#forgotten gialli

[allieatthemovies]

Movie Review: The Killer is One of 13 (1973) d. Javier Aguirre - 2.5 / 5 Stars

Going all the way back to movies like The Thin Man and After the Thin Man and as recent as movies like Knives Out, I just have a soft spot for the “large group of people stuck in a location together and accused of murder” trope. It’s not something I ever really thought much about, but watching this it occurred to me I like these sorts of mysteries a lot - no matter how contrived they might be. This movie falls neatly into that category.

The Killer is One of 13 is by no means the best of its kind, but is serviceable enough if you find yourself in need of something new. The film centers around the character Lisa who brings together a group of thirteen people she believes may have killed her husband, Carlos, two years prior. She disguises this inquiry as a reunion weekend and accuses her guests while they sit around the dinner table the first night. This... genre, i suppose, of mystery / horror inherently comes with a lot of talking - exposition is a key factor - and this movie exposits excessively. For me, I enjoyed the barbed accusations and meandering theories postulated in every scene about Carlos’ murder, but even I will admit it does start to drag at times. There’s very little variation to the scenes, very little movement. The scenes at the dinner table are either wide shots of people looking around confused and offended or tight headshots that cut back and forth between the characters speaking. This applies to most of the movie and the lack of energy from the characters and cinematography hurt it in the long run.

The plot itself is suitably convoluted to this type of story. Theories are proposed and abandoned, character flaws are revealed only to go nowhere. It all serves to steer the audience away from the real motivation. But with so many branching possibilities proposed it becomes a little disappointing how few of them actually come into play by the climax, and for all the talking and theorizing the climax comes extremely abruptly. There isn’t a single death until around the 60 minute mark of this 90 minute movie, but once they start they happen in quick succession. The kills themselves are adequate, but not particularly memorable. When the false killer is revealed - five minutes before the end of the movie no less - it’s frustrating because we, as the audience, know this cannot possibly be the killer. The reveal of the actual killer doesn’t offer a satisfying “a ha!” moment, but rather more of an exasperated sigh moment. It’s not really set up well enough despite the exorbitant amount of exposition, it’s cliche, and half the dinner guests have already left the estate.

So the plot itself leaves much to be desired, but the characters can be interesting and most of the actors still manage to pull off decent performances. These sorts of movies always rely heavily on the interplay of character relationships, and I did enjoy watching the lines drawn between each of them. The standout character was Lisa’s aunt, Bertha. She’s the manipulative and doting mother of Lisa’s cousin who displays a sharper mind than most of the dinner guests and has the air an older femme fatale. In between emasculating her son her efforts to uncover the killer are equal parts the most disturbingly earnest and engaging. I also felt for Guillermo who was probably the most sympathetic and believable dinner guests of the thirteen. The discovery of his wife’s infidelity is probably the most engaging of the subplots threaded throughout the film. Everyone else plays their parts well for as one note as they are: Harry is suitably unlikable as the playboy, Arlen is serviceably awkward, the wives are all perfectly catty, Elena is just naive enough, Henry the Butler buttles expertly, and Ernest feels like he was written only as an excuse to hire Paul Naschy.

It’s the character dynamics that really save this from being a complete slog for me. While it will never be high on my list of recommendations, if it ever is, I can’t say I regret watching it or didn’t enjoy it in parts. I’ll probably revisit it once in a blue moon when I’m going through my movies and trying to remember if I liked it or not.

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

The Girl in Room 2A

Is every Italian thriller a giallo? Vinegar Syndrom released William L. Rose’s THE GIRL IN ROOM 2A (aka LA CASA DELLA PAURA, 1974, Shudder) in its FORGOTTEN GIALLI series, but I’m hard-pressed to find many similarities to giallo classics like BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964) or THE BIRD WITH CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1970). It doesn’t have the super-saturated dark colors of those films but rather is shot in bright, sunshiny EastmanColor. The score, though eclectic, doesn’t have the brooding intensity of most films in the genre. There’s no past trauma motivating the action. It’s really more like Nancy Drew with naked bosoms. An unjustly imprisoned ex-convict (Daniela Giordano) is sent to room with a widow (Giovanna Galletti) and her hunky if emotionally backwards son (Angelo Infanti). After having strange nightmares about a menacing figure in a red hood, she meets a man (Jack Scanlon) whose sister committed suicide after staying in the same room, so they have sex, because she has a nice body the filmmakers want to show off. This all ties into a cult led by Raf Vallone, who’s out to punish people for their sins, sort of. There’s only one scene that comes within spitting distance of a classic giallo, when Giordano sneaks into Infanti’s workroom, where she’s surrounded by mannequin parts, but it’s hardly as stylish as something Mario Bava or Dario Argento would have done. Perhaps it falls short in that area because it was made by Americans (Rose and producer Dick Randall) who specialized in exploitation pictures. The film starts out as a diverting little mystery only to get rather silly at the end. When the cult kidnaps Giordano, Scanlon rides to the rescue in a Volkswagen Beetle, which just looks funny. And the skinny Scanlon keeps beating up the baddies while his muscular buddy (peplum star Brad Harris) looks on. The strangest thing about the film, however, is the fact that it’s mostly dubbed (poorly) into English, but there are scenes in Italian in which the voices sound very different from those in the dubbed version. Vinegar Syndrome has advertised their release as the most complete version of the film in existence (and if that excites you, let’s hope they never uncover the original cuts of GREED or THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, for fear that might kill you). I’m guessing the American version that played mostly at drive-ins and in grindhouses had been cut, and no dubbed version of those scenes exists.

