As a fan of spaghetti terror since high school, I have delved into the films of Argento, Fulci, and Bava liberally. I consider Suspiria to be one of my favorite films, and I have somehow not completed the Three Mothers trilogy that it is a part of.
Inferno is the second in a chapter. In typical technicolor fever dream fashion, we’re introduced to the book of the Three Witches as it is found by our innocent heroin. A dreamlike narration introduces us to Mater Suspirium(the mother of sighs), Mater Tenaebreum(the mother of tears) and Mater Lachrymarum(the 3rd mother? I dunno.) Anyways, the plot is just a nightmare that you can’t wake up from and I say that as a good thing. One scene shows the protagonist(one of many) step down a narrow stairway into a highly stylized, spooky basement area. She finds a hole in the middle of it all that is filled with water beneath it. She drops her locket and has to retrieve it, along with a key that will help her further unleash more nightmares upon the world. The sequence is show underwater, giving a hazy feeling of struggle as right there, a corpse floats up to her in a classic jump scare.
There is literally no towns person that anyone can trust in this film. Not even the town hot dog vendor is normal, for in one scene he goes to a man being attacked by hundreds of rats and plunges a knife into his neck. Now, the poor guy was no saint. The towns’ spooky antique/occult shopkeeper has rounded up a bag of cats to drown in the pond, apparently just for funsies. I mean, the guy deserved it. I just know that if I were to get a hot dog in New York, I don’t think I would choose that one. The hot dogs he’s serving definitely aren’t kosher, know what I mean?
It’s thin on plot but that’s not a bad thing with Argento. How many of YOUR nightmares are completely coherent? The architecture of all of the buildings has been designed by the crippled old man who wrote the book, and the witches use these buildings as their eyes and ears. Yes,that’s right. The Mother of Sighs watches you as you sleep.
The movie is a showcase for setpieces. In one scene, a man is in a college lecture and suddenly a shady seductress is making piercing eye contact with him as she pets a fat grey cat. Nobody else notices her. She’s definitely in league with the witches. In yet another scene, a man is attacked by about 10 angry cats in a dark room. In another, a woman accidentally sets some curtains on fire and she pulls them down on top of her, leading her to fall out of a window and plunge to a fiery death.
The score of the film punctuates that feeling of dread all the way through, like when you eat too many DXM capsules on an empty stomach and the world is spinning. All the Italian trademarks are here: bizarre architecture, spooky occult stuff, black gloved killers. It all leads to a brilliant finale where a groovy dude gets to the root of the conspiracy and meets Mater Tenabrarum in the burning building and she explains with maniacal glee that the Three Mothers are literal personifications of death, and in a flash she morphs into a hooded skeleton cackling as the walls burn around her. All in all, this was a brilliant film. Just stay away from LSD while watching it and you should be able to prevent any panic attacks.
It's a Gory World Out There! 
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