The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies Part 9

The story doesn't actually get going until four young girls are seen heading into the desert for a weekend of camping and geological study. They encounter a couple of unsavoury individuals while filling up at a petrol station, Peter and Eric, who could have carried out the killings detailed in the movie's first fifteen minutes. The girls quite rightly feel it best to move on. Soon after the viewer is granted a few moments of gratuitous nudity as the girls enjoy themselves in the water, but this frivolity abruptly ends when they sense someone close by spying on them. As they try to put this incident behind them, Peter and Eric show up, now armed with rifles. They begin to intimidate the defenceless girls before turning to rape and torture. The desert echoes to the sound of the screams of the four girls as they look to escape these s.a.d.i.s.tic perverts. A series of flashbacks from Vietnam, including an unexplained Asian woman in a darkened room, attempt to temper the villain's despicable crimes, but for them there will be no escape.

Jeff Hathc.o.c.k's rape revenge feature would be his first entry into the world of the sleazy slasher and would pave the way for a long career in both film as well as cartoons. His movie utilized obvious aspects of plot from Last House on the Left (1972), I Spit On Your Grave (1978), and Mother's Day (1980), but due to his inexperience and lack of funds was devoid of their technical merit. His debut has been lambasted for being both trashy and hateful; these, however, proved to be the facets that would endear it to the long-time devotees of grindhouse cinema. All these years later we can only wonder if it was originally intended for these fleapit cinemas, as the substandard writing, cinematography and acting suggest this film was made considerably before 1985.

STEVEN EMORY AND his wife have recently moved away from New York to start a new life running a video rental store. They are both surprised and delighted to learn nearly everyone in town has a video recorder, even in the video-mad world of 1987, but there is more to this VHS overload. Their customers display an uncomfortable obsession with slasher and splatter movies, along with a sampling of p.o.r.n. When one of their employees discovers a returned case containing a grisly snuff movie Steven turns to the police for help. When they return to the store the offending video has been replaced and his employee is nowhere to be seen. These crudely produced films, depicting the slow torture and murder of innocents pa.s.sing through the town, continue to appear in the store. Steven is now forced to carry out his own investigations only to find himself up against a town of psychos.

Gary Cohen's Video Violence remains one of the most widely distributed shot-on-video horror movies of the period and with regard to its technique is considered to be way ahead of its time. Having owned a video store, Cohen created his low-budget feature, made for only a few hundred dollars, to explore the casual viewer's affinity for bloodthirsty violence. When the cable station where he was editing his film became aware of the sordid nature of his film they immediately asked him to leave. His film, however, went on to see release and he unwittingly became one of the pioneers of a new form of home entertainment. While everything about this film is cheap, his story moves at a fast pace, making use of understandably cheap gore effects which are cleverly reserved for the snuff video scenes. Video Violence very quickly acquired cult status and sold out, before going on to a second pressing. That same year the derisive carnage returned in Video Violence 2. It didn't end here; the queasy premise of both would surface many years later in the big-budget Vacancy (2007).

Cohen is now the Producing Director for Middles.e.x County, New Jersey's Plays-in-The-Park, having enjoyed a wide-ranging career in both film and theatre. He has also written two books on theatre, The Community Theater Handbook and the The Theater Director's Primer.

ACHILD PLAYS WITH his ball and then returns home to be verbally abused by his mother. When the door closes, a scream can be heard from within the house. The blood-stained youngster smiles to the camera, having just killed his mother with a meat cleaver. Twenty years later the adult Karl escapes police custody, having butchered them as they transfer him between prisons. The last of the policemen is seen at very close proximity falling before the madman's sharpened weapon. Karl, meat cleaver in hand, is now free to return to his murderous ways. His next victim is a woman whose car has broken down in the German countryside; true to the Italian splatter-filled misogyny of this bloodthirsty decade, he thrusts his blade into her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. His bloodl.u.s.t doesn't end here; a man's p.e.n.i.s is soon after chopped in half. In a change of weaponry, a gardener is decapitated with a hedge trimmer and so the gorefest continues with bodily dismemberment and a b.l.o.o.d.y display of intestines. All the while, the killer avers to being plagued by the vision of the devil he saw as a child. In the bizarre finale, his body degenerates to slime, and within minutes we witness his rejuvenation as a baby.

As the budget suggests, Andreas Schnaas' first film was an almost amateur project, but could take pride in being Germany's first shot-to-video horror movie. An admirer of Lucio Fulci, Schnaas used what little money he had to pour on as much cheap gore as his bank balance could stand, but offered little in the way of a comprehensible storyline and never appeared concerned with the character development that afforded so many of its contemporaries such credence. Instead, he preferred to linger on the hack and slash of his killer's slaughter, cutting up his victims and ensuring Steve Aquilina's camera was as close as it possibly could be to the b.l.o.o.d.y display. The t.i.tle alone would see it banned in many countries, but in the world of underground cinema Schnaas was to go on to gather a dedicated cult following. Against the odds, he continued Karl's low-budget penchant for slaughter less than twelve months later in Violent s.h.i.t 2 Mother, Hold My Hand but this wouldn't see release until 1992. He then set to work on a third film hoping to conclude his disreputable series in 1993, but a lack of funds kept the film from release until 1999 when it appeared as Violent s.h.i.t III: Infantry of Doom, re-t.i.tled as Zombie Doom for its a.s.sault on the US market. With the copyright to these films now lying elsewhere Schnaas has no plans to revive this deranged psychotic.

DURING THE MAKING of Visions of Suffering, Andrey Iskanov conspired with any accepted notions of surrealism, psychedelia and gore to create a film that remains unique and reflected just how the world of cinematic horror was once again beginning to change. As the opening frames roll onto the screen we are told, "A dream is a reality, rejected by our mind", and so follows a celluloid voyage of visual splendour into a hallucinatory domain of unending nightmare, which at the last defies any attempt at explanation.

Whenever it rains The Man in Gla.s.ses (Alexander Shevchenko) is plagued by the hideous nightmare of a person with a misshapen face trudging through dismal swampland grasping at black squid creatures as they descend from the sky. With the intensity of his dreams becoming increasingly alarming, he calls his girlfriend, but damages the phone. The Phone Repairman (Victor Silkin) arrives on the scene, a man whose dominion lies amidst those haunting ghosts who have the power to evoke these terrifying visions. These creatures are known as Vampires, and those who acquire knowledge of their existence are agonizingly punished and then left for slaughter. To ensure word about their activities doesn't get to the ears of mortal man, the Vampires utilize the s.a.d.i.s.tic skills of The Man in Black (Igor Orlov).

