Tag Archives: giallo

Mario Bava Season at Castle Bleasdale (Part One)

Blood and Black Lace 1
Blood and Black Lace

A diary of watching Mario Bava films over a week.

It was January, cold, and everyone was dying. I chopped enough wood for the week and stored it against the wall with the kindling. There were frosts every night at Castle Bleasdale – my current residence, a shuddering pile located on the River Piave where the plains meet the first mountains of the Dolomites – but while my wife and children slept fitfully upstairs, I would get the fire roaring, turn out all the lights and watch a film by Italian horror director Mario Bava. Prior to this week, I’d never seen any of his 30-odd films. This is a scientific record of the Mario Bava Season at Castle Bleasdale.

Monday, 11th of January, 2016

David Bowie died last night. An inauspicious beginning to the week, to the year in fact. I resist the temptation to watch The Man Who Fell to Earth – there’ll be time enough for that later – because tonight I must begin my journey into the cinema of Mario Bava. I’ve put it off too long and now it calls to me. All the wonderful titles: lots of blood, lots of black, covens of witches and parties of demons. I eschew the synopsis and trailers and pick Blood and Black Lace from 1964. In Italian (and I watch it in Italian) the title is Six Women for the Murderer. The first thing I notice is the wind. A wind blows through the film as a series of murders are committed around a fashion house. The models and the owners are somehow involved. Throughout there is an air of scandal and the diary of a victim becomes a focal point for many of the characters. There is a widespread guilt. The women fear exposure as much as they do the murderer who stalks them with his strange cloth mask, as if he (or she) were fashion itself. The murders are brutal and the sadism of the killer mixes with obvious misogyny, as the fear of the women is accentuated and one of the women has her face thrust against a red hot stove. Everyone is trapped in or about the creepy villa and Bava is obviously attuned to the Gothic. The wind slams windows and billows curtains. Mannequins stand frozen waiting to come to life. There is drapery and blood and the grotesque comedy of death which leaves the women in poses without poise, eyes bulging, faces ruined, mere things to be carted around. This is the very beginning of the giallo, a whole genre dedicated to the fascination of what beautiful women look like when they’re frightened, and later when they’re dead.

Tuesday, 12th of January, 2016

Last night I tweeted about my first Mario Bava film and Massimo B. sent me a message from Amsterdam. They’re making a horror movie: would I submit a treatment? I base it on Blood and Black Lace and send it off. He gets back to me. Read it, liked it, will be in touch. Heartened, I build the fire up. It’s almost too hot. Outside there is a full moon casting sharp shadows. The cold is so intense, it’s like you’re immersed in freezing water. My daughters and wife sleep upstairs. I have chosen Kill Baby Kill (1966). A title that Roger Corman might have been proud of. Operazione Paura in Italian! But the film opens like something out of Hammer. A village is approached. There’s a terrible secret. The young doctor arrives to assist with the investigation of a grisly death. The local villa houses a Miss Haversham of sorts, who in the ruins of her former glory, surrounded by the dolls of her lost child, leaks a malign influence onto the village. The corruption of the locals see them hounded to death if they spill the secret. Inside the corpse of the young girl – an apparent suicide – a coin is found. The investigating policeman is found killed and the coroner, played by the impossibly square-jawed Giacomo Rossi Stuart, teams up with a local girl (Erica Blank), who has returned after a long sojourn away to find out what is going on. Bava is extremely good at the traditional elements of the horror story. As with Blood and Black Lace, the wind moans and shutters slam. A little girl wanders the film, a terrifying precursor to the little red riding hood of Don’t Look Now and a ball bounces down a spiral staircase and we could be forgiven for thinking it settles in a corridor of the Overlook Hotel. As the film slides effortlessly into the surreal, the haunted house becomes increasingly psychotic and beguiling. As I turn off the lights and lock all the doors before going to bed, I catch sight of my own reflection and recoil at the lurid grin that contorts my face.

Wednesday, 13th of January, 2016

One of my students died. Death comes by email these days, or worse still, Facebook. I learned of a suicide via Facebook two years ago. Last year Twitter alerted me to the massacre in the offices of Charlie Hebdo. The world we live in death comes tweeting. The fire is lit early this evening. The Planet of the Vampires (1965) was Bava’s foray into science fiction. He also directed comedies and Spaghetti Westerns. Two space ships land on a mysterious planet after they pick up an SOS message. As they land, the crew are gripped by a mass psychosis and set about trying to kill each other. Once recovered they find that the crew members on the other ship were similarly affected but had gone the whole hog and murdered each other. The film was made on the cheap with only a couple of rocks, some slow motion and a wind machine with which to make an alien planet. The wind blows again and seems to be a crucial element to the Bava universe, that invisible force that we all take for granted but which moves and affects the world. Likewise there are invisible beings on the planet that can only be perceived by their effects on others as they reanimate the corpses of the dead crew and attack the living. Bava regular Barbara Steele joins US TV actor Barry Sullivan in trying to make the sets and the situation credible. The creepiness is well done and although everyone involved denies it, there is more than a germ of Alien here, though Bava’s film borrows liberally from Forbidden Planet (1956) as well it must be noted.

Thursday, 14th of January, 2016

I’m rehearsing a play to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday when I get the news that Alan Rickman has died. I saw Rickman in St. George’s Hall in Liverpool perform Hamlet in the mid-90s. He was a wonderful Dane and I walked back to my student digs blathering fake Shakespearean verse. I take the rest of the day off and decide tonight I will double bill Mario Bava. The fire is lit and the wood is consumed, the flames, reaching high into the chimney as if they’re trying to grab something. Just as Dario Argento – influenced by Bava’s Blood and Black Lace is claiming the giallo for his own, Bava lurches back towards the Gothic, which lies at the heart of his concept of horror. Baron Blood has the Italian title Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga. Peter Kliest (Antonio Cantafora) visits the castle of his ancestors where he meets Eva (Elke Sommer), a student who is studying the ancestral pile, which is due to be sold. A series of murders coincide with the arrival of the wheelchair-bound Alfred Becker (played by an ageing Joseph Cotten), the new owner of the castle. There is gruesome murder, an Iron Maiden gets some use and a wonderful foggy chase. Joseph Cotten can’t really compete with the grisly make-up of his un-rejuvenated Baron, but it doesn’t really matter as it is the Austrian castle that is the true star of the film. Released the same year – 1972 – Lisa and the Devil also starred Elke Sommer, this time as Lisa, an American tourist in Spain. Here she meets a strange man (Telly Savalas) in a mannequin shop. He bears a striking resemblance to a fresco depicting the devil on the wall of the local church. Lisa loses her group and is given a lift by a rich couple and their chauffeur, who in turn find themselves stranded near a fog-shrouded villa, the butler of which is the mannequin-lugging devil. Invited in, the travellers find themselves part of a weird role-playing game as a mother and son see in Lisa a resemblance to a sweetheart long dead. There is necrophilia, sadism and black magic at play as Leandro (Savalas) manipulates everyone in the house like the mannequins he positions, which come to life. Leandro could be seen as a stand-in for the director himself, manipulating pain and grief and exhuming memories in order to make his own entertainment. Savalas sucks on a lollipop throughout the movie, a detail that he liked so much he used it for his iconic TV detective Kojak, which he filmed the following year.

