Hammer's Film Legacy

This 408 page book by Wayne Kinsey covers every Hammer production made between The Quatermass Xperiment in 1955 and To the Devil a Daughter in 1976 (including the is-it-or-isn’t-it Hammer The Shadow of the Cat) in chronological sequence.

There’s thus next to nothing on Exclusive/Hammer in the periods immediately before and after the Second World War, nor on the likes of Terence Fisher’s Three Sided Triangle and Stolen Face from the early 1950s, nor on the present-day Hammer revival.

Each of the 106 films included is approached in the same way: An image of its title card; listings of the crew and cast; distribution details; discussions of pre-production; casting; production; post-production and release.

For the most part Hammer’s Gothic Horrors are given the longest and most detailed write-ups, their television sitcom adaptations the least.

Besides reflecting the likely interests of the assumed reader, this is often a consequence of the back-and-forth between the studio and the British Board of Film Censors over script content at the pre-production stage. Mindful of costs, Hammer’s management could see no point in shooting material deemed too horrific or otherwise censorable.

Discussions of these negotiations were also one of the major strengths of the author’s previous volumes on Hammer’s Bray and Elstree periods. This, in turn, raises the question of how necessary Hammer’s Film Legacy is for those who already own the two now out-of-print collections. Similarly, some of the details of the contributions of those behind the camera and behind the scenes may overlap with Kinsey’s more recent book on Hammer’s Unsung Heroes.

For those owning neither of the Bray and Elstree volumes this is undoubtedly a worthwhile purchase considering the information it contains and the prices its predecessors now fetch. For those with them I would also argue that it is a worthwhile purchase, whether as an investment (as I write this the limited hardback edition of 500 must be nearly gone, mine being #412), for the material that hasn’t hitherto appeared elsewhere, or just to keep Kinsey and his publishers doing more of this stuff.

In case my comments appear too gushing I’ll finish with a negative. There are some places where I wondered if what the author wrote was what he meant. Early on, for example, he characterises the purchase and establishment of Bray Studios as a “false economy”. While Bray was certainly an economic decision I don’t believe it was a false one, i.e. a decision that cost more than it returned. Similarly a reference to “sort solace” rather than “sought solace” seems a malapropism.

Overall, however, well worth getting.

The Amicus Anthology

Compared to some of the subjects of author Bruce Hallenbeck's previous books, most notably The Hammer Vampire and The Hammer Frankenstein, The Amicus Anthology likely provided a greater challenge -- one that he thankfully rises to.

For the Hammer Frankenstein films, excepting the one-off spoof/parody Horror of Frankenstein, are unified by the constant presence of Peter Cushing in the title role and, barring The Evil of Frankenstein, Terence Fisher as director/auteur. The Amicus anthology films, by contrast, were directed by Freddie Francis and Roy Ward Baker in approximately equal numbers and had no recurring characters.

The history of Amicus is intrinsically linked to that of its rival. Milton Subotsky presented Hammer with a script for a Frankenstein film. Hammer's bosses didn't like it, but learned that Mary Shelley's characters were out of copyright and thus made their own treatment. This became the epochal Curse of Frankenstein.

Subotsky and other Amicus mainman Max Rosenberg responded to Hammer by employing Christopher Lee for the atmospheric City of the Dead. While not an official Amicus film its present-day setting would emerge as something differentiating Amicus and Hammer horror on aggregate.

There are, in my opinion, three key reasons why The Amicus Anthology works.

First, Hallenbeck provides historical context to the horror compendium film in his opening and closing chapters, which reference the likes of Waxworks, Dead of Night, and Creepshow.

Second, he contextualises Amicus's anthologies in relation to their single-story horrors, such as The Skull, and their non-horror films, such as the Amicus in all but name Dr Who adaptations with Cushing as (a) Who. (This Amicus/Who nexus is worth noting, with third and fourth Who's Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker both appearing in Amicus anthology horrors.)

Finally, Hallenbeck makes you think: Do you prefer to see Amicus's guest stars or Hammer's character actors? Do you prefer segments or wholes? Do you prefer humour as punchline or intermittently? Does a great segment outweigh a good film?

Offbeat

With Headpress's Offbeat editor Julian Upton presents 400+ pages on what the book's subtitle identifies as "British Cinema’s Curiosities, Obscurities and Forgotten Gems." Other than mentioning the films encompassed within this remit only cover a thirty year period from c. 1955-85 (so no Tod Slaughter or 30s Edgar Wallace adaptations, for instance; though there are certainly other places you can read up on these) it is a fair enough description of the films surveyed and reviewed within.

So, for example, if we’re talking Hammer then it is emphatically not the Gothics for which they are best known, rather their swashbucklers and adventure romps like Captain Clegg and Pirates of Blood River, or the brilliant Cash on Demand where Peter Cushing is for once outperformed by another, Andre Morell; admittedly Morell had played his role on TV and so had the advantage. Or, if it’s Hammer’s most famous house director, Terence Fisher, then it is one of the three sci-fi films he made for another studio, Planet, namely The Earth Dies Screaming.

I’d like to think that I’m somewhat close to the ideal reader for the book, arrogant though you may judge me: I’ve seen about half of the films reviewed within and would say that I concur with the authors most of the time on these. Two things help here. One, the reviewers resist the urge to proclaim each and every film as a forgotten mini-masterpiece or suchlike. Rather they accept the films on their own merits, or lack thereof. Two, they provide their working rather than just their correct answer. That is they explain why they feel the way they do about a film. As such even if I do not agree with the reviewer of No Blade of Grass’s opinion I can understand that he is paying attention to the source novel, whereas I was not considering the film in terms of adaptation.

Even more important, however, is that Offbeat provided further encouragement to seek out those titles I had heard of but not seen, and introduced me to others which I had not, or which I might have grokked at some point but since forgotten.

In addition to the reviews Offbeat also presents several overviews of a time period, sub-genre, cycle or trend. These are informative as an orientation and also point out topics of further consideration. For example, the essay on the pop/rock musical posits a significant difference between the Elvis films from the US and the Cliff Richard and British Invasion films from the UK that followed them. The Elvis films were entrusted to older, established directors who worked to make Elvis a safer property, whereas the British films often took chances on younger filmmakers closer in age to their subjects, this resulting in a less predictable fare. The reviews generally run two or three pages, begin with production, cast and crew details, followed by a one-paragraph summary of the plot, followed by a more substantial discussion of the individual film’s merits (or lack thereof) and place in British cinema history.

So, to sum up, if you read this you would probably like Offbeat.

Eurohorror

Olney begins by this academic study by demonstrating that European horror cinema of the 60s through 80s has a surprisingly high profile amongst contemporary horror audiences. As evidence of this he cites the successful re-releases of Eurohorror by Grindhouse Releasing along with lavish DVD releases of both acknowledged genre classics such as Lucio Fulci's The Beyond and decidedly lesser entries such as Bruno Mattei's Hell of the Living Dead.

Following this Olney indicates that fan interest in Eurohorror has thus far not been paralleled with equivalent attention amongst academics, with the exception of some hybrid fan-academics. Olney posits that this paucity is partly explicated by the generally marginal position of European popular and genre cinema as a whole. It is also a reflection of the inherently problematic nature of many Eurohorror texts as far as progressive-minded critics are concerned, given not only their apparent sexism, racism, misogyny, and homophobia, but also their tendency to present transgressive combinations of sex and violence.

Olney then introduces his theoretical route out of this impasse, namely the concept of peformative spectatorship. Drawing upon the work of Judith Butler in particular, he posits that the distinctive challenge and opportunity posed by Eurohorror films is their uneasy dynamics. Whereas the Anglophone horror film invites our identification with the hero-protagonist, the Eurohorror film allows us to identify now with the hero-protagonist and now with the monster-antagonist. Paralleling this they allow us to take the roles of both sadist and of masochist.

It is a strong thesis and one which Olney then goes on to demonstrate via detailed textual analyses of a range of Eurohorror films, including films by Dario Argento (Suspiria, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage), Mario Bava (The Whip and the Body), Jesus Franco (Eugenie de Sade, Eugenie.. the Story of her Journey into Perversion, Fulci (The House by the Cemetery, The New York Ripper), Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust), and AntonioMargheriti (Cannibal Apocalypse) amongst others.

There were two aspects of Olney’s analysis which I found slightly disappointing. First, there is little French or German Eurohorror cinema mentioned, with a strong bias towards Italian product. Second, why he looked at women and prison and nunsploitation films in the context of their sadistic-masochistic dynamic while omitting a third strand of women in total institution exhibiting similar dynamics, namely the Nazi sadism film. I would speculate that this is because it is relatively harder to get the typical viewer to temporarily align themselves with the Nazi. This is doubly so when it comes to the continental Europeans of the 1970s who would have been the original audiences for these films.

The challenge now is perhaps one of operationalising the concept of performative spectatorship and seeing how useful it is with actual audiences  - i.e. bridging the theory/practice divide.

