Stage Fright (Michele Soavi, 1987) Blu-Ray Review

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“What a disaster, and just a week from opening night.” By 1987 the slasher movie was in rapid decline, having dominated the popular cinema of the 1980s with masked murderers slaying their way through camp grounds and holidays alike with gore-drenched abandon. However, if there's still some juice left in the squeeze, you could be sure the Italians will find it, and in this case Michele Soavi (Dellamorte Dellamore) made a name for himself by injecting a fairly standard slasher flick with an invigorating sense of energy and a love for the horror genre...

 

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Delirium (Lamberto Bava, 1987) Blu-Ray Review

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“Sounds like you enjoy playing the victim.” The 1970s saw an explosion of 'giallo' films produced by Italian filmmakers after the success of Dario Argento's début film The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, a murder mystery that twisted sex and violence together in a bravura package of style and warped psychology. As the decade wore on the flood turned into a trickle, but the American slasher movie craze that came in the wake of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13^th (1980) saw somewhat of a revival of blood-soaked mysteries in Italy with the likes of Tenebrae (1982) and A Blade In The Dark (1983). However, once again, the craze waned, but spurts of brilliance still emerged with Argento's Terror at the Opera (1987) – in which a bullet penetrates a peep hole to brain-splattering effect – or, in this case, Lamberto Bava's psycho-sexual mystery slasher Delirium (aka La Foto Di Gioia) – in which a woman with a big, veiny eyeball for a face gets skewered with a pitchfork … now that got you intrigued, didn't it?

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Blastfighter (Lamberto Bava, 1984) DVD Review

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“You only get peace when you can impose it.” Lamberto Bava, son of the iconic Italian filmmaker Mario Bava, never quite achieved the creative heights of his father's catalogue of cinematic treats (Mario kick started the entire giallo movement with The Girl Who Knew Too Much in 1963), but he has nonetheless carved out a recognised and beloved niche in Italian genre cinema. Macabre, Body Puzzle, A Blade in the Dark, Delirium, and particularly Demons, will all be familiar to aficionados of European exploitation movies, but whereas Demons dispensed with characterisation and any shred of plot logic in favour of scatter gun gore, Lamberto's 1984 action thriller Blastfighter crafts a character-rich story which dispenses frequent action while still keeping the viewer emotionally invested...

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Rabid Dogs (Mario Bava, 1974) Blu-Ray/DVD Review

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“You're just crazy! Crazy and cruel!” Italy in the 1970s was a turbulent place and time, rocked by socio-political change and rife with organised crime. Drug cartels, kidnapping schemes, and young gangs left the police scrabbling to catch up and the public locking themselves away. Reacting to this period of fear, the film makers of the era unleashed a series of hard-as-nails crime pictures and hard-bitten 'poliziotteschi' films. Menacing rogue cops modelled on Dirty Harry dominated, but sometimes the violent criminals took centre stage. One example would be Umberto Lenzi's Almost Human (1974), but not to be outdone – even in the twilight of his career – Mario Bava (best known for horror films like Black Sunday or Kill Baby Kill) dived into the fray with Rabid Dogs. However, it was sucked into a nightmarish legal limbo before the low budget production had even finished. The film, which many feared to be lost forever, remained unseen for more than twenty years before, at long last, it was pulled from the ashes and given new life...

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Anthropophagous (Joe D'Amato, 1980) DVD Review

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“It's not fear that tears you apart … it's him!” Formerly one of the most notorious 'Video Nasties' in the United Kingdom – where it was banned in 1984 at the height of the moral panic – Anthropophagous: The Beast, aka The Savage Island, is a flesh-devouring holiday in hell from Joe D'Amato (Love Goddess of the Cannibals, and the infamous Emmanuelle in America). However, even with it's grisly reputation, the film has some grander ideas at its core...

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Baba Yaga (Corrado Farina, 1973) DVD Review

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“Our meeting was pre-ordained.” Corrado Farina's Baba Yaga (aka The Devil Witch / Kiss Me Kill Me), is based on the comic strip by Guido Crepax, and Slavic folklore. It is the tale of a free-spirited young photographer who falls under the curious spell of a strange woman who increasingly holds sway over her mind and her possessed camera.

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2019 After the Fall of New York (Sergio Martino 1983) Review

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“Since the nuclear holocaust, twenty years have passed.” Many of the Italian film-makers who became best known for a particular genre – be it giallo, cannibals, zombies, etc – were experienced in a range of genres. During the 1970s and 1980s the Italian film industry was booming as socio-political upheaval provided impetus for change and ideas for screenplays, and productions sought to become ever more ambitious. In 1983, Sergio Martino (The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, Torso) unleashed an audacious – if derivative – sci-fi action extravaganza that stretched its modest budget far and wide with obliterated cityscapes, vehicular combat, and even a space shuttle.

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