Did you know that Dario Argento’s classic Suspiria was originally intended to feature children as the girls attending the ballet school? This would have made for a much different, though likely still awesome movie. I set out to write specifically about this interesting piece trivia, but in my research, I came across some fantastic artwork that imagines Suspiria as an old school children’s book-and-record set. If you grew up in the 80s, you probably remember these.

So first off, let’s check that out. Then we’ll get to the real Suspiria trivia down below.

The artwork comes from The Collinsport Historical Society’s Cousin Barnabas, who calls it a “Photoshop experiment” created on a whim. It was first posted back in April.

Unfortunately there aren’t actually 24 pages as mentioned on the cover, but it’s still an an awesome little project as far as I’m concerned.

Now for the actual story.

Our own John Squires recently wrote about his trip to haunt convention Haunt Faire, where he saw Suspiria’s Barbara Magnolfi (she played Olga) speak about working on the film.

John recalled, “Magnolfi talked about working with Dario Argento, remarking that the film was originally going to star children – and Argento, she said, instructed her to basically act like a child would.”

This isn’t a completely unknown fact. It’s been mentioned here and there, but I’m not sure the knowledge is incredibly common among the more casual fans of the film. The IMdb trivia section for the film gets into it a little:

Director Dario Argento‘s original idea was that the ballet school would accommodate young girls not older than 12. However, the studio and producer Salvatore Argento (his father) denied his request because a film this violent involving children would almost certainly be banned. Dario raised the age limit of the girls to 20 but didn’t rewrite the script, hence the naiveté of the characters and the occasionally childlike dialogue. He also put all the doorknobs at about the same height as the actress’ heads, so they would have to raise their arms in order to open the doors, just like children.

According to 366WeirdMovies.com, Argento intended for the girls to be in the 8 to 10-year-old range.

Here’s an interview in which Magnolfi talks about it a little more: 

[iframe id=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/eMDeDB80xoM”]

She says, “He wanted all of us to play  the roles in a childish way because Suspiria was intended as a fairy tale at the beginning, and obviously you couldn’t do a horror fairy tale, so you know, he got people that were older, but he still wanted us to play in a childish way, so I approached  my character in a childish way.”

The film’s Wikipedia page says:

Scriptwriter Daria Nicolodi stated that Suspiria‘s inspiration came from a tale her grandmother told her as a young child about a real life experience she had in an acting academy where she discovered “the teachers were teaching arts, but also black magic.” This story was later confirmed by Argento to have been made up.

It’s hard to argue with the decision to put adults in the characters’ roles, and I don’t think many would argue that the film worked out pretty well in the end, but at the same time, you have to wonder if it would have been even more terrifying had we seen 8 to 10-year-olds in danger from the notorious ballet school witches.

There’s been talk about both a cinematic remake of the film and a television series. It would be interesting to see them play with that concept in either, but that most likely won’t happen. Hell, who knows if these projects will happen at all? A Suspiria remake has been rumored at various times for years.

Children’s Book-and-Record Set Art from  www.collinsporthistoricalsociety.com