As it is, Olney’s ideas would appear applicable to many other European horror films that he does not discuss. Two that they made me think of were Terence Fisher’s Dracula and Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre and their respective treatments of the Jonathan Harker character. In Fisher’s film Harker is a vampire hunter intent on destroying Count Dracula, but falls prey to Dracula’s bride and thus himself turns into one of the undead. At this point his fellow vampire hunter Van Helsing becomes the narrative focus and destroys Harker. In Herzog’s film the destruction of Dracula leads to Harker, here just a lawyer, becoming the reincarnation of Dracula. Put another way, Fisher’s Anglo horror film retains the boundaries that Herzog’s Eurohorror film transgresses.

Of Muscles and Men - Essays on the Sword and Sandal Film

When you are a fan of Italian filone cinema one thing which quickly becomes evident is how some filone have received far more attention than others, especially in the context of English-language scholarship. There’s most material on the Italian Western, followed by horror and the giallo, but considerably less when it comes to the peplum, sex comedy, mondo, spy film, war film etc.

As such this recent collection of academic essays on the peplum or sword and sandal film is especially welcome, even although only some of the authors investigate the Italian cycle of the late 50s-early 60s and there is certainly scope for further research.

Editor Michael Cornelius begins the collection with a overview of the genre and the areas which the individual essays explore.

Cornelius notes how the peplum, sword and sandal or strongman film is difficult to place within a generic taxonomy. Unlike comedy, romance, horror and thriller films there is not any obvious emotional state or mood associated with the peplum. In this it is like the Western. However, whereas the iconographic objects of the Western have symbolic value (white hats vs black hats, the horse vs the iron horse etc.), the sword, sandal and skirt are primarily functional.

A further area of difference (one likely shared with the Italian Western cycle) is around the dynamics of the gaze, or who looks at whom. Rather than men looking at women, the peplum is more likely to have men looking at other men. This, of course, raises issues around the homosocial and the homosexual.

Cornelius contends that four major periods of peplum filmmaking can be identified, the first two being associated with Italian cinema and the latter two with Hollywood. The filone/genre emerged in the 1910s, with the first colossal epics drawing on Ancient Rome and strongman Maciste’s shift from being a minor figure in Cabiria to the title character. The filone then reappeared in the late 1950s, beginning with the success of the Steve Reeves starring Hercules and would continue for another ten or so years. It then experienced a resurgence in the 1980s, with Conan the Barbarian, and in the 2000s, with Gladiator. (Regarding to the 1980s sword and sandal film it is worth noting that the likes of the Ator series, The Barbarians and Conquest are not mentioned.)

Maria Elena D’Amelio’s ‘Hercules, Politics and Movies’ proves one of the most rewarding chapters for the enthusiast and/or scholar of Italian popular cinema, both for the points she makes and where they might be taken.

D’Amelio identifies three key individuals or groups within the pepla of this period. First, the hero. Second, the tyrant. Third, the wider society. The role of the people is usually passive, the victims of an oppressive tyrant who has usurped power from a rightful ruler. Although the hero is sometimes responsible for overthrowing the tyrant, it is also frequently the case that the latter is undone by his own actions. Where he does overthrow the tyrant, the hero declines to take power himself, even if the people ask him to, instead returning power to the pre-tyrant ruler or their heir.

Though D’Amelio does not mention Will Wright’s structuralist study of the Hollywood Western, Sixguns and Society, the relationships she identifies seem much the same as those of the ‘classical’ Western there. In both cases the hero and the villain are strong and the society weak.

Beyond this Wright mentions a further three Western plots that presented different configurations of the relationship between these parties: the transitional plot, the revenge plot and the professional plot. Later Christopher Frayling and Bert Fridlund would explore how well these plots and the trajectory from the classical to the professional could be found in the Italian Western, with both proposing a number of alternative plots. In Frayling's case the factor that is especially important is his sense that the differences between American and Italian plots related to wider differences between the two societies.

Returning to D’Amelio, she likewise relates the particular configuration of the Italian peplum to politics and history, particularly Fascism and the post-war re-alignment into Western and Eastern blocs. Essentially the tyrant was Mussolini, the people the Italians, and the hero America. Establishing the rule of the tyrant as a deviation from the norm accorded with a post-war narrative that required ordinary Italians and Christian Democrat politicians to be excused from culpability with Fascism. Presenting the people as needing an external liberator downplayed the role of the left-dominated anti-Fascist resistance and the Communists in particular. Establishing the hero as someone who magnanimously defeated the tyrant but then chose not to himself take power suited the interests of the US, as the power behind the throne.

The next chapter is by Kristi M. Wilson and examines Pasolini’s Medea and the distinctive contributions of its director. While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the piece, it does seem a reflection of a weakness of many studies dealing with popular cinema, namely giving greater attention to the auteur film than would strictly be warranted given its audience size.

Following this Jerry B. Pierce looks at Gladiator, Troy and 300 and how they respectively work to performatively establish the heterosexuality of their protagonists within their primarily homosocial context.

Andrew B. R. Elliot also looks at the contemporary peplum and how it typically features a group of heroes rather than an individual. This is again interesting in relation to the Western and Wright’s analysis of its different plots. The last of Wright’s plots, the professional plot, is likewise characterised by having multiple protagonists.

John Elia’s essay presents a defence of third and fourth generation pepla by seeking to draw a distinction between ‘reverent’ and ‘irreverent’ violence. This distinction is one that is situated as going back to ancient Greece and which potentially has uses elsewhere. In particular we might consider the subject of vengeance and the vendetta in Italian society; in Nietzsche’s notion of Christianity as a slave morality that inverted the values of earlier belief systems such that taking vengeance was wrong rather than right; and how revenge is treated in the Italian Western.

Subsequent chapters are of less obvious interest, in that they again exclusively address third and fourth generation pepla, but without less that can be drawn upon in relation to their second generation counterparts. Two essays that are worth singling out are those by Robert B. Pirro and Cornelius. Pirro brings out points where Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy departs from Homer’s source texts and relates these to the director’s personal history, as a German growing up post-WWII. Cornelius examines the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe franchise of the early 1980s and its affinities with the gay male clone subculture. (He-Man et al were literally clones, the action figures coming from a few basic moulds; whether He-Man and the others devoid of genitals ever got any 'action' is another matter...)

“Do you like gladiator movies?!”

The Hammer Frankenstein

This new book from Bruce Hallenbeck, published by the UK’s Hemlock, follows on from the same author’s The Hammer Vampire.

If the chronology and complexity of producing works on the two foremost Hammer franchises seems a bit back-to-front, given that the studio’s first vampire film followed its first Frankenstein film, and more challenging, in that there was greater variation amongst the vampire films, it perhaps made commercial sense as vampire films were more popular at the time and, if Underworld and Twilight are considered, more popular today.

The Hammer Frankenstein begins with a brief foreword by Veronica Carlson, who is distinguished by being the only female lead to appear in two of the studio’s Frankenstein productions – Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) and The Horror of Frankenstein (1970).

Following this Hammer scholar Denis Meikle provides a general introduction to the Gothic as a literary genre and the place of Mary Shelley’s source novel within it.

The remaining chapters are all by Hallenbeck and take a chronological approach, with one chapter on each of Hammer’s seven Frankenstein films – The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), the aforementioned Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed and Horror of Frankenstein (the odd one out in that it a re-imagining of the first film rather than continuing on from its predecessor) and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1973).

Prior to discussing Hammer’s Frankenstein, however, Hallenbeck first of all devotes a chapter to the story’s pre-Hammer film history, from the Edison Company’s 1910 short through to the Monster Rallies and inevitable encounter with Abbott and Costello in the 1940s. Here, as the author indicates, the Whale/Karloff films are the most important, establishing the definitive look of the monster and that he, rather than his creator, was given primacy. (Subsequently the author does the same with a chapter on the post-Hammer Frankenstein film.)

Both these points were to prove crucial when it came to The Curse of Frankenstein. For, as is well-known from more general histories of the studio, Hammer found themselves with a basic source that was now out of copyright alongside certain aspects which were Universal’s intellectual property, most notably the look of the monster. Hammer’s response, of course, was to both give the monster a new look and to shift the focus from the creation to his creation.

It is through this chapter that the strengths and, to a far lesser extent, the weaknesses of Hallenbeck’s approach come through. Taking the positives first he expertly draws together and selects from the existing and ever-expanding literature (the aforementioned Meikle, Richard Klemensen’s long-running Little Shoppe of Horrors fanzine, Dr Wayne Kinsey’s Bray and Elstree Years volumes, Marcus Hearn’s various ‘official’ studies; Jimmy Sangster’s autobiography, etc., etc.). Hallenbeck also skilfully addresses various facets of the film’s production, distribution, reception, and influence, placing each in their specific and general contexts. In so doing he also crucially manages to give his own critical perspective upon the film. I would argue that it is this that is so vital when dealing with something as well known as the Hammer Frankensteins. This in turn relates to the main failing of the book, if it can be called a failing, namely the extreme difficulty of bringing something new to bear without spending ever greater and less productive amounts of time in the archives or lazily invoking and applying capital-T type Theory.

Against the former – “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” to cite Walt Whitman – it should also be considered that the various reproductions of (often annotated or crossed out) key pages from scripts are a delight.

