La terza madre

Plot synopsis:
The film begins with members of the Catholic Church digging up the body of a 19th-century church official, whose casket has a box-shaped urn chained to it. Inside the box they discover artifacts belonging to Mater Lachrymarum (Moran Atias), the last surviving member of the Three Mothers; an ancient trio of powerful black witches. In particular, the box contains a magic cloak that, when worn by Mater Lachrymarum, increases her powers significantly.
The urn is shipped to the Museum of Ancient Art in Rome where Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento), an American studying art restoration, works. Sarah is dating the curator Michael Pierce, a single father who is away from the museum that night. With help from the assistant curator, Sarah opens the box and finds the cloak, a dagger, and three statues representing the three witches. Sending Sarah to her office to retrieve tools to help her translate the text on the artifacts, the curator is promptly attacked by the demonic agents of Mater Lachrymarum. Sarah arrives too late to save her boss (who is being disembowelled by the monsters) and starts to flee the museum. Unfortunately, she is pursued by Mater Lachrymarum's familiar (a baboon) and is only able to escape when a disembodied voice magically throws open a series of locked doors keeping her trapped inside the museum. Sarah tells the police what happened as she spends the night with Michael and his son. Michael visits the Cardinal who sent him the urn only to find out that, shortly after mailing the urn to him, he had a severe stroke and is now in a coma. An assistant of the priest gives Michael a piece of paper, which the Cardinal was writing on before collapsing. On it is scrawled the name "Mater Lachrymarum". As he leaves the hospital, a pair of witches observe Michael leaving the building.
Back in Rome, chaos descends as a wave of mass suicides, murder, and violence engulfs the city. Sarah continues her own research only to be summoned by Michael to his apartment. The witches have kidnapped his young son and won't return the boy to him unless he stops his investigation. Sarah begs him to call the police (who are tailing Sarah, ever since the murder at the museum) but Michael refuses to and instead opts to visit a local priest who is a trained exorcist. This goes badly for Michael; the two witches see him and he is soon captured and murdered, along with his son, whose body is cannibalized by the rapidly expanding coven. However, before he is killed, Michael calls Sarah and begs for her to come and help him. As she makes her way through a crowded train station, Sarah is spotted by a gang of witches who, like so many other witches, have arrived in Rome in order to pledge their loyalty to Mater Lachrymarum. Pursued by the witches and the police, the disembodied voice from before instructs Sarah on how to magically make herself invisible. She uses this to avoid the police detective, though she is forced to kill a witch, Katerina, who catches and corners her on the train.
At the priest's home, Sarah meets Marta, a fellow white witch and friend of Sarah's deceased mother. Realizing that Sarah's mother is the voice guiding her, Marta reveals details to Sarah about her parents. Her mother was a powerful white witch who dared to challenge and severely wound Mater Suspiriorum, the eldest and wisest of the Three Mothers. In response to this, Suspiriorum caused the fatal car crash that killed Sarah's parents. Though Mater Suspiriorum and her sister Mater Tenebrarum are now dead, their sibling Mater Lachrymarum has emerged from the shadows to bring about the second age of magic, with the fall of Rome as her coming out party. They talk to the priest, only for him to be killed before he can give the two a copy of a book that would explain Mater Lachrymarum's backstory to them by a patient of his. Escaping back to the city, Sarah goes to her own home but finds Mater Lachrymarum's goons waiting for her. She heads to Marta's house, but once again Mater Lachrymarum's minions strike and Marta and her lesbian lover are murdered. Fleeing, Sarah spots Michael, who takes her back to his apartment. Unfortunately, Sarah soon realizes that Michael is dead and that Mater Lachrymarum is animating his body in an attempt to kill her. As she burns her lover's still-animate body, the ghost of her mother intervenes one final time to grab Michael and banish him (and possibly herself) to Hell.