Unaware his life is threatened The Man in Gla.s.ses gets through to his girlfriend and arranges to meet her in a bizarre nightclub known as Delirium, an inst.i.tution with its own set of rules. However, in contacting his girlfriend he has foolishly given the Vampire breed his whereabouts; b.l.o.o.d.y carnage will inevitably follow. While there is little in the way of dialogue the camera's lens allows us to see addicts with access to mind-bending drugs and the strangest people who freely indulge their inhumane desires. He seeks counsel from The Priest (Andrey Iskanov) only to learn he too is deeply troubled, by his faith and those indescribable dreams that invade his sleep when the rain begins to fall. Demonic creatures conspire to use these nightmares to escape their own h.e.l.l-borne world and drag the inc.u.mbents to the terrors that lie in wait in their unholy realm.

Iskanov's film follows in the path of the Italian masters, preferring to immerse the viewer with imagery that seeks to disturb rather than presenting a coherent storyline, taking those who sit before its hypnotic gaze into a vision of drug-induced nightmare. The camera works to heighten the sense of disorientation while a.s.saulting the senses as the dream eventually consumes our sense of reality.

TELEVISION JOURNALIST DEBORAH Ballin's (Lee Grant) strong-willed disposition thrives on controversy. However, her unrestrained defence of a woman accused of murdering her abusive husband leaves one of the studio's cleaning staff seething. An emotional void exists in this man, a trait observed in so many slashers, past and present. As a child, Hawker (Michael Ironside) saw his browbeaten mother throw boiling oil into the face of his abusive father. All these years later, he continues to bear the emotional scars, intimated in a series of vague but unsettling flashbacks. To his twisted way of thinking, this outspoken woman must be silenced, once and for all. After following her home, he wastes no time in disposing of the maid Francine, then bides his time waiting for Ballin before making his vicious a.s.sault. Barely surviving the ordeal she is rushed to a hospital and is placed under the care of nurse Sheila Munroe (Linda Purl), whose boundless determination will add her to Hawker's death list.

When he learns Ballin is still alive, Hawker heads to the hospital with murder in mind. The tension mounts as this develops into a taut game of cat and mouse with the murderous psycho shadowing his victims through the deserted wards and corridors of the hospital. There is an insane pleasure insinuated in the terrorizing of his victims before subjecting them to the razor sharpness of his new weapon of choice, a handy scalpel. Hawker doesn't face the customary gaggle of girls a.s.sociated with the slasher of the last few years, screaming their heads off (literally in some cases) at the first sign of trouble; these women each have an inner strength, which is why they are now in this predicament.

While there are many gaping holes in the plot, which to some extent detract from this film, Hawker as the silent a.s.sa.s.sin with his disconcertingly sado-m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic tendencies is accordingly the creepiest of psychotic killers. As the eerie score seeps into the claustrophobia of the hospital's endless corridors and empty wards, so stalks this misogynistic slayer. Jean Claude Lord's film may resort to so many of the cliches a.s.sociated with the slasher phenomenon of the period, but it also introduces a cast of strong women who are prepared to fight for their lives rather than the usual stock of teen fodder. Visiting Hours couldn't be described as a gory piece, but Lord wasn't averse to lingering over his death scenes and relished getting in as close as possible during the stabbings.

THE HEAD OF a family (Humberto Yanez) shuffles through an affluent shopping centre and falls dead to the floor. The pa.s.sing shoppers try to ignore his dishevelled presence; he isn't their problem and they know a cleaning crew will be called in to remove his body. In the mortuary, the pathologist finds a finger with a painted fingernail in the father's stomach and reveals him as a cannibal. Up until this revelation, the police had had little interest in the case, but now they know if they can capture his family the headlines would be the making of them.

In another part of the city, the eldest son, Alfredo (Francis...o...b..rreiro) must a.s.sume responsibility for the surviving members of the family. He finds it difficult to follow the example set by his father in providing his family with their much-needed ritualistic sacrifice. He fails miserably when he attempts to lure a suitable prost.i.tute on his visit to the red light district, and his attempt to kidnap a homeless child is later thwarted. The family dynamic begins to endure a dramatic change as his mother and sister withdraw from life, dismissing his intended victims, and his younger brother becomes increasingly psychotic, looking to pick young men up in gay bars and bring them to the family dinner table. As the family return to their all-consuming quest and try to hunt down their prey, the police investigation gets closer to their home, one of the many slums of the city, and leads to a calamitous showdown.

Rather than concerning himself with the bloodthirsty nature of the revived cannibal phenomenon, which had been covered admirably by Cannibal Hillbillies (2003) and Germany's Barricade (2007), Jorge Michel Grau on his promising directorial debut concentrated on the collapse of an already dysfunctional family in the poverty stricken labyrinthine slums of Mexico City. Unlike the cannibal frenzy of the 1970s and early 1980s, which had very quickly become stale in repeatedly laying emphasis on the plight of its victims, We Are What We Are observed the domestic drama of a family of killers as they endeavoured to survive in the ruthless streets of this modern-day city. In what is acknowledged as being the country's first cannibal movie, Grau offered a powerful examination of Mexico's corrupt authorities and the country's increasingly divided society, one that appears more inclined to the wealthy and the influx of foreign tourists with money to spend. The poor seem to have been forgotten, which in this instance allowed this family to satiate their craving for human flesh. The reasons for their cannibalism are never fully explained; we can only wonder if their desperate economic circ.u.mstances have driven them to this grisly way of life. Theirs is a realistically violent world, a theme Grau wants to return to as he antic.i.p.ates his next two projects in what should be, given his immense ability, a series of films that match the beauty in this film's cinematography and its compelling storyline. While, as would be expected, there is plenty of gore in this film, the scenes of cannibalism are often shot from a distance and the hand-held close-in shots appear obscured, thus detracting from the grisly delights many fans of this sub-genre would relish, but this ironically makes Grau's film so much more disturbing.

CARLOS SCOTT'S WEDDING Slashers is a highly amusing tribute to the slasher movies of two decades past. In an introductory flashback a young couple are journeying to Vegas, having eloped to get married. They never manage to get there; the love struck couple are killed by a figure wearing a gas mask and cloak, who is not quite on a par with the previous year's Reeker. He eulogizes on love and then delivers a blow to the bride's head, splitting it clean open.

Jenna has always dreamed of finding the perfect man and gliding up the aisle. However, whenever she meets the man of her dreams he has a habit of ending up dead. This time she knows it will be different; Alex is just perfect and the wedding date has been set. On the eve before the big day, doubt begins to set in, and who can blame her when the best man is murdered at the bachelor party and some of the girls in the bridal party begin to disappear. Her family, we soon discover, are overly protective of their beloved daughter and will do anything it takes to dispose of her lovers. She was convinced she had escaped their possessive clutches, but they have arrived on the scene to hack their way through the entire wedding party. As you can imagine there's not much in the way of romance and it looks extremely doubtful that the happy couple will make it all of the way to the service.