Friday, 15th of January, 2016

The funeral took place in the local cathedral and outside the sun was strangely, unseasonably warm.

John Bleasdale

A Krimi-Giallo Hybrid: What Have You Done to Solange?

Solange 2
What Have You Done to Solange?

Format: Dual Format (DVD + Blu-ray

Release date: 14 December 2015

Distributor: Arrow Video

Director: Massimo Dallamano

Writers: Bruno Di Geronimo, Massimo Dallamano

Original title: Cosa avete fatto a Solange?

Cast: Fabio Testi, Cristina Galbó, Karin Baal, Joachim Fuchsberger

Italy, Germany 1972

107 mins

Massimo Dallamano’s Catholic girls’ school psycho-sexual thriller combines elements of German and Italian genre cinemas.

A German-Italian co-production, Massimo Dallamano’s What Have You Done to Solange? is one of several films intended to bridge the gap between the West German Edgar Wallace krimi and the Italian gialli. The relationship between the two subgenres dates back to the late 1960s, when gialli like Antonio Margheriti’s Naked You Die! (1968) were released in Germany in black and white (despite being shot in colour) to resemble the classic Wallace krimi in appearance. At the same time Rialto Film, the primary producer of the Wallace films, were trying to find ways of revitalizing their formula, in response to declining popularity. Their first attempt, Double Face (1968), was certainly equipped for lasting cult appeal, being directed by Italian horror legend Riccardo Freda and co-written by the future ‘godfather of gore’ Lucio Fulci. It also starred Klaus Kinski in a rare leading role, as well as a number of Euro-horror veterans, including Gunther Stoll, Margaret Lee and Annabella Incontrera. Unfortunately, Freda’s star had waned by that point, and despite the efforts of the cast, Double Face is bland and uninvolving.

The film’s commercial failure doused Rialto’s interest in further ventures, and the matter might have rested there, were it not for Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. One of the big European box office hits of 1970, Argento’s debut feature sparked off a wave of similar thrillers, bringing the giallo firmly into the mainstream. In Germany The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was distributed by Artur Brauner’s Central Cinema Company (a.k.a. CCC Films), Rialto’s main competitor in the field of the Wallace krimi. Brauner added a spurious credit to German prints of the film, claiming it was based upon a story by Bryan Edgar Wallace, the son of the famous author whose own works had been adapted by CCC Films. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was then marketed to German audiences as an authentic krimi.

Having noticed the film’s impressive box office takings, Rialto decided to attempt another krimi-giallo crossover. Although most of the technical aspects of What Have You Done to Solange? were left to the discretion of the Italian crew, Rialto made a number of changes to bring the film closer to their previous Wallace krimi, including setting the film in London. The main detective would be played by Joachim Fuchsberger, Rialto’s most popular leading man, while the German wife would be played by Karin Baal, the star of two earlier Wallace films, including The Dead Eyes of London (1961), arguably the finest example of the form. A single line of dialogue was added to justify the appropriation of the title of a genuine Edgar Wallace story for the film’s German title (The Clue of the Green Pin), despite the two stories having absolutely nothing in common.

Enrico Rosseni (played by Fabio Testi, best known for his role in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis) teaches Italian and gymnastics at a prestigious Catholic school in London. Even though his severe German wife Herta (Karin Baal) teaches at the school as well, Enrico is having an affair with one of his students, Elizabeth Seccles (Christina Galbó, The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue). During one of their meetings, Elizabeth sees a young girl and the flash of a knife, but Enrico angrily dismisses her claim. The following day a girl’s body is discovered in the same location, with the victim another student of the school. Even though Elizabeth is a key witness, Enrico discourages her from contacting the police because of his marriage. When another student is murdered, Enrico realizes that Elizabeth is not just a witness, but a key figure in the events unfolding and a potential victim too.

Despite its hybrid origins, What Have You Done to Solange? is very much a classic example of the 1970s giallo. As usual, the police are present but take a backseat role to the hero’s amateur investigations. Although Enrico himself is not a witness to the crimes like his counterpart in Dario Argento’s thrillers, his girlfriend Elizabeth is, and she experiences the same confusion and progressive revelations as the heroes of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Deep Red (1976). The killer is visible only as a pair of black-gloved hands, although we hear his voice. His motivations are a little more complex. Instead of being a witness to, or a victim of, a traumatic event, he’s taking revenge on behalf of that victim. The incident itself is one of the most unpleasant of its kind and certainly effective, but would perhaps be more appropriate for a Roman Catholic country; the United Kingdom’s laws on the subject make such events largely unnecessary (a similar point applies to Elizabeth’s age; in Italy she would have been over the age of consent). The brutal and sexualised nature of the killings (and their motivation) is sharply at odds with the standards of the Wallace krimi, which rarely featured graphic violence and generally couched any sexual content in a light-hearted tone.

By technical standards, What Have You Done to Solange? is exceptional, especially the cinematography. Although best known as a producer of notorious splatter movies (including the excellent Beyond the Darkness) and hardcore pornography, Aristide Massacessi (a.k.a. Joe D’Amato) is a skilled cinematographer whose framing and shot composition are consistently solid. Director Dallamano is a capable cinematographer himself, having worked on A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For A Few Dollars More (1965) before moving into direction. Together Dallamano and Massacessi create a stylish, visually interesting film, with a number of memorable and eye-catching moments. Legendary composer Ennio Morricone provided the scores to more than a dozen gialli in the early 1970s, including Argento’s early thrillers. His work on What Have You Done to Solange? relies on many of the same motifs and themes that characterise his other giallo scores: angular, discordant bass figures; wordless child-like singing; high-pitched, screeching strings. Despite this, it’s a strong enough score, and certain passages correspond well to the images they accompany.

Although Dallamano is happy to kill off the girls in a brutal fashion and use them to provide the film’s plentiful nudity, there is something sad about his portrayal of these young women. They are essentially adrift in the world. Their parents are generally absent from the film and when they do appear, they present a rose-tinted, idealised view of their children that shows no awareness of their growing physical and mental maturity. Their Catholic upbringing provides them with plenty of rules and admonitions against sin but offers them no help with their predicament whatsoever. The other adults in their lives are equally hopeless. Their teachers (aside from the priests) include a lecherous hypocrite who ascribes to them every kind of sexual vice but spies on them in the showers. Even Enrico, the one teacher who takes their side in disputes with the school, is having an affair with a girl not yet halfway through her teenage years, and is not above pressurizing his lover to give in to his sexual demands. With no guidance except their own instincts, the girls drift into the clutches of perverts, sleazy photographers and backstreet abortionists.

The execution and genre mechanics make What Have You Done to Solange? an excellent example of its kind, but it possesses an emotional resonance that lifts it above the majority of its contemporaries. It is not a flawless film; Inspector Barth’s assertion that showing the teachers graphic crime scene photos is a ‘necessary formality’ is ridiculous and grotesque, while Enrico’s sudden change of heart is poorly handled and does the character no favours (indeed, none of the film’s characters are anything other than one-dimensional). Despite its shortcomings, What Have You Done to Solange? is a first-rate giallo that deserves this new restoration.

