Suspiria synopsis

Suzy (Jessica Harper) arrives at a German airport. She passes through the airport's automatic doors
and hails a taxi in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. The lights from the taxicab chillingly illuminate
the crevices between the forest trees, a flash of lightning revealing a shadowy image, perhaps a scythe
or a knife, reflected on a large tree stump. All the while, Suzy is innocently bathed in the cold
blue tones of Luciano Tovoli's glorious cinematography.

Blink and you'll miss a subliminal superimposition, reflected on the cab's security divider is the image
of a screaming face (Dario Argento's). Arriving at the dance academy, a drenched Suzy witnesses
a terrified Pat (Eva Axen) screaming at someone inside the school. Pat runs off as Suzy is told to leave
the school by a voice coming from the intercom in the school's doorway. Suzy is too frazzled to pay
much attention to Pat's cries, purposefully muted by Argento so as to leave the spectator
"in the dark" along with Suzy. By film's end, Suzy comes to discover that her recollection of
Pat's exact words (she specifically recalls "secret" and "irises") will lead to her salvation.

Riding back into the city, Suzy watches as a frightened Pat runs through the Black Forest. Pat stays
the night with a friend, where she is seemingly lulled to the window and in a truly frightening scene,
an unseen figure grabs her head and force's her face through the glass. Pat is then stabbed several times,
hung from a telephone wire and violently thrust through the stained glass ceiling of the apartment
complex, the falling glass, in turn, slices Pat's friend to death.

The next day Suzy returns to the school, meeting the faculty and her fellow students. With the
exception of Sara (Stefania Casini), all the girls are petty and cruel. The administrators Madame Blanc
(Joan Bennett) and the firm Miss Tanner (Alida Valli) are cold and suspiciously secretive.

Traps, it seems have been set for those who should go near or stumble upon the school's true meaning
and hidden passages, a nosy Sara meets her grim demise inside a room filled with barbed wire.
After her friend's demise, Suzy is forced to crack the code of "secret/irises," imprinted on the walls
of Madame Blanc's flowery chamber room, and try to get out of the dance academy alive.