Karl Malden and James Franciscus in the giallo by Dario Argento

Dario Argento’s ‘Cat O’Nine Tails’ on Amazon Prime and Criterion Channel

The Cat O’Nine Tails (Italy, 1971), Dario Argento’s second feature, follows up his directorial debut The Bird With the Crystal Plumage in genre, style and “animal” theme (stretched into a trilogy with Four Flies on Gray Velvet). In Bird, Argento explores, pushes at, and plays with the mechanics of suspense and murder mystery spectacle in […]

Jorge Grau directs this Spanish/Italian zombie film shot in England

‘Let Sleeping Corpses Lie’ on Amazon Prime

One of the best zombie shockers of the 1970s, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974), also known as The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue and Don’t Open the Window, is a real international affair. Inspired by George Romero’s genre-shattering Night of the Living Dead, this Spanish/Italian co-production was shot in the English countryside by a Spanish […]

Marianne Morris and Anulka star in the Erotica horror film from Joseph Larraz

‘Vampyres’ – Seventies Eurotica horror on Amazon Prime

In Vampyres (1974, NC-17), one of the more interesting slices of seventies vampire Eurotica, Spanish filmmaker Joseph Larraz (aka José Ramón Larraz) reworks “Carmilla” and rewrites the vampire myth to make his bloodsucking lovelies the restless ghosts of lesbian lovers murdered while making love in their shadowy castle. Reappearing nightly in the twilight forest, they […]

Franco Nero stars in Sergio Corbucci’s 'Django'

The original ‘Django’ on Amazon Prime

Along with Sergio Leone’s Clint Eastwood trilogy, Sergio Corbucci’s Django (1966), starring Italian hunk Franco Nero as the gritty mercenary who drags a coffin behind him, was one of the films that set the tone and attitude and style spaghetti westerns. Wandering a desolate desert of ghost towns and miserable frontier dropouts under the bootheels […]