Watch the trailer:

Jim Harper

Blanck Mass Re-Score: The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears

strange-colour-cover1
The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears album cover artwork

Format: Double LP

Release date: Sold ONLY at the East End Film Festival screening & performace in London on 10 July 2015

Label: Death Waltz Recording Co.

Viewers with untrained ears might watch Belgian directing team Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s dazzling neo-giallo The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears (2013) and wonder why Ben Power (Blanck Mass, Fuck Buttons) would be so bold as to want to re-score it. The heady mix of slick psychedelia, early synth and ambient grooves are a perfect fit and certain signature pieces are used repeatedly throughout. However, not one of the compositions was originally scored for the Cattet and Forzani film. Instead they lifted their music straight from the 1970s giallo films that inspire them.

The directors have said they like to assemble their soundtracks as they write their script, embedding the fusion of audio and visual into the early stages of the development process. So it was no doubt an unusual experience to watch their film with Power’s retrofitted score laid over it. Thankfully and unsurprisingly, the new music comes with the Belgian duo’s approval. It features contributions from Stockholm’s Roll The Dice, London’s Helm, Moon Gangs, Phil Julian, Glasgow’s Konx-Om-Pax, and New York’s C. Spencer Yeh, as well as Mr Blanck Mass himself. Each artist was assigned a scene and given the freedom to score it how they wished. Furthermore they were doing this without prior knowledge of what was planned by anyone else. Their combined efforts have come together to form a brooding cinematic morass of electronica. In particular, Helm’s ‘Silencer II’ is a hyper-tense 11-minute epic of suppressed emotion and pent up frustration whereas Moon Gangs’ ‘The Apartment’ or a couple of the C. Spencer Yeh tracks are far less brutal – allowing your fast-beating heart and fragile mind a chance to relax. Note that the shrill attack of Phil Julian’s ‘End Credits’ makes sure there’s a shot of adrenalin for anyone flagging when the film fades to black.

The re-score of The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears is put out by Death Waltz Records. It’s a double vinyl release, housed inside a 425gsm reverse board jacket and comes in two versions. There’s the ‘exclusive splatter combo’ as Death Waltz’s Spencer Hickman describes it – limited to 500 only worldwide. Not entirely sure what exact colours that means, but it will not be black – that’s reserved for the regular shop version of it.

The East End Film Festival are showing The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears with the brand new score on 10 July at Red Gallery. After the screening there will be DJ sets from Blanck Mass and friends, including Spencer Hickman spinning some rare giallo records of his own.

For more infos about the event and to buy tickets visit the EEFF website.

Stuart Wright

Interview with Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani

The Strange Colour of Your Bodys Tears
The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears

Format: Cinema

Release date: 11 April 2014

Distributor: Metrodome

Director: Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani

Writers: Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani

Original title: L’étrange couleur des larmes de ton corps

Cast: Klaus Tange, Jean-Michel Vovk, Sylvia Camarda, Sam Louwyck

Belgium, France, Luxembourg 2013

102 mins

French directing duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani have developed a style in which they take elements of the giallo and use them to compose intensely sensual cinematic experiences. They made their feature debut with Amer in 2009, a near-experimental exploration of a woman’s troubled psyche set in the south of France. Their follow-up, The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, moves north to Brussels and into the obsessive mind of a man looking for his missing wife.

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani talked to Virginie Sélavy at the London Film Festival in October 2013 and told her about using the language of giallo to give audiences a filmic orgasm.

Virginie Sélavy: How do you see the relationship of your films to giallo? Are they homage, distillation, artistic commentary?

Bruno Forzani: Definitely not homage. It’s more that we reinterpret and re-use the giallo language to tell our story.

Hélène Cattet: We use it as a tool, especially because there are strong iconographic elements whose meaning we can subvert, for instance, the figure of the assassin, which is a very striking, shocking figure. We change its meaning so it takes on a personal significance in our story.

You do the same thing with sound: you’ve used extracts from giallo films for your score. It must be difficult to re-use music that was originally composed for something specific in other films. How did you choose the tracks?

BF: Initially most of them were in the script.

HC: They inspired us as we were writing the script.

You mean that as you were writing the script you were thinking about those pieces of music?

BF: Yes, exactly. We want to use music 100% and give it all of its original power, not just compile a jukebox. So we have to find the right balance in relation to a modern film. A couple of the pieces didn’t work because they made the scenes too kitsch. One was the music for the inspector’s story at the beginning, and the other was for the opening credits. As the scene is cut all the time, it interrupted the rise of the melody and it ruined it.

Does the story inspire the music or is it the other way around?

HC: The music inspires the way a sequence develops. It gives us a rhythm, and ideas too. We listen to music as we write, and all of a sudden there’s one track that strikes us, so we play it again and again, and it inspires the rhythm.

BF: And images too.

What is the most remarkable music for you in the film?

BF: ‘Maddalena’. That’s the one when Dan goes inside the walls. It comes from the film Maddalena by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, about a priest who falls in love with a woman, and is lost between faith and passion and doesn’t know which to choose. I was very keen to have this music in the film because it’s representative of a period in Ennio Morricone’s career, and it works with the film’s themes, in relation to fantasy – we hear all these women sighing. There’s also the use of the organ that you find in the music he wrote for Westerns. For me it was the most important music. It was the hardest to get but we managed it in the end.

HC: For me it was the music from the opening credits that we didn’t keep! It was the very first piece we thought of for the film and it had inspired the first drafts. It was from Seven Blood-Stained Orchids. It created the atmosphere there was at the very beginning. We started writing in 2002 and the film was very different then. It was more like a whodunit, and through the years it turned more into a ‘who am I’. The whodunit aspect of Seven Blood-Stained Orchids was really present at first.

The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh also seems to be a major influence.

BF: Yes, completely. The sequence when Barbara explodes on the glass body is like the flashback in The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh. It’s a scene that really struck me and we tried to magnify it – not to redo it because there’s no point, but to be inspired by it as if we were dreaming it in a different way. And there’s also a note on the bunch of flowers, and it’s the note that Edwige Fenech receives in the film. Sergio Martino’s films are always about vice, fantasy and sado-masochism, so it fit the subject matter perfectly.

Amer, and your contribution to The ABCs of Death, O for Orgasm, even more so, were already concerned with pain and pleasure, and sex and death. What draws you to those themes?

BF: We see the films we make as an experience. We try to give our viewers a filmic orgasm. There is definitely that aspect, to give pleasure to people.

HC: It allows us to approach the story in a sensual, physical way, to play with very strong feelings of attraction and repulsion.

BF: They are two instincts, two impulses, and as we’re trying to do something sensorial, connecting those two impulses strengthens the audience’s involvement in our sensorial experimentation. And audiences are confronted with their own impulses, which they may reject – violence, desire – and that places them in a slightly ambiguous position. For me, a film is not like a motorway, it’s about getting a bit lost among primitive things. We try to play with that, embrace that side of things 100% and not have any moral judgement in there, just connect with the impulse, whether it’s fear or love.

You seem more interested in the sensory experience than in the narrative.

HC: It’s a little as in Amer. We use all of those filmic elements to tell the story. To tell it sensually first, but there is a meaning in the end. The story is told by what is experienced through the sounds and images. We try and convey the ambiguity of a character through stylistic effects. The split screen, for instance, may look nice, but it’s there to actually show something.

