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[This October is "Gialloween" on Daily Dead, as we celebrate the Halloween season by diving into the macabre mysteries, creepy kills, and eccentric characters found in some of our favorite giallo films! Keep checking back on Daily Dead this month for more retrospectives on classic, cult, and altogether unforgettable gialli, and visit our online hub to catch up on all of our Gialloween special features!]

From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, the giallo film was a defining genre for Italian cinema. The giallo, for those unfamiliar, was born from literature; crime novellas published in Italy, and known for their yellow book covers, would focus on pulp fiction detective tales and crime stories. When the giallo style found its way into cinematic form, the genre would be most influenced by the exercise of sensationalized sex and violence rather than the crime procedural or mystery solving.

The giallo, in some forms of film during this Italian wave of horror, finds significantly more depth and complication than otherwise perceived. And there is no better example of the sensationalized and nuanced approach to this style of film than Sergio Martino’s 1973 film Torso. Alternatively known as Carnal Violence, or sometimes The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence, this film functions as both giallo and a slasher film,...

I’m not sure how you’re feeling, dear readers, but the fact that the best month of the year has finally arrived is a welcome event for this writer. Every year at Daily Dead, we try to mix things up with themed coverage for the month of October, and for 2020, we’re turning Halloween into Gialloween and celebrating a bunch of classic gialli films as well as a few newcomers (and one Italian trailer bonanza that should definitely get you in the mood), too.

We’ll be kicking off our Gialloween celebration next Monday, October 12th and we’ll have fun giallo-themed content going up every single weekday through Halloween (and be on the lookout for some fun coverage to pop up on select weekends as well). To get you ready for Gialloween, I’ve gone ahead and put together this list of giallo films that are currently streaming...

Part of our on-going series Notebook Soundtrack Mixes.Forever on the edge of one's seat, giallo is the provider of all the glamorous and hallucinatory emotions. The film genre and its musical sister is somewhat a crown jewel when it comes to detailed niches, sub-genres, and die hard fans. Original LP records from the giallo genre can cost a hefty sum and the blossoming vinyl reissuing industry (an exciting addition over recent decades) proves how enduring the genre and its sub-genres are. This giallo bonanza comes in just shy of two hours and you will find both influential and cherished moments and secluded moments on the sidelines. That, for me, showcases its textures and ultimately what a fun, trippy genre it is. The work of the masters is in full swing, beloved composers such as Bruno Nicolai, Nora Orlandi, Riz Ortolani, and Goblin all have turns. And of course, the...

May’s home media releases are ending on a high note, as we have a ton of great titles hitting Blu-ray, DVD and 4K Ultra HD, so I hope genre fans have their wallets ready for all the killer selections coming out this week. If you happened to miss it in theaters, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man is heading to various formats on Tuesday, and if you’re a fan of Japanese filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto, you’ll definitely want to pick up Arrow Video’s Solid Metal Nightmares Collector Set.

Arrow is also keeping busy with two other titles this week – Lucky McKee’s The Woman, Blood Tide (1982) – and Blue Underground is bringing to cult classics to the world of 4K finally with their new releases of Maniac and Lucio Fulci’s Zombie. And as if all of that wasn’t enough, Vinegar Syndrome is resurrecting both Dolly Dearest and Pale Blood this week,...

When it comes to releasing unique and collectible Blu-ray box sets (such as their Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection), Severin Films has done an amazing job preserving horror history, and this summer they'll continue to do so with The Complete Lenzi Baker Giallo Collection, featuring Umberto Lenzi's collaborations with Carroll Baker:

"On June 30th, Severin Films is bringing together the complete collaborative works of two cult film legends with The Complete Lenzi Baker Giallo Collection, which includes superlative editions of Orgasmo, So Sweet… So Perverse, A Quiet Place To Kill, and Knife Of Ice.

Italian writer/director Umberto Lenzi helmed popular peplums, created extreme poliziotteschi, and invented the Italian cannibal phenomenon. Hollywood actress Carroll Baker was the Golden Globe® winning/Academy Award® nominated star of Baby Doll, Giant and The Carpetbaggers. Together in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s, they made four landmark films that changed the erotic thriller and giallo genres forever.

