films are getting out there, slowly.

Films are dreams. Many, many critics say to me that my films are not good because they are too unbelievable, but this is my style. I tell stories like they are dreams. This is my...

So I haven’t thought about the critics for a long time.

I am young. I didn’t know that. But I don’t recognize myself. That’s my problem with the mirror. I see only the ugliness.

I went through a phase where I thought nostalgia was a bad thing.

Maybe when I stop making movies, I’ll understand my work better.

Every writer, to some extent, writes about himself.

For a long time, censors have been cutting my works. This makes me so sad, because many times they will tell me, ‘Television won’t like, so we have to cut, cut, cut!’

When I see a film I’ve finished, it’s like another person made it. Like another mind.

But now we have bought the film back and it will be shown in Paris in the original version for the first time in the next couple of months.

I like films to have something inside, I don’t mean a message, I mean something from the soul.

There’s nothing gratuitous about my films.

I don’t like landscapes. I like cities. Lots of cities. I like buildings. I like streets.

I first came to cinema as a passionate filmgoer, when I was a child. Then, when I was a very young man, I became a film critic precisely because of my knowledge of cinema. I...

When I was five. That’s when I started to love film.

I wanted something new, the supernatural. The witch, the sorcerer, I love this. I love the films of the witch and sorcerers and magic, it’s wonderful!

I’ve been lucky enough to have had the luxury of being able to make the picture I’ve wanted to make each time on my own terms and without compromise.

Fear has disappeared. No more fear. In Asia, it is different. They’ve discovered again the fear and the psychology of the characters. Without psychology, the horror film doesn’t exist.

I’m Dario Argento, and my style is something recognizable I think by the audience.

I make a film – and once I’ve made it, everyone comes along and says ‘Ah! This is a film that’s political, or social’ , or whatever. But I’m not telling the story that they...

I was very young, and I was on vacation with my family, and there was a retrospective of old films, and one of them was ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ with Claude Rains that was...

Young girls of 13 or 12 are great actors.