A lot of articles call OPERA a box office failure and yet it had 1.3 million admissions in Italy. I doubt it tanked that bad?
That's because america never realeased it in mainstream theaters or they were edited so bad that they ruined most of his movies over state side. Thanks to blue underground we can see all the italian "video nasties" on blu-ray.
shareRealy good example of this is "Deep Red" it was released in america re-named the "hatchet murders" and edited down to a PG-13 rating from a hard R rating. Resulted in a story that made no sense at all and no artsy gore that we love from him. And "deep Red" was a hard R even back in the mid 70's to early 80's and the murder scenes are still pretty hardcore by todays standards.
shareedited down to a PG-13 rating from a hard R rating
OPERA was one of Italy's biggest box office hit in 1987/1988, it was ranked at the 12th place if i remember well, so it did good business in Italy but maybe not enough because of the film's big budget and especially the non theatrical releases in others countries.
All Argento's films (save for FIVE DAYS OF MILAN) were huge hits in Italy, from THE BIRD TO THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE to OPERA included.
http://darioargentofr.blogspot.com/