1970s
Plot: onward Christian psychos! When Wes Craven directed The Last House on the Left (1972) he couldn’t possibly have foreseen the sheer deluge of imitations it would spawn almost overnight. Interestingly, most of these imitations tended to come from Italy. There was only one Grecian but it was so
2010s
Plot: three friends order custom-built robot girlfriends. Hilarity ensues! For the last quarter century Hong Kong producer, director, screenwriter, and actor Jing Wong has been a force to be reckoned with. His natural affinity in catering to audience tastes and his eye for female beauty made him one of the
1960s
Plot: Praetorian plans to overthrow increasingly despotic Caesar. Alfonso Brescia may never be remembered as one of the great Italian exploitation directors but his reputation as a director of competent, albeit seldomly inspired, genre pieces made him a worthy footnote in the country’s cinematic history. That reputation had to
1970s
Plot: female shape-shifting snake avenges the death of her lover. Nagin (or Female Serpent) is a bona fide classic from the Golden Age of Hindi horror and a thinly-veiled reworking of a French arthouse favourite from the decade before. Decked out with a star-studded cast including Yogeeta Bali, Mumtaz, Femina
1960s
Plot: scientific expedition is stalked by unseen monster in cave. Sound Of Horror (released domestically as El sonido de la muerte, and El sonido prehistórico, or Sound Of Death or The Prehistoric Sound, respectively) would probably be just another Iberian horror obscurity if it weren’t for the presence of
1960s
Plot: who’s the mysterious woman in Anna’s dreams? Is she dead or alive? As with all things in life, timing is everything. Metempsyco (or Metempsychosis, released in France as Le manoir maudit or The Cursed Mansion, in Germany as Die Bestie von Schloß Monte Christo or The Beast
1970s
Plot: some siblings scheme, others kill for their inheritance... Just like you don’t need to go to Texas for a good chainsaw massacre, likewise you don’t need to go to Argentina or Mexico to have something resembling a 90-minute pilot to a very deranged unproduced telenovella. Blood Mania
1970s
Plot: journalist and his wife explore French countryside and find witches. La Notte dei Dannati (or The Night Of the Damned, alternatively Il Castello dei Saint Lambert or The Castle of Saint Lambert – and Les nuits sexuelles or Night of the Sexual Demons when it was presented at Cannes Film
2010s
Plot: scholar is fascinated with a beautiful girl who might, or might not, be human. Ghost Story: Bride with Painted Skin (聊齋新編之畫皮新娘) is not, as the garble of an international title would have you believe, a mix between A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), The Bride With White Hair (1993) and
1980s
Plot: pregnant woman is murdered… and comes to haunt her wrongdoers. Ghost with Hole (for once a pretty accurate translation of the original Sundel Bolong, released alternatively as Devil Woman internationally) is, if not the height of Indonesian horror, than at least one of its more enduring and recognizable entries.
1960s
Plot: how far will a woman go to save her dying husband? Every country does its own regional spin on an established formula. Madame Death (La señora Muerte back at home in Mexico) offered a Latin American spin on a familiar and well-known plot. Armed with enough mad science, hysterical
1980s
Plot: in fascist Italy thirty-something Teresa awakens dormant sexual desires. Giovanni “Tinto” Brass revived classy soft erotica in a time when the genre was considered all but extinct. From somewhere around the mid-sixties up until the late seventies the subgenre survived primarily thanks to the exploitation industry. In Italy erotica