Sarah locates a powerful alchemist, who Marta mentioned as her only hope to learn how to fight Mater Lachrymarum. After being briefly paralyzed by the alchemist (so that he could perform a test on her to see if she was a white witch or an evil witch), the alchemist gives Sarah the only help he has in locating Mater Lachrymarum's dwelling. Sarah is given a copy of "The Three Mothers" to read, and from this (and from following a group of witches) Sarah finds Mater Lachrymarum's lair; a now run-down and disrepaired mansion. At this point, she is joined by one of the police detectives hunting her and the two go into the catacombs to find Mater Lachrymarum. However, the two become separated, and the detective is tortured alongside the alchemist and his assistant, who dies after his arm is chopped off by one of Mater Lachrymarum's minions. Sarah is caught and brought before Mater Lachrymarum, who offers Sarah up to her cannibal followers. Sarah, having healed the detective's wounds, uses a spear to pull the cloak off Mater Lachrymarum and tosses it into a nearby fire. This causes the mansion to collapse as a pillar falls and impales Mater Lachrymarum. With the Mother's followers crushed as the caves collapse, Sarah and the detective laugh in horror and shock as they reach the surface, as they realize that the threat of the Three Mothers has been defeated once and for all.

Tags: cruelty, murder, paranormal, cult, violence, good versus evil, psychedelic, revenge, sadist

Review:
The soundtrack from Keith Emerson is probably even better than the movie itself.Anyways...Argento decided to hold off from finishing off the trilogy, and ended up holding off for 30 YEARS..., so finally in 2007 he decided it was time to create the finale, The Mother of Tears.What can I say?
An ancient urn is found on a Cemetery outside Rome.At the museum art student Sarah Mandy(Asia Argento)& Gisella Mares(Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) opens it and unleashes the powerful witch Mater Lacrimarum.Murders,rapes and suicides goes like a plague all over the city.Its the start of the final installment in Dario Argento's Three Mother trilogy.First one Suspiria is from 1977 and second one is Inferno from year 1980.Both Suspiria and Inferno is two of my best horror films of all time so I expected a lot from this one.And I must say I am not disappointed.
Not as colorfully as the other two classics but anyhow a good ending on the Three Mothers trilogy.Acting was OK but by far not excellent.Some of the dialog is a bit silly but hey its an Argento movie.Never been his strong side.Asia Argento does her part good.Music score by Claudio Simonetti is excellent and fits this film fine.The film is full of gore&violence and it reminds me of horror films from Italy in the seventies and early eighties.All shown in bloody detail.One of Dario Argento's most violent films ever.Some CGI-effects looks a bit cheap,but mostly the special- effects are very good.La Terza Madre is better than most horror films coming out these days.Thank you Dario,Asia and all the others involved in the film.I had a good time and already looking forward for next Argento film named Giallo.I give it 9/10..
Sarah Mandy,an American studying art restoration at the Museum of Ancient Art in Rome,examines an urn found at an ancient,decrepit grave near Viterbo.Bound within are the relics of a witch known as the Mother of Tears,Mater Lachrymarum.Breaking the seal heralds the return of the beautiful yet malefic sorceress' powers and Rome is plunged into chaos.A wave of suicides and crime sweeps over Italy's capital as witches congregate to pay homage to their reborn queen.Sarah must eventually discover her latent supernatural powers with the help of her deceased mother and confront Lachrymarum at the opulent Palazzo Varelli."The Third Mother" actually bears very little resemblance to "Suspiria" or "Inferno".The film is not as beautiful as the most famous Argento's works.The gore is pretty extreme and some killings are extremely vicious and bloody as hell."La Terza Madre" feels more like a Fulci film in so far that the narrative is only a vehicle to the gore scenes.Unfortunately some scenes are downright terrible with the use of awful CGI and the climax is weak and disappointing.Still I quite enjoyed this film and you should too if you are a fan of earlier works of Italian maestro..
Gifted with an excellent soundtrack, it's one of the best new horror movies I've seen recently and worthy of the name Dario Argento.A few things I liked less, though: First, the police men were portrayed totally silly.
With the exception of Sleepless, Argento hasn't made a really great film since Opera in 1987, and while I wouldn't quite call the final instalment of the 'Three Mothers' series a return to form, it's certainly a lot better than the majority of his modern movies.