Severin Films and Cav presents The Strange Vice Of Mrs. Wardh Sergio Martino’s Giallo Masterpiece – now uncut on Blu-ray/DVD. The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh 1 Blu-ray disc + 1 CD disc Label: Severin Films Preorder: 4/28/20 Street: 5/26/20 Msrp: $34.98 Upc: 663390003213 Catalog #: SEV93213 Genre: Horror Color, 100 minutes in English and …

The post The Strange Vice Of Mrs. Wardh – Now uncut on Blu-Ray/DVD | Severin Films and Cav appeared first on Hnn | Horrornews.net.

If you've read Scott Drebit's Blu-ray reviews for Wax Mask, Paganini Horror, and The Peanut Butter Solution, just to name a few, then you know that here at Daily Dead, we're big fans of the eclectic physical home media releases from the talented team at Severin Films. The company is looking to continue their tradition of obscure and intriguing releases this spring, as they've announced three new Blu-rays for May that should please fans of multifaceted international horror.

Announced on their Facebook page, Severin Films' May Blu-ray releases include Satan's Slave (1980) aka Pengabdi Setan, a limited edition of The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971), and Horrors of Spider Island (1960). All three Blu-rays are scheduled to come out on May 26th.

You can check out the full release details, trailers, and cover art for the Blu-rays below, and be sure to visit Severin Films' website for more information, including details...

Severin Films have announced their May release lineup and they’re bringing genre fans a trio of goodies. The headliner is Sergio Martino‘s stunning classic, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh starring the giallo queen and frequent Martino collaborator, Edwige Fenech. Fenech plays the wife of an ambassador that discovers one of the men in her life is a killer in […]...

Genre festival to open with Bong Joon-ho’s ‘Parasite’.

Genre festival Night Visions has revealed the line-up for this year’s event, which will run from November 20-24 in Helsinki, Finland.

The opening film is Bong Joon-ho’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Parasite while other highlights include Rian Johnson’s whodunnit Knives Out and Vaclav Marhoul’s World War II drama The Painted Bird, starring Udo Kier, Harvey Keitel and Stellan Skarsgard.

The festival will celebrate the work of Us director Jack Sholder by screening three of his 1980s horror films: The Hidden, Alone in the Dark and A...

In regards to the dark, the world of giallo is still one that I’m fumbling around in, trying to navigate my way through countless films and directors. As I settle in, I’ve started to make out shapes and patterns; that is, until I saw Sergio Martino’s All the Colors of the Dark (1972), a trippy, surreal head trip beautifully restored in an overflowing Blu-ray from Severin Films. My eyes are still adjusting to what they’ve seen.

I’m still fumbling around with Martino, though; other than this, I’ve only seen Torso (’73) and Screamers (’79), and I enjoyed the latter’s high adventure/splattery mermen over the straight ahead straight razor-isms of the former. Colors is easily my favorite of the three, as it offers a heady mix of hallucinogenic horror with a giallo backbone, all done with ferocious style.

Pity poor Jane (Edwige Fenech – The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh...

For this final week of home media releases in January, I hope everyone has prepared their wallets, because we have a lot to get excited about, especially if you’re a cult film fan.

Vinegar Syndrome is doing the dark lord’s work this Tuesday, as they are putting out four different titles, including Cutting Class, Splatter University, There’s Nothing Out There, and Uninvited. Severin is celebrating giallo filmmaking with their releases of All the Colors of Giallo and All the Colors of the Dark, Scream Factory is showing some love to Screamers, and if you missed it in theaters, you can also finally catch up with Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria on Blu-ray this week as well.

Other notable releases for January 29th include a new edition of Willow, Save Yourself, and Dead Silence (1989).

All the Colors of Giallo

'Giallo' is Italian for 'yellow', the color of the lurid...

Bertrand Mandico's The Wild Boys (2017), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing September 14 – October 14, 2018 as a Special Discovery.French director Bertrand Mandico shared with us the films he thought about before, during, and after making his feature debut, The Wild Boys:ISLANDSThe Saga of AnatahanMatango: Attack of the Mushroom People: The island and its fauna and flora, the mushroom-men, the sinking. A sublime film.Lord Jim: The tempest sequence in the opening and the cowardice of Lord Jim—an amazing film.A High Wind in Jamaica: For the confusion of the captain played by Antony Quinn, the phlegm of James Coburn and the beauty of his young crew.The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (Lewis John Carlino, 1976): For the erotic figure of the Captain (Kris Kristofferson) and its clique of violent boys.Remorques: A romantic and captivating film with sequences...