Hallenbeck’s next chapter, on the abortive US television series attempted in between Curse of Frankenstein and its sequel, is perhaps more interesting for the Hammer aficionado. This is partly because its subject is less familiar, partly because ideas first mooted here would be Frankensteined and given new life in some of the later films.

The third and fourth chapters, on The Revenge of Frankenstein and The Evil of Frankenstein, prove similarly strong. Hallenbeck adjudges Revenge superior to its predecessor as a sequel and steers a course between the Scylla and Charibdis of the US/pro-Universal and UK/pro-Hammer camps with regard to the latter, the only entry in the main cycle to be directed by someone other than Terence Fisher.

Turning to Frankenstein Created Woman, Hallenbeck usefully brings out how Fisher’s return was combined with stylistic and thematic innovations, in the director’s modish use of the hand held-camera and the hitherto scientific-materialist Frankenstein now experimenting with the transplantation of the soul. He also notes how the lab sets were less impressive than those of the preceding film, nicely illustrating how low-budget filmmaking is always a creative compromise.

This is also the case when it comes to the final Hammer Frankenstein, where the enclosed spaces of the insane asylum in which Frankenstein now lives and works help connote the sense of diminishing returns that, ironically, echoed the studio’s fortunes (or, rather, lack thereof) at the time.

Overall, a worthy addition to anyone’s Hammer library.

Amicus Horrors: Tales from the Filmmakers' Crypt

I bought this new volume from Midnight Marquee, via the UK’s Hemlock Books, after seeing it on Troy Howarth’s Facebook feed.

A book about Amicus would be very welcome, I thought, especially if it treated the company’s horror and non-horror output in a manner comparable to, say, John Hamilton’s book on Compton/Tigon/Tony Tenser.

Amicus Horrors certainly starts off promisingly, with a worthwhile discussion of the musical anthology films produced by Amicus partners Max Rosenberg (production, finances) and Milton Subotsky (writing, in this case of both screenplay and musical numbers) and how the approach taken in them would feed into Amicus’s better-known horror productions.

If the writing also seemed somewhat fan-boyish that could be excused on account of many of the recollections and quotations stemming from author Brian McFadden drawing upon his meeting Subotsky over 40 years ago.

It was also balanced out by the author’s explanation of the similarities between the narrative structure of Psycho and of Amicus to-be’s first foray into horror, City of the Living Dead/Horror Hotel: made after Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho but before Hitchcock’s film Psycho, it was highly probable that Subotsky, a voracious reader, would already have read the former.

Additionally, McFadden nicely brings out how Subotsky’s experience in television production; padding out or cutting down material to fit a certain length; and general knowledge of how to put the money on the screen proved (in)valuable to Amicus.

Unfortunately it is pretty much all downhill from this point.

Though entitled Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and Christopher Lee at Amicus, the chapters on the three horror icons devote as much or more space to their careers elsewhere.

The chapter on the Amicus Stock company that follows makes little sense given the author had previously indicated, quite correctly, that a key feature of the Amicus approach was the casting of stars on a one-off, short-term basis to make the films look more expensive than they actually were.

For instance, Ingrid Pitt’s inclusion, despite appearing in only one segment of the anthology film The House that Screamed, is explicated in terms of the iconic qualities of one of the still taken off her in the production.

There is some valuable material in these chapters, as is also the case in McFadden’s discussions of Amicus at Shepperton and at Twickenham Studios, and of some of the composers who worked for the company, such as serialist Elizabeth Lutyens and jazzman Tubby Hayes. But, and it is a big but, it is very much a case of sifting through considerable quantities of less-than-gold material to find these nuggets.

In between the studio and music chapters a foray into Hammer territory also highlights the basic problem with the book. To wit, there is no doubting McFadden’s enthusiasm for his subject, but it isn’t always clear what this subject actually is.

Ultimately, we are still waiting for the book that will do Amicus justice. Until then the Little Shoppe of Horrors issue on the studio, #20, remains the reference of choice.

Latsploitation, Exploitation Cinemas and Latin America

The obvious question that comes to mind with this 2009 collection is what is within it for the fan of European exploitation cinema here?

Well, for one thing you may also be interested in the likes of José Mojica Marins, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Rene Cardona Jr., Emilio Vieyra, Isabel Sarli, and the Brazilian pornochanchada, each being the subject of one of the essays contained herein.

For another, some of the other essays more directly address European exploitation cinema and its relationships with its Latin American counterpart.

Perhaps most important, however, some of the essays are exemplary in the ways they investigate aspects of exploitation cinema in general, whilst remaining attuned to national and cultural specifics. Indeed, as the volume’s editors Victoria Ruétalo and Dolores Tierney explain in their introduction, their coining the term Latsploitation is a conscious decision intended to convey that Latin American exploitation cinema cannot and should not merely be subsumed within more familiar US and European frameworks.

Taking Mexico as a case study, Ana M. López highlights how the framework provided by Eric Schaefer with reference to the US does not apply, as Mexican cinema lacked the industrial infrastructure required. This said, however, the reader will likely also identify their own points of connection to their own particular areas.

The first of the essays with a stronger European dimension is by Antonio Lázaro-Reboll and looks at the reception of Latin American exploitation cinemas by Spanish fans, with specific reference to the fanzine 2000 Maniacos and the San Sebastian Festival of Fantasy and Horror films. Lázaro-Reboll emphasises the benefits of a crossover between fans and academics and their respective areas of knowledge.

The second is by Andrew Syder and examines the use of Latin American locations in Italian cannibal and zombie films, with particular but not exclusive reference to Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox, Zombie and Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals. Syder identifies that there are two curious absences in these and other films. First, cannibalism is always situated in Latin America or Asia, but never Africa. Second, the characters within the films are never Italians, instead usually being Americans. Indeed, each of Syder’s four key films begins and ends in Manhattan, in addition to presenting images of it and New York that are recognisably distinctive when compared to US films using these same locations. Syder posits that these two structuring absences relate to Italy’s particular colonial history and allow its discussion to be elided and displaced. Here Snyder also makes reference to some earlier films, including Africa Addio and Grand Slam. Prosperi and Jacopetti’s mondo film is critical of British and French colonialism but also adopts a paternalistic attitude towards the colonised Africans, by suggesting that they were not ready for independence. Giulio Montaldo's film characterises the Italian approach to Latin America in 1960s films, one that contrasts point by point with those of the 1970s. In the earlier decade Latin America was a dynamic, modern, fun place. In the latter decade it was backwards, atavistic and deadly.

The third of the essays with European connections is by Andrew Willis and looks at the career of Leon Klimovsky in both his native Argentina and in Spain. He suggests that Klimovsky may have left Argentina for political reasons. Having been associated with the Peron regime, it was possible that Klimovsky feared a backlash from the new regime. Willis contends that Klimovsky found Franco-era Spain to be more in accord with his reactionary world view. As support of this Willis notes, for example, how The Devil’s Possessed presents an evil nobleman but then has him defeated by a good nobleman espousing Christian values rather than by the oppressed peasantry themselves. At the end of the film, that is, the peasantry have not been liberated nor liberated themselves, as these alternatives would have been too radical and subversive. All that has changed is that they now have a more benign aristocratic ruler.

While I would agree with Willis’s central point, that we should not automatically assume exploitation films are progressive, I felt that his reading of Klimovsky’s career failed to address one major biographical factor. This is the fact that Klimovsky’s own religious background was not Catholic but Jewish. It seems an important omission given the importance of Catholicism to Francoism.

Of the other essays in the collection, the one on José Mojica Marins is also worth noting. Author Tierney identifies a central contradiction in the canonised Cinema Novo movement that dominated discussions of Brazilian Cinema in the 1960s. This is that the movement’s theorists were nominally in support of filmmakers from marginal backgrounds, but were themselves often from privileged ones. Whereas, for example, Nelson Periera Do Santos undertook formal studies at the Italian state film school Centro sperimentale, Marins left school at 13 and was an entirely self-taught filmmaker. Despite these proletarian origins, the considerable aesthetic challenges posed by his films, and the blasphemous qualities of his Coffin Joe character, he was not championed by the critics.

Here I would also make a couple of personal points. First, I remember seeing in a documentary about Marins how he ran an acting school and as one of his teaching methods had a series of numbered photographs of himself performing particular facial expressions. He would use these in drilling his students and when working with them on his films, asking them to give him a number seven, a number thirty-one, or whatever. It seemed like a technique that had unconscious affinities with Soviet and Brechtian avant-garde practices, and thus something that a filmmaker with more cultural capital could have represented as directly political. Second, when doing a MSc in European Film Studies just under a decade ago, one of my fellow students was from Brazil. One time we got talking about the then topical City of God, a film which he characterised as a somewhat touristic exploitation of the underclass by privileged filmmakers.

Overall an impressive, stimulating and wide-ranging collection that is well worth a look for fans and scholars of exploitation cinema whether specifically interested in Latin America or not. 

Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western: Politics, Violence and Popular Italian Cinema

This 2011 volume published by I B Tauris presents an analysis of a number of films that may be identified as a sub-genre of a sub-genre, namely Italian or Spaghetti Westerns that have an explicit political (read left) orientation.