It soon becomes apparent that the only person who can stop the evil from enveloping the world is Sarah Mandy, who has a few supernatural powers of her own...As mentioned, it's the change in style that is the biggest problem with this film for me and the thing that really means it doesn't quite live up to the previous two instalments, but what the film lacks in atmosphere, Argento makes up for in gore (and then some) and it's clear that the great director has lost none of his eye for a brutal and stylish death scene.
Oh yeah, and Udo Kier is here again (but in a new role).Argento expert James Gracey has some criticisms, saying, "The film lacks the glowing and lurid kaleidoscopic look of Suspiria and Inferno, and it resembles Argento's more recent output, favoring a stylish neo-realism as opposed to baroque surrealism." When I spoke to writer Adam Gierasch, he made a similar complaint: he felt that Argento did not use color as much as he should have, focusing more on his new, glossy approach.Gracey points out that the "fact that public transport is still running while Rome self-destructs is a testament to Argento's emphasis on stylistic flair over logical narrative." This is nothing unusual to Italian horror fans.The witches "resemble heavily made-up Goths from the eighties on a rowdy girl's night out," he says, and on this I must agree.
It took me several viewings of Argento's final film in his Three Mothers trilogy before I finally arrived at a sure, albeit ambivalent, conclusion.The "plot", as they call it, involves an ancient urn which causes the city of Rome to erupt into violence.
A good, gory, horror movie, average scary scenes, nice FX and great story.This is the third movie about the "three mothers", "inferno" and "suspiria" are the other two, and it close the circle of the three demons story.As I said we are still a little far from the great directing we had in the first 70ish Dario's movies, but at least it's far better than the latest releases we have seen!
The story goes on nicely, Asia is perfect in the leading role, Udo Kier find his "usual" bad ending in one of the best scenes of the movie (and of latest 20 years horror movies!), demons and gore scenes are really well made with the right amount of suspense..
There are two scenes in which Argento both almost manages to create something like an atmosphere (this film hasn't got any atmosphere or mood) and return to those points: When Sarah Mandy (Asia) is chased by a Japanese witch (one of the rare convincing performances of the film: Jun Ichikawa of Ermanno Olmi's "Singing Behind Screens") through the Central Station of Rome which is packed with people and when a smiling but then crying mother throws her Baby off a Bridge into the Tiber.
I love Argento's earlier works and I was looking forward to seeing this third in the trilogy, ie: Suspiria, Inferno.I must say that this movie was a big let down, its pace was non existent , the acting was quite pitiful by most of the actors especially Asia, (she acts well as someone who is strong and angered but she can't act pass that point).At the premier screening a lot of people laughed at points of the film whereby I don't think the director intended for it to be funny.The use of CGI simply put was "Z" grade, it was that bad.Except for a couple of interesting gore scenes and nakedness...there really isn't much else to go on.Dario Argento...phenomenal director he will always be and has quite a repertoire of great films, but all can't be perfect..
If "Suspiria" was Argento's masterpiece and "Inferno" his flawed but still entertaining second chapter, then "The Three Mothers" would be the nail in the coffin for any expectation that he will ever deliver another great film.
I already know that there are plenty of reviews on here that stress that this film is an utter failure in terms to the first two volumes of this story and so I will not go and complain on that angle.I will say that I had tried to have an open mind as much as possible but the only joy that I had received from this movie is the monkey and the Mother's breasts (so sorry) but it's true.I am a fan of Argento but why he waited so long to do the final installment in a very horrible way is beyond me.Instead of getting a well rounded story, you get bad acting, senseless gore and more bad acting.
For Euro-Cult enthusiasts and especially Argentophiles, this is the cinematic equivalent of the Second Coming  not so much because it's an Argento movie as for the fact that it's the long-promised conclusion to his diabolical trilogy which also comprises SUSPIRIA (1977) and INFERNO (1980).I'd read a bit about it on the Net  where the general consensus has been quite mixed  prior to this viewing, but no official reviews (though I'd seen stills of some of its gorier highlights).
Earlier this week I watched Mario Bava's made-for-TV swan-song THE VENUS OF ILLE (1978) which, curiously enough, started out very much like this  with the discovery of an ancient and powerful relic (another connection is the presence in both films of frequent Argento collaborator Daria Nicolodi, also mother of leading lady and the director's daughter Asia).
