Fear, Mystery and Death: Venice and Horror

‘My sister says it’s like a city in aspic. A dinner party after all the guests are gone or dead,’ the blind medium, Heather (Hilary Mason), tells architect John (Donald Sutherland), as he guides her back to her hotel in Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973). The film establishes an important template for thinking about horror in Venice. Venice itself is a character, a threat. Throughout the scenes near the church John is restoring, a large sign that reads ‘Venice in Peril’ in bold red text. Venice is a place of jeopardy, exuding unease and trepidation with its shifting geography and labyrinthine structure, possessing a wilful urge to confuse and ensnare the unwary visitor. It combines the swamp of its original lagoon setting and the petrified forest of its construction: in order to build Venice, forests in what is now Slovenia were cut down and the wood driven into mud where over time it petrified, creating the foundation on which the city now rests.