In early modern Europe, it is estimated by historians that between 50,000 and 200,000 people (mostly women) were tortured, burnt or hanged for witchcraft. So no surprise that the majority of horror films set in the early modern period explore ...

The Gothic is a vast literary and cinematic mode, incorporating the supernatural terror of ghosts, ghouls, mummies and werewolves, as well as ‘real horror’ of insanity, murder, torture and necrophilia, with settings ranging from shadowy corridors in isolated castles, to ...

Over 120 years ago early cinema pioneer Georges Méliès made Le Manoir du diable (1896), an ambitious film considered now by many to be the first example of cinematic horror because of its Gothic themes, even if the genre of ...

Antonio Margheriti’s Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye (La morte negli occhi del gatto, 1973) is one of the strangest films to emerge from Italy’s giallo cycle. Blending gothic mise-en-scene with the violent murder mystery structure of the giallo, it ...

Within horror film discourse and in film theory more generally, it is accepted by some that one of the primary visual pleasures of viewing violent scenes, as repeatedly witnessed in giallo films, is a sadistic, projective viewing pleasure. That is ...

In a scene from Mario Bava’s seminal 1964 film Blood and Black Lace (Sei donne per l’assassino) we witness a fashion model, Nicole (Ariana Gorini), as she is pursued through a cluttered antique store and then sadistically murdered with a ...