That said, the plot is intriguing if definitely contrived  given that the late mother of Argento's archaeologist character (the supernatural urn just happens to be sent to her superior/lover!) was a practitioner of white magic (killed by Mater Suspiriorum, no less!) and she intermittently appears throughout to guide her in fighting the Mother Of Tears (opening locked doors, for instance, or rendering her invisible to any pursuers).Incidentally, the narrative seems to me to smack rather more of Roman Polanski's THE NINTH GATE (1999) than the earlier Argento classics  not least in the muted, dreary look (there's very little use of the director's trademark garish, albeit carefully-constructed, visuals here)!
By the way, I liked the script's play on the famous "broken mirrors/broken minds" line from SUSPIRIA  which, roughly translated, here becomes "It's not your mind that's troubled but the world".The final opinion, therefore, is that the film isn't all that bad a follow-up (and it may very well improve with further viewings) but, in the long run, Argento has simply allowed too much time to pass to finish the trilogy  so that this particular entry lacks the dynamism and inspiration of his best work....
I will say however, I think you could watch any of the movies in this trilogy in pretty much any order as none really link well together apart from the overall 'Three Mothers' thread.Asia Argento plays the lead role here, and apart from a nice cameo from Udo Kier, none of the other characters really register.
After much anticipation, I finally got to see "The Mother of Tears," the third installment in the so-called Three Mothers trilogy of films by one of my all time favorite directors, Dario Argento.The movie starts off with a healthy dose of violent gore, served up Stivaletti style and in graphic detail.
Both they're parents were killed by evil forces and are being followed and now they have to stop it.Dario Argento's trilogy is complete,he makes la Terza madre give off a sinister feel throughout the film,its not like the first 2(SUSPIRIA,INFERNO)its dark,violent,gross,creepy and hypnotic in a way you see a candle light.Claudio simonetti's score is like the film:whispers,breathing and cymbals!
watching La Terza madre was like watching a 2000 year old painting thats on display for one last time,Dario Argento may be too old but he's still trying better than what horror movies are now( like INSIDE).oh and if you wonder why I'm making fun..I'm not but hey you might laugh along with all of us in the end.
Starting off I'm officially new to the work Dario Argento, however MOTHER OF TEARS is only the second Argento film I've seen, the first film I saw was actually OPERA, and I'll admit I wasn't very fond of it because I thought the acting was horrid, the plot had potential but the execution wasn't there, however I thought that MOTHER OF TEARS was a lot better.MOTHER OF TEARS also has a great plot although its a bit on the weird side, it doesn't really try to bombard the viewer with a series of jump scenes or tasteless sex like most of today's horror movies do, instead it tries to draw you into this strange world of magic and madness where everyone just begins to lose it and caught in the middle is our main character played by Asia Argento who must find a way to stop the evil behind it all, a witch known as the MOTHER OF TEARS.However, by the time the film ended it didn't really leave a lasting impression like past horror classics such as HELLRAISER or NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, considering how people talk about Argento's work a person could feel the need to run comparisons, this film could've rivaled these two classics but its because of the ending that seemed rushed, the ending is rather abrupt its like they didn't know how to end it off so they just quickly came with an idea just to finish it off.Final verdict, this film won't make me fall in love with Dario Argento's work but it won't stop me from checking out his other films like SUSPERIA, INFERNO, DEEP RED, TENEBRE and by next week I'll also be seeing another Argento movie called THE STENDHAL SYNDROME, then I'll post comments saying exactly what I think about each of them, until then..
Following the positive experiences of JENIFER and PELTS for the "Masters of Horror" TV series,MOTHER OF TEARS/LA TERZA MADRE received the typically mixed reviews for a Dario Argento work: People liked the film,or they disliked it,but very few of them were indifferent at the experience of watching MOTHER OF TEARS!True,the last chapter of the Mater trilogy is a very different "beast" in comparison to SUSPINFERNO:this time Argento doesn't repeat the totally surreal,colorful,abstract dream worlds of SUSPINFERNO but the director instead throws his viewer into our modern urban world.In fact,MOT offers itself as a clever metaphor of the end of our days,our regular apocalypse.The "second fall of Roma",as shown in the film, isn't the fake,typical "CGI-zed" apocalypse view of the world that you can see in many horror films like DAWN OF THE DEAD 2004 or 28 WEEKS LATER,but it is rather the daily,sad and gruesome chaos and madness that we can see in our every day lives: People beating and killing each other,rape,mothers killing their children,suicides,racism,etc.