[spoilsofwar666]

January Giallo Day 18 Crazy Desires of a Murderer Figured I'd keep the roll going amd dip back into one of my @vinegarsyndrome Forgotten Gialli sets. The back synopsis seemed interesting enough. This one was ok. It had a pretty basic story and the death scenes weren't too bad. It's always interesting to see other directors for the eye ball mutilations, cause it still seems Fulci does it better. The reveal was interesting enough, but I saw most of the twists coming. All in all, it wasn't terrible but it also wasn't a stand out film. #Horror #HorrorMovies #HorrorJunkie #BloodJunkie #GoreWhore #Blood #Guts #BloodAndGuts #Shudder #HorrorReviews #MovieReviews #EverydayIsHalloween #InfectedVoice #Metal #MetalAndHorror #MetalHead #SpoilsOfWar #JanuaryGiallo #ItalianHorror #CrazyDesiresOfAMurderer #VinegarSyndrome #ForgottenGialli #TheEdgarWrightChallenge https://www.instagram.com/p/CnlryErOlYR/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[brokehorrorfan]

Blu-ray Review: Forgotten Gialli: Volume 3

Vinegar Syndrome launched its first Forgotten Gialli Blu-ray box set less than a year ago, but the powerhouse distributor is already on the third volume of obscure giallo (European murder-mystery) films. The latest installment features 1972's Murder Mansion (also known as The Mansion in the Fog), 1975's Autopsy (also known as The Victim), and 1977's Crazy Desires of a Murderer (also known as The Morbid Vices of a Housekeeper).

Murder Mansion is a Spanish-Italian co-production that only classifies as a giallo by a rather liberal definition. It starts out slow; the first line of dialogue isn't spoken until six minutes in, after the opening title sequence and a lengthy driving scene. When the night is consumed by fog, a group of strangers from different backgrounds seek refuge in an old mansion next to an abandoned village where local legends say vampires once resided. It's not long before they suspect that ghosts have risen from the nearby graveyard.

Written by Luis G. de Blain and Antonio Troiso (Beyond the Door), the murder-mystery aspects are more Agatha Christie - or even Scooby-Doo, given the cartoonish reveal - than giallo, lacking many of the subgenre's hallmarks; but even more so director Francisco Lara Polop seems to be drawing influence from gothic horror in both approach and execution. The chilling atmosphere is palpable as soon as the fog rolls in, but the first body doesn't pop up until nearly an hour into the 86-minute film. The last act makes admirable attempts to compensate with scares and shocks.

Murder Mansion has been newly restored in 4K from its 35mm original camera negative. It includes the original Spanish language audio with newly translated English subtitles as well as the English and Italian dubs. The disc includes a 20-minute interview with actress Evelyn Stewart (The Psychic). While she admittedly doesn't remember the specifics about much of the production, she recalls working with the special effects and explains her use of a stage name. She’s noticeably pleased by the film, particularly Polop's direction.

The most well-known title among the three Forgotten Gialli sets, Autopsy opens with a montage of grisly suicides plaguing Rome, purported to be caused by sun spots. A young, female pathologist (Mimsy Farmer, Four Flies on Grey Velvet), serendipitously writing a thesis on the differences between simulated and authentic suicides, teams up with an epileptic race car driver-turned-priest (Barry Primus, Boxcar Bertha) following the alleged suicide of his sister to investigate.

Directed by Armando Crispino (The Dead Are Alive), who co-wrote the script with Lucio Battistrada, the Italian giallo is convoluted even by the subgenre's standards. It's also shockingly sleazy, from a misogynistic coroner to maddening visions of being molested by cadavers. The film is uneven in both tone and pacing and bloated at 100 minutes, but it ends on a high note with a memorable finale. On the whole, it's more unnerving than most gialli, due to the taboo buttons it pushes as well as the hints of surrealism in which Crispino indulges. A score by Ennio Morricone (The Thing, The Good the Bad and the Ugly) certainly doesn't hurt.

Autopsy has been newly restored in 2K from its 35mm original camera negative. It includes both the English and Italian (with newly translated English subtitles) mono soundtracks. It offers a variety of special features: a featurette on Crispino consisting of 38 minutes of insight from the late director's son, Francesco Crispino; a 10-minute interview with Francesco Crispino, who dissects various versions of the film and discusses his father's influences; an 11-minute interview with editor Daniele Alabiso conducted by Francesco Crispino, in which they examine the film's peculiar rhythm; an introduction by the director from a screening; alternate Italian titles and credits; and the theatrical trailer.

If only Crazy Desires of a Murderer's plot was as stimulating as its traditionally verbose giallo title. It centers around an affluent, globe-trotting countess, Ileana (Isabelle Marchall, Black Emanuelle). She returns to her familial castle with new friends she met while traveling in China, who unwittingly used her as a drug courier. Meanwhile, her traumatized half-brother is kept locked away in the basement. But those are the least of her problems once someone starts murdering the inhabitants of the castle.

Aesthetically, this one most closely resembles a traditional giallo. What the drab castle lacks in color palette, director Filippo Walter Ratti and cinematographer Gino Santini (Django the Bastard) make up for with interesting camerawork. There's also ample gore, as the killer's modus operandi involves removing the victims' eyes, and heavy doses of sleaze, although it pales in comparison to Autopsy. But writer Ambrogio Molteni (Black Emanuelle) employs an Agatha Christie-esque sleuth (Corrado Gaipa, The Godfather) to solve the mystery, and the abundance of clunky procedural scenes weigh down the film.

Crazy Desires of a Murderer has been newly restored in 4K from its 35mm original camera negative with Italian mono audio and newly translated English subtitles. The disc includes a 15-minute interview (in Italian with subtitles) with actor Giuseppe Colombo (who more notably went on to produce The Stendhal Syndrome and other Dario Argento productions). He candidly recalls frequent disagreements with Ratti and other drama that befell the production.

While the films are hit or miss, the experience of unearthing them is always a thrill. Even the packaging is great, with each film in its own individual Blu-ray case with reversible artwork, all of which are housed inside a sturdy box (limited to 6,000). Between Forgotten Gialli and the forthcoming Home Grown Horrors, I hope Vinegar Syndrome never stops spoiling us with box sets of hidden gems.

Forgotten Gialli: Volume 3 is available now on Blu-ray via Vinegar Syndrome.

[grindhousecellar]

[mariocki]

Spaghetti Western icon and international film star Frank Wolff inexplicably turns up as the villainous Jim Reston in The Saint: The Old Treasure Story (4.9, ITC, 1965)

[maxwell-grant]

Excuse Me what is pulp and why is it importan?

Good question! And probably one I should have answered sooner. Time to put on the historian hat for this one.