For these eighty minutes, there are plenty of gory scenes on show, which probably drained the hopelessly diminutive budget. Heads are severed, eyes popped out, throats are cut as the carnage rages out of control. As with its precursors, the acting left much to be desired, but it did give the boys just what they wanted; blood, guts and a plethora of topless shots.

ACCOMPANIED BY AN expedition led by Lacombe (Gil Vidal), the Polish count Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) journeys across the Himalayas in search of the legendary Yeti. Soon after arriving in Katmandu, Waldemar and a scout (Victor Israel) trek into the mountains and come upon a cave. In the confides of the cave Waldemar is captured by two flesh-eating sorceresses who reduce the intrepid adventurer to become little more than their s.e.x slave. Their foul machinations eventually result in his transformation into a werewolf. As the full moon rises, he is set loose to wreak havoc and slaughter anyone or anything that comes into his path. After his disappearance, his fellow explorers attempt to follow his trail, but many of the party are killed by bandits led by Temuljin, and those who survive are incarcerated by a Mongol chief named Sherkan-Kan (Luis Induni). Then we are introduced to the evil Wandesa (Silvia Solar), who tries to cure Waldemar of his lycanthropy, but is unable to prevent the final battle between the werewolf and the Yeti.

The Werewolf and the Yeti has also gone by the names Night of the Howling Beast, La Maldicion de la Bestia, Hall of the Mountain King and Horror of the Werewolf and sees the return of Paul Naschy's (born Jacinto Molina Alvarez) heroic adventurer Waldemar Daninsky, who once again falls to the werewolf's curse. The unrelated "Hombre Lobo" movies began life in 1967 with The Mark of the Wolfman and followed with the now lost The Nights of the Wolf Man (1968); this would be the eighth production in this series of twelve films and probably the most ludicrous. Director Miguel Iglesias had acquired a reputation in Spain for his exploitation movies and for the ninety-four-minute running time provided a colourful piece of comic book-styled entertainment, combining terror, action, nudity and a copious flow of blood and guts as members of the expedition suffered beheading and impalement. Horror fans would have to wait until the finale for the battle they craved but those who were in it for the sleaze would see the hero turned into a s.e.x slave by nymphomaniac witches and the cruel flagellation of Waldemar's doe-eyed lover by the perverse Wandesa. The effects were cheap but these scenes still brought this film to the attention of the DPP and the BBFC almost two years after being made available on video in October 1982. It joined the list of video nasties in August 1984 and remained there throughout the hysteria. Its ban under the Video Recordings Act of 1984 has yet to be revoked and the original video is now considered a rare treasure.

WHILE MARRIED, ENRICO "Henry" Rossini (Fabio Testi) is teaching at a private all girls Catholic school in London; he is also having an affair with one of the students (Christina Galbo). As they drift down the Thames on a romantic outing, his girlfriend suddenly becomes hysterical, insisting she has seen a knife. At first, Henry is dismissive of her claims, but the following day the body of another student is discovered at the same spot. The investigating officers led by Inspector Barth (Joachim Fuchsberger) are faced with a trail of murder, as Enrico becomes the main suspect, owing to his close relationship with several of the girls under his tutelage. When more of the schoolgirls turn up dead at the hands of this black-gloved killer, Enrico and his trusting wife take it on themselves to find the culprit, in the hope of clearing the philandering teacher's name.

While not as stylish as many of the gialli of the period, Ma.s.simo Dallamano's Cosa avete fatto a Solange? contained all of the elements the genre held so close to its heart: suspense, murder, s.e.x, religion and a series of disturbing flashbacks. Dallamano, who had been the cinematographer on Sergio Leone's A Fist Full of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965), based his tale on Edgar Wallace's The Clue of the New Pin, first published in 1923. The death scenes were not especially grisly, but Dallamano made up for this with a skilful piece of storytelling, introducing teasing red herrings and carefully laying the clues as he guided this feature on its way towards a series of shocking revelations. His film blended two of the European sub-genres of the period, the giallo and the West German krimi, which had begun life in 1959 under the influence of the Danish movie company Rialto Film, but by 1972 had waned in popularity. As with Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood (1971), What Have You Done to Solange? was given an extensive release in the United States, which had a major impact on the early years of the following decade's obsession with the slasher. This was also the beginning of the "schoolgirl gialli", which trailed seemingly innocent adolescent girls as a series of deluded predators with strangely moralistic predilections stalked them in the shadows. The outcome would invariably reveal a young girl with a scandalous secret. As the camera's roving eye caught glimpses of the showering girls, the element of teenage sleaze was diminished when the audience realized the female cast were all at least eighteen years of age. As this new strain of gialli evolved, so too would the sleaze factor; but not in Dallamano's movie.

Alongside Dallamano was his tireless cameraman Joe D'Amato, no more than a dozen films into the two hundred or so features upon which he would come to work. Under the supervision of his experienced director, he a.s.sisted in creating the eerie air that has come to characterize this feature, which would later be reproduced in his own creations Buio Omega (1979), Antropophagus (1980) and Absurd (1981). This was augmented by Ennio Morricone's haunting score that suffused the melancholy in the wake of these terrible murders, each of which was left to the audience's imagination.

LONELY MIDDLE-AGED Molly (Millie Perkins) works by night as a barmaid at a seaside bar and spends her days babysitting her nephews, telling them seafaring stories where her father is always portrayed as the hero. Her tales hint at an obsession with the ocean and sailing lore, which seek to fascinate and in time reveal a discernible sense of self-loathing. It becomes obvious that her sister, Cathy (Vanessa Brown), is not entirely at ease with her company, but for the moment we are not sure why. From the beach, she admires the muscular guys as they work out and parade before their on-looking admirers and then drifts into fantasies about their powerful physiques. Her fantasies display violent tendencies as she lures these burly men to her home and in a dreamlike scene has s.e.x with two of them and then ties them up before castrating them off screen, leaving blood pouring over her own naked body. The following morning Molly learns her visions are far more than fantasy when two dead bodies are uncovered. Her friends are aware that she is deeply troubled and are very protective of her. They can't believe she would do such a thing, but Molly is hopelessly tormented by vivid memories of abuse and molestation at the hands of her sea-going father.