Tuesday, July 17th looks to be another busy day for home media releases, as we have a rather interesting blend of titles, both new and old. As far as recent flicks go, Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare, The Housemaid, Rampage, and You Were Never Really Here are the big highlights of this week’s Blu-ray and DVD debuts. And for those of you who are looking to expand your cult cinema collections, Arrow Video is keeping busy with new HD releases of The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail and Doom Asylum.

Other notable releases for July 17th include the new EndoArm edition of Terminator 2 in 4K, the Church of the Damned/Bad Magic double feature Blu-ray, Amityville Prison, and The Antithesis.

Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare

Lucy Hale (Pretty Little Liars) and Tyler Posey (Teen Wolf) lead the cast of Blumhouse's Truth or Dare, a supernatural thriller from Blumhouse Productions.

Shameless Films in the UK continues their commitment to sharing the best in classic sleaze with their new UK Blu-ray premiere of Sergio Martino's Torso. The company has recently released two of Martino's other classic giallo films on Blu-ray - The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and All the Colours of the Dark, both starring Edwige Fenech - but this is probably one of the most eagerly awaited film from the director's filmography to hit the British Isles in HD. The film was released on Blu-ray back in 2011 in the Us by Blue Underground, and I reviewed it then: Sergio Martino's film mines the primordial brain, mingling sex and violence in a very explicit way, more explicit than most, even, and creates a very...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Review by Roger Carpenter

Sergio Martino was a journeyman Italian director who averaged around three films a year into the early nineties and who worked in many different genres including documentaries (Naked and Violent), spaghetti westerns (A Man Called Blade), poliziotteschi (The Violent Professionals), sex comedies (Sex with a Smile), and action films (The Great Alligator; Slave of the Cannibal God; 2019: After the Fall of New York). But this blue-collar filmmaker is arguably most famous for his early seventies gialli such as The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail, All the Colors of the Dark, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, and Torso. Each of these gialli films are–rightly so–considered genuine classics of the genre and fans of these films each have their favorite Sergio Martino giallo. However, his final giallo of this period (he...

Sergio Martino’s The Suspicious Death Of A Minor (1975) will be available on Blu-ray September 26th from Arrow Video

In the wake of the success of Dario Argento’s ground-breaking giallo The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, numerous other directors stepped forward to try their hand at these lurid murder-mysteries. At the forefront was Sergio Martino (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, Torso), whose sensual 70s thrillers starring Edwige Fenech and George Hilton are widely celebrated as some of the best the genre has to offer. The final of Martino’s six gialli, The Suspicious Death of a Minor combines conventional giallo trappings with elements of the then flourishing ‘poliziotteschi’ crime thrillers. Claudio Cassinelli (What Have They Done to Your Daughters?) stars as undercover cop Paolo Germi, on the trail of a Milanese criminal outfit following the brutal murder of an underage prostitute. But a killer-for-hire is also on the prowl,...

Well, horror fans, we have only a few releases on hand for November 29th. So this Tuesday, get ready for the Blu-ray and DVD arrival of Fede Alvarez’s latest excursion in terror, Don’t Breathe.

Vinegar Syndrome will also be releasing the kung-fu horror film Death Machines on home media this Tuesday, and Raro Video USA will unleash Umberto Lenzi's cannibal film Sacrifice! on Blu-ray as well.

It looks like the horror Blu-ray and DVD front picks back up again on December 6th, so be sure to keep an eye out for more titles next week.

Death Machines (Vinegar Syndrome, Blu-ray / DVD Combo Pack)

Madame Lu has created three 'Death Machines', a trio of martial arts experts who have been injected with a special serum, turning them into mindless zombies, capable only of murder, at Lu's command. Tasked with eliminating her enemies,...

Top Ten Scream Queens: Barbara Steele, who both emitted screams and made others do same, is in a category of her own. Top Ten Scream Queens Halloween is over until next year, but the equally bewitching Day of the Dead is just around the corner. So, dead or alive, here's my revised and expanded list of cinema's Top Ten Scream Queens. This highly personal compilation is based on how memorable – as opposed to how loud or how frequent – were the screams. That's the key reason you won't find listed below actresses featured in gory slasher films. After all, the screams – and just about everything else in such movies – are as meaningless as their plots. You also won't find any screaming guys (i.e., Scream Kings) on the list below even though I've got absolutely nothing against guys who scream in horror, whether in movies or in life. There are...