"Pulp" is a term used mainly to describe forms of storytelling that sprang out or were dominant in 20th century cheap all-fiction American magazines from the 1900s to the 1950s. The pulp magazine began in 1896, when Frank Munsey's Argosy magazine, in order to cut costs, dropped the non-fiction articles and photographs and switched from glossy paper to the much less expensive wood pulp paper, hence the name. The pulp magazines would mainly take off as a distinct market and format in 1904, when Street & Smith learned that Popular Magazine, despite being marketed towards boys, was being consumed by men of all ages, so they increased page count and started putting popular authors on the issues.

It was specifically the 1905 reprint of H.Rider Haggard's Ayesha that not only put Street & Smith on the map as rivals to Argosy, but also inspired other companies to start publishing in the pulp format. Pulps encompassed literally everything that the authors felt like publishing. Westerns, romance, horror, sci-fi, railroad stories, war stories, war aviation stories. Zeppelins had a short-lived subgenre. Celebrities got their own magazines, it was really any genre or format they could pull off, anything they could get away with.

Nowadays, although they came quite late in it's history, the American pulps are most famous for it's "hero pulps", characters like The Shadow and Doc Savage that are viewed as a formative influence on comic book superheroes. The pulp magazines in America lasted until the 1950s, when cumulative factors such as paper shortages, diminishing audience returns and the closing of it's biggest publishers led to it dying off, although in the decades since there's always been publishers calling their magazines pulp. That's the American pulp history.

But pulps are a phenomenon that spans the entire world and has a much bigger history to it, because pulps have become synonymous with cheap fiction magazines and those have a much bigger history. In America, before the pulps, you had the dime novels, the direct predecessors of the pulps, as well as the novelettes. England had it's penny dreadfuls and story papers, and continued publishing pulp-format magazines past the American 1950s, and that's how we got Elric of Melniboné. France and Russia arguably got to it first with it's 1800s coulporters, chapbooks and particularly the feuilletons which lasted all the way to the 20th century and created characters such as Arsene Lupin, Fantomas and The Phantom of the Opera. The Germans published pulp under the name hefteromane. Japan also published pulp magazines both original as well as imported, and the current "light-novel" phenomenon started off as an equivalent of pulp magazines (it's even on the Wikipedia page). China has wuxia, Brazil has cordel, Italy has gialli. There were Indian, Persian, Ethiopian, Canadian, Australian pulps and much more. Look anywhere in the world and you'll find examples of "pulp" happening again and again, under different circumstances and time periods.

Even if we stick to American fiction, it's impossible to state that all pulp heroes must come from the 1900s-1950s pulp magazines, because that forces us to exclude some of the most popular pulp heroes like Indiana Jones, Green Hornet, Rocketeer and The Phantom. Pulp may have once been a term meant to refer to pulp magazines exclusively, but it's morphed and lost structure and it's become the closest thing we have to a general umbrella term that allows us to try and consolidate these under a shared history. It's a lot, as you can see, and it's why several pulp historians that broaden their scope outside of 1930s American fiction have adopted Roland Barthes's definition of pulp as "A Metaphor With No Brakes In It", which is still the closest thing to a true working definition we have.

Why is it important? You tell me. I don't like to stake claims about stuff being "important", everyone's got their own priorities in life. Surely a lot of people would scoff at the idea of old populist fiction published in what was functionally equivalent to toilet paper having any sort of "importance". On the other hand, some people definitely want to talk big about the pulps as a cultural bedrock of fiction, something that's baked into the lifeblood of all fiction as we currently know it. Which it is, mind you, but I don't like to talk about pulp fiction's value being derived mainly from merely the things it inspired.

There is definitely a historical importance to be had in cataloguing them. According to the US's foremost pulp researcher Jess Nevins, 38% of all American pulps no longer exist, and 14% of all American pulps survive in less than five copies. Many libraries have very scant, if any, records on them, many collectors are hard to locate and are uncooperative when it comes to sharing information and letting outsiders view their collections. A lot of them are bound up in legal complications that prevents them from taking off in the public domain, and a lot of them ARE public domain but are completely inacessible as research material. And that's the American pulps, foreign pulps have fared far worse in posterity, with records inaccessible to people unfamiliar with the language or locations, many existing merely in mentions on decades-old records, and hundreds if not thousands of them being completely gone beyond recovery or recall.

Gone, dead, wasted, destroyed. They can't be found in barbershops or warehouse or bookstores, not even in antique stores. Hundreds, thousands of characters, stories and creators, gone. Time and posterity have crushed them to dust, forgotten and ignored by their successors. Unfettered by pretenses of respectability that repressed their glossier counterparts, in packages meant to be destroyed after reading, proudly announcing itself as trash. Things that should have never even lasted as long as they did have died many times now. It's heroes peripherical shapeshifters, nearly all of whom seem dead, quite dead, as dead as fictional characters can possibly be.

But they do not die forever. Many of them have, maybe most of them have, but many of them linger on.

"The strange red flickering of 1930’s fiction seems distant now.  You hold in your hand the product of a time too remote to recall, and feel a slow stir of wonder.  The smell of pulp pages, an illustration, an advertisement, these fragile things mark the slow hammering of time and display what it has done.  About you are today’s machines, today’s shadows.

Outside the window, leaves hang against the sky, as did leaves during the 1930’s.  The sound of voices are no different then than now.  You hold the magazine and feel something quite delicate slipping past. These solid forms surrounding you are all insubstantial. Time’s hammer will also pass across them, leaving little enough behind." - Spider, by Robert Sampson

Many of the things people call dead are just things that have been sleeping for a while or haven't had the chance to be born. Pulp fiction is dead on the page, inert, unless your imagination breathes live to it, and every now and then, one way or another, these characters dig themselves out of dustbins. Maybe it's a brief revival, maybe it's a successful reboot. Maybe they find publishers, or maybe the public domain allows them to find new life. Maybe new creators do interesting things with them, and maybe, just maybe, they live again because some won't shut up about them online. Some curious impulse led you to me, did it not? 

We all have our Frankensteins to obsess over, and these are some of mine. As someone who's lived a life perpetually restless over pursuit of knowledge, pulp has lured me like a moth to flame, because I literally never run out of things to discover within it, I never run out of possibilities. As the years pass and the public domain starts being more and more open to the public, more and more narrative real state is brought forth for writers and artists and creators to play around.