Amidst the exploitative excess of the grindhouse years came this almost forgotten gem. Shot in 1971, this was a typically low-budget affair which not surprisingly contained some rather dubious acting, but was saved by an intriguing psychological slant to its script and the photography of the aspiring Dean Cundey, who would go on to work with Steven Spielberg. For Matt Cimber, Jane Mansfield's third husband, this was a remarkable change from the exploitative excess with which he had for so long become a.s.sociated. Robert Thom's script allowed Cimber to pace the development of this disturbed character and then shock his audience with Molly's incestuous past, rather than the b.l.o.o.d.y display so routinely demanded by the drive-ins and grindhouse cinemas. Her descent into madness would lead to several gory scenes, but the horror in this film concerned Molly, not the men she sliced up in the privacy of her home. Millie Perkins, who a.s.sisted with the script, turned in a fine performance as she teetered on the very edge of madness, but this wouldn't save this film when it was handed to the distributors. It took another five years before this feature received a cinematic release and even then it wasn't given an especially long run before disappearing into obscurity. The audience for which it was intended couldn't get to grips with its psychological premise and the lack of sleazy nudity certainly didn't help either, while mainstream cinema was reluctant to handle such a challenging theme. Finally, film historian Walter Olsen and his brother Bill traced the original set of negatives and The Witch Who Came From the Sea was granted a deserved reissue, which will afford a new generation of film watchers the chance to savour this hidden treasure.

Its scenes of extreme s.e.xual violence would lead to worldwide bans and further hinder its already problematic distribution. In 1983, the Director of Public Prosecutions included Cimber's film in its list of seventy-two video releases that had avoided BBFC certification and declared it prosecutable for obscenity. It was banned in August 1984 but was removed from the list in the wake of an unsuccessful prosecution in June 1985. However, it wasn't made available in the UK until June 2006.

TELEVISION PRESENTER Sh.e.l.lY Carson (Judy Cler) takes her reluctant boyfriend, sports columnist Jack (Wayne Ratay), along to a magic show staged by Montag the Magnificent (Ray Sager). For his finale, Montag performs his piece de resistance by sawing a female volunteer in half as she lies helpless in his magic box. The audience gasp in horror, only for the girl to appear completely unharmed to cheers and a hearty round of applause. Days later, when the applause has died, the girl will be found dead, bearing wounds identical to those she would have sustained during the act. The murders continue, with the volunteers' deaths mirroring the endless illusions carried out on stage. In quite graphic scenes a metal spike is hammered into a girl's head, which ruptures her eyeball, swords are eased into their mouths, another is squeezed to death in a press and one poor girl is set ablaze, while another has to endure a drill being driven into her stomach. While the police investigate the crime scenes, they are unable to find any evidence to link the murders to the crafty magician. Sh.e.l.ly asks Montag to consider performing on her show, to which he readily agrees. As her suspicions grow, she prepares to reveal his villainy during his television appearance; only then can the slaughter be brought to an end.

As unconvincing as it may have been, Hersch.e.l.l G. Lewis has considerably more gore on show in this film than was in evidence in his infamous Blood Trilogy. His ambitious but incoherent storyline relies on a series of episodic set pieces, which involve young female volunteers being brutalized during the course of the magician's act. How could Lewis have known that he was inadvertently paving the way for the torture p.o.r.n of the twenty-first century, where the premise of the film is to slaughter rather than engage the audience with a well-told tale? The film, it has to be said, did have an interesting conclusion, but the inconsistencies leading to this finale were woeful. The bloodthirsty in the audience would have forgiven the storyline, for this level of gore in The Wizard of Gore's day would have been truly shocking, particularly the eyeball scene. However, it would have been completely over-staged by the ridiculous acting, which ensured these films would only ever be looked upon as camp entries to the genre. For the two weeks of filming, a couple of sheep's carca.s.ses were used to enhance the gory scenes; each had to be kept on the set at all times, making for quite an unpleasant stench. Lewis's film was never forgotten and went on to inspire a remake in 2007, when torture p.o.r.n had become all the rage.

WRITTEN, CO-PRODUCED and directed by Greg McLean on his first outing, the independently produced Wolf Creek was inspired by the murder of Peter Falconio and the a.s.sault on his girlfriend Joanne in 2001 by Bradley John Murdoch in Australia's Northern Territory. Murdoch's trial was still in session when the film saw release in Australia, which resulted in concern it could influence the proceedings. The Northern Territory court consequently placed an injunction on the film's release across the whole territory. Other killings were later referenced as being intrinsic to the research for McLean's film, including the backpacker serial killer Ivan Milat, but his feature would be maligned in many quarters for using the killing of an innocent to create cinematic entertainment.

The story takes place in 1999, when friends Kristy, Ben and Liz purchase an old car to take them on a dream adventure across Australia's Outback. This likeable bunch travel to the scenic Wolf Creek National Park. While there, they plan to hike to a spectacular meteor crater, which is breathtakingly photographed, as is so much of the terrain in this film. Mclean and his cameraman, Will Gibson, permeate this dreamlike vista with an eerie atmosphere that harks back to the air of Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975). Even though swathed in the reverie of this panoramic landscape, danger is never too far away. Their encounters with the locals are appreciably unnerving, some of whom you'd be well wise to stay away from. If you can still recall the oddb.a.l.l.s observed on the road to The Texas Chain Saw Ma.s.sacre (1974), The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and Wrong Turn (2003), then you'll get the picture. As they get closer to Wolf Creek the sense of isolation and the immensity of the Outback, become all the more daunting.

Upon returning from their arduous walk, they are frustrated to find their car will not start. As the rain begins to pour, they have no choice but to spend the night wrapped up on its seats. As they prepare for an uncomfortable few hours of sleep, along comes bushman Mick Taylor, who pulls up his truck and offers to help the stranded trio. After examining the engine, he diagnoses the problem as a faulty coil and in his amiable patter suggests towing them to his camp, where he can then make the repairs. When they accept, the ecstasy of the last few days is cruelly shattered. Unbeknown to them their drink has been drugged and when they awaken, they are plunged into a nightmare world of torture, s.e.xual abuse, grisly dismemberment and death. These are not the obnoxious youth of the halcyon slasher years; these are a set of congenial kids with the rest of their lives lying before them. This ultimately serves to make the horrors to which they are subjected even more real. The audience want them to make it, but Mick Taylor's unhinged tenacity has other ideas.

The epilogue to Wolf Creek continues to exasperate so many who endured the torment inflicted on this blighted group of friends, but let's remember McLean was crafting a horror movie and closure is rarely an option in such films. After having spent four months in custody, Ben is finally released due to a complete lack of evidence and is cleared of all suspicion. Silhouetted in the sun, cinema's new monster, Mick Taylor, rifle in hand, ghosts into the dying embers of an unnerving sunset.

Despite the film's commercial success, its reception among the critics was somewhat mixed, many of whom were uneasy with its incessant brutality. There are sequences towards the end of the film that are indeed difficult to watch, princ.i.p.ally the shed torture, which is shocking in its realism. During the shooting of Kestie Mora.s.si's torture, the fervour borne in her distressed screams was such that it caused considerable discomfort among the crew. There were reviewers, however, who recognized this movie as a departure from the norm, one that would live on with its audience and force horror cinema to re-evaluate many of its accepted precepts. These were the people who acknowledged McLean's worth as a filmmaker; they weren't alone. Wolf Creek was nominated for seven American Film Inst.i.tute awards, including Best Director.