BF: We construct the film in two ways. The first is the sensorial way, which corresponds to the first viewing of the film: you experience the film physically, then it sinks in. We wrote the film so it could be seen several times and people would discover different layers each time. We’re very influenced by Satoshi Kon. There are several levels of interpretation in the way he writes, and each time you see one of his films you discover new things. We wrote our film in the same way. We were also strongly influenced by David Lynch when we were teenagers. The first time we saw his films, we didn’t understand them, but the experience of them was very strong. It was a very powerful world. And gradually his films have become clearer and clearer. It’s a similar principle.

There seems to be an intense concern with seeing inside of objects, buildings and bodies in the film.

BF: Yes, there is definitely something obsessive about it. We are obsessed with close-ups, with trying to be very close to the viewers and penetrating them. We want the film to penetrate people. In the sound, we worked a lot on the bass frequencies, because bass goes into you. This film is really obsessed with penetration!

HC: And with intrusion too. That was already the case in Amer.

It’s a very baroque film, with this fascination with surface illusions, with doubles, mirroring and artifice, and of course the luxuriance of motifs.

HC: Yes, completely. That’s how we saw it. We were very inspired by Art Nouveau, and as we live in Brussels there’s a lot of that. We really wanted to film inside those Art Nouveau houses, with all those lavish motifs that fit so well with the labyrinthine aspect that we wanted for the film. It inspired us, not only in the visual motifs, but in the space and the mise en scène too – you get really lost.

Architecture is very important in giallo, but you have really found your own architectural world here. I loved the idea that the building is alive.

BF: For us, the question was always, is the building the main character, or is the main character inside the building? Where is the inside, and where is the outside?

HC: We played with the idea that the building is like a Rubik’s Cube, and the walls move, everything moves, and in the character’s mind something is triggered.

How did you choose the locations for Amer and Strange Colour?

BF: It was very natural. Amer was shot where I grew up in the south of France, on the border with Italy. And we made this one where we met, in the city where we live. So in each case it came from something personal.

It looks like every single shot has been carefully composed, with the same obsessive mindset as your characters. Do you feel there is an obsessive quality to your filmmaking?

Both: Yes…

HC: That’s the way it was visually, but also sonically, and that was even worse because we had no sounds at all – we shoot without sound – so we had to recreate absolutely everything. So, for instance, things like breathing, things that audiences don’t even notice, but will notice if they’re not there.

How long did it take you to make the film?

BF: All in all, 11 years. We started writing in 2002.

HC: Then we started the preparatory work in 2010.

This film felt closer to O for Orgasm than Amer.

HC: We made O when we were waiting to find out if we’d be able to make Strange Colour. It had been a few years since we’d last shot something, so it was perfect to get back into things. We tested things for Strange Colour in O, things like the slow-motion ghost-camera, so maybe that’s why.

What influenced the title of the film specifically?

HC: It refers to the themes of the film, while being surreal. And it brings to mind The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood Doing on Jennifer’s Body? (aka The Case of the Bloody Iris) and All the Colours of the Dark.

That’s another major reference in the film.

BF: Yes, we use the music from All the Colours of the Dark in the credits. There is a gorgeous nightmare scene in that film. And it’s about a woman who is bored, alone all day while her husband is at work, and our film is like the other side. She goes into this sect to discover pleasure because she has no pleasure with her husband, and our film is a little like…

HC:…the husband’s point de view!

BF: I hadn’t thought of that, but yes, exactly!

Have you thought about how you are going to develop the form you have created with Amer and Strange Colour in the future?

BF: I don’t know. After Amer there were people who said, ‘I don’t know what you can do after this, it can’t be renewed’. But then we made this. It’s the same themes, the same world, but it’s different. There is a third part, but we won’t do it straightaway. We’ll try and do something else in between. We’d like to do something that doesn’t come from us, because this film took so much energy, so much life. And then we’d like to go back to something personal to conclude Amer and Strange Colour.

Interview by Virginie Sélavy

Watch the trailer:

All the Colours of the Dark

All the Colours of the Dark
All the Colours of the Dark vinyl cover artwork (Finders Keepers)

Format: Limited edition double coloured vinyl

Release date: 21 April 2014

Distributor: Finders Keepers

All the Colours of the Dark ( Tutti i colori del buio) is surely one of the greatest soundtracks ever recorded and a holy grail vinyl for many collectors, yet for some reason Bruno Nicolai still doesn’t get the plaudits he deserves outside of the circle of giallo fans and hardcore soundtrack aficionados. For many years he was the right-hand man to Ennio Morricone and maybe that’s the problem: the wider world sees him in Morricone’s shadow or doesn’t even know the valuable contributions he made to Morricone’s scores before a mysterious falling out left them parting ways on bad terms. They were never reconciled, and sadly Nicolai passed away in 1991.

Although I’m a fan of nearly all of Nicolai’s scores, this one towers over the others. Throughout its runtime it can be jarring, difficult, dreamlike, hallucinatory, and yet it’s always strikingly beautiful. Recorded with the help of Alessandro Alessandroni on sitar and Edda Del Orso on vocals, the score can be split into two distinct sections.

Tracks such as ‘Sabba’ are beat-driven affairs with Alessandroni’s piercing psychedelic sitar almost working against the track, threatening to derail it. Add to this Del Orso’s terrifying wordless screams and moans, which sound out of time and place, and the whole thing almost becomes a car crash of the ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ kind. In lesser hands this would be unlistenable. But such is the masterful ear of Nicolai that he manages to focus the whole piece on what is very nearly an uplifting ‘chorus’, and the whole thing eventually makes you want to dance around your room like a lunatic.

And then you have tracks such as ‘Magico Incontro’, which are simply beautiful avant-pop with gorgeous orchestration and wailing vocals. I say ‘simply’ but nothing Nicolai does is simple. There is always something going on under the surface that pulls you back in for multiple listens.

As much as I love this score I had a hard time writing about it. It’s difficult to pin down what makes it great and it’s best experienced through a rumbling sound system where it can almost overpower you. The original goes for big money (if you can even find it ) so kudos to Andy Votel and Finders Keepers for not only releasing it in its original library sleeve but also loaded with extensive liner notes and a poster.

Spencer Hickman

Spencer Hickman is the founder of Death Waltz Recording Company, the leading soundtrack label specialising in horror and cult films. Forthcoming releases include the scores to House of the Devil and City of the Living Dead.

Watch the US original trailer for Tutti i colori del buio:

Aldo Lado: Beyond giallo

Short Night of Glass Dolls
Short Night of Glass Dolls

Although he doesn’t have the status of Italian filmmaking pioneers and favourites like Mario Bava, Dario Argento or Lucio Fulci, Aldo Lado is often considered one of the most interesting directors in Italian cult cinema, mainly because of a handful of giallo-inspired thrillers he directed in the early 1970s: Short Night of Glass Dolls (La corta notte delle bambole di vetro, 1971), Who Saw Her Die? (Chi l’ha vista morire?, 1972) and Night Train Murders (L’ultimo treno della notte, 1975). Prior to his directorial debut, Lado worked as a scriptwriter, contributing to Maurizio Lucidi’s Hitchcock-inspired giallo The Designated Victim (La vittima designata, 1971), among others.