Pulp is the dark matter of fiction, the uncatalogued depths of the ocean, the darkest recesses of space. It's the box of your grandfather's belongings, the treasure you find in an attic, a body part sticking out from an old playground. It's the things that don't work, don't succeed, the things that don't fit, that are out of place. That shouldn't live and succeed, and did so anyway. The things that slither in the cracks, the shadows behind the curtain.

Aren't you interested in peering on what's behind the curtain?

The exquisite workmanship of the head, of a pre-pyramidal age, and the hieroglyphics, symbols of a language that was forgotten when Rome was young–these, Kane sensed, were additions as modern to the antiquity of the staff itself as would be English words carved on the stone monoliths of Stonehenge.

As for the cat-head–looking at it sometimes Kane had a peculiar feeling of alteration; a faint sensing that once the pommel of the staff was carved with a different design. The dust-ancient Egyptian who had carved the head of Bast had merely altered the original figure, and what that figure had been, Kane had never tried to guess.

A close scrutiny of the staff always aroused a disquieting and almost dizzy suggestion of abysses of eons, unprovocative to further speculation. - The Footfalls Within, by Robert E Howard, quoted by Stuart Hopen’s The Mythic American Culture

[hadarlaskey]

Why Dario Argento’s Deep Red remains a trashy masterpiece

A sweet children’s song, a Christmas tree in a cosy domestic setting, silhouettes on the wall showing one person viciously stabbing another, and then a blood-stained knife falling to the floor, by the shoes of a standing child. This is the prologue to Dario Argento’s Deep Red, and also its primal scene – the source of a trauma that keeps resurfacing over a decade later. It is also a piece of shadow play in the theatre of a disturbed mind, leading us to draw certain connections and inferences, while being open to more than one interpretation.

Indeed, much of Deep Red will involve the discussion and reading of minds and art. “Really, that’s good, very good,” pianist and music teacher Marcus Daly (David Hemmings) tells jazz band in the present scene that immediately follows the past prologue. “Maybe a bit too good. Too clean, yes, too precise. Too… formal. It should be more trashy.” Here Argento may as well be laying out the aesthetics of his own film, which comes meticulously crafted, operatic even in its baroque mannerisms, but which is nonetheless aiming low.

For the director is still working within the trashy sensationalism of the giallo genre in which he had already established his name and signature style with the ‘animal’ trilogy The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, The Cat O’ Nine Tails and Four Flies on Grey Velvet. Deep Red was originally intended to belong to this series, and its working title was the more bestial-sounding The Sabre-Toothed Tiger. But even if the film was briefly rereleased in America during the early ’80s as The Hatchet Murders, Deep Red eventually stuck.

After recognising that there is a “twisted mind” with “perverted, murderous thoughts” in her audience, Lithuanian telepath Helga Ulmann (Macha Méril) is later killed in her apartment. Her screams draw Marcus, her upstairs neighbour, to the scene, but he is too late. When questioned by the police he becomes convinced that one of the macabre pictures he saw in passing on Helga’s walls is now mysteriously missing. “Maybe,” fellow pianist Carlo Manganiello (Gabriele Lavia) suggests to Marcus, “that painting was made to disappear because it represented something important.” Yet as Marcus tries to remember, the mysterious killer wants a past crime to remain forgotten, and commits many more murders to cover a bloody trail leading all the way back to the primal scene.

It is not just a painting that must be found, but a supposedly haunted house, and a missing window (with a missing room behind it), and various infantile reproductions (whether on paper or fresco) of that first killing, all to piece together the identity of the killer. Barely helped by the incompetent police, Marcus reluctantly joins forces with ambitious journalist Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi), and as they become both investigative partners and lovers, the chauvinistic pianist learns the price of underestimating women. Much of this couple’s relationship was excised by Argento himself for the film’s original 100-minute theatrical version, but has been reinstated for a 126-minute edit whose additional scenes have never been dubbed into English.

It is well worth watching them. For while these scenes’ comic tone may sit oddly with the rest of the film, there is something about the sight of Marcus sunk into the broken passenger seat of Gianna’s barely functioning little car, that perfectly encapsulates the folly in Marcus’s posturing masculine superiority. Here it is Gianna who is both positioned above her male passenger, and very much in the driver’s seat – and from this a more general lesson can be drawn about the film’s inversion of gender norms, at least according to the sexist Marcus. “Men and women are different,” he will tell Gianna, “Women are delicate, fragile.” Yet the film will repeatedly challenge his assumptions and prejudices about woman’s capabilities.

Deep Red was a transitional film in Argento’s career, bridging the gap between his earlier gialli and his later leanings towards the supernatural in features like Suspiria, Inferno and Phenomena. Indeed, much as Helga has the uncanny ability to read minds, in one scene here, her colleague Professor Giordani (Glauco Mauri) describes the telepathic powers of insects, and in so doing, practically predicts a key point of Phenomena’s plotting, a good decade before it was made. All the grotesquely bloody murders of Argento’s previous detective stories are here present and correct, while this is the first in a long musical collaboration with Italian prog rockers Goblin and their front man Claudio Simonetti.

As both Marco and the killer try to reconstruct the primal scene in their different ways – the one to solve a crime, the other to recreate its circumstances – Argento pulls off a genuine coup de cinéma by revealing the killer’s face remarkably early in the film, but in such a way that if you do not know what you are looking for, you will not see it, even though Argento plays entirely fair in the relevant sequence and the face is most certainly there. This film is very good, but also distinctly trashy, as the elegant art gallery in a Helga’s home hides a cleaver-wielding presence determined to paint and repaint everything deep red.

Deep Red is released on Limited Edition 4K UHD Blu-ray, DVD and soundtrack CD from 25 October via Arrow Film.

The post Why Dario Argento’s Deep Red remains a trashy masterpiece appeared first on Little White Lies.

source https://lwlies.com/articles/deep-red-dario-argento-giallo/

[sciatu]

I boschi dei Nebrodi e dell’ Etna in autunno.

