"Italian horror movies": Part 2

I have to laugh because I actually had the book to the left when I was very young. I got it for my birthday or Christmas, and it was a very good book. It covered the history up to 1974, including a lot about the Hammer films, with lots and lots of photos. Getting more back on topic, I do know that many people absolutely love Italian horror movies, going back decades. They're like Spaghetti westerns in that they have a certain style all to themselves. I found one piece of text that makes this point well.


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From '12 Classic Italian Horror Movies You Need To See Before You Die' by Clare Simpson:

Hardly anything in the world gives me as much pleasure as Italian horror movies. They just make me really happy. Even the really crappy ones like Manhattan Baby (directed by Lucio Fulci) or – heaven forbid – anything directed by Bruno Mattei. Yes, I will sit down to that man’s films. I love cannibals, I love zombies, i positively adore all sorts of Italian horror based mayhem. I am also a huge fan of Giallo movies, and as some of you may have read, I wrote an article rating the best Giallo movies a while back.

The line dividing Giallo and straight out horror often becomes blurred in Italian cinema. Take a film like Torso (The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence). On one level it is a typical Giallo concerning a murder-mystery – a who dunnit with a masked killer running around – one of the most obvious motifs in the Giallo genre. On another level, it can be read as a typical straight slasher horror film – which is how it was marketed to overseas audiences.

In this list, I have mainly tried to focus on pure Italian horror, however some Giallo elements inevitably sneak in. There is a lot of pilfering and copying in Italian horror cinema, so I have attempted to pick the most original movies possible as well as the classics we all know and love. So please enjoy 12 Classic Italian Horror Movies – and if you have your own favourites please list them below.


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If you can remember watching television before the cable-age, then you probably saw some of these movies and maybe didn't even realize that they were Italian or European. Someone compiled a list of the 50 top Italian horror directors, which gives a good quick overview of this sub-genre.

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Hardly anything in the world gives me as much pleasure as Italian horror movies. They just make me really happy. Even the really crappy ones like Manhattan Baby (directed by Lucio Fulci) or – heaven forbid – anything directed by Bruno Mattei. Yes, I will sit down to that man’s films. I love cannibals, I love zombies, i positively adore all sorts of Italian horror based mayhem. I am also a huge fan of Giallo movies, and as some of you may have read, I wrote an article rating the best Giallo movies a while back.
The line dividing Giallo and straight out horror often becomes blurred in Italian cinema. Take a film like Torso (The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence). On one level it is a typical Giallo concerning a murder-mystery – a who dunnit with a masked killer running around – one of the most obvious motifs in the Giallo genre. On another level, it can be read as a typical straight slasher horror film – which is how it was marketed to overseas audiences.
In this list, I have mainly tried to focus on pure Italian horror, however some Giallo elements inevitably sneak in. There is a lot of pilfering and copying in Italian horror cinema, so I have attempted to pick the most original movies possible as well as the classics we all know and love. So please enjoy 12 Classic Italian Horror Movies – and if you have your own favourites please list them below.

Read more at http://whatculture.com/film/12-classic-italian-horror-movies-you-need-to-see-before-you-die.php#t7ZFKkbzaIOWlBm3.99

"Italian horror movies": Part 1

I have a lot of loose-end ideas about this subject, so I think I will just bounce around here a little bit. So, this may not follow any consistent pattern. The horror film genre has long been a sub-industry in of itself, as it has been something basically "apart" from mainstream Hollywood. Every year, going back to the 70s, this genre has produced many low-budget films; as evidenced by all of those late-night movies on second-tier cable networks like Cinemax since the 80s, or the seemingly endless stream of direct-to-video movies that you probably saw in the now disappearing video rental stores.

It has become much more mainstream in recent years, but the independent element is as strong as ever. I have always enjoyed horror movies. I'm not as much for zombie or slasher films. I prefer paranormal or mystery-based thrillers. Horror films seem to be a refreshing creative license for the producers to take chances, be overzealous, be silly, be shocking--without the worry of too much artistic criticism. Of course, there is the more finely artistic element to it. The rest mostly fall into the category of exploitation films.

The Europeans have been at least as much the early pioneers of this genre. The 1922 silent German horror film 'Nosferatu' is regarded as "an influential masterpiece of cinema," and clearly a forerunner of the early classic American horror films. The "Hammer films" from the UK were very popular in the United States going back many decades, especially in the 60s and 70s. Recently I watched again the Hammer film 'Tales from the Crypt (1972), and it was very eery. I think that someone who is not a particular fan of this genre would probably enjoy being creeped out by it. It was eerily though-provoking.

The "cabin in the woods" concept has long been a favorite backdrop; as it forms a little world unto itself... in which the story unfolds. Just last week, the Independent Film Channel had a double-feature of just this theme: 'Cabin Fever' (2002), an American film; and 'The Last House in the Woods' (2006), an Italian film. This popular horror flick was something like an Italian version of 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. I don't know much about Italian horror in particular, but I know that Dario Argento has long been a big name in this genre. I recall watching some of these films as a kid, often late at night, and wasn't even aware that they were from Italy... or Germany, Spain, etc. I specifically remember one called 'Bay of Blood' (1971), directed by Mario Brava.

I recall one time a friend who really knows a lot about the Italian horror genre mentioning that Anna Falchi had appeared in many of these films and is well-known in Europe as a "scream queen." In the United States, to me, Linnea Quigley is one that comes to mind in this category. Elizabeth Kaitan is another one that I really remember. American Theaters which played the exploitation films within this genre were called "Grindhouse" theaters. I don't know of any theater that specifically fits that description anymore, but it's a curious concept. One exploitation horror film which I thought was eerily artistic was Rob Zombie's 'House of 1000 Corpses' (2003).

When I was a child in the Bay Area, there was a program on KTVU called 'Creature Features' (1971-1984). Actually this apparently was a syndicated program, and this was our locally-hosted broadcast. This was a much bigger cultural element since there weren't the cable channels, internet, video games, IPad's, etc. as there is now. This was even before VCR's! Locally it was hosted by the late Bob Wilkins, who was a unique type of host who always kept everyone up-to-date on the horror or similar conventions that would come around. One movie that was frequently broadcast was George Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead' due to its popularity. That movie, and Romero's films since, have directly led to this "zombie craze" that we see today.

I had mentioned earlier the 1922 move 'Nosferatu'. In 2000, there was a British "remake" of a sort called 'Shadow of the Vampire', staring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe. I thought it was worth a mention because it was somehow an acknowledgement of the whole of this element of our culture since 1922... and it was a good movie. Interestingly, it was a fictional horror movie about the "making" of the original film in Slovakia.

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