The Inferno Index (Eurotrash Horror Reborn)

 

Cosmotropia de Xam is best known for founding music collective Mater Suspiria Vision, pioneers of the witch house genre. It seems de Xam (henceforth CdX) uses the same techniques when making films as when making music: drones, backmasking, sampling, genre-hopping, heavy filters and effects, textures and the ethereal feminine, all adding up to something defiantly uncommercial – something to be experienced, not analyzed. CdX’s latest offering in this vein is a 68-minute drug trip called The Inferno Index. My sad stab at a synopsis: a woman named Lithia (Mira Kohli) walks the streets of a European city, followed by a strange woman in a blue coat. She boards a train, falls asleep, and dreams of a psychedelic red desert. Later, accompanied by the woman in blue, Lithia visits different parts of the city before ending up in a frozen void as a vampire queen with homoerotic appetites.

   

With pseudonyms derived from Rollin and Argento, it’s evident that CdX reveres the golden age of Eurohorror. The main influences seem to be Jess Franco (Kohli’s blood-streaked vampire face could be mistaken for Lina Romay) and, chiefly, Jean Rollin. The early part of The Inferno Index is especially indebted to Rollin, with the sinuous music doing what dialogue would do in a more narrative-driven film. The otherworldly desert midsection is filtered to look like rotoscope animation. The last section, the most conventional, resembles a tableau you’d see on an average Saturday night at your local fetish club, but before I could lose interest, the credits rolled. Part music video, part avant-garde mood piece, The Inferno Index will interest fans of the abovementioned Eurosleaze merchants, as well as modern provocateurs like Gaspar Noe and even Jimmy Screamerclauz. But if you don’t know what you’re getting into, make sure to bring a friend and a safe word.

 

The Inferno Index Official Facebook

Written by Cthulen, Dead Dreamer

The Inferno Index (2021, US)
Cosmotropia de Xam
3.7 / 5