Lentamente, dal sottobosco sale in lunghe spirali la nebbia, si aggrappa ai deboli raggi di sole che filtrano tra le ingiallite foglie e su essi risale fino a vedere finalmente il cielo grigio e silenzioso ed a questo punto, in lunghe volute, sparisce confondendosi con le nubi. Le chiome degli alberi hanno perso il loro verde cupo e diventano fiamme vegetali con i loro rosso-mattone, rosso-cinabro, rosso-aranciato o i loro colori d’ocra sfumati da un delicato verde e luminosi gialli. Le foglie vestono il loro splendente sudario per tornare alla terra a ridarle il nutrimento con cui l’albero è vissuto. Alla madre i figli ridanno l’amore avuto in un equilibrio continuo che noi uomini, bambini capricciosi ed egoisti, abbiamo dimenticato. La terra. ora di un profondo color oscuro, ora di un bianco abbagliante, osserva i rami che si stanno svestendo di colore a cui il vento con le foglie ha rubato le parole e la voce. La terra umida e grassa, segue lo sfrecciare di merli e colombi, osserva le onde di grigie nuvole che coprono di monotonia l’azzurro sottile del cielo. Tutto appare come un tango lento che il tempo suona e che terra e il bosco danzano, intimamente abbracciati, perduti ognuno nell’amore dell’altro.

Slowly, from the undergrowth the fog rises in long spirals, clings to the weak rays of sun that filter through the yellowed leaves and climbs up to finally see the gray and silent sky and at this point, in long swirls, it disappears, mingling with the clouds. The crowns of the trees have lost their dark green and become vegetable flames with their red-brick, red-cinnabar, red-orange or their ocher colors tinged with a delicate green and bright yellow. The leaves dress their shining shroud to return to the earth to give it back the nourishment with which the tree lived. The children give back to the mother the love they had in a continuous balance that we men, capricious and selfish children, have forgotten. The earth. now of a deep dark color, now of a dazzling white, observe the branches that are stripping of color from which the wind with the leaves has stolen the words and the voice. The moist and greasy earth follows the whizzing of blackbirds and doves, observes the waves of gray clouds that cover the subtle blue of the sky with monotony. Everything appears like a slow tango that time plays and the earth and the woods dance, intimately embraced, each lost in the love of the other

[mcbastardsmausoleum]

treated myself to some @vinegarsyndrome FORGOTTEN GIALLI VOL. 2 & 3 https://www.instagram.com/p/CPauT_TlAKt/?utm_medium=tumblr

[moviesandmania]

Blu-ray and DVD releases: April 2020

Here is our selection of the Blu-ray and DVD releases being released in the USA in April 2020. For movies that we have covered on our site, there are links for further information. Otherwise, click on the Amazon link(s).

April 7th, 2020:

Camp Cold Brook (Shout Factory Blu-ray) Amazon.com

Camp Cold Brook (Shout Factory DVD) – Amazon.com

Knives and Skin (Shout Factory Blu-ray) – Amazon.com

Superna…

[allieatthemovies]

Movie Review: The Girl in Room 2A (1974) d. William Rose - 3.5 / 5 Stars

Combining elements of gothic horror and giallo slashers, The Girl in Room 2A offers a somewhat uneven, but fascinating story that explores themes of justice, its connection to the religious and moral idea of “good” vs “evil”, and the nature of redemption.

The film’s protagonist, Margaret, is a recently released inmate of a women’s prison who is sent to the Grant House by her kindly social worker, Alicia. Once at the Grant House, Margaret’s innocence is called into question by Mrs. Grant, the ominous landlady, to whom Margaret protests her own innocence. Also staying in the house is Mrs. Grant’s son, Frank, who seems to be largely influenced by a local, controversial cult of which his mother is a part. The catalyst for the central mystery occurs when Margaret meets Jack, the brother of a girl who reportedly committed suicide after staying in the Grant House. The two work together to uncover the mysteries surrounding the house even as the cult closes in on Margaret as their next victim.

The question of Margaret’s character is a running theme throughout the movie that reinforces the philosophical and moral questions at the core of the story. Almost as soon as Margaret arrives at the the Grant House, she is besieged by nightmares of her time in prison and hunted by red-clad figures seeking to punish her for her crimes. These spells are preceded or followed by the appearance of a red stain on her floor which she scrubs away and covers with a rug. There’s plenty of symbolism that can be unpacked in that simple action, and while not exactly subtle it effectively evokes the idea of Margaret’s possible mental instability and a subconscious desire to bury her own guilt. The establishment of Margaret as an unreliable narrator puts the audience between her and the actions of the cult who seek to punish guilty parties they deem were not punished enough and who have failed to repent. In fact, the movie has several unreliable narrators including Mrs. Grant and Frank, who tell Margaret different accounts of the death of Frank’s father. This may have been a thread intended to go somewhere, but apart from briefly spiking Margaret’s suspicions, it never plays into the rest of the movie. The most forthright character is Jack, who is never presented as anything less than sincere and is the only character who wholly believes Margaret’s claims to innocence.

The Girl in Room 2A is unique to its genre in that there’s never any real doubt that the cult is responsible; if there is a mystery for the audience it’s the identity of the Grand Inquisitor - clad in red vestments reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition and some works of Edgar Allen Poe - or the question of Margaret’s innocence. It’s this cult element and the religious iconography scattered throughout that lends to the gothic aesthetic presented almost more at the forefront than the elements of the giallo. But when combined, these elements create some uniquely striking visuals for both genres such as the black, knife-wielding glove associated with giallo being replaced with the vibrant red of the cult’s chosen attire while maintaining the use of the POV camera. Despite the lack of a traditional giallo mystery, the journey to uncover what happened to Jack’s sister remains engaging. We, as the audience, know it’s the cult, but Jack and Margaret do not, so as they seek out the perpetrators the audience is allowed more insight into the motivations and ideology that drives those we know are responsible. Having said that, while I never thought much about the identity of the Grand Inquisitor, the reveal of who they are was actually very satisfying despite how little screen time is devoted to it. I remember thinking early on in the film that one particular character’s demeanor seemed to shift oddly, but I wasn’t sure if it was simply a matter of inconsistent acting or intentional foreshadowing (sometimes it’s hard to tell in these kinds of movies, but that adds to the fun). Given the reveal, I’d say it was definite foreshadowing, and for so brief a moment it pays off to great effect by the end.