Whilst adapted from author Austin Fisher's PhD thesis and thus possibly more theoretically oriented than some fans would like, the author's use of the likes of Louis Althusser and Franz Fanon does not come across as gratuitous name dropping or shoe-horning of the theory into the text, coming across as more bottom-up than top-down.

Fisher begins by establishing the broader context in which his corpus of films emerged, most notably that of the post-war settlement where the anti-Fascist alliance of the resistance (a resistance which was a formative experience for some of the key filmmakers) was represented, with overt and covert US support, benefitting the Christian Democrats party and marginalising the communists.

Turning to the films themselves, the key distinction Fisher makes, responding to the taxonomies of Will Wright, Christopher Frayling, and Bert Fridlund, is that between RSA and insurgency narratives.

The RSA narrative is derived from Althusser's distinction between the Ideological State Apparatus, or ISA, as represented by the education system and the mass media, and the Repressive State Apparatus, as represented by the law. Put crudely the ISA tells you what to think and do, while the RSA then comes into play if you fail to follow the ISA.

The key characteristic of the RSA film, as epitomised by Sergio Sollima's The Big Gundown and Sergio Corbucci's The Great Silence, is the power of the law, or the RSA, being (ab)used by the powerful against the weak.

In Sollima's film it is how land baron Brokston sends Corbett off to bring back Cuchillo dead or alive (preferably the former), for the peon's supposed rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl to divert attention from the real perpetrator, his son.

In Corbucci's it is how businessman Policott contrives to have those who refuse to surrender to him outlaws, such that they may be legally murdered by bounty hunters/killers.

For Fisher the key point about The Big Gundown is its ultimate incoherence. Here it is germane to remember a fundamental difference between Sollima's film and Corbucci's. In The Big Gundown the ending of Franco Solinas's screenplay was dropped, so that Corbett did not kill Cuchillo and the real villain was punished -- i.e. an unhappy ending. In The Great Silence Corbucci was asked to provide a happy ending for some territories, one in which Silence triumphed. Corbucci subverted this request by presenting a happy ending that it was difficult to take seriously, reminiscent of the self-consciously ironic coda to Murnau's The Last Laugh.

The insurgency narrative is drawn from Fanon, and is exemplified by Damiano Damiani's A Bullet for the General and Corbucci's Companeros. These are narratives where a US or Anglo character heads south from the US into Mexico and thereby becomes involved with the revolution, whether supporting or subverting it.

The key question these narratives raise, to Fisher, is the place of violence and its justification/rationalisation: how do we distinguish between legitimate violence against an oppressor and illegitimate violence whereby the formerly oppressed becomes the oppressor?

The most important film in this regard is Sollima's Face to Face, with its civilised eastern academic going west for the sake of his health and then becoming a ruthless bandit leader.

Sollima's film is also important for featuring the two key actors within the Italian political western, namely Gian-Maria Volonte and Tomas Milian.

There are perhaps two notable areas of omission in Fisher's discussion. Both are, however, perfectly understandable given the origins of the book in a PhD thesis where (as I was advised) it is better to accentuate the positive by looking for confirmation rather than refutation of one's ideas.

The first of these is where these films fit in relation to the taxonomy proposed by the editors of Cahiers du cinema around the time of May 1968 (and all that). They suggested that films could be divided into five main categories in relation to form and content and whether these were conservative or radical in approach.

Category A encompassed the bulk of films, especially those produced by Hollywood. These films were conservative on both the form and content axes. As such they were condemned by Cahiers. The far rarer category B encompassed films which were radical in both form and content, such as Godard's Wind from the East. Category C encompassed films which were formally radical but conservative in their content. The Cahiers critics felt such films preferable to those in category D, which were formally conservative but politically radical. Finally, category E encompassed films which did not fit into this schema, in that they might initially be taken as conservative texts but then proved to question this through their contradictions.

With this taxonomy Italian political westerns would seem to be closest to category D. But a problem perhaps then arises when it comes to identifying what conservative form means. A key characteristic of the films of Leone and, more pertinently, those who he influenced is, after all, their comparative lack of regard for David Bordwell classical Hollywood style or Noel Burch's Institutional Mode of Representation.

To give one example, in Django Kill there are rapid-fire montage type flashbacks which are tinted and at times appear to be in reverse motion, with bodies rolling uphill rather than downhill. Rather than seeking to conceal his interventions Questi makes them obvious.

What thus arguably emerges is a situation where formal radicalism becomes less clear cut. Django Kill is radical in relation to The Searchers, but conservative in relation to Wind from the East.

The second area where I felt that Fisher might have commented is with regard to Pier-Paolo Pasolini's broadly contemporaneous notion of an “unpopular cinema”. Pasolini identified three approaches to cinema and politics, the first two of which broadly correspond to Cahiers' categories A and B. For Pasolini the popular cinema, as represented by Hollywood, lacked political bite. The avant-garde cinema, as represented by Godard, was critical, but was also self-defeating as it could only ever reach a minority audience and even then implied a fundamentally sado-masochistic relationship between the sadist filmmaker and the masochist spectator. Pasolini's alternative, the unpopular cinema, was political, yet accessible to wider audiences. As such it could be considered as having affinities with Cahiers' category D.

Pasolini himself took an unpopular cinema line with his Trilogy of Life, of The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, and The Thousand and One Nights, the wider accessibility of which could be directly compared to the films that preceded them, Oedipus Rex, Pigsty and Medea. Pasolini also, however, subsequently repudiated the Trilogy of Life and made Salo as a film which he hoped would be deliberately unwatchable and impossible to recuperate.

Italian political westerns would appear to clearly fit into Pasolini's framework as instances of an unpopular cinema. As such, Fisher's failure to provide a detailed discussion of Carlo Lizzani's Requiescant/Kill and Pray arguably emerges as another structuring absence. Lizzani was, after all, avowedly leftist, as were the actor playing the film's protagonist, Lou Castel, and a performer playing an important supporting role -- none other than Pasolini.

Popular Italian Cinema: Culture and Politics in a Postwar Society

This 2012 academic essay collection has two main sections.

The first features five chapters on specific post-war cycles. These are, in order of presentation, the peplum; horror, this including the giallo; the western; comedy, more specifically the Comedy Italian Style predominant in the 1960s but not Franco and Ciccio nor the Sex Comedies and Decamerotics of the 1970s; and a group of films dealing with the Tarantela.

The second features two chapters on violence in relation to the western and treatments of rape.

Taken as a whole the volume serves to consolidate some established understandings whilst challenging or extending others in useful directions and, as such, can be recommended for readers of this blog – although you may want to wait and see if there is a paperback edition, given its somewhat prohibitive price

In her introduction editor Flavia Brizio-Skov establishes a few guiding principles taken by the four contributors to the volume.

 They are more interested in the consumption of the texts rather than their production. In other words, they are more concerned with what people (audiences) do with these films than what filmmakers intended them to do. They assume that all texts are ideological, with a text that purports not to be ideological likely being one that is implicitly conservative.

In his chapter on the peplum Frank Burke begins by looking at three early post-war examples of the form, each preceding the boom that followed Hercules (1959). He highlights their increasing conservativism, relating this to the consolidation of Christian Democrat regimes backed by the US.

Burke then looks at Leone’s The Colossus of Rhodes (1961) and foregrounds how it works as a parody, with nominal hero Dario being inept and ineffective. Burke thus suggests that the film was perhaps more successful in Leone’s terms, as an intentional parody, that Christopher Frayling would appear to indicate in his discussion of the film. For Burke the problem with The Colossus of Rhodes is that its critique of the peplum is too subtle, generally only becoming apparent on a second viewing. Burke nevertheless tacitly agrees with Frayling that The Colossus of Rhodes is an important predecessor of the Italian western, where the parody would be more obvious.

Burke then examines another ironic peplum, Cottafavi’s Hercules and the Captive Women. He emphasises how its Hercules is an indolent figure whose motivation to act against the Atlantean Aryan/Nazi-coded villains stems not through commitment to more abstract notions of morality or a wider concern for the people but rather friendship, and that the eventual destruction of Atlantis that Hercules precipitates is one that has both allusions to nuclear weapons and that is indiscriminate.

Burke’s chapter arguably also raises a question which recurs throughout the book: by what means and how adequately can the film scholar looking at the meanings audiences attached to these films be verified, given the general infancy of cultural studies at the time and the distance of several decades?

Andrea Bini’s chapter addresses the Italian horror film. He argues that it comprises of three broad periods, each spanning approximately ten years. In this he both confirms and extends the work of previous scholars (such as Maggie Günsberg) by suggesting a slightly different breakdown of the first two periods and introducing the third one. For Bini, as Günsberg, the first period spans the years 1956-66 and can be characterised as Gothic. For Bini, as Günsberg, the second period is characterised as giallo, but begins in 1967 rather than 1969/70. For both critics, however, the key film heralding the Gothic to Giallo shift (can we say epistemological break? or paradigm shift?) is Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. Bini’s third period, that of excess and gore, begins in 1977 and lasts until 1986.

