Slasher season is over, but Dario Argento's 'Tenebrae' bleeds eternal

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Set us as preferred In a year when outsider horror — “Obsession,” “Backrooms,” even Ken Russell’s “The Devils” reissue — did boffo box office, add “Tenebrae” to that list of gory discoveries.The 1982 slasher flick from giallo master Dario Argento is a fan favorite in his catalog of crimson-splattered, beautifully stylized films like “Suspiria” and “Deep Red.” It was a pre-”Scream” stab at meta-horror, where a crime author visits Rome on a book tour to find a killer re-creating his murder scenes.“Tenebrae” earned some shine as featured pick on Criterion Channel this Halloween season, but its soundtrack deserved a stage of its own.Composed by Claudio Simonetti, Fabio Pignatelli and Massimo Morante (whose band Goblin was a fixture in Argento’s films), the crunchy synth-rock score has been a favorite drop in edgy disco sets (Justice sampled it on “Phantom”).“We’ve played ‘Suspiria,’ ‘Dawn of the Dead’ and ‘Deep Red,’ but we had so many requests this year to play ‘Tenebrae,’ ” Simonetti said from a call on the road where a new version of Goblin is playing the score live with the film (it hits the Alex Theatre in Glendale on Wednesday).

“It was a completely different kind of music.Dario Argento’s first films were made by Morricone and the greatest musicians in the old style with an orchestra.

So when he chose us, he said, ‘I want something new.I want a rock sound.’”Simonetti, 74, and Goblin have achieved a kind of Italian goth-unc status in the horror world, where their creeping synthesizers and delirious sound design first arrived in Argento’s films as ‘70s contemporaries of both Giorgio Moroder and John Carpenter.

“I’m a big fan of John Carpenter, and he once told me that sometimes I inspired him.I said, ‘Wow, you’re joking,’ because all o...