While on location, one of the settings used during the drive to Wolf Creek had not seen rainfall in over six years. However, once the crew arrived, it rained non-stop for three days. McLean and his young cast responded by amending the script to accommodate this unexpected downpour. When filming commenced at the quarry where Mick inflicted his atrocities, the locals vented their rage, as this was the site of a real-life murder. The aggrieved community were convinced the film was exploiting this particular unsavoury episode.

In September 2010 a sequel was announced, returning to the Outback and the monstrous Mick Taylor, with production to commence in 2011. As with its precursor, the story will be partly based on actual events.

DR JAMES MORAN (George Coulouris) and a business partner embark on a journey to the Amazon jungle in search of a tribe with the power to return the dead to life. They encounter the aforementioned tribe as they become lost in the performance of an unholy ritual, where a woman is sacrificed to a monstrous tree. Moran is later found suffering from the delirium of jungle fever, while his colleague is less fortunate, slain by a native's spear. Several years later Moran returns from his travels to London with a member of the strange tribe, Tanga (Jimmy Vaughan), who he keeps hidden in his creepy bas.e.m.e.nt with the hideous plant seen earlier in the film. Tanga is endowed with the dubious talent of being able to hypnotize buxom women, who are than offered to the constantly hungry plant. Moran savours the delectation of Piccadilly Circus and Soho, having little time for the prost.i.tutes, preferring instead women with a quite specific allure. After he buys a young lady a drink she is escorted to his manse where she falls to the mercy of his despicable tree. Moran looks on, still living in the hope the tree will return these nubile gifts with a serum, which he has been told can rejuvenate the dead.

While there was an absence of blood and guts in this almost forgotten British treasure, The Woman Eater bristles with so much of what would, in a few years, become essential to this sanguinary genre. The audience would have had a pretty good idea as to what was going on at Moran's house, but the sight of the carnivorous plant devouring its prey the producers felt should be left to their imagination; such a spectacle would have been far too much in the Britain of 1958. This overlooked B feature pulsed with an underlying lurid s.e.xuality, particularly the "dance of death" and the tearing of one victim's blouse. These scenes will appear tame to modern eyes, but just over half a century ago they were far from commonplace in British cinema. The misogynistic Moran's pursuit of women is a trigger for violence, which culminates in the weird thrill he derives in seeing his murderous plant consume its victims. The film was shown in British theatres as part of a double feature and then exported to the United States before being summarily dismissed. This was one of a couple of low-budget horror films, the other being The Man Without a Body (1957), made by Guido Coen and Charles Saunders, who had established a reputation for crime thrillers. Saunders would very soon go on to direct Britain's first nudist film, Nudist Paradise (1959), and Coen found a lucrative finale to his career producing s.e.x comedies. Their film, as with so many others of this ilk, was poorly financed, but the shots tracing a potential victim through Soho's ill-lit streets would be repeated a couple of years later in Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960), albeit with considerably more intensity.

In his fifty years in the film industry George Coulouris was a regular in the films of Coen and Saunders, regularly cast as the villain of the piece. He also made appearances in some of the finest films of the twentieth century, including Citizen Kane (1941), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) and Papillon (1973), and found work in television, including appearances in Doctor Who in 1964 and Danger Man (1967).

TWO COLLEGE STUDENTS, Halley (Yvonne Gaudry) and Rich (Joel Harris), run into trouble on a rock climb in the West Virginia Forest. Rich is thrown from a cliff by an unseen figure then Halley, after trying to escape, trips over a piece of barbed wire and is hauled screaming into the woods, just before her throat is slit.

The scene changes to fresh-out-of-school medical graduate Chris Flynn (Desmond Harrington) driving through the same area to a job interview. He is forced to take a detour due to an accident on the road, and in truth his own impatience. In a scene very reminiscent of Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Ma.s.sacre (1974), an old man at a near-derelict petrol station directs him to a dirt track that will bypa.s.s the accident. In his haste, he soon after loses control of the car and ploughs into a stranded Range Rover. The car was carrying a group of young hikers, Jessie (Eliza Dushku), Carly (Emmanuelle Chriqui), her fiance Scott (Jeremy Sisto) and another couple, Evan and Francine (Kevin Zegers and Lindy Booth). Their tyres have been punctured by a st.u.r.dy piece of barbed wire, stretched across the road. Chris, Jessie, Carly and Scott venture into the forest in the hope of finding help, leaving Evan and Francine to attend to the cars. Left alone in the middle of nowhere the two indulge in some s.e.xual foreplay before they hear a sound in the woods. When Evan doesn't return Francine goes into the dense woodland to investigate. She soon discovers her boyfriend's shoes and then his severed ear; it is now she realizes something is seriously wrong. As she staggers from the scene, she is overcome by an obscured figure who binds barbed wire around her mouth.

Chris, Jessie, Carly and Scott come upon a ramshackle mountain cabin, surrounded by vehicles, which again harks back to Tobe Hooper's masterpiece. Within they find an untidy hotchpotch of barbed wire, car keys and, most alarmingly, human body parts. Three disfigured mountain men can now be seen striding towards the cabin, forcing the four to hide in the visceral filth. As they enter, Francine's dead body is unceremoniously hurled onto a table. The friends try to hold back their horror as she is callously butchered in preparation for the family's b.l.o.o.d.y repast. Theirs will be a bid for survival as they desperately attempt to escape these inbred cannibals; the film follows their efforts to survive as they chase through the darkened woods.

Wrong Turn was commended for bringing something fresh to the screens on its 2003 release. It is, however, a return to the outlandish families observed in the horror cinema of the 1970s, whose moral perversity freely espoused slaughter and the delicacies of cannibalism. The Texas Chain Saw Ma.s.sacre and The Hills Have Eyes (1977) had first introduced these ideas to the big screen, with Andrew Davis's The Final Terror returning to the wilds in 1983. Rob Schmidt's film shot in Hamilton, Ontario, attempted to bring these ideas to a new audience. In what is a fast-paced thriller, the group are picked off one by one in a wilderness that captures the spirit of John Boorman's Deliverance (1972), with the most annoying being dispatched first. The momentum doesn't relent as the cannibals' arrows bring the hikers down and an axe is thrown in for good measure in an imaginative decapitation scene. The thud of a body can be heard as it falls from a tree through the darkness; the head, unmoving, remaining firmly before the camera's gaze. The closing credits are disrupted by a deputy sheriff being strangled by "Three Finger", who survived the climactic explosion. The scene returns to the credits and the insane laughter heard at the very beginning of the film once again rolls from the screen. The success of this film allowed it to be continued with the 2007 release of the direct-to-video Wrong Turn 2: Dead End, which brought a group of celebrities together to fight for their lives in the guise of a real-life television show in these same Virginia backwoods. Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead was released direct-to-video in October 2009.