Like Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo, 1970), Short Night of Glass Dolls is a remarkable debut feature, and one that shows a talent already well-developed. The film was co-written by Lado himself and Ernesto Gastaldi, the genre’s pre-eminent scriptwriter, responsible for a number of classic gialli, including most of Sergio Martino’s films.

Unlike the majority of giallo films, Short Night of Glass Dolls is not constructed around elaborate set-piece murders, although it does feature a typical giallo hero in Jean Sorel’s Gregory Moore, an American journalist living in Prague. When his girlfriend (Barbara Bach, The Spy Who Loved Me) disappears in the middle of the night Moore begins questioning anyone who might have spoken to her on that last evening, as well as looking into several similar disappearances. In a bizarre twist, all this is related by Moore in a series of flashbacks as he lies on a mortuary slab, having apparently died from heart failure. While the doctors try and figure out why his ‘corpse’ is still warm and why it hasn’t gone into rigor yet, Moore looks back on recent events in an effort to understand what’s happened to him.

In most giallo films the journey is more important than the destination, and the pay-off is often something of a disappointment, although some of the finest efforts manage to construct a climax worthy of the rest of the film (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, for example). Short Night of Glass Dolls definitely falls into the latter camp and features one of the genre’s most memorable conclusions, both in resolving the mystery of the girl’s disappearance and in Moore’s eventual fate. Although it appears to be inspired by a classic episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Lado takes the film in another, more exotic direction, one which it is doubtful that Hitchcock could have conceived of.

Watch the trailer for Short Night of Glass Dolls:

Although it’s very successful in purely horror terms, Short Night of Glass Dolls also works on a number of different levels. It can be assessed as an overtly political film, with an American journalist struggling to solve a mystery in a society that does not tolerate dissent and hides its secrets behind a corrupt bureaucracy. Because of this approach Lado was able to secure funding from pro-western sources; ironically, he also received financial support from pro-communist groups, who interpreted the film as a parable about the way the wealthy, upper-class elite prey upon the working classes like parasites. On a more abstract level, it’s also concerned with the fleeting nature of youth, and its exploitation by those desperate to recapture their own youthful vitality. This theme is reflected in Lado’s frequent references to butterflies, whose brief lifespan has made them a popular metaphor for youth and mortality. After the director’s original title, Malastrana, was rejected by the producers, it was changed to Short Night of the Butterflies, an appropriate enough choice, but that was altered because it was considered too similar to the title of another giallo released at roughly the same time, Duccio Tessari’s The Blood-stained Butterfly (Una farfalla con le ali insanguinate, 1971).

Despite its continued critical acclaim Short Night of Glass Dolls has not been widely influential, but does seem to have inspired a handful of later films. Both Sergio Martino’s All the Colors of the Dark (Tutti i colori del buio, 1972), which was also (co-)scripted by Ernesto Gastaldi, and Francesco Barilli’s The Perfume of the Lady in Black (Il profumo della signora in nero, 1974) feature secret groups and sinister activities. In contrast with Lado’s film, they focus upon female characters played by actresses with a solid giallo heritage, Edwige Fenech and Mimsy Farmer, allowing both films to portray their heroines’ collapsing mental state, much like Polanski’s Repulsion (1965). Neither film is entirely successful; All the Colors of the Dark is compromised by a hysterical central character and doesn’t stand up to Martino’s other gialli, while a solid performance from Farmer in The Perfume of the Lady in Black isn’t enough to remedy a slow-moving plot and a largely event-free first hour.

Lado’s second film was another giallo, but a more traditional one, this time co-written by Lado, veteran scriptwriter Massimo D’Avak, and Francesco Barilli. Although it’s not as effective or original as Short Night of Glass Dolls or Night Train Murders, Who Saw Her Die? is still an interesting example of the genre, with a few unusual aspects that make it worth watching. A compelling introductory scene shows a child being murdered by someone in a black veil. Four years later, sculptor Franco (played by George Lazenby, the forgotten Bond) and his estranged wife Elizabeth (Anita Strindberg, Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, 1971) are living separate lives in Venice. When their daughter Roberta (Nicoletta Elmi, Deep Red, 1975) is found murdered, Franco tries to track down her killer, uncovering a web of paedophilia and sadomasochism.

With a grieving father exploring the baroque and otherworldly city of Venice, trying to understand his daughter’s death, it’s not surprising that many commentators have seen connections between Who Saw Her Die? and Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973), although Lado’s film came out more than a year before Roeg’s. It’s never been established whether Roeg was familiar with Who Saw Her Die?, but the similarity of certain shots, locations and events suggest that he might have been. While Lado’s film is respectable enough, Don’t Look Now is still the superior film.

Watch the trailer for Who Saw Her Die?:

Like Short Night of Glass Dolls, Who Saw Her Die? is a window into a world of clandestine societies with secret agendas, and it’s also concerned with the themes of youth and mortality. The final revelations are less effective here, partly because they’re considerably less exotic, but also because it’s an altogether more traditional film, one that rarely strays from the established giallo pattern. It’s certainly technically accomplished, boasting excellent cinematography from Franco Di Giacomo, who had recently worked on Dario Argento’s long-elusive third giallo, Four Flies on Grey Velvet (4 mosche di velluto grigio, 1971). Like all of Lado’s early films, it boasts an excellent Ennio Morricone score. The composer downplays the jazz-rock tendencies and abrasive strings that characterise most of his giallo soundtracks in favour of choral pieces that predominantly feature children’s voices. This works for the most part, tying well into the film’s subject matter, but some of it seems too light for the material. Ultimately, despite its qualities, Who Saw Her Die? doesn’t stand up to Lado’s other films.

The final effort in Lado’s loose giallo-esque trio is 1975’s Night Train Murders, an unofficial remake of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972). One of the most notorious exploitation films ever made, The Last House on the Left depicts the rape and murder of two young girls, and the subsequent bloody revenge taken by the parents of one of them. Although Craven wrote the script, the movie takes its plot and its central themes from the Ingmar Bergman classic The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukä;llan, 1960). Despite its notoriety, Craven’s film was a commercial success and gave rise to its own sub-genre, the ‘rape-revenge film’, including Meir Zarchi’s misogynistic I Spit on Your Grave (1978), Takashi Ishii’s mournful Freezer (2000) and Lado’s Night Train Murders, arguably the finest of the movies inspired by The Last House on the Left.

Night Train Murders begins with school friends Margaret and Lisa, played by Irene Miracle (Inferno, 1980) and Laura D’Angelo; having stayed with Margaret’s parents in Munich, they are travelling to Italy to spend Christmas with Lisa’s family. Although their journey starts out well enough, the presence of two pretty young girls attracts the attention of thug Blackie (Flavio Bucci, Suspiria, 1977) and his junkie friend Curly (Gianfranco De Grassi, The Church, 1989). Margaret and Lisa switch trains to escape from them, only to discover their attackers have done so too. By this time Blackie and Curly have been joined by a well-dressed Woman (Macha M&#223ril, Deep Red) whose obvious status and wealth conceal a nature every bit as sadistic and brutal as her new friends. They imprison the girls in a deserted carriage and subject them to a barrage of sexual, physical and psychological abuses. Eventually Lisa dies at their hands, and Margaret tries to escape out of the carriage window, but ends up dying on the rocks below. The three killers leave the train at the next stop and unwittingly accept an offer of a lift from Lisa’s parents, who have come to the station to pick up the girls. When they discover what has really happened, they turn upon the killers with surprising ferocity.

