In my series on Italian director Fernando Di Leo, I began part one by examining his early career and two of his most beloved films, Milano calibro 9 (1972) and La mala ordina (1972), of his Milieu Trilogy; in part ...

“The whole city is full of madmen. It’s like a carnival shooting range.” —Umberto Lenzi’s Almost Human An icon of Italian cult cinema—particularly spaghetti westerns and crime films—Cuban-born actor Tomas Milian possessed a talent beyond his niche reputation. He regularly ...

Salò, o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Salò, or The 120 days Of Sodom, 1975) is necessarily associated with director Pier Paolo Pasolini. His interpretation of The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade is considered to be ...

I began this three-part Fernando Di Leo series a few weeks ago with a look at two of the first films in his poliziotteschi trilogy, the Milieu Trilogy: Milano calibro 9 (Caliber 9, 1972) and La mala ordina (The Italian ...

Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond (L’aldilà, 1981) is a masterpiece. It was not always recognized as such and even now there are certainly those who argue the point, but it is. It’s a gory, Grand Guignol guided tour through Hell. A ...

Dario Argento’s films are often described as ‘style over substance’. Upon reading yet another sentiment to this effect in my final year of film school, I decided that my major dissertation would form a defence of Dario, arguing that his ...

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 ...

One of the most compelling plot devices of film noir involves an opening sequence that establishes that the film’s protagonist is dead, or soon will be, as seen in classic titles like Sunset Boulevard or D.O.A. (both produced in 1950). ...

“I found myself lying down in the apartment of my dead mother… [I] remembered that two years before I participated in an orgy in my mother’s absence, exactly in her room and in her bed which was now supporting her ...