The Three Mothers

A trilogy of Italian horror films

The Three Mothers (Italian: Le Tre madri) is a trilogy of supernatural horror films by Italian filmmaker Dario Argento. It consists of Suspiria, Inferno, and Mother of Tears. Each film deals with one of the titular "Mothers", a triumvirate of ancient witches who are determined to rule the world, using their powerful magic to manipulate its events on a global scale, killing anyone who discover their whereabouts. During the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, Argento stated he had not ruled out the possibility of shooting a fourth film dealing with the Three Mothers. His daughter Asia has suggested that there might be a prequel.

The story of the Three Mothers opens at the beginning of the 11th century, when the origin of witchcraft is depicted as three sisters on the coast of the black sea. In the years that followed, they wandered the world and amassed great personal wealth and power, leaving death in their wake. The sisters are known as, "The Mothers", hence the title of the trilogy. Both Mater Suspiriorum and Tenebrarum have claimed that the Mothers are Death personified. In the late 19th century the women commissioned E. Varelli, an Italian architect based in London, to design and construct three stately buildings. From these enchanted, bastion like homes, the Three Mothers "rule the world". According to Varelli's memoirs, entitled The Three Mothers by an anonymous colleague, the architect learned too late of the women's evil nature. (At least six copies of the book are known to have existed. Four may have been destroyed at the end of Inferno.) The residences he designed will become so corrupted that eventually, the land they were built on will become pestilential.

Mater Suspiriorum, the Mother of Sighs, is the oldest and wisest of the Three Mothers, her given name is Helena Markos. She is also known as The Black Queen; any mention of Helena Markos being one of the Three Mothers would not be made until Inferno three years later. Lela Svasta, who portrayed Markos in Suspiria, was uncredited. According to Jessica Harper, "the witch was a ninety year old ex hooker Dario had found on the streets of Rome." Markos, a Greek émigré, was exiled from many European countries and had written several books on a variety of arcane subjects. In 1895, she founded the Tanz Akademie ("Dance Academy" in German), a school for dance and the occult sciences, in the Black Forest outside Freiburg, Germany. The locals feared her, having intuited that she was a witch. As Markos' wealth grew, so did suspicion about her true nature. To avert this unwanted scrutiny, she faked her own death in a fire in 1905. Control of the academy, which transitioned to a ballet school, subsequently passed to Markos' prize pupil (who was in fact Markos herself). As the original Freiburg building "Haus zum Walfisch" the Akademie bears a plaque stating that Desiderius Erasmus once lived there. In Suspiria, Markos is the Directress whose presence is concealed by her coven, headed by Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett). A young American, Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper), discovers the hidden chambers beneath the school after several pupils are killed by Markos' proxies. The aged witch attempts to use her magic to kill the girl, but her powers — including those of invisibility, illusion casting, and telekinesis — prove insufficient due to her feeble state. Bannion defeats Markos by stabbing her through the neck. The witch's death causes the foundations of her home and coven to fail. In The Mother of Tears, it is revealed that before the events of Suspiria, Elisa Mandy (Daria Nicolodi), a white witch, sought to challenge Markos' evil might. The two battled in Freiburg, and Markos slew both Elisa and her husband. According to Father Johannes (Udo Kier) in the third film, the battle left Suspiriorum "a shell of her former self". Elisa's daughter Sarah would later defeat Mater Lachrymarum in Rome. In the 2018 remake of Suspiria, the roles of both Madame Blanc and Helena Markos, referred throughout as Mother Markos, are played by Tilda Swinton. Markos is depicted as an ancient, disfigured, centuries old crone maintaining control over the coven and seeking to acquire a new, younger body as her current one is riddled in leprous sores, tumorous growths and immobile infants' limbs growing out of her own. In this version, it is revealed in the climax that Markos is a fraud and Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) is the real Mater Suspiriorum.