Bini says that the Gothic-Giallo-Gore progression sees horror move from being marginal to mainstream and back to marginal. Here he foregrounds that Suspiria and Inferno were less successful within Italy than Argento’s earlier films, alongside the increasing importance of producing films for export. This gives an interesting angle on Suspiria in particular: according to the figures in Maurizio Baroni’s Platea in piedi, Suspiria was more successful than any of the Animal Trilogy and Deep Red in terms of its absolute ranking in box-office take for the year, as 4th most successful film of 1976/77. However, this success can also be measured in relation to a decline in absolute cinema attendances and, concomitantly, the amount of Lire taken, over the 1970-77 timespan.

Bini also notes the absence of the vampire in Italian culture and how they are replaced by the powerful witch. This helps explain the commercial failure of Freda’s I Vampiri, the figure of Asa in Bava’s Black Sabbath and, indeed, the non-Italian settings of both films alongside the Wurdalak episode of Black Sabbath.

Bini further emphasises how horror was a specifically adult genre in Italy, with reference to the sex-horror films of Renato Polselli. This also explicates their often problematic position in the US marketplace, where horror tended to be seen more as something for children.

For Bini the reason why The Bird with the Crystal Plumage achieved the breakthrough that previous gialli had not seems to have been partially down to making the right film at the right time. Whilst denying that Argento’s films are explicitly political, he suggests that the director managed to tap into the fears and uncertainties that emerged in the Years of Lead, generally taken as beginning in 1969.

Bini, finally, puts forward that Argento’s films along with the genres or cycles as a whole express and ambivalence toward the feminine. This can be seen as being in accord with Mikel Koven’s reading of the giallo as a form which is ambivalent towards modernity more generally.

In her chapter on the Western Brizio-Skov posits that a fundamental difference between the Hollywood Western and the Italian Western is the remove at which they operate: US Westerns dealt with the myth of the West. They were Westerns about the West. Italian Westerns dealt with the myth of the myth of the West. They were Westerns about the Western. One expression of this distinction is that the US Western, as epitomised by Shane, has a hero, whereas the Italian Western, as epitomised by A Fistful of Dollars, has an anti-hero.

Brizio-Skov contents that in social terms the likes Clint Eastwood’s Joe/The Man with No Name worked for those Italians who were winners and losers in the new economic system of individualism. Those who were winners could see themselves reflected on screen, those who were losers could enjoy a wish fulfilment of what they would like to be on screen.

Individualism also manifested in the way in which the Italian Western anti-hero would destroy a corrupt system, but decline to stay around or settle down to construct a better one in its place.

Above all, in Brizio-Skov’s analysis, the Italian Western was a sub-genre marked by contradictions in how it could be read, this leading to its being criticised by the left and the right on the one hand, and being enormously successful with audiences on the other.

Finally, Brizio-Skov suggests that the Leone Western ushered in the post-Western, as inaugurated and exemplified by Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch.

In this regard, a crucial distinction between the Western Italian Style and Comedy Italian Style was that the former could readily be exported internationally, whereas the latter was too close to home to be successfully exported widely.

In his chapter on Comedy Italian Style, Bini suggests that three distinct periods of films could be identified, thus repeating the magic number as already seen in Italian horror and in the Western (US-Italy-US). In general the success of a film depended upon how well Italian audiences were able to see and recognise themselves as the subjects of the comedy whilst not feeling insulted or threatened. Unsurprisingly the boundaries here shifted considerably between the late 1950s and mid 1970s.

Though Comedy Italian Style is perhaps less interesting to readers of this blog, it is worth remembering that Leone employed writers Age and Scarpelli for The Good, The Bad and the Ugly on the basis of their work within the form. That is to say, the connections are there if one seeks them out.

This also applies to Flavia Laviosa’s examination of films featuring the tarantela, which emerges as a more specialised topic with several films about the phenomenon being documentaries and/or not exported. She does, however, mention tarantism in Flavia the Heretic Nun, whilst references to appearances of spiders in other European and North American horror films might lead back to the likes of Canevara’s The Black Belly of the Tarantula or Fulci’s The Beyond.

The second section of the book begins with Brizio-Skov’s chapter on violence in relation to the three periods of the Western established in her earlier discussion: classical-, Italian-, and Post-Western. The last of these, inaugurated by The Wild Bunch, continues through various 1970s Westerns before reaching its high point in Eastwood’s Unforgiven. Drawing on Murray Slotkin in particular, Brizio-Skov suggests that the classical Hollywood Western presents a situation of regeneration through violence, accompanied by a clear-cut positioning of the good and the bad and their respective relations to the community. The Italian Western sees an initial breakdown of these frameworks. The post-Western then presents spirals of violence, where one excessive retaliation spawns another excessive retaliation. Tantalisingly the author then raises the issue of where in contemporary cinema a regenerative violence might still be found and mentions the cop film. Accordingly one is left wanting more, in the form of a discussion of the 1970s cop and gangster film cycle in Italy.

The second chapter in this section, and the last in the book – there is no conclusion – is by Lavioso and addresses how rape has been dealt within in Italian cinema. Lavioso foregrounds a discursive change from texts which discuss rape in the context of sex to texts which discuss rape in the context of (abuse of) power. One issue here, perhaps, is that the popular status of some of the texts/films discussed is less clear; though my own understanding of Damiani’s The Most Beautiful Wife was certainly enhanced by learning about its real-life background and inspiration. Likewise, I wondered whether another case mentioned had any relationship to Di Leo’s To Be Twenty – especially given that Di Leo’s films often have a realist/sociological bent – whilst the deployment of Trauma Theory might suggest a new way of looking at Argento’s The Stendhal Syndrome.

All in all, a very fecund collection where even the least obviously relevant chapter – the tarantela – suggests new lines of inquiry.

Beyond the Darkness

With the Beyond the Darkness title stemming from a Joe D’Amato film and the subtitle cult, horror and extreme cinema, the typical reader of this blog can probably expect that Phil Russell’s book is going to be of interest to them, whether as a source of new films to track down and see or to simply see how another fan’s tastes diverge and converge with your own.

Rather than plunging straight into the alphabetised reviews of roughly 160 titles across 420 or so pages, Russell sets out his criteria in the introduction: No, this is not a comprehensive discussion of cult, horror and extreme cinema, nor could it ever be. No, this is not an “entry level” book, where no prior knowledge is expected.

At this point the prospective reader might wonder what “entry level” means and whether they are just going to get another discussion of, say, Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer or The Beyond. Well, yes, both these titles are present and correct.

Crucially, however, the wide geographical and temporal range in the films discussed, from North America, Europe, and East Asia, and from the late 1950s to the present, should mean there are titles you haven’t seen or may not even have heard of.

Another important factor here is the gamut of positions the films discussed occupy in relation to art, auteur, experimental and/or exploitation cinemas. This is sometimes seen within a single film (e.g. Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant or Nacho Cerda’s Aftermath) and sometimes within the broader career of a given auteur (e.g. David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future to Shivers to Dead Ringers).

Importantly, Russell also here establishes his limits, particularly around the inclusion of actual death footage. Accordingly those expecting a run through of interminable Faces/Traces of Death sequels may be disappointed.

The reviews themselves are informative and even-handed, avoiding fan-boy type hyperbole, whilst still often couched in Joe Bob-Briggs type language. There’s a levelling effect, where Jesus Franco’s “Bloody Moon is far from being a masterpiece but is entertaining from start to finish” whilst Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch is essentially a hit or miss affair”

In addition to the reviews there are also some longer pieces, such as a reprint of the Cinema of Transgression’s manifesto and an interview with Nick Zedd, or a discussion of horror and censorship in late Franco Spain.

Some apparent misspellings (“Marchians” for Martians in John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars) and awkwardness in the formatting (though no worse than other print-on-demand type titles I’ve seen) aside Beyond the Darkness can be recommended.

Mr. Towers of London: A Life in Show Business

Harry Alan Towers was a British-born, peripatetic film producer probably best known for the Fu Manchu series starring Christopher Lee and Tsai Chin, and his collaborations with director Jess Franco, these also often featuring Towers’ partner Maria Rohm. And, one would imagine, that is the main selling point for this autobiography.

The first thing that struck me, reading the back cover blurb, was a somewhat schizoid split: At the top, in larger sized letters there is the unattributed remark “Makes Jackie Collins look like Dr Seuss”. Underneath, in smaller type, there is a blurb by Tim Lucas, the editor of Video Watchdog. I can only assume that some of those who saw the book sight unseen would pick it up for the Collins quote and that some of them would then buy it, while those who know about Towers or recognise Lucas’s name would buy it sight unseen, as I did after seeing Lucas mention it on Facebook. Whatever the case, it’s a classic example of knowing how to exploit different markets that Towers himself would surely have been proud of.

There seem to have been two reasons why Towers waited until so late in his life to publish his memoirs. First, during the rest of the time he was just too busy wheeling and dealing and getting things done to write them; if he was writing it would be a script under his pen-name of Peter Welbeck. Second, Towers clearly knew a lot of things about a lot of important people that could have proven legally actionable were they or he still alive.

In this regard, the most important event in Towers’ life (besides meeting Rohm, to whom the book is dedicated) was the time he was arrested in the USA for his alleged involvement in a prostitition racket. Whether Towers was or was not -- he otherwise makes no secret of his knowledge of the vice trade at the time -- the scandal looked likely to ruin him. Moreover, by skipping bail he set up a Polanski-like situation of being unable to return to the country and thus the centre of the film industry (at least in the west).

