Series: Film / TV

Six (Nongiallo) Italian Horrors

As you may have discerned from some of my previous Shocktober columns, I really do love the Italian film genre known as the giallo, featuring as it does stylish murder mysteries, gorgeous location shooting, catchy theme music, and, more often than not, violent and grisly set pieces. But as most horror buffs have long been aware, the giallo film was not the only kind of horror product that the Italians gave to the world, by a long shot. From Gothically inflected period horrors of the 1960s to blood-soaked supernatural shockers of the ‘70s,

Featuring masked and black-gloved serial killers wielding straight-edged blades, violent and stylized mayhem, byzantine plotting, and, more often than not, gorgeous theme melodies, the Italian film genre known as the giallo was kick-started by the great cinematographer/director Mario Bava in 1963, with his remarkable black-and-white film The Girl Who Knew Too Much. But the genre would really come into its own in the 1970s, when Italy came out with a raft of large-budgeted wonders that really took the world by storm. I have already written here of such marvelous gialli as those starring “The Queen of Giallo,” Edwige Fenech;

Born Bela Ferenc Dezso Blasko in 1882 in Lugos, a town that was then part of Austria-Hungary but that today lies in Romania, Bela Lugosi (he would go on to take his famous last name from the town of his birth) is today regarded as one of the true titans of cinematic terror. A veteran of the National Theatre of Hungary, Lugosi, over the course of some four dozen horror films for Universal and various Poverty Row studios, has managed, over the decades since his passing in 1956, to remain one of the true cinematic greats in the arena of horror.

When you think of the horror film, certain decades automatically spring to mind in connection with specific events. The 1930s were surely dominated by Universal, with that studio’s Frankenstein, Dracula, and Invisible Man fare. The ‘40s were also dominated by Universal, with RKO producer Val Lewton also beginning to make his mark with a classic series of highly atmospheric wringers. The ‘60s saw the horror film taking a quantum leap forward into modernity, with sure fare as Psycho and Night of the Living Dead breaking down all kinds of taboos; the Italians and Mexicans stunning audiences with a series of Gothically inflected shockers;

Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1939, Wes Craven would go on to become a legendary director, screenwriter and producer. Before his passing in 2015, at the age of 76, he helmed almost 20 films in the arena of horror, carving out for himself a place in the modern-day pantheon of great frightmakers. Starting with 1972’s remarkably effective (although wholly offputting) classic The Last House on the Left, Craven proceeded to create the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise in 1984, and the Scream franchise in 1996. The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986) and Shocker (1989) also proved to be rattlingly good film jolters.

Born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1961, Peter Jackson is today known throughout the world as one of cinema’s foremost filmmakers; a triple threat in the fields of directing, producing and screenwriting. After a string of modestly budgeted early films, Jackson would, of course, begin to helm some of the priciest productions ever made, with his Lord of the Rings trilogy being budgeted at some $270 million, and King Kong at $200+ million. But in today’s Shocktober column, I would like to shine a light on two of Jackson’s earliest projects, the combined budgets of which probably totalled the one-week caterer’s bill for the Two Towers shoot.

Everybody the world over loves a good zombie movie, right? For proof positive of that statement, I offer you these five stunning little excursions into the realm of the lurching dead, culled from various international sources – the U.S., Spain, Italy and Hong Kong – each one of them a stunner in its own unique way. And, of course, each one of them an ideal entertainment for this Shocktober season…

CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS (1972)

Back in the dark days of the late ’70s and early ’80s, when none of us had what’s now known as cable TV (remember,

Three Horror Films Featuring Killer Genitalia

We’re all adults here, right? Okay, then, here goes: On her Grammy Award-winning album of 1994, Turbulent Indigo, Joni Mitchell gave the world a wonderful song entitled “Sex Kills,” which was written during the height of the AIDS epidemic. In part, the song bemoaned the fact that something as simple and natural as the act of lovemaking could prove deadly to the participants engaging in it. However, what Ms. Mitchell was unaware of at the time, perhaps, was the fact that one horror film, and two more that would emerge in the next few years,