on the literary origin of tropes in the work of dario argento (and their subsequent influence)

 in the argento/ soavi (1989) horror film ' the church' there's a reference to a book 'the mystery of cathedrals' by fulcanelli. it's a plot of the type  - the book that was lost is found (chaos ensues). trusting to luck horsemouth started searching. there was a fulcanelli a noted would-be alchemist from the 20 ies and 30ies, there was speculation about his real identity, beyond the title page horsemouth was unable to discover more of the contents of the book. 

atually that's not true - he seems to have just found a pdf of the whole thing.  excepting the first page of the introduction (which seems a strange omission). 

it seems to echo the chapter in victor hugo's notre-dame de paris where we are given an occult tour of the meanings of the church, its monuments and decorations. 

the book is given as a gift by the male protagonist to the female protagonist, she seems to quote from it at some point. it doesn't end well for them. the church in the film has been built over the graveyard of devil worshipers exterminated by the teutonic knights and as is usual in these things what is buried comes to light again (to tell you any more would be to give the plot away, such as it is). 

this follows on from horsemouth's watching of the inferno the second of the trilogy the three mothers. this contains a fictitious book - the book the three mothers  by varelli (the architect of their three houses). here it is  the names (if not the roles) of the three mothers are lifted from the levana and our ladies of sorrow section of thomas de quincey's suspiria de profundis. 

horsemouth's memory is so poor these days it affords him the enjoyment of watching movies over as if they were new. 

following on from the church he started watching profundo rosso (deep red) and here it is more the influence of argento that horsemouth noticed - in the first scene (a murder) on john carpenter's halloween then, in the second scene, a telepathy demonstration that goes wrong, on david cronenberg's scanners. 

horsemouth has also been enjoying joan didion's on keeping a notebook.

'the impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way any compulsion tries to justify itself...

'keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth by some presentiment of loss.'