Making homages to the gialli, Italy’s cultishly beloved violent, stylish thrillers from the 1970s, has become something of a cottage industry over the last few years, going from a fun celebration of a niche interest to a fairly lazy way to jazz up horror stories with bright colors and cryptic storytelling. It takes more than […]
From among the Video Nasties If you were to know only the title of the film Tenebrae, you might think- actually, you would probably have no clue. Before I saw it the first time, I think I had some vague sense that it might have something to do with the spinal column, because of -brae. […]
From among the Video Nasties I could say “a movie from around the turn of the ’80s with the word ‘Don’t’ in the title, that caught the attention of Britain’s Director of Public Prosecution”. I could even throw in the detail that in addition to all of the above, the film is also about cannibals. […]
From among the Video Nasties In 1963, indie producer-director and godfather of gore and direct marketing Herschell Gordon Lewis made Blood Feast, a movie typically identified as the very first gore picture (that is, a movie with no intrinsic merits and no hook to its marketing campaign other than “there is blood, lots of it). […]
From among the Video Nasties I’m not sure whether what is most impressive about Night of the Bloody Apes is a positive (there’s so much wacky bullshit going on here that it saves the film from that meanest of fates, being boring) or a negative (it’s so boring that I lost interest halfway through even […]
From among the Video Nasties There will never come a time when the career of director Tobe Hooper isn’t sad: the fella makes one timeless all-American cinematic masterpiece in the form of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and then never comes within leagues of the same quality ever again. To be frank, most of his post-TCM […]
From among the Video Nasties Any honest accounting of the history of American horror filmmaking has to bow in the direction of the enormous influence of The Last House on the Left, the 1972 debut of writer-director Wes Craven and a solid contender for the title of most controversial movie of the last half-century. It […]
From among the Video Nasties You tell me how I was supposed to pass this one up: 1982’s Visiting Hours is one of just two wholly Canadian-made films to make the British Department of Public Prosecution’s legendary Video Nasties list,* and the only one of those starring Canada’s favorite son, William Shatner. It’s catnip to […]
From among the Video Nasties The making and production of The Evil Dead has become a legendary campfire story in its own right: writer-director Sam Raimi, looking to make his first feature, creating a demo short and forcing it upon potential investors; borderline-inhumane working conditions for most of the cash-strapped location shoot; a rapturous, career-making […]
Part of the Italian Horror Blogathon at Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies From among the Video Nasties 1980’s Inferno, Dario Argento’s very next movie after Suspiria was not just a sequel – a sequel that had not by any means suggested itself from the plot of the first film, mind you – but a film that […]
From among the Video Nasties L’ultmo treno della notte AKA Night Train Murders AKA Late Night Trains AKA The New House on the Left (1975, Italy) The creators: Director Aldo Lado, a giallo maker of no real import, alongside a team of writers including minor giallo figure Ettore Sanzò, semi-important Western writer Renato Izzo, and […]
Nick Davis probably didn’t think that he’d be using his Carry On Campaign donation as a means of extending the Summer of Blood, but that’s just how things work ed out. At least he had the sense to pick the mostly weirdly artsy film to ever be branded a scum-sucking horror movie. From among the […]
