Giallo | Cagey Films

Miscellaneous May 2022 viewing

Posted on June 8, 2022December 11, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Would-be actress Stella (Susan Ermich) enrols in a prestige acting school in Andreas Marschall's Masks (2011)

Bertrand Tavernier’s epic eight-part documentary Journeys Through French Cinema (2017) offers a personal and idiosyncratic history rooted in the filmmakers personal passions; Enzo G. Castellari’s The Big Racket (1976) and The Heroin Busters (1977) showcase the cynical, violent action of Italian genre movies of the ’70s; Andreas Marschall turns homage into effective horror in the retro-giallo Masks (2011); and Puloma Basu and Rob Hatch Miller’s documentary Other Music (2019) captures an experience all-but-lost today with their account of the final days of a great independent record store in New York City.

Winter viewing 1: Vinegar Syndrome

Posted on April 6, 2022April 5, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Detective Linda Masterson (Cynthia Rothrock) investigates a killer martial artist in Kelly Makin's Tiger Claws (1991)

A long cold winter, a working-from-home schedule and pandemic-induced malaise means I’ve been watching a lot of undemanding genre movies over the past few months. One of my primary sources in the past couple of years has been Vinegar Syndrome, a company whose dedication to unearthing obscure, often forgotten genre movies equals my own passion for watching them. Although by no means a complete account of my VS viewing, here are brief notes on two dozen titles.

Recent disks from England, part two: Arrow

Posted on March 2, 2022February 25, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

A young woman's psychic powers make her a target of nefarious forces in Nico Mastorakis' Death Has Blue Eyes (1976)

Arrow’s big pre-Christmas sale brought a wide range of titles, some old, some new: Juan Simon Piquer’s Spanish slasher Pieces (1982), Chelsea Stardust’s horror comedy Satanic Panic (2019), Giancarlo Santi’s spaghetti western The Grand Duel (1972), Lee Min-jae’s horror comedy Zombie for Sale (2019), Jill Gevargizian’s psycho horror The Stylist (2020),Nico Mastorakis incoherent first feature Death Has Blue Eyes (1976), a Japanese double bill of sci-fi crime movies, Nobuo Adachi’s The Invisible Man Appears (1949) and Mitsuo Murayama’s The Invisible Man vs the Human Fly (1957), Riccardo Freda’s mix of melodrama and giallo Double Face (1969), Jacques Tourneur’s late film noir Nightfall (1956), and Giorgio Ferroni’s atmospheric Gothic horror Mill of the Stone Women (1960).

Dario Argento in decline

Posted on February 9, 2022December 15, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Strange costume choice for Christine Daaé (Asia Argento) in Dario Argento's The Phantom of the Opera (1998)

Four of Dario Argento’s later movies reveal a filmmaker in decline – but they all get excellent Blu-ray releases with pristine transfers and lots of extras. This is a mixed blessing for fans of Argento’s great movies from the ’70s and ’80s, who can see the movies’ weaknesses, but nonetheless appreciate occasional flashes of visual and narrative invention.

Vinegar Syndrome October releases, part two

Posted on November 27, 2021November 26, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

Jane (Camille Keaton) investigates noises from the cellar in Riccardo Freda's Tragic Ceremony (1972)

Vinegar Syndrome’s October package included a stylish but frustrating Uruguayan giallo, a catalogue title about a high school girl’s romance with a T-Rex and a box set of three Italian movies from the early ’70s featuring performances from Camille Keaton.

Vinegar Syndrome October releases, part one

Posted on November 24, 2021November 21, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

A Mayan god shows up for the big climax of Somtow Sucharitkul's demented The Laughing Dead (1989)

Vinegar Syndrome’s October releases offer a satisfyingly eclectic selection of occasionally obscure genre titles — from mid-’80s gialli to Southern Gothic crime to mutant bugs and a Mayan death cult.

The second coming of Cauldron

Posted on June 2, 2021June 1, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

The Medieval dead awaken to deal with modern killers in Tomas Aznar's Beyond Terror (1980)

With their second pair of releases, the folks at Cauldron Films have again dug deep into the fringes of genre movie-making, this time unearthing Sergio Pastore’s The Crimes of the Black Cat (1972), an Italian giallo from the peak period of that genre, and Tomas Aznar’s Beyond Terror (1980), a Spanish film which begins as a nihilistic story about a gang of vicious criminals and morphs into a supernatural revenge narrative.

Euro Pulp

Posted on May 19, 2021May 16, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

Delphine Seyrig conveys elegant ennui as the Countess Elizabeth Bathory in Harry Kümel's Daughters of Darkness (1971)

A selection of European genre movies from the 1970s and ’80s ranges from sadistic killers to cannibals to elegant vampires, from bad fashions and electro-pop music to old families sinking into decadence, from masters of exploitation like Sergio Martino, Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi and Ruggero Deodato to the artful Harry Kümel.

Winter viewing: Severin Films

Posted on March 13, 2021March 11, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Graf Saxon (Howard Vernon) engages in gruesome medical experiments in Adrian Hoven's Castle of the Creeping Flesh (1968)

Bingeing has been my default viewing mode for some time, but it’s only more recently that it’s come to encompass indulging in multiple releases by a particular company – which in turn is a result of those company’s offering regular sales and discount packages of monthly releases. The most prominent examples of this are Vinegar Syndrome and Severin Films, both of which specialize in genre and exploitation titles, pulling me into deep, often sordid, black holes.

2020: Year-End Thoughts

Posted on December 30, 2020December 29, 2020 by Kenneth George Godwin

The cost of security and comfort is high in George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978)

It’s that time of year again. How to decide what’s “best” out of the six-hundred-plus movies I watched in 2020? It’s an impossible task, so here’s a fairly random selection of things which may not be best, but certainly appealed to me and stuck in my memory.

Tag: Giallo