From here:
http://purplezombiedj.blogspot.com/2011/05/giallo-moods-music-for-murder.html
Saturday, 21 May 2011
Friday, 20 May 2011
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]
Sunday, 15 May 2011
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
A one-off
Well, one of two: an original prop from Fulci's City of the Living Dead, currently on Ebay.
Something for the Fulci fan who has everything?!
Something for the Fulci fan who has everything?!
Saturday, 7 May 2011
The Best of Spaghetti Westerns
This ten disc set features 20 films, two to a disc:
No Room to Die
Lone and Angry Man
Rope and the Colt
In the Colt's Shadow
Shanghai Joe
The Return of Shanghai Joe
Charge! Dirty Dogs
Shoot Gringo Shoot!
A Bullet for a Stranger
10,000 Dollars for a Massacre
A Pistol for Ringo
The Return of Ringo
Ringo: Face of Vengeance
Blood for a Silver Dollar
Deep West
Seven Dollars on the Red
Bandidos
Forgotten Pistolero
A Noose is Waiting for You Trinity
A Sky Full of Stars
Not bad for £15 or so from Amazon marketplace.
I've got Seven Dollars on the Red on at the moment and it looks damn good, in the proper aspect ratio, with vibrant colours, a pretty immaculate print and with no artefacting or pixelation thus far. Hope the other films are equally impressive...
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Some new posters
US one-sheet for Lizard in a Woman's Skin, as Schizoid
US one-sheet for Psychomania, as The Death Wheelers
US one-sheet for Death Line, as Raw Meat
Not the best pictures, I know.
US one-sheet for Psychomania, as The Death Wheelers
US one-sheet for Death Line, as Raw Meat
Not the best pictures, I know.
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Swedish Sensationsfilms
Although author Daniel Ekeroth gives no precise definition, sensationsfilm can broadly be understood as Swedish vernacular or exploitation cinema for the most part. It was a type of cinema that lasted around 40 years, from the early 1950s to 1990s, when industrial and other changes rendered it redundant.
A complication is that at times the sensationsfilm and the art film are difficult to distinguish, particularly in the period before the hardcore porn boom of the 1970s.
Bergman’s Summer with Monika was, after all, distributed in a shortened, dubbed, rescored version in the US as Monika: The Story of a Bad Girl while the same director’s rape-revenge horror The Virgin Spring not only famously inspired Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left but has also been identified by John Waters as the first film to feature scenes of vomiting.
Nevertheless, it is also clear that the sensationsfilm took the particular form it did due to particularities of Swedish culture and censorship. For instance, whereas male nudity in particular is a rarity in US exploitation films, it emerges as a commonplace in the sensationsfilm.
Contrariwise the Swedish censors tended to take a harder line as far as violence was concerned, with mitigating circumstances and exceptions for social engineering purposes.
Here, Ekeroth discusses the film which inaugurated the “kicker” cycle of the 1980s. This youth group got their name from their liking for kicking things, including phone booths. An official film with the intention of discouraging such activity had, perhaps predictably, the opposite effect.
An aspect of certain sensationsfilms which may be more problematic today in some territories are sexualised images of adolescents in some titles; as Ekeroth notes the child pornography laws introduced in the late 1960s were comparatively lax.
Following a useful introductory overview, Christina Lindberg (the most recognisable name, face and body associated with the genre) provides her memories of the genre. This is followed by a longer alphabetical reviews section. Each film gets a page to itself, punctuated by individual pages of black and white poster, lobby card, video box and still reproductions and colour sections. The reviews generally have the format of a synopsis followed by a commentary and points of interest, along with a typically dismissive contemporary review from a respectable critic. Ekeroth is unsurprisingly more positive, but is thankfully not blind to the considerable variations in the films’ levels of ambition and accomplishment.
The alphabetical approach has its pluses and minuses. On the one hand it makes it easier to find a particular title should it crop up somewhere. On the other hand it makes it more difficult to chart the development of particular filmmakers and performers careers, such as they were.
On balance, however, it works, thanks to a generous degree of cross-referencing and shorter sections after the reviews giving profiles and filmographies for some of the most important names (besides the aforementioned Lindberg these include US-expat Joe Sarno, whose shift from the softcore productions of the late 1960 to harder fare ten years later is characteristic, and Bo Vibenius, whose little seen Breaking Point sounds like an outré must see comparable with the likes of Alberto Cavallone) along with a listing of the top 20 sensationsfilms (also often the ones which are easiest to access internationally, including Vibenius’s Thriller: A Cruel Film, starring Lindberg)
A valuable guide to one of the hitherto uncharted areas of world exploitation that comes highly recommended. Where else would you learn about the 'Lingonberry' western or a series of five colour-referencing detective films including the pre-Bava and apparently Blood and Black Lace like Mannequin in Red?
A complication is that at times the sensationsfilm and the art film are difficult to distinguish, particularly in the period before the hardcore porn boom of the 1970s.
Bergman’s Summer with Monika was, after all, distributed in a shortened, dubbed, rescored version in the US as Monika: The Story of a Bad Girl while the same director’s rape-revenge horror The Virgin Spring not only famously inspired Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left but has also been identified by John Waters as the first film to feature scenes of vomiting.
Nevertheless, it is also clear that the sensationsfilm took the particular form it did due to particularities of Swedish culture and censorship. For instance, whereas male nudity in particular is a rarity in US exploitation films, it emerges as a commonplace in the sensationsfilm.
Contrariwise the Swedish censors tended to take a harder line as far as violence was concerned, with mitigating circumstances and exceptions for social engineering purposes.
Here, Ekeroth discusses the film which inaugurated the “kicker” cycle of the 1980s. This youth group got their name from their liking for kicking things, including phone booths. An official film with the intention of discouraging such activity had, perhaps predictably, the opposite effect.
An aspect of certain sensationsfilms which may be more problematic today in some territories are sexualised images of adolescents in some titles; as Ekeroth notes the child pornography laws introduced in the late 1960s were comparatively lax.
Following a useful introductory overview, Christina Lindberg (the most recognisable name, face and body associated with the genre) provides her memories of the genre. This is followed by a longer alphabetical reviews section. Each film gets a page to itself, punctuated by individual pages of black and white poster, lobby card, video box and still reproductions and colour sections. The reviews generally have the format of a synopsis followed by a commentary and points of interest, along with a typically dismissive contemporary review from a respectable critic. Ekeroth is unsurprisingly more positive, but is thankfully not blind to the considerable variations in the films’ levels of ambition and accomplishment.
The alphabetical approach has its pluses and minuses. On the one hand it makes it easier to find a particular title should it crop up somewhere. On the other hand it makes it more difficult to chart the development of particular filmmakers and performers careers, such as they were.
On balance, however, it works, thanks to a generous degree of cross-referencing and shorter sections after the reviews giving profiles and filmographies for some of the most important names (besides the aforementioned Lindberg these include US-expat Joe Sarno, whose shift from the softcore productions of the late 1960 to harder fare ten years later is characteristic, and Bo Vibenius, whose little seen Breaking Point sounds like an outré must see comparable with the likes of Alberto Cavallone) along with a listing of the top 20 sensationsfilms (also often the ones which are easiest to access internationally, including Vibenius’s Thriller: A Cruel Film, starring Lindberg)
A valuable guide to one of the hitherto uncharted areas of world exploitation that comes highly recommended. Where else would you learn about the 'Lingonberry' western or a series of five colour-referencing detective films including the pre-Bava and apparently Blood and Black Lace like Mannequin in Red?
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