1960s
Plot: the night Muriel (and her lover) came out of the grave. The crown jewel in Barbara Steele’s conquest of Mediterranean horror cinema is in all likelihood this, Nightmare Castle, Mario Caiano’s epitome of gothic horror perfection. In Nightmare Castle (released back at home as Amanti d'
1950s
Plot: colonists discover a white girl living in the jungles of Kenya. The noble savage is a literary convention as old as time. After the Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller in the thirties and forties had made Edgar Rice Burroughs’ most enduring creation one of the heroes of the big
1980s
Plot: Waldemar Daninsky faces Countess Elisabeth Báthory… again! El Retorno del Hombre Lobo (or The Return Of the Wolfman, released in North America as The Craving in 1985 and, at a later stage, internationally as Night of the Werewolf) was the first of two El Hombre Lobo episodes produced during
1970s
Plot: two sisters inherit a mansion and convert it into a pension. Hilarity ensues! In the post-La Liceale (1975) years things weren’t always easy for Gloria Guida. No doubt la Guida had the luxury of picking the roles she was interested in but the general quality of the sex
1980s
Plot: the Shelleys visit Byron and compete to write the scariest story they can. Even the most talented and serious of directors like to unwind from time to time and indulge themselves in what by all accounts should be considered pulp. For British filmmaker Ken Russell that was Gothic. To
2010s
Plot: who or what lurks within the darker bowels of the English countryside? The 1970s were a decade of constant and grand innovation in horror and exploitation. No other subgenre went through greater evolution than the vampire movie. Hammer, the British film studio that once led the charge in revitalizing
1990s
Plot: abused woman is impregnated by alien and becomes its murderous host. France was absolutely the last place you’d expect to find a genuine horror gem at the dawn of the decade that all but killed the genre. A simple concept can go a very long way when executed
2010s
Plot: scholar falls in love with a beautiful girl who might, or might not, be human. The Extreme Fox (非狐外传) is about the last thing you’d expect from actor-producer-director Wellson Chin Sing-Wai. Chin started out as an assistant director under famed action choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping and actor-producer-director Sammo Hung
1980s
Plot: kept woman is targeted by psychotic killer in luxury high-rise tenement. Amidst the mid-80s slasher deluge Mexico contributed an old-fashioned suspense and terror flick in the British and American tradition that feels a decade older than it is. It might not have the sheer weirdness of The Mansion of
2010s
Plot: vigilante cop purges town of criminals and other undesirables. In the eight years separating War Machine (2010) and Death Kiss (2018) there has been exponential evolution in the work of California writer-director Rene Perez. Not only did he helm the lucrative The Dead and the Damned (2011-2015) and Playing
1980s
Plot: not everything is what it seems in this retirement home…. La Nuit de la Mort! (or Night Of Death! back at home, re-released in 1988 by Colombus Video as the more colorful Les Griffes de la Mort or The Claws Of Death to fully exploit the advent of the
2010s
Plot: Spaces Babes crash-land on Earth. Hilarity ensues! Apparently quite a few people are longing for the halcyon days when exploitation cinema catered to every discerning taste that Hollywood couldn’t or wouldn’t. In this day and age of superheroes and multiverses something like this is a breath of