There's Always Vanilla (George A. Romero, 1971) Blu-Ray Review...

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“Anything that has something happening has a purpose to it.” An experimental bitter-sweet romance drama is not what you'd expect to be directed by George A. Romero, the Godfather of the modern zombie, whose seminal 1968 film Night of the Living Dead not only defined a new sub-genre, but a new way of utilising horror to examine the world in which we live. Seeking to not be pigeon-holed by the horror genre, Romero and production company The Latent Image embarked on this character piece, which turned into a scattered and tense production with a final product that limped onto the silver screen after which it became a 'lost' film in Romero's catalogue. Indeed, Romero himself described the film as “an awful experience and I care very little about it”, but even with – seemingly – so little going for it, There's Always Vanilla now proves to be an intriguing time capsule of Pittsburgh, and America, in 1970...

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Cold Blooded Beast (Fernando Di Leo, 1971) Blu-Ray Review

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“How nice to be sent to a famous loony bin!” Straddling the lines between the gialli thrillers and softcore romps that were so popular with mainstream audiences in Italy during the 1970s, Fernando (Milano Calibro 9) Di Leo's skin 'n' kills movie Cold Blooded Beast (otherwise known as Slaughter Hotel) features a bevy of beautiful women inflagranti and in peril, as well as Werner Herzog's notorious performer Klaus Kinski…

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The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave (Emilio P Miraglia, 1971) Blu-Ray Review

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“It's not uncommon for a man to do strange things to get his kicks.” The opening companion piece to Miraglia's 1972 gothic-tinged giallo The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave treads similar ground to its successor. Miraglia juxtaposes the old and new worlds whereby the cutting edge design of the 1970s sits amidst a crumbling ancestral home built from stone and sordid family secrets. Riddled with nihilism, this forever-twisting tale of a sadomasochistic fetishist and his not-quite-so-dead wife is soaked-through with moral decay...

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Four Flies On Grey Velvet (Dario Argento, 1971) DVD Review

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“Seeing all these worms make a living out of death, kind of knocks the fear out of you, right?” Dario Argento's third giallo film and, at the time, intended to be his last, Four Flies On Grey Velvet is a curious mix of murder mystery and offbeat comedy in which a drummer in a prog rock band finds himself framed for murder – but his blackmailer has no intention of calling the cops on him, so what is it they're after?

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The Bloodstained Butterfly (Duccio Tessari, 1971) Blu-Ray/DVD Review

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“I'm a smart killer, Inspector – a little smarter than all of you.” Consider the giallo genre – what springs to mind? Black-clad killers with razor knives, blood-splattering violence, and scintillating sexuality? Chances are that forensic examination of a crime scene and perspective-altering scenes of court room drama didn't crop up – but that's exactly what sets Duccio Tessari's The Bloodstained Butterfly apart from the crowd. Side-stepping many of gialli's visual clichés, nestling into a pace akin to the more thoughtful examples of the genre such as Aldo Lado's Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971), Tessari's film nonetheless paints a bleak and savage picture of inter-generational betrayal, lust, abuse, and shattered illusions...

 

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Death Walks On High Heels (Luciano Ercoli, 1971) Blu-Ray/DVD Review

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“With this razor you won't feel the pain right away, but it will leave your body covered with horrible scars.” Luciano Ercoli teamed up again with his Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (1970) stars Nieves Navarro (aka Susan Scott) and Simon Andreu, and giallo screenwriter extraordinaire Ernesto Gastaldi, for Death Walks On High Heels – a deeply fetishistic thriller. A strip tease artist flees Paris with a Doctor, but soon finds the quaint English countryside is nowhere near as safe as she had hoped...

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The Case of the Scorpion's Tail (Sergio Martino, 1971) DVD Review

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“You know I'm dying to see you.” Sergio Martino – one of Italy's finest journeymen filmmakers – helmed an impressive run of giallo films during the early 1970s. Following on from the sublime The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1970) came The Case of the Scorpion's Tail, a densely-plotted thriller/morality play packed with infidelity and greed – as well as a some particularly flashy murder sequences...

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Short Night of Glass Dolls (Aldo Lado, 1971) Review

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“Don't leave me like this! Help me! Help me!” In amongst the quiet cityscape of Cold War era Prague, a street sweeper swats a crow away from a piece of rotting fruit, only to discover a dead body dumped in the undergrowth. The corpse is that of Gregory Moore, an American journalist working for a foreign paper in the city, and he isn't dead. Somehow he's been paralysed and shows no clear signs of life to the indifferent pathologist and, as he lies there waiting for his autopsy, he must recall the events that lead him to this terrible potential fate.

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The Black Belly of the Tarantula (Paolo Cavara, 1971) Review

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“With needles dipped in deadly venom the victims are paralysed – so they must lie awake and watch themselves die!” During the 1970s, Italian silver screens were crammed full with giallo films; lurid murder mysteries that combined achingly beautiful visuals with sharp shocks and jagged social commentary, and it was in The Black Belly of the Tarantula that perhaps the most original Modus Operandi in the history of gialli was exhibited.