SAM (PHILLIP SAYER) and his young son Tony's (Simon Nash) game with the family's pet dog is brought to an abrupt end by the appearance of a huge white light, which abducts Sam. Three years later Tony is still traumatized by his father's inexplicable disappearance; little does he know the white light has returned his father, or rather, what used to be his father. For the moment, Sam has been transformed into a crab-like alien. It doesn't take long before this creature tracks down a lone woman and then attacks her before placing a tentacle deep into her mouth. When she wakens from her ordeal, she sees her dog devouring the body of the alien. Still in shock, she makes her way into the kitchen, and then her stomach begins to swell. Unable to control her body she falls to the floor and in a series of horrific shots gives birth to a fully-grown Sam. It doesn't take long before he finds his way to London where he is reunited with his son and tries to explain to Rachel (Bernice Stegers), his now ex-wife, that he doesn't know where he has been for the past three years. Her new boyfriend is immediately suspicious and although Sam tries to live a normal life, his son very soon learns of his alien powers. Sam makes a gift of them, allowing his son to animate his toys. These powers, however, have a sinister edge, melting telephone boxes, and in time will maim and kill. The hapless babysitter (Maryam d'Abo) soon becomes the object of Sam's desire and finds herself cruelly used as the surrogate for a new generation of alien beings.

Xtro was another successor to Ridley Scott's vaunted Alien (1979) and liberally borrowed from John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), as director Harry Bromley Davenport crammed a mult.i.tude of ideas and influences into his film's strangely atmospheric eighty-two minute run. This low-budget UK feature presented an incoherent narrative held together by a series of episodic accounts, yet remained unusually inventive, throwing in scenes of nudity, an excess of gore and a dwarf dressed as a clown as the schizophrenic alien malevolence conspired to draw upon the audience's compa.s.sion. The imaginative set pieces would include a bizarre alien rape scene and a disgusting birth that defied the film's meagre budget, leading to a grotesque finale. This excess would acquire Xtro a very unfavourable reputation, which is not entirely in keeping with much of the film's buoyant tone. The UK's DPP, however, were quick to seize on its gruesome content, listing it as yet another loathsome video nasty even though it had been released uncut to cinema with an "18" certificate. It was later caught up in the tabloid uproar and confiscated in Manchester, Birmingham and Newcastle. The tapes, however, had to be returned when the BBFC indicated that they had previously pa.s.sed it suitable for cinema release without cuts. When the video was released in 1987 and again in 1992, the ending was altered to make it somewhat downcast when compared to the upbeat spirit of the original.

With his film having become a cult success in the ever-expanding video market of the 1980s, Bromley Davenport returned to direct two sequels Xtro II: The Second Encounter (1991) and Xtro 3: Watch the Skies (1995) and then in 2010 announced Xtro 4 was in production, which promises a return to form in being even stranger than the original.

IN A BEAUTIFUL locale, very close to Venice, self-destructive Oliviero (Luigi Pistilli) struggles to write his next novel and in his descent into madness he becomes obsessed with the image of Mary, Queen of Scots. His drunken rambling is plagued by the memory of his dead mother and he thinks nothing of publicly demeaning his long-suffering wife Irina (Anita Strindberg). In the privacy of their villa, he also sleeps with his maid Brenda as well as having an adulterous affair with an ex-student who works in the local bookshop. When she is hacked to death by an unseen a.s.sailant, Oliviero immediately falls under suspicion, for she was on her way to meet him. Soon after, his maid is butchered as she enjoys herself garbed as the ill-fated Scottish Queen. Even with a killer in their midst, both Oliviero and his submissive wife lie to the authorities, claiming they had to let Brenda go. Then they have the unexpected surprise of having their beautiful niece, Floriana (Edwige Fenech), come to stay with them. She begins to play with the couple's fragile marriage, seducing both and sowing the seeds for their demise as the murders continue and a silver-haired stranger watches in the distance. All the while Oliviero's black cat, Satan, surveys the scene, forever tormenting the downtrodden Irina.

Sergio Martino's bizarrely ent.i.tled Il Tuo Vizio e Una Stanza Chiusa e Solo Io Ne Ho La Chiave was the fourth in a series of five gialli he worked on between 1970 and 1973. The t.i.tle followed from his first, Lo Strano Vizio Della Signora Wardh also known as The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1971), but was never intended as a sequel. This particular entry, which adopted an uncharacteristic experimental approach to the traditional giallo structure, also went by the names Gently Before She Dies, Excite Me and the highly appropriate, Eye of the Black Cat. As Martino's giallo reached its final half hour it drew upon the Gothic elements of Edgar Allan Poe's tale The Black Cat and led to a finale that skilfully twisted the great writer's original. This masterfully tense feature was to deliver some rather graphically ill.u.s.trated murder scenes and immerse them in a sensuous ambience of licentious erotica that was prevalent in Italian cinema at this time. Martino had worked with his cast on many occasions, among them Eurocult actress Edwige Fenech, who was a regular in his films and was no stranger to s.e.x romps and the gialli of the period. She went on to star on chat shows before moving into film production and later made an appearance in Hostel II (2007).

SOMEWHERE IN AN outlying region of Kansas City, a nuclear research reactor, which was constructed over an Indian burial ground, is going into melt down. Two years later, the complex has been completely demolished and the network of subterranean tunnels has been secured. The reactor has been replaced by a thriving up-market housing development. While the families above the ground carry on with their day-to-day lives, the atomic zombies bide their time. Their patience is rewarded when some of the youngsters attempt to film in what was once the main access into the reactor complex. When they fall through a damaged section of the pa.s.sageway into the tunnels below, the growling zombies are presented with a golden opportunity to escape their two years of imprisonment and wreak havoc on the streets above. Three families now band together in a bid to stop the carnage.

Todd Sheets has over thirty films to his name, all produced on a micro-budget, ready to go to video. While his enthusiasm knows no bounds, he been constantly criticized for his ham-fisted approach to filming and scripting. Thankfully this has never stopped him and he has acquired something of a cult following. Such is his standing that when he set out to make this film, he had over 700 volunteers turn up to play the parts of the zombies. The acting leaves much to be desired, but Sheets makes up for this by pouring on the gore, with intestines constantly being torn out and the unfortunates being dragged away by this mindless horde. His adoration of George Romero's work is there to be seen; it's just a shame no one will give him that little bit of guidance and an ample budget.