Throughout the history of cinema there are countless adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s work, from D. W. Griffith’s early take on The Sealed Room through Roger Corman’s series of lo-fi refittings of the 60s up to last year’s attempt to adapt The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether in Stonehearst Asylum. Looking back at two loose Italian adaptations of Poe’s classic horror short The Black Cat, Arrow’s new Edgar Allan Poe’s Black Cats set sees a towering duo of giallo cinema auteurs picking and choosing their favorite elements of the original tale and molding them to their supernatural, blade-wielding will with blood-spilling glee and cinematic aplomb.

Released in 1972 on the tail end of a trio of more classically typified gialli in The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail and All the Colors of the Dark, Sergio Martino...

Kino Lorber brings the 1967 spaghetti Western Face to Face to Blu-ray this month, one of director Sergio Sollima’s most notable titles, previously released on DVD as a box-set with the two other titles in Sollima’s trilogy The Big Gundown (1966) and Run, Man, Run (1968). Noted for imbuing his work with a bit of actual social and historical context, there’s a bit more substance than usual for a film relegated to the periphery of a movement dominated by a mere handful of notable names. Though it’s ultimately not at the same level as iconic works by Sergio Leone and hasn’t reached the same level of reappraisal as several other retroactively recuperated directors, it features more nuanced characterizations in its complex narrative structure than is usually evident in other titles of the era.

Boston professor Brad Fletcher (Gian Maria Volonte) is suffering from poor health, and is forced...

In 1973, after prolific director Sergio Martino made three formative giallo films — The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, All the Colors of the Dark, and Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key — the filmmaker created a giallo-slasher hybrid that conflated sex, violence, and art. Torso was released a decade before Dario Argento’s Tenebre, but…

The post The Beyond: Sergio Martino’s Torso appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

Scariest movies ever made: The top 100 horror films according to the Chicago Film Critics (photo: Janet Leigh, John Gavin and Vera Miles in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho') I tend to ignore lists featuring the Top 100 Movies (or Top 10 Movies or Top 20 Movies, etc.), no matter the category or criteria, because these lists are almost invariably compiled by people who know little about films beyond mainstream Hollywood stuff released in the last decade or two. But the Chicago Film Critics Association's list of the 100 Scariest Movies Ever Made, which came out in October 2006, does include several oldies — e.g., James Whale's Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein — in addition to, gasp, a handful of non-American horror films such as Dario Argento's Suspiria, Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre, and F.W. Murnau's brilliant Dracula rip-off Nosferatu. (Check out the full list of the Chicago Film Critics' top 100 horror movies of all time.

A Woman in Trouble and a Man in Need: Forzani & Cattet Return Prove a Force to Reckon With

Directing duo Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani follow-up up their 2009 debut Amer with another hit from the giallo pipe, The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, a visual masterpiece that will confuse, confound, and hypnotize you as it’s one of the most visually extravagant explorations of the gaudy and grotesque ever committed to film. Certain to be rejected by mainstream sensibilities, Cattet and Forzani go beyond just another stylistic homage to create a creepshow that actually surpasses its predecessors with its expert level of artistic and technical prowess.

The plot seems to be transparently simple, yet spurts into a labyrinthine odyssey of revolving tangents and alternate perspectives that make it seem anything but. Dan Kristensen (Klaus Tange), a Danish man living in Brussels, returns to his art nouveau apartment from...

Welcome to the future where you will hunt for your food in gang war ridden streets of a major metropolitan area! You and your buddy are just trying to get by but shit is getting way too real. You decide it’s time to leave the city and go to an island in the Atlantic. It must be better than the Bronx Warriors-like survival of the fittest living conditions. Does this sound like something that might be called The Fishemen and Their Queen? Does it sounds like the sequel to Island of the Fishmen as directed by the great Italian director Sergio Martino, one of the savviest and well-known of the horror men from the booted country? This guy has directed the Gialli of your nightmares. It doesn’t sound like a movie he would make at all, does it? Well, he did, and if you think the title is bad just you wait.

An ambassador, Neil Wardh (Alberto de Mendoza), and his wanton wife, Julie (Edwige Fenech), arrive in Vienna for business in the midst of a vicious killing spree that has everyone in a panic. Julie's return to the city rouses memories of former lover Jean (Ivan Rassimov) and their sadomasochistic relationship. It also helps that her husband is utterly dull, busy, and inattentive. The restless Julie has a dark secret that only Jean knows about: blood frightens her, but it also arouses her unimaginably. Julie's cruel ex-boyfriend stalks her and sends unnerving love letters, but she finds comfort at swinging parties and in the arms of another man, George (George Hilton). As the city's body count begins to rise, and a mysterious caller threatens to expose her adulterous and kinky secrets, Julie suspects she's next and that Jean is behind the murders and madness. She escapes to Spain with George for a fresh start,...

