("Four Flies On Black Velvet"), both backed by his father Salvatore.
After "The Bird With the Crystal Plumage" became an international hit,
Argento followed up with two more thrillers,
The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971),
starring
'Karl Madlen' (qv" and 'James Fransiscus',
and
Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)
("Four Flies On Black Velvet"), both backed by his father Salvatore.
Argento then directed the TV drama
Testimone oculare (1973)
and the historical TV drama
The Five Days (1973). He
then went back to directing so-called "giallo" thrillers, starting with
Deep Red (1975), a violent
mystery-thriller starring
David Hemmings that inspired a
number of international directors in the thriller-horror genre. His
next work was Suspiria (1977), a surreal
horror film about a witch's coven that was inspired by the Gothic fairy
tales of the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Anderson, which he also
wrote in collaboration with his girlfriend, screenwriter/actress
Daria Nicolodi, who acted in "Profondo
Rosso" ("Deep Red") and most of Argento's films from then to the late
1980s. Argento advanced the unfinished trilogy with
Inferno (1980), before returning to the
"giallo" genre with the gory
Tenebrae (1982), and then with the
haunting Phenomena (1985).