Every character in the movie serves to reinforce different perceptions of justice and how good and evil are judged from different perspectives. The cult serves as the most radical and overt vessel for this. At one point, the cult’s promoter Mr. Dreese, picks up a piece of paper that reads: “Their punishment shall match the evil in their souls”. The question of how this phrase is interpreted is central to the message and conflict. Margaret seeks to maintain her own innocence, and that her punishment was unjust. Jack seeks a more traditional, vigilante sort of justice for the murder of his sister, and later seeks to stop the cult in order to protect Margaret whom he deems innocent of wrong-doing. Mrs. Grant doesn’t believe that wrongdoing can, or should, be forgiven and that punishment should be an enduring fact of those who transgress. It’s this mentality that draws her to the cult whose philosophy that accusation equates guilt feeds her own trauma about the loss of her husband. The cult itself, as the most radical element, demands repentance for crimes, but refuses to offer forgiveness. This is an interesting stance to take since, regardless of personal opinion, what point is there to repent when your captors will never forgive your crime? Death is guaranteed in this case. But this philosophy does line up well with the cult’s use of torture, a proven unreliable method for ascertaining truth since most anyone will say what you ask just to make the pain stop.

Most of the inconsistencies or unanswered philosophical questions feel intentional, but there are some minor failings in the pacing, plot, and motives that keep me from elevating this movie higher. The one that bothered me the most was Maria, a minor character who is looking to stay at the Grant House. She ends up at the mercy of the cult, but I honestly don’t know why. Unless I missed it, the movie never specifies that she committed any wrong-doing. It could be a statement on the hypocrisy present in the cult’s zealotry, but it didn’t feel as intentional as some other open-ended elements. I’m left wondering if there’s a deleted scene somewhere that expands more on Maria’s role. There is also a scene towards the beginning where the cultists punish a journalist they judge to be too selfish and ambitious - a crime in their eyes, apparently. Again, this serves to highlight the different levels of judgment cast on ideas of what constitutes good or evil and what defines “the punishment fits the crime”. But, for me, it felt extremely out of place. There are plenty of other, more organic, scenes that explore this while this one just sort of comes and goes and is never mentioned again.

Overall, I enjoyed this one and was engaged from beginning to end. I would definitely recommend it to fans of the gothic and giallo sub-genres.

[slayedpoet]

Ti scatterò una foto | capitolo 1

Pairing: Martino Rametta/Niccolò Fares Summary: Quando fotografi la gente a colori, fotografi i loro vestiti. Quando fotografi la gente in bianco e nero, fotografi la loro anima. (Ted Grant) Words Count: 1.052 words A/N: Una specie di AU ambientata quando frequentano tutti l’università (Martino studia fotografia e arte, Niccolò frequenta il conservatorio, gli studi degl’altri verrano citati indirettamente), gli eventi principali saranno generalmente presenti, ci sarà qualche cambio qua e là. [ah. è la prima cosa che scrivo, mi sembrava giusto dirlo]

For the international part of the fandom: I haven’t forgotten about your existence...just give me time to translate it. :))

Il Coffee Express è sempre stato il punto di ritrovo preferito dagli studenti universitari di Roma.   Sarà per quella sua aria vissuta, un po’ vintage, dove ogni mobile fa a pugni con quello vicino e allo stesso tempo no; saranno le pile di libri stipati su ogni singola mensola delle librerie di mogano che ricoprono interamente le pareti; sarà per la musica che risuona delicatamente a tutte le ore dagli altoparlanti, un mix fra indie, jazz e acustica; oppure per il profumo di caffè appena macinato, brioches appena sfornate e le varie fragranze delle sigarette elettriche; magari per i fili di luci gialle appesi come ghirlande o le abat jour sui tavolini del soppalco. Martino e i suoi amici si ritrovano sempre lì quando riescono a combaciare i loro orari universitari: a volte per pranzo, a volte per una colazione veloce prima di scappare in aula, a volte senza un motivo, solo per stare un po’ insieme come ai vecchi tempi quando si vedevano al Baretto a giocare a biliardino fra schiamazzi e incazzature del proprietario. Oggi è uno di quei giorni: se ne stanno tutti e quattro seduti ad un tavolino, a parlare del più e del meno, mentre fuori l'autunno si fa sentire con le prime giornate grigie e piovose; caffè, cappuccini e brioches di fronte a loro, e una macchina fotografica fra le mani di Martino.

La porta sempre con sé, la macchina fotografica. In parte perché ha sempre dei progetti per l’università che ne richiedono l’uso, in parte perché si ritrova sempre scatti interessanti dopo un pomeriggio passato al Coffee Express. Qualcuno assorto nella lettura di qualche classico al tramonto, un gruppo di amiche che si ritrova a studiare per un esame di fronte a decine di caffè, un ragazzo che si è messo a suonare il piano all’angolo, rimasto intoccato praticamente dall’apertura del locale, con un trasporto tale da far girare quasi mezzo bar.

E nell’ansia che ti perdo, ti scatterò una foto

Scatta l’ultima foto in bianco e nero. Martino non sa perché. Ha sempre preferito i colori, quelli vibranti: le sfumature di gialli e rossi autunnali, i campi di fiori in piena primavera, i bianchi e i blu accecanti dei paesaggi invernali e l’arcobaleno di colori che è l’estate in vacanza in Sardegna con Giovanni, Elia e Luca. C’è qualcosa nell’atmosfera, la pioggia incessante fuori dalla vetrata adiacente al piano, il grigiume insolito della città, l’espressione trasportata del ragazzo o forse è la melodia a richiamare a così gran voce l’uso del bianco e nero.

‘Zì noi andiamo a prendere l’autobus, torni anche tu a casa o ti fermi ancora un po‘?’ gli chiede Giovanni, mentre si alza per mettersi la giacca di jeans. ‘Mi sa che me ne sto ancora un po’ qui. Ci vediamo da te Elia domani sera per vedere la Roma?’ ‘Se ho casa libera certamente zì!’ risponde Elia. ‘Beh allora a domani raga’ li saluta Martino.

