Claudio Simonetti's Goblin perform Suspiria @ SWG3, 31 October

Like so many of the best horror films, Suspiria doesn’t just inspire nightmares; it resembles one. As victims helplessly flee from unseen assailants, logic loosens and hysteria takes hold, creating an anything-goes tone. Guide dogs become killers, razor wire appears beneath doors to nowhere, maggots rain from ceilings – and all the while the same twinkling musical motif lurks, a hellish lullaby that amplifies the madness and frays the nerves.

The soundtrack’s spell is more potent than ever during this evening’s special screening, which delivers the score live and in its entirety. The original line-up of Italian prog-rock icons Goblin may have splintered long ago, but the iteration that survives tonight retains an integral component: figurehead Claudio Simonetti on keys, revisiting the pioneering synth sounds that made the band’s soundtrack work so effective and influential.  

And all this on Halloween no less – an alignment that has understandably made the show a hot ticket for Glasgow’s horror enthusiasts. Yet despite a splattering of ghoulish décor (prep for the “last warehouse on the right” event scheduled to follow, which will require Suspiria to wrap up long before the witching hour), there’s a distinct dearth of pre-show atmosphere in the noticeably hushed SWG3. Luckily, the film’s opening credits provide atmosphere enough, as the band rattle and rumble into life and that haunting, metallic refrain makes its first appearance of the night.

Throughout, original dynamics are preserved: stingers are deployed with unnerving accuracy, volume rises and falls in tandem with the terrors onscreen, and dialogue and incidental sound remain largely audible – the latter ensuring that the event functions just as well as an offbeat cinema experience as it does a live recital (not always the case at events of this ilk). The evening arguably lacks that glint of the unexpected needed to truly amaze, but the soundtrack’s familiar contrasts – from the main theme’s sinister whispers to the regular, vast crescendos – are nonetheless strikingly rendered, and continue working their dark magic long after the last reel.