Thanks to the easy flow of information over the Internet, the fanzine is becoming something of a dinosaur, but for many of us, zines were an early and much-loved gateway to information and subcultures we would not have otherwise been exposed to.

For those of you reading who are still in your younger years, the fanzine revolves around a very simple idea: Find something you are obsessed with, write a bunch of stuff about it, cut and paste your fingers to the bone, photocopy, staple, distribute the booklet with your own hard-earned funds, and hope that other folks out there who are just as obsessed as you are find it and love it too.

The horror zine is unique in the fact that many early Diy titles grew into larger publications, including Cinefantastique. Today’s genre zines are less-frequently produced and tough to find, but there are many intrepid zine...

Edwige Fenech, Barbara Stanwyck, Lee Patrick: Top Ten Scream Queens [See previous post: "Janet Leigh, Fay Wray Scream: Top Ten Scream Queens." Photo: Edwige Fenech image in The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh.] 3 - Edwige Fenech, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1972) An ideal entry for any Halloween Movie Series: A mix of kinky sex, suspense thriller, and more kinky sex, Sergio Martino’s giallo The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (aka Blade of the Ripper or The Next Victim!) makes most Alfred Hitchcock [...]...

The term “giallo” initially referred to cheap yellow paperbacks (printed American mysteries from writers such as Agatha Christie), that were distributed in post-fascist Italy. Applied to cinema, the genre is comprised of equal parts early pulp thrillers, mystery novels, with a willingness to gleefully explore onscreen sex and violence in provocative, innovative ways. Giallos are strikingly different from American crime films: they value style and plot over characterization, and tend towards unapologetic displays of violence, sexual content, and taboo exploration. The genre is known for stylistic excess, characterized by unnatural yet intriguing lighting techniques, convoluted plots, red herrings, extended murder sequences, excessive bloodletting, stylish camerawork and unusual musical arrangements. Amidst the ‘creative kill’ set-pieces are thematic undercurrents along with a whodunit element, usually some sort of twist ending. Here is my list of the best giallo films – made strictly by Italian directors, so don’t expect Black Swan, Amer or...

For the horror buff, Fall is the best time of the year. The air is crisp, the leaves are falling and a feeling of death hangs on the air. Here at Sound on Sight we have some of the biggest horror fans you can find. We are continually showcasing the best of genre cinema, so we’ve decided to put our horror knowledge and passion to the test in a horror watching contest. Each week in October, Ricky D, James Merolla and Justine Smith will post a list of the horror films they have watched. By the end of the month, the person who has seen the most films wins. Prize Tbd.

Justine Smith (11 viewings) Total of 31 viewings

Purchase

Spider Baby or The Maddest Story Ever Told

Directed by Jack Jill

This movie is very fun, not so much scary as gleefully depraved. The film revels in it’s childhood attitude,...

Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh) (1970)

A.K.A. Blade of the Ripper

Directed by Sergio Martino

Inspired by the often-imitated Les Diaboliques, director Sergio Martino (also known as Italy’s Roger Corman) proves once again why he does giallo better than most. Starring giallo queen Edwige Fenech (What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood Doing on Jennifer’s Body, The Case of the Bloody Iris, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, and many more) and George Hilton (The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail, The West Is Tough, Amigo), the film is a fashioned and engrossing thriller with impressive Italian locations, beautiful authentic interiors, awe-inspiring cinematography (by Emilio Foriscot and Floriano Trenker) and excellent sound design (Note the use of a heartbeat effect during a tense life-or-death scene is fantastic). A number of elements have been lifted...

Lots of goodies are hitting DVD and Blu-ray this week including the better than it should have been Saw VI, the second installment of Matt Pizzolo's Godkiller: Walk Among Us, Frank Henenlotter's return to form Bad Biology, and our pick of the week, Canada's claustrophobic Pontypool.

Also on tap are some oldies but goodies like Blade of the Ripper and Doctor Death Seeker of Souls, horror/sci-fi hybrid InAlienable, and the original Toolbox Murders making is bow on Blu-ray. For something a little different, there's a documentary on Alice in Wonderland that examines the coming together of the writer (Lewis Carroll) and his muse, the society they inhabited, and their relationship that is still the subject of much controversy, as well as the effect it had on their subsequent lives. Included on the disc are the 1903 and 1915 versions of Alice.

Happy shopping!

- Debi Moore

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