last weekend i found a four dollar copy of suspiria at the flea-market.
i had never seen it but heard alot about it.suposedly the ill-fated 2004 version of d.s. was stylistically inspired by it.plus it featured joan bennett so i took it.
the person i bought it from warned me not to watch it alone because it was so scary.now i didn't find it all that scary but loved the style and mood of it.the super-saturated color palette and musical score gave it a very distinctive feeling.and the sets and locations were eerily beautiful.
joan bennett didn't have as much presence in it as thought she would.she was almost a cameo.but i did think she had aged alot since d.s. and the movie was filmed only a few years after d.s. left the air.they revived liz's beehive hairdo for the film which was a nice touch.
according to the bennetts,an acting family the reviews for joan were not kind(one critic likened her to a "wax-work princess margaret" and another "a programmed grand-mother doll"). 
I was interested to see this post because I just finished watching Argento's "Profondo Rosso" ("Deep Red"), which is sometimes said to be his masterpiece (although the same has been said of "Suspiria," I believe).
I've now seen three of Argento's films, and "Deep Red" is definitely far scarier than "Suspiria," in a nail-biting suspense way, whereas as "Suspira" is probably more intriguing than frightening. Joan Bennett did seem like she was just reciting lines, like she hadn't spent much time preparing for the role, though she was still fun to watch. "Suspiria" definitely isn't the high point of her acting. I've also seen "Scarlet Street" in the past year, and she gave a top-notch performance in that film, probably 50 years earlier. Bennett's performance wasn't the only subpar performance in "Suspiria," in my opinion (remember the outdoor scene where the actor is obviously reading cue cards?). Performances are far better in both "Inferno" and "Deep Red," with those in the latter being especially outstanding, in my view ... there's really not a weak link, from Daria Nicolodi and David Hemmings down to the smallest parts (which prove to be more significant in the film than one first realizes).
I am very discomfitted by the in-your-face deaths in Argento's movies, but his films are original, unique, and are an experience unlike any other. I actually like "Inferno" better, in which the dream/nightmare logic is more readily apparent.
"Deep Red" takes an old-fashioned type of murder mystery storyline and gives it a complete makeover visually and in its overall treatment. I really like the stylization of his films, and "Deep Red" is even more stylized than "Suspira." For example, he is creating artificial or hyperrealistic sets, where the people in the background are frozen like mannequins. I think he may be taking a cue from Hitchcock but going with it to an extreme that would never be acceptable in a Hollywood studio film.
Although the music in the films is similarly unique, like Gothick says, that aspect can get on my nerves. But then Argento would say that every aspect of his films is designed to get under the viewer's skin.