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The Case of the Bloody Iris (Giuliano Carnimeo, 1971) DVD Review...

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With The Case of the Bloody Iris, fans of gialli will experience one of the era's best examples, particularly as it shares much of the same talent as another prime representative of the lurid murder mystery movement – The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (Sergio Martino, 1971). Both films star Edwige (Strip Nude For Your Killer, Phantom of Death) Fenech and George (My Dear Killer, All The Colours of the Dark) Hilton, while boasting superb scripts from Ernesto (Torso, Almost Human) Gastaldi, and crystalline editing by Eugenio (Oasis of Fear, The Good The Bad and The Ugly) Alabiso. Suffice to say, if you were a fan of landmark giallo The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, you will be treated to a similarly luxuriant banquet of sumptuous visuals, sinister chills, and otherworldly beauty...

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Oasis of Fear (Umberto Lenzi, 1971) DVD Review...

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Umberto (Almost Human, Cannibal Ferox) Lenzi toured a variety of genres during his time as a director, bringing exuberant smash & grab style to his films. Interestingly, Oasis of Fear (aka Dirty Pictures), is a more claustrophobic and restrained effort from Lenzi when compared to some of his more famous flicks. That said, the first act is a typically Lenzi opening – all crash zooms, fast cuts, spiralling camera angles and a generally fevered pace (good work from editor Eugenio Alabiso) with a hip-swinging pop soundtrack.

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Fright (Peter Collinson, 1971) - movie review...

Having not heard of it before, I chanced upon this classic slice of British scares on The Horror Channel last week, and was immediately drawn to it as it starred Susan George (most widely known as Amy Sumner in Sam Peckinpah's superb Straw Dogs - which was also produced in 1971).



Susan George plays Amanda, a babysitter hired by Helen and Jim Lloyd (Honor "Pussy Galore" Blackman, and George "Minder" Cole respectively) to look after their son Tara (played by the director's own son) as they go out for the night to celebrate an 'anniversary of sorts'. Cue lots of nicely composed, almost voyeuristic, shots of Amanda making herself at home - a rustic old building of dark wood and haunted memories - all-the-while being stalked from outside by an unknown figure. Already a bit jumpy, she's none-too-pleased when her suitor Chris (Dennis "The Sweeney" Waterman) turns up and starts telling her a tale of how Jim isn't Helen's actual husband ... as it turns out, the real husband went barmy and tried to kill Helen and her son - and he's just gone and broken out of the mental institution he was locked up in!



So far, so famliar right? Well to be fair this film pre-dates the slasher boom (that really kicked off in 1974 with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Black Christmas, but which can be traced back to the likes of 1971's Bay of Blood and 1960's Psycho) and even forms an early template for many of the common structural elements for many horror flicks to come. Sexy babysitter who's adverse to keeping her top done up? Check. Creepy old house? Check. Escaped lunatic hellbent on murder? Check. Nutjob's Doctor who tries the stop the madness? Check. Indeed, you wonder if Ty West was familiar with this film before he made his excellent 1980s homage The House of the Devil in 2009 (which admittedly goes for satanism rather than an escaped nutjob), but even more acutely you could ask the same question of John Carpenter and Bob Clark in that respect, but no matter.

Watching this film 41 years later it's easy to consider it old hat and predictable retrospectively - but if you ignore that and enjoy it as an old school dose of British horror, then it still works very well indeed. There are far scarier movies from the period (for example the downright chilling The Wicker Man), but fans of creepy old houses, the stiff upper lip of the British middle class on film, and the gorgeous and attention-grabbing Susan George, will be well catered for here.

However it's not just a simple fright film - Tudor Gates' script has some nice touches of thematic depth - Amanda is a student of theoretical child psychology and the like, so naturally her night of terror sees her thrown into the deep end of real world mental anguish. Indeed - not to spoil it, mind - there's a nice little moment to tie this plot thread up at the end of the flick which illustrates some deeper thought at play in the script; and even in 1971 the police were being painted as drowning in bureaucratic incompetence. Speaking of which, fans of the British sitcom Only Fools and Horses will spot a young Roger Lloyd-Pack (Trigger) as one of the policemen in the climactic sequence.



So in summary, Fright is an atmospheric old school slice of British Lion/Fantale Films horror that will appeal to fans of an era defined by Hammer Horror, Susan George, and babysitters terrorised in creepy old houses. 41 years on it's not the nerve-shredder that it once might have been, but it is well served by a healthy dose of nostalgia, a solid script, tight direction, and a great sense of visual flair (both in Ian Wilson's cinematography and Raymond Poulton's editing - which pleasingly seems to take a little inspiration from 1969's Easy Rider). If this sounds like your kind of flick, then I recommend you check it out.