Inglorious Baguettes

Food: (Drink)

Halloween Cocktail #2: Blood & Wine

“Deep Red” deserves a pairing that matches its titular color, and so for this film, provided by PunchBowl.com, I have chosen a “Delicious Blood Red Halloween Cocktail Recipe” made of Champagne or Sparkling Wine and Pomegranate.

“Ingredients:

1.5 ounces of pomegranate juice
3 ounces of champagne or sparkling wine
pomegranate seeds
Directions:

Combine 1.5 ounces of pomegranate juice with 3 ounces of champagne or sparkling wine. For a fun little touch, sprinkle a few pomegranate seeds into the bottom of each glass before serving the bloody drink.

Sherry Cocktail Recipe

Ingredients:

1 ounce of sherry
1 ounce of brandy
½ ounce of grenadine
¼ ounce of fresh lemon juice
¼ ounce of cherry liqueur
1 orange twist
1 cherry
Directions:

Put ice in a cocktail shaker and pour in the sherry, brandy, lemon juice, grenadine, and cherry liqueur. Shake the shaker and pour the mixture into a rocks glass with ice. Include the cherry and orange twist. Enjoy your red Halloween cocktail!

Serve these individual red cocktail drinks in fancy Halloween glasses! Enjoy the end result of the red drink recipes: a tasty, spooky colored cocktail that’s sure to impress your family and friends this Halloween. Bloody brilliant!”

Source: https://www.punchbowl.com/p/blood-red-halloween-cocktail-recipe

Halloween Italian Horror Film Series #2:

“Deep Red” (1975) directed by Dario Argento, is also known as “The Hatchet Murders.” This masterclass in gory filmmaking follows a pianist, Marcus Daly (David Hemmings), after he witnesses the murder of a woman in his apartment building and decides to start pursuing an investigation into the obscured killer. The electronic score by Goblin energizes the films most intense moments and the cinematography by Luigi Kuveiller delivers iconic cinematic shots of some of the more deranged sequences. The use of shadows and light in this movie is stunning, helped by thoughtful production design (by Giuseppe Bassan). “Deep Red” is a thrilling mystery, chalked full of horror and slasher gore.

Created 10 years prior to the first pick of the series, “Phenomena,” this film has a more tightly crafted script and a cleaner execution than the latter. Starting out in a quiet living room, we see a silhouetted figure stab another, and a knife falls to the ground beside the foot of a child. Fast forward twenty years, we find ourselves in an ornate theater where what seems to be a conference taking place. Leading the event is a psychic medium Helga Ulmann (Macha Méril) who begins to experience a quick and powerful vision, where she exclaims that she can see the “twisted, perverted, murderous” thoughts of someone in the audience, and later tells her comrade, Professor Giordani, that she believes she will be able to identify said person in time. This solidifies her fate, as a shadowy onlooker hears this, and later that evening, she is violently murdered in her apartment by a black-gloved character. When our lead Marcus Daly witnesses this disturbing sight, a reporter, Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi), captures his photograph and identifies him publicly as the singular eye witnesses, immediately putting a target on his back. As the murderous being trails Daly, Daly commits to an investigation to find the killer, and the double sided search for one another begins.

With a myriad of various characters and convoluted plots overlap, it is the type of the film that deserves ones full attention. The film follows a classic murder mystery formula, but the full fledged carnage that is featured throughout is not for the faint of heart. For example, co-writer Bernardino Zapponi said the inspiration for the murder scenes came from him and Argento thinking of painful injuries to which the audience could relate, as the pain of being stabbed or shot is outside the experience of most viewers. Each murder sequence feels visceral and nauseating.

“Deep Red” is lesser known in the landscape of classic horror films, but is just as well-revered today as it was then (maintaining a 96% on the popular aggregate critic website, Rotten Tomatoes). It has also been referenced as the inspiration behind horror flicks that followed, such as David Cronenberg’s “Scanners” (1981) and Rick Rosenthal’s “Halloween II” (1981). With memorable visuals (including some dolls that could inspire quite the Halloween party decor), and a haunting final scene, “Deep Red” is a Hitchcockian slasher film that will leave brave viewers trembling in their seats.