This feature would be the first in a trilogy, followed by Zombie Bloodbath II: Rage of the Undead (1995) and Zombie Bloodbath III: Zombie Armageddon (2000). They were later released as a shot-to-video triple pack, but the first feature still remains the director's favourite.

ACHEMICAL LEAK AT the Hope Centre in Papua New Guinea has started to spread and infect the staff at the plant, turning them into flesh-eating zombies. As these slow-moving zombies begin their mindless rampage, an anti-terrorist team led by Lt. Mike London (Jose Gras) and including Vincent (Josep Lluis Fonoll), Zantoro (Franco Garofalo) and Osbourne (Gaby Renom) arrives on the island. As they travel across the island, they come upon the news reporting team of Max (Selan Karay) and Lia Rousseau (Margit Evelyn Newton), who are trying to explain a series of attacks on the tribes of the island. The whole country is being overrun by this zombie infestation and the government is on the verge of collapse. When two of the group are consumed by the living dead, the survivors are forced to journey further inland only to face further attacks by this deranged mob. Their investigation reveals the chemical leak wasn't an accident and the zombie plague is about to spread to throw the western world into utter chaos.

Zombie Creeping Flesh started life as Virus, a script written by Jose Maria Cunilles, that was then turned into a more extravagant venture by Claudio Fraga.s.so and his wife Rossella Drudi. Adolescent cinemagoers had already developed a taste for zombie gut munching following the success of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 or Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), and were now craving more. Two studios a.s.sociated with low-budget horror, Dara Films in Spain and Beatrice Films in Rome, now looked to take advantage of this new demand. The original script set in Africa with entire ships crammed full of zombies was going to be too expensive to produce, so Bruno Mattei, a master of low-budget sleaze, was brought in as director with Fraga.s.so a.s.signed as his a.s.sistant. The project was beset by numerous problems; the filming that had taken place around Barcelona proved virtually unusable. With neither the time nor money available to re-shoot, the movie ultimately bewildered its expectant audience. The feature was further damaged when a series of sets were built to match the stock footage taken from La Vallee (1972), none of which were successfully edited into the finished cut.

In keeping with its exploitative roots, Inferno Dei Morti-Viventi was to enjoy life under several different names, each designed to cash in on the success of the increasingly lucrative zombie phenomenon. In the United States, it was released as h.e.l.l of the Living Dead and then came Cannibal Virus, Night of the Zombies, Zombie Inferno, Zombies of the Savanna, Zombi 2: Ultimate Nightmare, Zombi 4 and Zombi 5: Ultimate Nightmare. No matter which t.i.tle the distributors used, there was no disguising the fact that this film was a blatant plagiarizing of the critically acclaimed Dawn of the Dead. Further to this, Mattei adopted the pseudonym of Vincent Dawn and then garbed his team of anti-terrorists with the same uniforms as Romero's Philadelphia SWAT team. As with Romero's film, the only way to take one of this breed down was a gunshot to the head, although this outfit rarely seemed to get this right; but when they did, the head-exploding scenes were a delight for its eager viewers. While it remained true to its low-grade European origins princ.i.p.ally with the prerequisite nudity and cannibalism, it also contained some excellent gory flesh ripping which was the match of its putrescent predecessors, splattering a copious supply of blood and guts along with extreme scenes of corpse devouring. The budget, however, didn't always run to effective zombie make-up, with some of the cast looking as if all they had done was rub mud on their faces, while others succeeded in chilling the audience to the very bone.

When the film was submitted to the BBFC prior to its UK release, it had already been edited to safeguard its distribution with an "X" certificate. However, when it was released to video it appeared as the pre-cut cinema release and an uncertified shortened version in October 1982. This would lead to its ban as a video nasty in July 1983 after a successful prosecution in Brighton. It wasn't dropped from the list until July 1985, but then ran into further problems in 1993 following the appalling murder of young Jamie Bulger. It was finally released uncut in 2002.

IN A SCENE that was added to the original footage, a couple of Coast Guards board a deserted boat which has been borne into New York's Hudson River harbour. As they search through the disarray below decks, the zombie captain of the vessel erupts onto the scene. One of the boarders is savaged to death before the shambling monstrosity is brought down by a gunshot; it then collapses seemingly dead. Soon after in the morgue the creature begins to exhibit the faintest signs of life.

The boat, up until recently, had been in the possession of a scientist who was reported missing months ago as he was making his way to the Caribbean. His daughter, Anne Bowles (Tisa Farrow), is determined to find out what happened to him along with a journalist, Peter West (Ian McCollough), who desperatly needs a scoop to improve the mood of his demanding editor (Lucio Fulci). When they eventually discover the Island of Matuul, they learn Anne's father had succ.u.mbed to a mystifying illness. They become acquainted with Dr David Menard (Richard Johnson) and his scornful wife Paola (Olga Karlatos), who is anxious to depart the secluded island. The zombie attacks that have been reported across the island have left her petrified, but her foolhardy husband is overly eager to undertake research into these macabre occurrences.

Menard should have been mindful of his shrew of a wife; the zombies soon rise from the earth to initiate their vicious a.s.sault. The most memorable attack comes from an aquatic zombie, who seizes a scantily clad female crewmember by the throat, then, its frenzy unabated, rips into a Tiger Shark. Paola meets her end as she is dragged by the hair through a closed door by an unseen zombie. In probably the most shocking scene in this bloodthirsty debacle, she is subjected to an impalement to the eye. The survivors are marooned on the island, their boat damaged by an enraged shark. They soon learn the only way to kill these zombies is to shoot them through the head. Only Peter and Anne are able to make an escape. As they enter New York's Harbour, they listen in horror as a radio broadcast warns of a zombie plague that has gripped the entire city. The finale is widely acknowledged as one of Fulci's finest moments, although, as with the prelude, it was added to the original reels following the success of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978). The film now turns full circle, training on the droves of walking dead as they mindlessly trudge across the Brooklyn Bridge heading for Manhattan.

Zombie Flesh Eaters has since attracted a mult.i.tude of aliases, Zombie, Zombi 2, Island of the Living Dead, Zombie Island, Gli Ultimi Zombie, Island of the Flesh-Eaters, L'enfer Des Zombies, Sanguelia and Woodoo, and in its wake bestowed Fulci, whose career had begun to wane, a newfound iconic status. Dawn of the Dead was still to see release in Italy and at this point few people had been subjected to hordes of zombies on the rampage since Night of the Living Dead (1968) and to a lesser extent in Hammer's The Plague of the Zombies (1966). With a very limited budget, effects man Gianatto Di Rossi breathed life into a host of frightening creations, whose sole purpose was to leave the audience quaking in their seats. Fulci's film later saw an Italian release as Zombi 2, suggesting it as a sequel to Zombi, the country's t.i.tle for Dawn of the Dead. Two more sequels also carried the Zombi moniker, neither of which had anything to do with this or Romero's original.