Given this, it is no surprise that Towers ended up making films pretty much anywhere else in the world he could. In this regard his wanderings also present close parallels with two of the major figures in his memoirs, namely the aforementioned Franco and Orson Welles. This, in turn, helps us intuitively understand Franco’s enthusiasm for Welles, along with his being tasked with second unit work on Chimes at Midnight and subsequently reconstructing Welles’s Don Quixote. Equally, however, one also gets a sense of a key difference between the two men and thus Towers’ dealings with them: Whereas Welles was someone who had a tendency to abandon projects, leaving them in an unfinished state, Franco is someone who can be relied upon to complete a film, for better or worse.

Indeed, if anything, Towers suggests that Franco could sometimes be too efficient, noting an incident when, on a trip to Brazil, the director managed to finish work a week early -- no mean feat given what must have already been a tight shooting schedule -- and so spent the surplus time shooting some footage that became the basis for another film.

Elsewhere, Towers provides some commentary on the Salkinds’ Musketeers films, noting how their cleverly using the term project rather than film in their contracts enabled them to get two films out of a cast and crew who thought they had only been employed for one.

He also amusingly comments on how the services of Klaus Kinski were acquired for Justine and Count Dracula. In the former case, Kinski’s scenes as De Sade were shot in the one day that his per diem could be afforded, while in the latter Kinski, having initially announced that he would not appear in a Dracula film, was sent a copy of the script that concentrated upon his unnamed part and excised all references to Dracula, Renfield and so forth.

While my comments obviously concentrate on those aspects of Towers’ life and work that are particularly germane to my own interests and, presumably, most of those who read this blog, it is worth pointing out that they cover the whole of his life, including his earlier periods as a theatre, radio and television producer.

Mondo Sexy and Eroticissimo - Bizarre Cinema Archives

For fans of obscure European cinema and associated culture, the Bizarre Cinema archives series by Glittering Images are pretty much indispensible in my opinion, particularly for the English-language reader.

This is because they’re a source of material that is difficult if not impossible to find elsewhere, be it advertising materials, fotoromanzi and cinemaromanzi, images of obscure soundtrack releases and, above all, translated interview and review fragments.

Their bibliographies are also invariably excellent, albeit generally limited in their usefulness if one is not a reader of English, Italian and French, with access to archival sources of a copyright library level. (One of the good things about where I live, Edinburgh, is that it has one of the UK’s copyright libraries, the National Library of Scotland, and so has a copy of just about everything besides so-called ‘grey literature’. Being able to go there and consult issues of Continental Film Review or Cinema X in a separate reading room is a particularly fond memory; it’s also funny to think of their having complete runs of many UK pornographic magazines, likely including those that are now unacceptable due to having 16- or 17-year-old nude models.)

These two recent Glittering Images volumes, published in 2011 and 2012 respectively and curated by mainstay Stefano Piselli are no different. Mondo Sexy deals with the mondo film in its various incarnations, while Eroticissimo presents sequences from a number of cinemaromanzi (i.e. photo-stories) of European sexploitation films made between 1969 and 1973.

As its title suggests, Mondo Sexy takes a somewhat different approach to the mondo filone than the likes of David Kerekes and David Slaters’s Killing for Culture (a substantially revised third edition of which is due for publication in the new year) and Mark Goodall’s Sweet and Savage.

Whereas those volumes, especially the former, emphasise the death and shockumentary side of the mondo film, as epitomised by the likes of Africa Addio and The Wild Eye, Mondo Sexy focuses more upon the earlier erotic and exotic side of the genre, beginning in the late 1950s and ending in the mid-1960s.

The filmography of Italian sexy mondos is presented chronologically, making it easier to chart the course of the filone over this period. This said, to fully do so the reader will also need to cross-reference with the second and possibly third filmographies. The former of these is of other Italian mondo and mondo-related films, such as Mondo Cane and Cannibal Holocaust respectively. The latter is of non-Italian productions. Some of these, such as Primitive London, are basically sexy mondos in their subject matter and approach, while others, such as Exhibition, illustrate the shift to hardcore that had come to dominate the sex(y) film by the 1970s.

For the general reader -- to the extent that there is such a thing as a general audience for specialist publications like these -- Eroticissimo is perhaps the better option if finances are limited; as followers of Glittering Images will know their books are neither particularly easy to get hold of (I got these from an Italian-based seller on Ebay, and have got some previous volumes from Italian online retailer Bloodbuster), nor particularly cheap.

This is principally because rather than featuring mostly now-forgotten erotic and exotic performers from circa 1959-65, as its counterpart does, Eroticissimo instead features many of the best known and most beautiful starlets of Italian and European cult cinema of a decade or so later, including Rosalba Neri, Edwige Fenech, Janine Reynaud and Sandra Julien.

The films the images of these women and the stories they are part of also showcase the work of some of European trash cinema’s more interesting auteurs, including Jose Larraz (with Whirlpool), Jose Benazeraf (Frustration) and Renato Polselli (Mania).

There are, however, two main criticisms I have of the book. First, Pilselli does not particularly contextualise the fotoromanzi extracts shown. This makes it difficult to know how representative they are. Did the typical fotoromanzi tell the same story as the film it was based upon, or merely offer edited (sexy) highlights in a manner akin to an 8mm version of a feature? Second -- and perhaps more in the way of wishful thinking -- might it be possible for Glittering Images to republish a fotoromanzi or two in their complete form, such that we might then be better able to understand its particular aesthetics in relation to the film and the comic book?

A Complex of Carnage: Dario Argento Beneath the Surface

This is one of a number of recently released books from Glitter Books in their Cult Movie Files series, edited and introduced by Jack Hunter. It contains essays previously published by Creation Press, particularly in Andy Black's Necronomicon series of the mid-late 1990s, collected by their subject, psychoanalytic interpretations of Dario Argento's films.

There are four essays: Xavier Mendik's 'Detection and Transgression', and 'Monstrous Mother', Ray Guins' 'Tortured Looks', and Julian Hoxter's 'Anna with a Devil Inside'.

The first of Mendik's essays uses Freud, Lacan and Zizek to argue for the deviant characteristics of detection in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Tenebrae, in line with the former film's female aggressor and the latter's murderous protagonist.

Guins' essay examines Deep Red and Opera by way of Mulvey's seminal essays, but with an interesting twist by focusing on visual displeasure rather than pleasure.

Mendik's second essay examines figures of abjection and/or the monstrous feminine in Italian cinema via Kristeva's essay on the former and Creed's application of it to horror cinema in terms of the latter.

Finally, Hoxter's essay uses Klein's object relations theory to examine figures of the good and bad mother in The Stendhal Syndrome.

The key strength of the volume lies in the consistency of approach, insofar as all three authors draw from the same broad theoretical corpus. Indirectly it also provides a useful guide for further reading around such work.

Contrariwise, the obvious weakness of psychoanalytic film theory as a whole is its unverifiable (or, to use Popper's term, “falsifiable”) nature: you either believe in it or, as with cognitivists such as Bordwell and Carroll do not.

When applied to Argento's films, meanwhile, the notion of a gendered gaze is problematised by the frequent inability to identify the source of the gaze. The famous Louma crane shot in Tenebrae is, after all, not identified with a human. Likewise the New York apartment block in Inferno is identified as female and male simultaneously, being both the repository of the “filthy secrets” of Mater Tenebrarum and the “body” of its architect, Varelli.

In sum, worth picking up if you don't already have the original Necronomicon volumes in which the essays appeared.

European Nightmares

Following a short general introduction European Nightmares divides into seven sections, each prefaced by a separate introduction/overview from the volume's editors.

The first section deals with the Reception and Perception of European horror cinema, the other six with national or regional horror cinemas, the British, French, Spanish, Italian, Germany/Northern Europe, and Turkey/Eastern Europe.

The first section begins with Peter Hutching’s chapter, in which he emphasises the difficulty of defining Eurohorror as a distinct genre. Hutchings first compares Resident Evil and Suspiria, noting that while both films have US and European elements the former is rarely considered Eurohorror whereas the latter is perhaps the quintessential Eurohorror film.

Hutchings then takes a more historical focus, noting how the 1960s and 1970s typically saw English-language critics refer to continental horror films as Italian horror, Spanish horror, or other nationally specific instances of horror. Eurohorror, as an overarching descriptive label, dated from the 1980s and 1990s.

In the UK this was indirectly encouraged by the Video Nasties moral panic, in that Italian and Spanish films were disproportionately represented in the lists of banned titles, and then by the efforts of fan-critics such as Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs to identify common traits. (One productive line of inquiry here may be to see if a random sample of European horror films have what David Bordwell terms a “group style” or if a Eurohorror group style, as implied by Tohill and Tombs' invocation of the fantastique, might be discerned.)