Appena li vede varcare la soglia del bar diretti alla fermata dell’autobus ridirige la sua attenzione di nuovo su quel piano. E su quel ragazzo. Lo osserva ancora per qualche minuto, scatta ancora qualche foto, poi decide nella sua testa che sta diventando troppo molesto. Guarda il telefono: 17:40.   Decide che è meglio tornare a casa, magari prima passa a comprare qualcosa per cena al supermercato. Si alza dalla sedia, si rimette l’impermeabile, ripone la macchina fotografica nella borsa a tracolla e va a pagare. Esce dall’Express e subito l’aria umida e stranamente fresca di inizio ottobre investe le sue guance che gli si colorano leggermente di rosa, apre l’ombrello e si avvia verso casa. Quella melodia gli risuona nelle orecchie mentre è sull’autobus verso il supermercato, anche con le cuffie nelle orecchie che suonano altre canzoni. Gli risuona fra le corsie del Conad e mentre paga alla cassa. Gli risuona mentre varca la soglia di casa e mentre cucina la cena per lui e per sua madre. Dopo cena si rintana in camera sua per sviluppare al computer gli scatti del pomeriggio, sperando di trovare qualcosa che lo soddisfi per l’ultimo progetto del corso di fotografia sulla fotografia urbana, incentrato sulla vita universitaria. Si siede alla scrivania, tira fuori la macchina fotografica dalla borsa e inserisce la scheda SD nel portatile. Ci sono almeno una cinquantina di foto risalenti solamente a quel pomeriggio; molte le ha già scattate, i soggetti sono naturalmente differenti, ma le situazioni identiche: alcuni ragazzi che parlano seduti al bancone del bar, Elia che ride ad una stupidata di Luchino e Gio che li guarda come una mamma chioccia guarderebbe i suoi pulcini, oppure il menù del giorno scritto sulla lavagna che ocupa l’intera parete dietro il bancone. Ma poi incappa in quegli scatti, quelli in bianco e nero a quel ragazzo che suona il piano. Si sofferma sulla luce proveniente dalla vetrata che gli illumina metà volto, che mette in risalto i suoi lineamenti spigolosi: il naso dritto, gli zigomi pronunciati e la mascella che potrebbe tagliare un foglio di carta in due; ma anche sui particolari più dolci: i ricci neri che gli ricadono quasi sugl’occhi e le labbra leggermente screpolate per il freddo di stagione increspate in una smorfia di concentrazione. Gli ricorda vagamente il David di Michelangelo.

‘È un capolavoro.’

E no, non si stava riferendo alla statua. Raramente gli capita di commentare i soggetti delle sue foto, non può farsi influenzare dai propri canoni di bellezza quando ha la macchina fotografica in mano. Certamente l’occhio fa sempre la sua parte, ma il più delle volte quello che fotografa ha un senso solo per lui e poche persone riescono a vedere quello che ci vede lui. Anche se non avrebbe scelto questi particolari scatti per il suo progetto, non significava che li avrebbe cestinati. Del resto, non lo faceva mai. Però si ritrova a fissarli per una buona mezz’ora. Ogni curva, angolo e dettaglio impresso nella sua mente. L’orologio da parete segnava le 22:55. Di tutte le foto del pomeriggio ne sceglie solo una da aggiungere a quello che sembra un progetto interminabile, ma fortunatamente non lo deve consegnare domani, fortunatamente c’è tempo. Quella sera si addormenta con quel volto senza nome stampato in mente, e spera che magari un giorno di questi avrà l’occasione di rincontrarlo.   E magari avrà il coraggio di almeno presentarsi.

[spoilsofwar666]

January Giallo Day 18 Girl In Room 2A Another gem I see in many lost or underappreciated lists online. I was glad to see that the Forgotten Gialli Vol. 2 set from @vinegarsyndrome I own has a copy of it. Since I haven't seen it yet, and now is as good a time as any. I really enjoyed this one. It's a little different since it adds a dash of the occult, making the story odd in places and giving the feeling that our protagonist is an unreliable narrator. But everything links up pretty well in the end. The killer also has a slightly different look since he's mainly wearing red instead of all black. Which of course works with the hallucinations of if he's even really in the room or just part of a fever dream. Some kills are crazy too. With some of them involving torture. Obviously, by today's standards, it's pretty tame. But a little brutal nonetheless. #Horror #HorrorMovies #HorrorJunkie #BloodJunkie #GoreWhore #Blood #Guts #BloodAndGuts #Shudder #HorrorReviews #MovieReviews #EverydayIsHalloween #InfectedVoice #Metal #MetalAndHorror #MetalHead #SpoilsOfWar #JanuaryGiallo #ItalianHorror #GirlInRoom2A #VinegarSyndrome #ForgottenGialli #TheEdgarWrightChallenge https://www.instagram.com/p/CnjMV3UO3Lr/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[brokehorrorfan]

Blu-ray Review: Forgotten Gialli: Volume 1

One of the most reliable distributors when it comes to unearthing obscure genre films, Vinegar Syndrome has released Forgotten Gialli: Volume One, a Blu-ray box set containing a trio of giallo - or, European murder-mysteries - that have never received distribution in the U.S.: 1973's The Killer Is One of 13, 1975's The Police Are Blundering in the Dark, and 1978's Trauma.

The Killer Is One of 13 is a Spanish giallo by way of Agatha Christie. Lisa Mandel (Patty Shepard, Slugs) invites a collection of acquaintances to her elegant, isolated home for reasons unknown to the guests. As she reveals over dinner, it's the second anniversary of her husband's mysterious passing, so she has gathered 13 people who may have benefited from his death, convinced one of them is responsible.

Despite the very specific title, there are more than 13 suspects when you factor in everyone; from guests to family members to the help. Director/co-writer Javier Aguirre (Count Dracula’s Great Love) and co-writer Alberto S. Insúa (Count Dracula’s Great Love) do an admirable job painting each character as a potential culprit, as everyone has both motives and flaws. However, as is often the case with ensemble murder-mysteries, it's difficult to keep track of the ancillary characters, some of whom are barely developed.

Far more restrained than its Italian brethren, the film's pacing is rather uneven. It's heavy on exposition throughout the first two acts, but the intriguing mystery drives it until the murders begin. That doesn't occur until 63 minutes into the 95-minute film, leading to an unrelenting, if rushed, final act. The big reveal isn't all that surprising if you pay attention to the clues, but it's not dissatisfying.