Although it devotes less screen time to the protracted rapes and assaults than most films of its kind Night Train Murders still makes for extremely uncomfortable viewing, thanks to a number of scenes that raise the bar for cinematic nastiness. The effect is compounded by the fact that Lado takes his time with Margaret and Lisa, allowing the viewer to understand and sympathise with them before their ordeal begins, roughly halfway through the film. They’re sweet, good-natured girls about to cross over into womanhood, but still childlike in many ways: secretly stealing cigarettes, flirting with boys and exploring their own nascent sexuality. It’s this innocence that draws Blackie, Curly and the Woman to them, with the corruption and destruction of this innocence being their primary motivation, as if rape and murder (and their own personal sexual satisfaction) were secondary considerations. All three of the killers seem genuinely surprised when one of the victims dies; this incident shatters the folie &#224 trois, and they soon begin to turn on each other.

Blackie and Curly are garden-variety thugs. Under the opening credits we see them snatching purses, beating up a market stall Santa, slicing up an expensive fur coat and jumping onto the train to escape from the police. They leer over Margaret and Lisa, attack a navy officer who attempts to help them and generally make a nuisance of themselves. No motives are provided, although Curly is a drug addict, which in a horror movie means he’s capable of anything. The well-dressed Woman is a different matter. We know she is intelligent, well informed and clearly wealthy. Beneath that respectable veneer she’s also a merciless sadist with a high sex drive (she carries pornographic photos in her handbag) and a dominant personality. Blackie’s attempt at rape quickly becomes consensual, with the Woman taking the lead over her surprised would-be attacker. Blackie and Curly revel in violence, but the Woman derives a sexual thrill from watching the rape and torture of two young girls. Her obvious intellect and imagination make her capable of acts of depravity that her cohorts could not conceive of.

Watch the trailer for Night Train Murders:

The Woman’s monstrous sadism is well hidden beneath a middle-class exterior, however, just as her face is concealed by her veil. Blackie and Curly look the part, but few would suspect the Woman of being responsible for a pair of vicious murders. One of the core aspects of the rape-revenge movie is the meting out of justice (or vengeance) upon the responsible parties, but Night Train Murders is one of the few films of its kind in which not all the killers are punished. [SPOILER] Instead the Woman (wearing her veil again) is able to claim that she had been kidnapped by the two thugs, and the credits roll after Lisa’s father has killed Blackie and Curly, with no apparent intention of killing her at all. It’s an incredibly cynical ending, but one that’s in keeping with the rest of the film. [END OF SPOILER]

Set in Germany and Italy, Night Train Murders takes place against a background of violence and revolution. Europe is still reeling from the last war, in which Munich played an integral role. Not everyone has managed to move on yet, as we can gather from the cabin full of German businessmen in suits, happily singing the archetypal Nazi hymn, the ‘Horst Wessel Song’, even though it’s been illegal for 30 years. Like the Woman, their secrets hide beneath a semblance of respectability. Meanwhile Italy is locked in the middle of the ‘Anni di piombi’, the Years of Lead, a two-decade period characterised by political turmoil and violent unrest. The nihilism and anger of young people like Blackie and Curly is being channelled towards political ends, although whether the end result will be any different remains to be seen. Margaret and Lisa’s train is stopped after a tip-off that a bomb has been placed upon it, forcing them to take another train and eventually bringing them into contact with the trio of killers.

Despite some flaws – Lisa’s parents, played by veterans Enrico Maria Salerno (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) and Marina Berti (What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, 1974), are essentially just cardboard cut-outs – Night Train Murders is still one of the best Italian cult movies from the 1970s, and comfortably superior to almost every other rape-revenge film, with the exception of Wes Craven’s trailblazing original. It even inspired its own knock-off, Ferdinando Baldi’s awful Terror Express (La ragazza del vagone letto, 1979), which pads its brief running time with soft-core sex scenes that try to be controversial or shocking but usually end up being laughable instead. At the other end of the spectrum, Franco Prosperi’s Last House on the Beach (1978) was another stylish, well-made rape-revenge movie based on a story by Ettore Sanz&#242, who co-scripted Night Train Murders and What Have They Done to Your Daughters? The last twitch of the Italian rape-revenge cycle was Ruggero Deodato’s House on the Edge of the Park (La casa sperduta nel parco, 1980), a rather unpleasant film that cemented Deodato’s reputation as one of the most extreme Italian exploitation directors. It’s the opposite of the taut, economical plotting of Night Train Murders, and a somewhat ignoble end to one of the more notorious aspects of Italian cult cinema.

Jim Harper

Film4 FrightFest 2012

V/H/S

Film4 FrightFest

23-27 August 2012, Empire, London

FrightFest website

Film4 FrightFest the 13th duly delivered on blood, thrills and controversy with a blast of the best and the worst of current horror film. Evrim Ersoy reports on some of the most talked about films in this year’s programme.

V/H/S

An interesting exercise in combining the portmanteau picture and the found-footage genre, V/H/S is the new offering from some of the hottest indie directors on the block (Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, Radio Silence).

Following the usual genre rules, it sets out a wrap-around concerning a bunch of deadbeat guys who are hired to break into a house and find a certain VHS for an undisclosed amount of money. As they are faced with a mountain of tapes, their attempts to find the right one are the pretext for the other stories until the very final tale, which, in an unusual touch, explains the nature of what has gone before.

At two hours, the film outstays its welcome by at least one segment and the wraparound is a muddled affair delivering none of the punch expected from such a tale. However, despite all this V/H/S works very well, with some of the segments genuinely inducing a sense of dread and unease while others create a videotape reality that just delights with its own twisted logic.

The final story also pulls out all the stops making sure the entire anthology ends on a high, sending the audience out into the night feeling as if they’ve been through on a ghost ride.

All in all, definitely worth catching – although not necessarily at the cinema given the lo-fi specs.

Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the 70s

Director/writer Mike Malloy’s love letter to the underrated poliziotteschi genre of the 70s is an impressive magnum opus that not only serves as an introductory lesson to newcomers but also offers in-depth analysis that every lover of the genre will delight in.

Compiling clips and new interviews with cast and crew associated with the films, Mike Malloy divides his epic documentary into chapters explaining various aspects of the genre (beginnings, real-life crime, politics, misogyny, etc) and revealing the history bit by bit. This fragmentary approach works incredibly well: rather than alienate any audience member, Mike Malloy sensibly draws everyone in before weaving a tale of an era so madcap and unusual it’s almost impossible not to be enthralled.

Mike Malloy’s talent is apparent not only in the assured pacing but also in the well-conducted interviews with stars, directors and other crew members of the era: Henry Silva, Franco Nero and Enzo Castellari all make an appearance bringing with them some unusual tales that may never have been heard if not for this film.

An amazing achievement, this 137-minute bonanza is a brilliantly entertaining documentary: full of life and action, it’s a joyful tribute that fits the spirit of the genre it celebrates so well.

Tower Block

A disappointing exercise in survival, James Nunn and Ronnie Thompson’s Tower Block focuses on the residents of the 31st floor of a block of flats who find themselves the target of a sniper. As the incompatible bunch try to work together to survive the day, their numbers continue to dwindle.