On its 1979, UK release, Zombie Flesh Eaters was issued to cinemas on the condition that two minutes of the original footage was removed. This didn't prevent its remaining gory content from being severely criticized; among the disparagers was the recently elected Conservative government. When it went to video, it became a cult favourite, but disappeared from the video stores when it was branded as a video nasty following the introduction of the 1984 Video Recordings Act. It wasn't until 2005 that the UK got the chance to see these grisly proceedings as Fulci had originally intended.

The Directors:.

Blood on their Hands.

Dario Argento.

(September 7, 1940).

Dario Argento was born in Rome; his father was a film producer and his mother a photographer. While still at school he worked as a film critic and began writing for various magazines. At the age of twenty he had turned his back on the chance to go to college and opted to become a screenwriter, and in the years that followed worked with Bernardo Bertolucci to write the screenplay for Sergio Leone's western Once Upon a Time in the West (1967). His exploits during this period brought him to the attention of Goffredo Lombardo, which led to his directorial debut on the groundbreaking The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970). His admiration of Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k was evident during much of this film, which was extraordinarily graphic, but Argento has never been afraid to portray violence although he prefers to use it poetically.

Following this success, he continued to work with the increasingly popular giallo, returning with The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971), where he strived for a macabre air to his narrative that mirrored the aura of Edgar Allan Poe, and then resumed with the similarly acclaimed Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1972). After an involvement with several television dramas, he returned to film to direct the first of his true masterpieces, Deep Red (1975), a work still considered by many critics as the finest giallo ever made. Here he discussed his ideas with the special effects technicians to produce a film that would go on to inspire some of the finest horror directors of the period. For all of the cleverly conceived effects on show in his films he maintained a preference for the careful orchestration of nerve-tingling suspense. This became obvious with the release of his next movie, the almost surreal Suspiria (1977), where any notion of plot and characterization became secondary to the atmospherics of sound and vision. This would be the first in his "Three Mothers Trilogy" followed by Inferno (1980) and The Mother of Tears (2007).

Profoundly impressed by Andrzej Zulawski's Phenomenon (1981) he set to work on the giallo-styled Tenebrae (1982), which resulted in severe editing across the globe and condemnation from countless censors. He returned to scriptwriting, princ.i.p.ally on Lamberto Bava's Demons (1985) and Demons 2 (1986), before directing Opera in 1987, set in Parma's Regio Theatre. This was a welcome return to the opulence observed a decade before in Suspiria and then Inferno, although this was to be a very sad time in his life as his highly influential father pa.s.sed away.

In 2009 he released the aptly ent.i.tled Giallo and then prepared to begin work on a remake of his masterpieces from all those years ago, Deep Red and Suspiria. Dario has spent almost half a century in film, and the enormity of his achievement makes it almost impossible to adequately measure his impact on the genre, having had such a profound influence on so many of his fellow creators and having produced so many works of visionary magnificence.

Mario Bava.

(July 31, 1914April 25, 1980).

Born in San Remo, Liguria, Italy, Mario Bava was the son of Eugenio Bava, a sculptor who ventured into the movie business in 1906 and became one of the most innovative cameramen of the Italian silent era. As a young man Mario had ambitions to be a painter, but found it difficult to make enough money to survive, so in 1934 he followed in his father's footsteps and joined the film industry, working as an a.s.sistant to some of the most esteemed cinematographers of the day, among them Ma.s.simo Terzano. He was also in the employ of his father, who managed the special effects department at the then Fascist-backed Ist.i.tuto Luce in Rome.

In less than five years Bava had perfected his skills, so much so he was considered a cinematographer in his own right, although he preferred to be looked upon as cameraman; the idea of being a cinematographer was a little too ostentatious for his liking. After making his debut feature in the early 1940s, his name very quickly became a.s.sociated with some of the major stars of the era such as Gina Lollobrigida and Aldo Fabrizi as he worked to add his magic to this celluloid world which offered so many possibilities. In 1958 alongside Paolo Heusch, he co-directed a low-budget feature on a single stage that would have gone virtually unnoticed outside his Italian homeland, Le Morte Viene Dallo Spazio or The Day the Sky Exploded. This was Italy's first venture into science fiction and with very little money his team created an image of a crashed alien s.p.a.cecraft that would one day be repeated on a far grander scale in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). For the next two years, Bava continued to polish his skills and then sat in the director's chair to create a film that was to become a landmark, Black Sunday (1960). This feature would be one of five films released in a year that would have a considerable bearing on the future of cinematic horror. His film opened with probably the most callous scene so far committed to celluloid as Barbara Steele endured the agony of having her face cruelly gouged in a spiked iron mask. The image would alarm censors across the globe, leading to this episode being heavily edited before it was allowed into many countries. It was Bava's artistic manipulation of light and dark, however, amidst a series of Gothic-styled sets filmed in an ominous monochrome, that really defined this feature. When he introduced colour to I tre volti della paura, better known as Black Sabbath (1963), his expressionistic technique prompted similar acclaim, and was later emulated by Martin Scorsese, who held Bava in such high esteem. Both films were shot in around twelve days and as he departed each set, he already had a clear vision as to how he would edit each feature.

Between 1963 and 1964, he embarked upon two films that would mark the beginning of something new and exciting in Italian cinema, the giallo. La Ragazza Che Sapeva Troppo, also known as The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), and Sei Donne Per L'a.s.sa.s.sino, provocatively ent.i.tled Blood and Black Lace (1964), would have a major influence on the stalk and slash movies that became all the rage during the 1980s. Then there came Terrore Nello Spazio or Planet of the Vampires (1965), which later inspired Dan O'Bannon when he penned the script for Alien. Having already given birth to the giallo, Bava created the film that would become the blueprint for the deluge of slasher movies, which started just as the decade came to an end: Reazione a Catena, released in the US as A Bay of Blood and was also known as Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971). His later films were blighted by continual problems with distribution, which led to his retirement in 1978, although he couldn't resist becoming involved with some of the special effects for Dario Argento's Inferno before he pa.s.sed away in 1980 aged 65. His son Lamberto, who had worked as his a.s.sistant director, now followed the family tradition and in turn directed several memorable additions to the genre. Lamberto would be the first to admit he could never match his father; few directors ever could, for Mario Bava was a genius whose influence still resonates over thirty years after his death.

Jorg b.u.t.tgereit.

(December 20, 1963).

West Berliner Jorg b.u.t.tgereit was brought up on films; among them was the excitement of the original j.a.panese G.o.dzilla movies, a subject upon which he would one day put pen to paper to write his own book. He was like so many kids of his age, a monster maniac eagerly collecting the Creature Fea