Blood And Black Lace (1964)

Continuing the exploration of Italian director Mario Bava’s films, I watched Blood and Black Lace (1964), which really impressed upon me how creepy red mannequins are. A stylish murder mystery set in a fashion house where models are killed one by one. The use of bold colours, wind effects and shadows is pretty great, definitely […]

The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970)

The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970; L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo) is Dario Argento’s first film as a director and one of the first examples of the giallo genre (if the info on the back of the Blu-Ray box is correct). This was an entertaining mystery thriller with Hitchcock and Blow Up as clear […]

The Fourth Man (1983)

I realised I’d never seen any pre-Hollywood Paul Verhoeven Dutch movies so I sat down with The Fourth Man (1983), which is a pretty nutty erotic thriller in the post-Hitchcock mould. Better known to me as the go-to actor for European dodgy guys in American movies like No Mercy and The Fugitive, Jeroen Krabbé plays […]

Beyond The Black Rainbow (2010)

Beyond The Black Rainbow (2010) was made before Stranger Things, and is like one plot strand of that show slowed down by fifty times into an arty music video perfect for projecting at a music show. A drugged patient/prisoner (Eva Allan) displays psychic abilities even as she is being interviewed/taunted by a smarmy, smirking doctor […]

All The Colors Of The Dark (1972)

Further exploring the giallo thriller genre and loving the Bruno Nicolai soundtrack, I watched Lindsay Hallam’s recommendation, All The Colors Of The Dark (1972; Tutti i colori del buio). Edwige Fenech plays a woman, Jane, plagued by nightmares based on traumatic incidents in her past – her hunk husband (George Hinton) is unsure about her […]