Boasting a set-up that’s bound to intrigue, Tower Block unfortunately runs into the first of its many problems before long: the occupants of the tower block of the title all appear to be archetypes. Perhaps it’s writer James Moran’s intention to populate the floor with a microcosm of Britain and try to see how we all can work together, but, on screen, the entire cast appears theatrical and robotic and the relationships and dialogue are distinctly wooden.

However, there is also much to be admired in the film: the set pieces are incredibly tense, and once the action gets going, the stark terror caused by the sniper is shown without any compromise. This is a film that delivers on the visual front with plenty of gusto. Shame, then, that the final result ends up being so uneven: a third act descent into Scooby Doo territory and really does the rest of the film no favours. By the end of the film, we’re left with a sense of disappointment at the hollowness and emptness of the plot.

It’s hard to shake off the feeling that Tower Block might have worked better as a 30-minute short. In its current form it is just another forgettable urban thriller in a long line of low-budget British films.

Tower Block is released in UK cinemas on September 21 by Lionsgate.

Tulpa

It’s hard to tell where Federico Zampaglione’s disappointing attempt to create a neo-giallo film went wrong: Tulpa is such a strange creation full of conflicting moments that it becomes impossible to distinguish the individual good and bad points after a while.

Opening with a beautiful sequence where a bizarre S&M meeting between an unnamed man and a woman goes horrifically wrong, Tulpa centres on Lisa Boeri, a corporate financial analyst in a fast-paced cut-throat company by day, and a member of a mysterious club for spiritual and psychical release of a sexual kind at night. When someone starts to murder Lisa’s sexual partners she realises there’s a psychopath out there who has her in firmly in their sights.

While the murders in Tulpa adhere beautifully to the giallo tropes, the pacing is so uneven that any enjoyment to be gleaned from the film soon turns to boredom. Add to this a second half that grinds to an almost complete halt and it becomes impossible to understand who the film is intended for: giallo enthusiasts will not find enough visual pleasure to enjoy the film while genre newcomers will be bored stiff after a while by the awful script and the rather outrageous dubbing.

A huge mess of a film, Tulpa can only be recommended as a guide to what not to do when trying to make a neo-giallo. Here’s hoping that Mr Zampaglione’s next film fulfils the promise of his first feature Shadow and confirms him as a filmmaker to follow.

Maniac

Set across a dreamy and melancholic cityscape, Franck Kahlfoun’s take on William Lustig’s notorious 1980 shocker might well be the best genre film to be released this year.

Shot largely in first-person P.O.V., it features an intense performance from Elijah Wood, who manages to portray Frank as a man both frighteningly sadistic and heart-breakingly pitiful. Frank works as a mannequin restorer and seller at a dilapidated shop in LA, which used to belong to his promiscuous mother. He has uncontrollable feeling of abject hatred and fear of women, which explode in acts of unparalleled violence. When Frank meets Ann, who wants to use his mannequins in a photography exhibition she’s preparing, the two connect in an awkward but not implausible way. However, as their relationship develops, it becomes harder and harder for Frank to control his destructive impulses.

Utilising mirrors, windows and other reflective surfaces, Khalfoun creates a glossy but emotive visual language: while the horror of Frank’s barbaric acts is never underplayed, his character comes across as a tragic figure rather than as the one-dimensional psychopath that is the stereotype of the genre. Cleverly using the soundtrack to intensify the city and Frank’s experience, Khalfoun grabs the audience when they least expect it: added into the mix are the rare appearances of Elijah Wood’s face, his eyes exhibiting a dead, hollow quality that makes his acts even more disturbing. His voice-over, delivered in a child-like whisper, speaks volumes about a man whose life has been lost for a long time: reminiscent of the protagonist Paul in Tony Vorno’s forgotten grindhouse gem Victims, Frank is equal parts abhorrent murderer and unexpected victim.

It’s hard to think of another piece of filmmaking that will manage to pack the same visual invention and emotional punch into a measly 89 minutes. Do not miss.

Berberian Sound Studio: The Sound of Horror

Berberian Sound Studio

Format: Cinema

Release date: 31 August 2012

Venues: Key cities

Distributor: Artificial Eye

Director: Peter Strickland

Writer: Peter Strickland

Cast: Toby Jones, Tonia Sotiropoulou, Cosimo Fusco

UK 2012

95 mins

The follow-up to the acclaimed, Berlin prize-winning rape-revenge drama Katalin Varga, Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio is a remarkable achievement. The accomplishment is amplified considering that it is a second feature. Among the most audacious European works in recent memory, Strickland’s film draws on his love of experimental film scores, sound effects and analogue recording equipment to create an elliptical, nightmarish tale that pays tribute to the Italian giallo genre and the Gothic horror of Mario Bava’s Black Sunday and Dario Argento‘s Suspiria. Juraj Herz’s The Cremator and Peter Tscherkassky are also acknowledged influences.

Set in a beautifully replicated 1976, the film hones in on Berberian Sound Studio, the cheapest, sleaziest post-production studios in Italy. Only the most sordid horror films have their sound processed and sharpened there. Gilderoy (Toby Jones, incredibly game in a discomfiting role), a naïve and introverted sound engineer from England, is hired to orchestrate the sound mix for the latest film by horror maestro Santini (Antonio Mancino). Thrown from the innocent world of local documentaries into a foreign environment fuelled by exploitation, Gilderoy soon finds himself caught up in a forbidding world of bitter actresses, capricious technicians and confounding bureaucracy. Obliged to work with the hot-headed producer Francesco (Cosimo Fusco), whose tempestuous relationships with certain members of his female cast threaten to boil over at any time, Gilderoy begins to record the sound for ‘The Equestrian Vortex’, a hammy tale of witchcraft and unholy murder.

Only when he’s testing microphones or poring over tape spooling around his machines does this timid man from Surrey seem at ease. Surrounded by Mediterranean machismo and, for the first time in his life, beautiful women, Gilderoy, very much an Englishman abroad, devotes all his attention to his work. But the longer Gilderoy spends mixing screams and the bloodcurdling sounds of hacked vegetables, the more homesick he becomes for his garden shed studio in his hometown of Dorking. His mother’s letters alternate between banal gossip and an ominous hysteria, which gradually mirrors the black magic of Santini’s Vortex.

The violence on the screen Gilderoy is exposed to, day in, day out, in which he himself is implicated, has a disturbing effect on his psyche. He finds himself corrupted; yet he’s the one carrying out the violence. As both time and realities shift, Gilderoy finds himself lost in an otherworldly spiral of sonic and personal mayhem, and has to confront his own demons in order to stay afloat in an environment ruled by exploitation both on and off screen.

Named after the yellow (giallo) covers of the trashy crime novels used for storylines, this period of cinema in 1960s and 70s Italy produced numerous thrillers and horror flicks that privileged style over script. As Berberian Sound Studio makes clear, key ingredients of a typical giallo tended to include girls, daggers, blood, witchcraft and chilling screams. At the time, directors such as Dario Argento (Profondo Rosso) and Lucio Fulci (The Black Cat, Zombie Flesh Eaters) commissioned composers including Ennio Morricone and prog outfit Goblin to score their slasher films. The title of Strickland’s fictional studio, Berberian, refers to Cathy Berberian, the versatile American soprano who was married to the Italian electronics pioneer Lucio Berio, a giant of 20th-century composition. Peter Strickland himself has dabbled in sound art and electronic production as part of the trio The Sonic Catering Band.

