Tenebrae

Argento's last great giallo, and the one where he answers his critics inside the film. A writer of violent thrillers arrives in Rome to promote a book and finds somebody murdering people using it as a manual. Argento had been accused of misogyny for a decade and made a film about a novelist accused of exactly that.

The reason to watch it is a single shot. Roughly an hour in, the camera leaves the actors and climbs the outside of a house, over the roof, down the far side and in through a window, in one unbroken crane move lasting about two and a half minutes. It required a purpose-built rig called the Louma crane and it has no narrative function whatsoever.

The lighting is the other surprise: after the gel-soaked Suspiria he shot this flat, white and modern, and the effect is colder than any of the darkness.

Passed uncut in the UK in 2003, having been one of the 39 successfully prosecuted.