There's nothing here as spectacular as the crows's scene in OPERA or the carpet crawl in SLEEPLESS,but Argento's direction is quite solid,with its nice use of frame compositions and editing (see the first Roma's fall scene,for example!)The opening scene in the museum,the incredibly nasty "TENEBRAEesque" scene with the likable lesbians and the night taxi ride/Mater's house's scene are really effective set-pieces that easily rank among the best set-pieces in the glorious career of Argento.Frederic Fasano's camera-work in the film is also good,but unlike the "Technicolor Disney style" of SUSPIRIA and INFERNO,the film is shot in mostly cold,naturalistic and dark tones full of shadows,even if Fasano also delivers from time to time some welcomed and subtle bursts of vivid colors in the key "Mater" scenes set in the witch's lair.The casting is quite good too,Asia Argento delivers an uneven but very physical,energetic performance,Adam James is a decent lead and it's always nice to see old legends of Euro cinema like Udo Kier,Coralina Cataldi Tassoni and Philippe Leroy doing some fun cameos.The special effects from the great Sergio Stivaletti are mostly good and gory,delivering many effective nasty shocks in the murders's scenes.Claudio Simonetti's music isn't as loud and memorable as SUSPIRIA and INFERNO's soundtracks,but it does the job very well and it is again a slightly different composition for the ex Goblin: full of electronic beats (remember IL CARTAIO?) but also with some lyrical,effective nods to Jerry Goldsmith,Bernard Herrmann,etc.MOTER OF TEARS isn't a flawless film (Daria Nicolodi's character is questionable,the few CGI effects are quite average,the ending -like the one of SUSPIRIA- is a bit too rushed,...),but it is overall an enjoyable and touching tribute to Arts and especially to the sadly missed Italian "cinema de genre" from the 60's to the 80's:There are lots of references in the film to Mario Bava,Lucio Fulci,Sergio Martino,Ruggero Deodato,Mario Caiano,Dario Argento (!),the "fumetti",Goya,Bosch,the 19th century painting,etc.And finally,it's always a great pleasure to see that in 2008,a year where some opportunists directors like Rob Zombie or Alexandre Aja are somewhat considered like "Gods" by the young horror fans,an old cinema legend like Dario Argento is still breaking taboos and experimenting audacious,fun and personal stuff,with each one of his new work....
From there it's a race through Rome as Asia has to uncover the untold story of her past (her, uh, parents didn't die by car crash, in other words), discover the whereabouts of an evil witch known as the Mother of Tears, and hide from a roving band of murderers and goth chicks that spread pestilence, insanity, and violence into the hearts and minds of the city.Most of the movie keeps up the tempo, taking enough time out of each scene to give the necessary exposition of the plot without making too fine a point on all of it.
This is a movie to watch in a crowd, if you can catch a showing of it somewhere; the excitement and reactions of the crowd are almost as fun as what's actually happening on screen, which consists almost entirely of silly dialog and bad dubbed-over acting.This is the finale of what Dario Argento has dubbed "The Three Mothers", a thematic trilogy which started 30 years ago with "Suspiria".
Like I have stated before, the pace is decent and almost never flags, performances are variable (to say the least) but fun, there is gore a-plenty (some scenes of murder are truly nasty!), some female nudity (for those who like that sort of thing with a lesbian flavor to it), one GREAT and unexpected scare, a (mostly) good score with echoes from both "Inferno" and "Suspiria"...and the movie looks good although not in the Argento-way, but more mainstream.
First of course was Suspiria, then Inferno and now Terza Madre, the Mother of Tears.When one watches an Argento film we come to expect a uniquely surreal directing experience and an immersion of genius proportions.