Description
Rose Elliot, a poet living alone in New York City\'s Upper West Side, purchases a book from an antiques dealer, titled The Three Mothers. The book, written by an alchemist named Varelli, tells of three evil sisters who rule the world with sorrow, tears, and darkness, and dwell inside separate homes that had been built for them by the alchemist. Mater Suspiriorum, the Mother of Sighs, lives in Freiburg. Mater Lachrymarum, the Mother of Tears, lives in Rome, and Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness, lives in New York. Rose suspects that she is living in Mater Tenebrarum\'s building, and writes to her brother Mark, a music student in Rome, urging him to visit her. Using the clues provided in the book, Rose searches the cellar of her building and discovers a hole in the floor which leads to a water-filled ballroom. She accidentally drops her keys and enters the water to find them. After she reclaims the keys, a putrid corpse rises from the depths, frightening her. Rose manages to swim out and flee.
In Rome, Mark attempts to read Rose\'s letter during class. He is distracted by the intense gaze of a beautiful student, who leaves suddenly; Mark follows, leaving the letter behind. His friend Sara picks up the letter, and later reads it. Horrified by the letter\'s contents, she takes a taxi to a library and finds a copy of The Three Mothers. Trying to find her way out, Sara becomes lost in the library basement and finds a room filled with boiling cauldrons. Sara is attacked there by a monstrous figure who recognizes the book. She throws the book to the ground and escapes.
Returning to her home, she phones Mark telling him to come and asks a neighbour, Carlo, to keep her company. The lights go out and both Sara and Carlo are stabbed to death by a gloved killer. Mark discovers the bodies and two torn fragments from Rose\'s letter. After the police arrive, he walks out of Sara\'s apartment and sees a taxi slowly driving by. In the back seat of the vehicle is the music student, staring at him intently. Mark telephones Rose and promises to visit, but the phone call is cut short. Rose sees two shadowy figures preparing to enter her apartment. She leaves through a back door, but is followed. Running into a decrepit laboratory, she is grabbed by a clawed assailant and guillotined with the glass of a broken window.
Arriving in New York, Mark goes straight to Rose\'s building, where he meets Carol, the concierge, and some of the residents, including a nurse who cares for elderly Professor Arnold, a wheelchair user who cannot speak. Mark encounters the sickly Countess Elise De Longvalle Adler, who tells him that Rose has disappeared. After the two find blood on the carpet outside Rose\'s room, Mark follows the stains. Inhaling a strange odour, he becomes ill and falls unconscious. Elise sees a black-robed figure dragging Mark away, but the figure stops and gives chase to Elise. The figure eventually finds her swarmed with rabid cats in a room and stabs her to death. Mark staggers to the apartment building\'s lobby where Carol and the nurse put him to bed.
The following morning, Mark asks Kazanian, the antique dealer who sold Rose The Three Mothers, about his sister\'s whereabouts. However, the man provides no information. That night, Kazanian drowns several cats in a Central Park pond and falls into the water. Hundreds of rats from a nearby drain crawl over him, gnawing his flesh. A hot dog vendor hears Kazanian\'s cries for help and rushes over, but proceeds to kill him with a knife.
More strange deaths occur in the building, when Carol and Elise\'s butler, John, plots to take advantage of the Countess\' death by stealing her valuables. A shocked Carol finds John\'s corpse in Elise\'s apartment, and drops a lit candle which starts a fire. Attempting to put out the flames, she becomes entangled in burning draperies and falls from a window to her death.
Mark uses the final clue from Rose\'s letter to discover that beneath each floor is a secret crawl space. He follows hidden passages to a suite of rooms where he finds Professor Arnold who reveals, via an electronic voice generator, that he is in fact Varelli. He tries to kill Mark with a hypodermic injection. During the struggle, Varelli\'s neck is caught in his vocal apparatus, choking him. Mark frees him, only to be told that he is still being watched as Varelli dies. Mark follows a shadowy figure to a lavishly furnished chamber, where he finds Varelli\'s nurse. Laughing maniacally, she reveals to him that she is Mater Tenebrarum. She vanishes, but re-emerges through a mirror as Death personified. However, the fire that has consumed much of the building enables Mark to escape from the witch\'s den. Debris crashes down on the fiend, destroying her.