Brigid Cherry’s chapter follows neatly on from Hutchings by again emphasising the importance of Suspiria whilst shifting the focus of attention somewhat from critic to fan discourses (though as indicated in the earlier chapter, these boundaries are permeable). Using material drawn from internet discussion forums, she suggests that a distinction may also be drawn between Eurohorror and Eurogore, with audience preferences for one, other, or both tending to correlate with gender and level of subcultural capital, female viewers preferring horror over gore and older or longer term viewers possessing greater subcultural capital. Unfortunately subsequent chapters will not address this distinction.

Ernst Mathjis and Russ Hunter’s chapter looks at the particular place of horror within Belgian cinema culture, or rather its peculiar absence. For while internationally successful as horror films, The Devil’s Nightmare, Daughters of Darkness, Man Bites Dog and The Ordeal were invariably discussed by Belgian critics in other terms and treated negatively.

The final chapter in this section, by David Huxley, looks at the reception of domestic and continental horror productions in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s from both the censors and critics. He indicates that a range of views were evident from the outset and that generally they became better regarded in the more liberal context of the 1960s.

Huxley’s chapter leads smoothly onto the section on British horror cinema, which has two chapters looking at Village of the Damned and at a number of genre films, including Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later produced during the period of New Labour government (1997-2010).

Both chapters, authored by John Sears and Linnie Blake respectively, make broadly socio-political readings of the films as symptomatic of wider issues such as class and gender.

While the editors’ introduction to the section on French horror cinema mentions Jean Rollin and the lack of recognition and discussion accorded his work in his native land, he is also ironically absent from this collection, with the chapters by Emily Brick and Matthias Hurst instead concentrating upon more recent films, namely Baise-moi and Switchblade Romance.

Brick situates the former film in the context of the rape-revenge subgenre, Hurst the latter in relation to questions of gender, identity and subjectivity. (It is difficult to write about Switchblade Romance without spoiling its twist ending, though a comparison with The Grip of the Strangler, Tenebrae and/or The Stendhal Syndrome might prove constructive.)

By this point the strengths and weaknesses of the collection are becoming evident. On the one hand there is no dogmatic attachment to any particular theory. On the other hand this makes the study a bit less cohesive. This is also apparent in the three chapters on Spanish horror cinema.

In the first Paul Willis notes that most studies of Spanish horror films of the 1960s and 1970s have tended to foreground their anti-Francoist characteristics. Such studies, however, neglect the strain of Spanish horror that is more reactionary than progressive. One example of this is the Paul Naschy vehicle Exorcismo, which Willis sees as presenting a negative portrayal of youth culture and a positive one of the Catholic religion that was a bedrock of the regime.

In the second Phil Smith looks at the Blind Dead and the zombie more generally (including those of Romero and Fulci) in relation to the Situationist notion of aimless wandering. While certainly an interesting idea, this is one of those pieces where you suspect the author came to the films via the theory rather than to a theory via the films.

In the third Barry Jordan looks at the contemporary Spanish horror films of Alejando Amenabar, particularly his early shorts. Their place within a distinctive national tradition is, however, somewhat unclear. Amenabar indicates his influences to be Hollywood filmmakers, while Jordan says that he makes his films as if Spanish horror cinema had not existed. As such, it might be questioned whether Amenabar is really a Eurohorror filmmaker in the De Ossorio or Fulci manner.

The section on Italian horror has two chapters. The first, by Mark Goodall, looks at Bruno Mattei’s Zombie Creeping Flesh/Hell of the Living Dead and highlights the often under-acknowledged influence of the earlier mondo cycle on Italian horror. The second, by Anna Powell, looks at Suspiria from a Deleuzean perspective, challenging psychoanalytic interpretations of Argento’s work.

If there’s a problem with both discussions it is in not offering much that is new. Goodall, after all, is the author of a book on the mondo film, while Powell had earlier written about Suspiria in Deleuze and Horror film.

While the introduction to the section on German and North European horror films mentions the krimi as a horror/thriller genre the three subsequent chapters focus on the Hollywood career of Robert Siodmak, Ingmar Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg, and Michael Haneke's films, with varying degrees of success.

It is hard to see the relevance of Mark Jancovich's chapter on Siodmak's Hollywood career in the 1930s and 1940s, given the claimed post-War European focus of the collection. Worse, Jancovich could have discussed Siodmak's 1957 West German horror-thriller Nights When the Devil Comes, based on the real story of a serial killer at large in Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

Samuel Umland's discussion of the relationship between The Serpent's Egg and Fritz Lang's Mabuse films, especially The Testament of Dr Mabuse, is more interesting and thought-provoking, as when he draws out the meanings attached to particular character names in Bergman's film and oeuvre.

Catherine Wheatley's chapter on Michael Haneke's horrors of everyday life emphasises the arthouse at the expense of the grindhouse. It also spends some of its time discussing the French-set (and titled) Cache when, for my money at least, an analysis of Gerard Kargl's Angst would have been more nation-specific.

The concluding section on Eastern Europe contains one general overview chapter, by Christina Stojanova, and two focusing on Hungarian and Turkish horror cinemas specifically, by Patricia Allmer and Kaya Özkaracular.

The overview chapter by introduces John Carpenter's distinction between a left-wing Frankensteinian horror, in which the threat comes from within, and a right-wing Draculean horror, in which the threat comes from outwith. It's an interesting thesis and perhaps one which could have been applied more widely in relation to earlier chapters, most notably that on Spanish horror, given that films were frequently set outside Spain.

That the book concludes with Turkish horror makes sense given the country's position at the margin of Europe and dominant religious tradition being Islam rather than Christianity. Both factors are to the fore in the films discussed, notably the self-explanatory Dracula in Istanbul and The Exorcist rip-off Seytan.

All in all, another useful collection, but also one which points to the need for volumes devoted to particular national horror cinemas beyond the British and the Italian.

Trash or Treasure

Based upon author Kate Egan's PhD thesis, Trash or Treasure presents a three-part, broadly chronological academic examination of the British “video nasty” phenomenon from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, highlighting the shifting and contested meanings attached to the films by various cultural and subcultural groups over this period.

The first chapter examines the discourses employed by the British critical establishment, with Egan emphasising a general tendency to 'other' the assumed audience for horror films as “not like us”. She also notes the particularly anti-American nature of much of this criticism, through an examination of three case studies --- The Funhouse, Visiting Hours (whose Canadian origins are mentioned in passing, but not otherwise explored; an odd omission given that it was shot in Montreal) and The Evil Dead.

The absence of any aesthetic or thematic analysis of the nasties is understandable, inasmuch as there was no coherent criteria by which films were or were not labelled nasties. Less satisfactory is the absence of Italian and Spanish productions or co-productions, given that a disproportionate number of films labelled nasties were from these countries. It is possible, of course, that these films were also less likely to be given cinema releases, but in my opinion it would have been good to mention this and, indeed, the place of continental European popular cinema in established/establishment critical discourse. (A useful case study here might be the cinema release of the Zombie Flesh Eaters/Toolbox Murders double bill, which Stephen Thrower has identified as giving him the feeling that, so to speak, “the times they were a' changin.”)

Another important limitation of Egan's discussion, albeit one that is entirely understandable in the context of academic research, is that her focus throughout remains firmly upon that group of films originally classified as “video nasties” in the early 1980s. She is uninterested in seeing how the term subsequently became a floating signifier that commentators sought to attach to other films, such as Child's Play 3 or Natural Born Killers.

The second chapter highlights contradictory understandings of the early 1980s, whether Kim Newman's golden age/plague years pairing or, more significant on a wider scale, that tension in Conservatism under Thatcher between economic liberalism and social conservatism.

Egan indicates how this relates to the marketing strategies employed by companies such as  Vipco, Go and Replay, in that they operated as ideal(ised) Thatcherite entrepreneurs should, but with a product that was beyond the pale as far as more traditional Conservative elements (Thatcher's “Wets”?) were concerned.

This leads neatly on to the third and final chapter of this section, where Egan looks at the video nasty campaign as it emerged in the media, particularly The Daily Mail. Egan identifies the real or implied Daily Mail reader of the time as someone who was more socially conservative than economically liberal, or thereby not quite the (Althusserian interpellated subject?) Thatcherite ideal, whereby economic liberalism was privileged over social conservatism.

In relation to this perhaps the most significant underacknowledged aspect of the video nasties campaign is that the first politician to raise their concerns was not a Conservative but a Labour MP, Gareth Wardell. This is of particular interest, insofar as it represents an area where Egan criticises Martin Barker's contemporaneous analysis in The Video Nasties (1984), in which Thatcher and the Conservatives tended to be presented as the prime movers in the affair, proactive rather than reactive.

In contrast, Egan argues that the Daily Mail and its alternate vision of [C|c]onservatism were to the fore and that, following the failure of Wardell's campaign, the Conservatives then modified their position to be more like that of the newspaper --- i.e. political conservativism was prioritised over economic liberalism. Put another way it seems to be that the tail, The Daily Mail, wagged the dog, the Conservative party.

Thus endeth the first part...

The fourth chapter explores the particular position occupied by the UK horror magazines/fanzines Fear and, especially, The Dark Side in constructing fan subcultures and discourses around the “nasties” (two other unexplored titles are worth noting here: Samhain and Shock Express).