Sound, and Gilderoy’s umbilical connection to it, is the heart of the film. To that extent the creation of the sound studio was pivotal and the film was always likely to stand or fall on the authenticity of the hermetically sealed bunker and the equipment on which Gilderoy toils. Production designer Jennifer Kernke (who worked with Berberian producer Keith Griffiths on Institute Benjamenta) has worked wonders, constructing a sound studio as it might have appeared in 70s Italy by scouring the UK for original vintage analogue sound equipment. For Strickland, an aficionado of vintage sound recording apparatus, amassing all this out-of-date gear felt wonderfully anachronistic. ‘I had to question myself. I thought, are we riffing off what these films did back in the 70s or are we taking cues from the spirit of those films? It seemed rather perverse to celebrate analogue within the digital medium.’ But it is precisely the fetishistic nature of Gilderoy’s relationship with his beloved machines – perhaps the only objects he truly understands – that Strickland is celebrating. ‘I like the idea of filling the whole frame with these strange machines as we celebrate this period when these things looked so futuristic and alien,’ the director comments.

The film’s general arcane sensibility is also enforced by the tape boxes and papers the film lingers lovingly over, all of which are designed by Julian House. A record designer whose work recently graced CAN’s The Lost Tapes box-set, House also envisioned the fake title sequence, one of the most arresting and genuinely thrilling moments in the film.

Giallo movies frequently had exceptionally advanced accompanying soundtracks that meshed free jazz with the avant-garde and high art with sleazy exploitation. The score for Berberian is courtesy of James Cargill of Broadcast (whose sleeves House has also designed), who conjures an ethereal soundscape in which sound and music cut back and forth from the reality of the studio into the giallo Gilderoy works.

Santini’s ‘The Equestrian Vortex’ may be a schlocky giallo slasher, a classic horror, but Berberian Sound Studio has a more absorbing, hauntological bent. ‘Horror was the starting point but I would never call it a horror,’ says Strickland. ‘I guess the rule was to bounce off that genre – to immediately say, no blood, no murder – but still make it scary. What was exciting about that genre was it has its own history, rules and regulations that you can manipulate and mess around with. There’s something very gratifying in taking a template and turning it into something very personal.’ While avoiding didacticism, Berberian Sound Studio also explores the fascination with violence and the potentially corrupting nature of graphic imagery. Gilderoy’s exposure to the sequences he is forced to endure slowly erodes his levels of tolerance. In the end he is quite literally ingested by the images and psychologically broken.

Despite its willingness to engage with complex and prescient issues, there is also a deep vein of black humour, most clearly during the foley sequences in the auditorium when sound artists hack watermelons and stab cabbages to imitate the sound of heads being split or witches being bludgeoned in Santini’s movie (images that are seen to be projected but which the viewer, crucially, never sees). The disconnection between the effects Santini is trying to generate and what’s causing it is often knowingly comical. As the film is so much about sound and the creation of it, Strickland was careful to bring in characters involved with exhibitions of sound and figures involved with making music. Experimental artists Pal Toth, Josef Czeres and singer Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg all appear, another example of reality imaginatively blurring with fiction.

Film4 FrightFest presented a preview screening of Berberian Sound Studio on August 26.

Jason Wood

FrightFest Glasgow 2012

Penumbra

FrightFest Glasgow

24-25 February 2012, Glasgow

Part of the Glasgow Film Festival

FrightFest website

FrightFest Glasgow, part of the Glasgow Film Festival, keeps growing, and this year it presented no less than 11 features, as well as shorts, exclusive teasers and special guests from all over the world.

Among the features I saw, Penumbra (2011), from Argentine directors Adrián and Ramiro García Bogliano, was a morality tale about greed. On the day of a solar eclipse, a money-loving, promiscuous businesswoman, Marga (Cristina Brondo), makes a lucrative property letting deal with a mysterious stranger, Jorge (Berta Muñiz), who is acting on behalf of a wealthy client. But to get the cash payment, Marga has to wait as Jorge’s various shady associates arrive at the apartment. Wittily choreographed ensemble scenes, together with Marga’s dealings with a hapless neighbour lean towards a farcical comedy of manners, and Jorge steals the show with a camply hysterical anticipation of his client’s arrival. The film is at its most sinister immediately after the deal between Marga and Jorge is done: in a paranoia-inducing sequence, a tramp covertly directs a stream of vicious verbal abuse; when she retaliates, she appears to overreact and is censured and shunned by the locals. A classic horror trope, this is played with dark comedy, and the comic moments are the saving grace of the film throughout. Sadly, the humour is absent from the final part, and the punchline – that the darkest forces come from within – lacks weight.

The Manetti brothers’ L’arrivo di Wang (Wang’s Arrival, 2011), largely centres on an interrogation between a gruff, increasingly aggressive secret service agent (Ennio Fantastichini) and Mr Wang (Li Yong), a Chinese-speaking extra-terrestrial who claims to come in peace but nevertheless is bound and eventually tortured for information. Gaia (Francesca Cuttica) is interpreter, witness and, ultimately, fellow captive. A film about culture, communication and prejudice, this is no District 9, but it is thought-provoking in its own way, for example managing to make an emergency call to Amnesty International absurdly comic, and generating a compelling tension mostly from the three-way conversation between the engaging leads.

Anthony DiBlasi’s Cassadaga (2011) packs in a plethora of horror devices, including a cross-dressing serial killer in a frumpy dress and a sensorially impaired (deaf) heroine who has a connection to a murder victim. It’s popcorn fun with a variety of references and genuinely spooky ghost appearances, the best moments of suspense deriving from the heroine’s Nancy Drew-like sleuthing exercises.

Extras around the billed features included The Other Side, directed by Bethanie Martin, a well-executed and atmospheric short reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, pitting the grey, factory-like lines of uniformed school pupils/office workers against visceral impulses and raw red meat. Federico Zampaglione presented seven minutes from the opening of his new film, Tulpa, in which a beautiful woman in bondage witnesses the brutal stabbing and castration of her lover – warm applause and cheers peaked as Zampaglione announced, ‘It’s a giallo!’ The Manetti brothers showed a FrightFest exclusive teaser for L’ombra dell’orco (Shadow of the Bogeyman), which they are currently editing. There was much enthusiasm from these filmmakers and FrightFest organisers about the idea that these films mark the beginning of an anticipated imminent resurgence of Italian horror. Fans should look out for these films at London’s FrightFest in August.

After the screening, I asked the Manetti brothers if genre or story comes first. There was no hesitation: for them, the story takes precedence. Marco explained: ‘Genre is a mechanism to get deep – that’s the strength of it. People think genre is superficial but it allows you to get deeper into a problem. Horror amplifies the problem. Comedy and horror are the most difficult genres because they must touch the stomach.’

A savvy audience, waiting for its stomach to be stirred, and reciprocally generous relationships between them, the festival and the filmmakers: FrightFest provides the ideal conditions for a fun exploration of genre filmmaking.

Jo Shaw