Cinematographer Francisco Fraile's (Dr. Jekyll vs. The Werewolf) ambitious camerawork - almost always roving or zooming - provides a kineticism to offset the long stretches of dialogue, even if focus is occasionally soft. A propulsive soundtrack would have helped further, but instead Alfonso Santisteban's (The Mummy’s Revenge) score is often hokey.

In addition to Shepard, the cast features several faces that may be familiar to Eurocult enthusiasts. Spanish character actor Simón Andreu (Beyond Re-Animator) plays a smug playboy; American expat Jack Taylor (The Ninth Gate) plays as an unappreciated artist; Spanish cinema royalty Carmen Maura (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) has an early role as the wife of an unstable older man; and Spanish horror legend Paul Naschy (The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman) has a small part as the chauffeur.

The Killer Is One of 13 has been newly restored in 2K from its 35mm original negative. The disc includes an audio commentary by film critic and Diabolique magazine editor-in-chief Kat Ellinger. Since information on the production is scarce, she contextualizes the film relative to the giallo subgenre, making for an interesting listen.

The Police Are Blundering in the Dark’s title is more interesting than the movie itself, as it seems director Helia Colombo (this being his sole credit) was blundering in the dark during the making of his Italian giallo. The cold open could be mistaken for a cliched '80s slasher: an attractive woman gets a flat tire and is chased by a killer through the woods, during which her blouse inexplicably opens as she runs, exposing her breasts before she's caught and stabbed with a pair of scissors.

It clocks in at a scant 87 minutes - rather brief by giallo standards - yet feels drawn out. The aforementioned woman is the latest in a string of murder victims, all of whom served as models for an impotent, wheelchair-bound photographer, Parisi. Giorgio D'Amato (Joseph Arkim), the journalist boyfriend of one of the victims, heads to Parisi's villa outside of Rome to investigate, learning that the photographer has invented a camera that captures its subjects' thoughts. This unexpectedly fantastical plot point is harnessed to solve the mystery a la Four Flies on Grey Velvet.

Despite being the most traditional giallo film of the trio included in the set, the picture fails to deliver on any of the pillars of the subgenre. After setting up a middling mystery, the midsection is bogged down by talky melodrama, while the eventual solution is preposterous. Beyond that, the kills are tame, Giancarlo Pancaldi's cinematography is pedestrian, and Aldo Saitto's score is forgettable.

The Police Are Blundering has been newly restored in 2K from its 35mm original negative. In lieu of an audio commentary, film historian and critic Rachael Nisbet provides a “historical audio essay.” It is exactly that; a breathless 16-minute amalgam of facts and critical analysis. It's thorough if dry, akin to reading a well-researched Wikipedia entry. A promotional image gallery is also included.

Not to be confused with Dario Argento's later giallo of the same name, Trauma is a Spanish giallo riff on Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. It centers on Veronica (Ágata Lys, The Holy Innocents), who runs a quaint inn in rural Spain while caring for her unseen, handicapped husband. She's smitten with Daniel (Heinrich Starhemberg), a mysterious and charming author that checks in, to the point where she becomes visibly annoyed when other guests interrupt their flirting.

Director León Klimovsky (The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman) and writers Juan José Porto (Cross of the Devil) and Carlos Puerto (Satan's Blood) position the film as a mystery, but when a black-gloved assailant begins murdering the guests with a straight razor, the options for the killer's identity are quite limited.

The film is rather slow moving yet sleazy. Nearly every character, regardless of gender, sheds their clothing at some point. Cinematographer Pablo Ripoll (Tombs of the Blind Dead) captures it all with voyeuristic delight. Composer Ángel Arteaga (Frankenstein's Bloody Terror) crafted a Goblin-esque main title theme.

Starhemberg's position as executive producer of the film surely influenced the decision to (mis)cast him as the male lead. Beyond lacking chemistry with Lys, there are some unintentionally uncomfortable scenes in which he caresses a local boy. Antonio Mayans (Zombie Lake) plays an ill-fated hiker who takes refuge at the inn.

Trauma has been newly restored in 2K from its 35mm original negative. The disc includes an audio commentary by film historian Troy Howarth, who previously profiled the film in his 2019 book, So Deadly, So Perverse: Volume Three. Per usual, he takes a conversational approach to the track, which occasionally leads to tangents but ultimately provides a detailed analysis that digs into the history of giallo films.

Each of the discs is housed in its own Blu-ray case, and all three are packaged together in a box designed by Earl Kessler Jr. Limited to 5,000 units, it's available exclusively from Vinegar Syndrome. Having never been dubbed into English, the movies feature newly translated English subtitles to accompany the fresh scans.

A precursor to the slasher boom in the 1980s, the success of the giallo subgenre spawned a wide breadth of films, ranging from oft-discussed staples to hidden gems that barely saw a release beyond their theatrical debuts. With Forgotten Gialli, Vinegar Syndrome has breathed new life into three movies that fall squarely into the latter category. As it is subtitled Volume 1, I can only hope that more sets come to fruition.

Forgotten Gialli: Volume One is available now via Vinegar Syndrome.

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

13 EERIE

Having overdosed on gialli, I decided to take a break by going to Amazon Prime, where bad horror movies go to die (if they don’t get us first). Finding a film there with a recognizable cast list can be a problem, so I settled in for 13 EERIE (2013), a Canadian film with an intriguing premise that, unfortunately, gets pretty much forgotten. A group of forensic science students take their final exam at an island prison described as “Guantanamo’s ugly kid sister.” Their professor (Michael Shanks) has planted dead bodies there for them to examine, but nobody told him the prison was used for government experiments that produced, you guessed it, zombies. I have to admit that I found the spectacle of science majors doing incredibly stupid things rather entertaining, but somehow I don’t think the filmmakers expected us to laugh as one tries to escape a zombie by running through a dense thicket or another drives a school bus at top speed when he can’t see out the windshield. At one point, the leading lady (Katherine Isabelle) even shoots her boyfriend (Brendan Fehr) while aiming at one of the critters. Oops! The letdown is that the forensics students don’t use their training against the zombies. Hell, it takes them forever to figure out that the dead are coming back to life, and a head shot is the only thing that takes them out. Film students would have done better. Isabelle, who has a wonderfully mordant presence in GINGER SNAPS (2000) and AMERICAN MARY (2012), seems at a loss here. She goes through the film looking perpetually perturbed. Maybe that isn’t acting.