Egan contends that (1990s) Dark Side constituted its identity in opposition to the (1980s-) US publication Fangoria, which it presented as too mainstream. While Dark Side was more mainstream than fanzines, its subcultural credentials were also established by discussing these publications.

Curiously, given the US/UK element identified in the first section, Egan does not say much about whether the Fangoria/Dark Side distinction (at least from the latter side) has broader associations.

She does, however, provide a compelling analysis of the role(s) played by the magazine's editor and public face, Allan Bryce, as gatekeeper / gamekeeper / groundsman of (a particular) subcultural know-how around the video nasties. This extends to Egan's reading of the magazine's small ads, whereby the reader-initiate was required to learn how to decode their particular shibboleths, whether the names of key directors (D'Amato, Franco, Fulci) or euphemisms (rare pre-certs), or Bryce's sometimes cryptic responses to readers' letters.

The fifth chapter looks at online discourses, as found on websites and discussion forums, with an emphasis upon the (male) nerd/geek type and their (his, my?) struggles over subcultural capital and masculinity. I didn't get much out of this. Whether this was mostly because I reacted against it as a male nerd/geek type; Egan's own lack of personal involvement (there is never any indication of why she chose the nasties as a research topic, nor the kind of existential commitment sensed when reading something written by a “true” fan, that this film/these films really matter); the material appearing dated; the difficulties of examining a nation-specific phenomenon in a post-national internet context; that many academic debates are equally petty territorial pissings (the politics of X are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger); and/or being unsure that her sample was genuinely representative, I don't know.

The issue of representativeness is also evident in the sixth chapter, where Egan provides a detailed analysis of collector “John's” particular approach to the video nasty --- or, more precisely, pre-cert videos with nostalgic associations. What is good about this chapter, besides Egan's provocative comparison of John's video collection with Walter Benjamin's library, is the anthropological “thick description” of John's learning and using specific competences in car boot sales to avoid being taken advantage of and to take advantage of others (the return of the repressed Thatcherite entrepreneur?).

Thus endeth the second part...

A major aspect of John's approach to the nasty is/was his specific interest in the original, authentic, video versions of the films. This leads into the third part of the book, where Egan looks at the re-release and re-evaluation of a number of nasties in the late 1990s and 2000s --- a period marked by the emergence of DVD over video (the VHS/Beta/Video 2000 aspect of collecting and rarity is neither explored nor mentioned, presumably because John had a VHS machine) and a new approach at the BBFC which allowed many previously banned nasties to be certificated, albeit often in cut versions.

The seventh chapter looks at the retrospective marketing of the nasties, with a particular focus upon the Vipco label. Egan identifies Vipco (founded in 1979 and intermittently ongoing to the point where her research ends) as a company who sought to position themselves as the home of the nasties via a cheap and cheerful approach, this in contrast to their more upmarket rivals Redemption.

The eighth and final chapter examines how selected nasties, most notably Last House on the Left, were re-contextualised as art works through their screenings in cultural contexts.

Here, I remember first seeing Craven and Cunningham's film at one of these events, namely Edinburgh International Film Festival screening, where it was introduced by Mark Kermode. Part of the reason for this screening was supposed to be as part of a campaign aimed at getting rid of the VRA. While that didn't happen, one now wonders about it and the BBFC's relevance, except as burdens on UK-based distributors who want to abide by the law: They paid to get inferior (because cut) product certificated while UK consumers bought uncut versions from Ebay, Amazon and so on; if we did buy UK releases, it is because of unique material, perhaps itself engaging with the history of the nasties, as with Egan's discussion of the Anchor Bay's US and UK versions of The Evil Dead, where the latter drew upon the legacy of Palace's distribution and defence of the title in the 1980s.

In sum, a provocative and wide ranging analysis of the “video nasty” and its place in British horror culture. You'll likely find things to disagree about, but that's good...

Fantastikal Diabolikal Supermen

Matt Blake, who runs the excellent Wild Eye website and wrote the essential Eurospy Guide a few years back has recently published this book on Italian fumetti neri style films of the 1960s and 1970s.



Extensively illustrated with posters, lobby cards and stills from the films and featuring quite a lot of interview and review material that hasn't been previously available in English (at least to my knowledge) it's an essential purchase for anyone with an interest in this comparatively under-explored area of Italian cult cinema.

Taking a comprehensive but not all encompassing approach, Blake looks at films that were made by Italian directors – so no Modesty Blaise or Mr Freedom – and which either presented direct adaptations of fumetti characters (Diabolik, Kriminal, Satanik, Isabella, Valentina etc.) or were clearly influenced by the comics (The 3 Supermen series, Vittorio De Sica's contribution to the anthology film The Witches, the Johnny Dorelli vehicle How to Kill 400 Duponts and so on).

The films are discussed in chronological rather than alphabetical order, allowing the reader to better chart the development of the filone as a whole and particular series within it. This is especially helpful when it comes to the likes of the long-running 3 Supermen series, since the personnel involved often changed from one film to the next, for better or worse.

Thankfully there's also a comprehensive index of titles for those wondering whether a specific film is one of the better, worse or average examples of the form.

While the reader will inevitably disagree with some of Blake's evaluations of the films, his reviews are invariably intelligent, informative and insightful, indicating why he rates or does not rate a given film, filmmaker or performer.

So, for example, of the 3 Superman films, Blake identifies those directed by Sabata's Gianfranco Parolini as ranking above those by Black Emanuelle's Bitto Albertini, with both in turn preferable to those directed by their usual producer and writer Italo Martinenghi – precisely the kind of stuff you need when, like me, you've got a whole load of them in your virtual to-watch pile and were not sure of where to begin.

Page for Fantastikal Diabolikal Supermen on The Wild Eye.

Coming soon from FAB Press

THE EURO-WESTERN BEYOND LEONE

The success of Sergio Leone's 'Dollars' trilogy in the '60s sparked a gold rush, as a legion of European film-makers - many of them sharing the get-rich-quick mentality of Leone's mercenary anti-heroes - followed the master's lead to create some of the wildest Westerns ever made.

Cynical and stylish, bloody and baroque, Euro-westerns replaced straight-shooting sheriffs and courageous cowboys with amoral adventurers, whose murderous methods would shock the heroes of Hollywood Westerns. These films became box-office sensations around the world, and their influence can still be felt today.

Any Gun Can Play puts the phenomenon into perspective, exploring the films' wider reaches, their recurrent themes, characters, quirks and motifs. It examines Euro-westerns in relation to their American ancestors and the mechanics of the Italian popular film industry, and spotlights the unsung actors, directors and other artists who subverted the 'code' of the Western and dragged it into the modern age.

Based on years of research backed up by interviews with many of the genre's leading lights, including actors Franco Nero, Giuliano Gemma and Gianni Garko, writer Sergio Donati, and directors Sergio Sollima and Giuliano Carnimeo, Any Gun Can Play will satisfy both connoisseurs and the curious.

Complete with a foreword by Euro-Western legend Franco Nero, this stunningly illustrated reference guide takes aim at the lingering notion that the genre has little to offer beyond the 'Dollars' films and a fistful of others, exposing the full, vibrant history of the Euro-western.

CONTENTS:

FOREWORD
By Euro-western legend Franco Nero, star of Django, A Professional Gun and Keoma, among others.

INTRODUCTION
An overview of Euro-westerns, their origins and characteristics, plus the major professionals whose careers they launched, prolonged or transformed.

TARGET PRACTICE
Early Euro-westerns were hit-and-miss affairs, but A Fistful of Dollars is not the only film from the genre's formative period worthy of recognition.

A BULLET SPENT, A DOLLAR EARNED
In the wake of For a Few Dollars More, the genre matured and broadened its horizons, presenting a misanthropic world-view, leavened with irony, that perfectly matched the tenor of the times.

RELATIVES AND RELIGION
Many Italian Westerns skewed their stories towards the home market, serving up stereotypical stories of troublesome females, feuding families and a satirical or critical treatment of religion.

'GOD FORGIVES... I DON'T!'
Euro-westerns posit a world where betrayal is rife and violence ever-present, taking the theme of revenge to extraordinary extremes.

'DON'T BUY BREAD, BUY DYNAMITE'
Euro-westerns were unashamedly populist, and many of them adopted a left-wing stance in the late Sixties, reflecting the influence of radical film-makers and the political atmosphere of the times.

BEWARE OF FAKE GUNS
While American Westerns had Jesse James, Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid, European film-makers invented a pantheon of their own, populated by the likes of Django, Ringo, Sabata, Sartana and Trinity.

COWBOYS, COMEDIANS AND KUNG FU STARS
Many Euro-westerns were hybrids not just of cultural traditions and film-making styles, but also tones, subjects and settings, with elements such as mystery, comedy, horror and martial arts not uncommon.

DESOLATION AND DECONSTRUCTION
The genre burned brightly but briefly, and by the early Seventies it was in decline. This chapter examines what these latecomers have to offer, and whether they have been dismissed too lightly.

WHO'S WHO IN EURO-WESTERNS
A biographical A-Z of the most important and prolific actors, directors, composers, etc.

EURO-WESTERN FILMOGRAPHY
A chronological listing of European Westerns.

[Sounds like a good, comprehensive guide for the most part IMO]