‘80s Italian horror TV movies aren’t always the most
memorable and have a tendency to be a little underwhelming in comparison to the
classic gialli and Eurohorror films from the ‘60s and ‘70s golden era. By the
late ‘80s, we were at, or were even beyond, the tail end of the horror boom, with
many Italian directors making movies more for television. Lamberto Bava directed a lot of TV movies throughout his career. His
‘80s horror TV movies paid a lot of homage to the classic gialli and horror
films that sculpted the genre like The Bird
with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Inferno
(1980), House by the Cemetery (1981),
his father’s Black Sunday (1960),
and even his own Demons (1985). A
lot of times his TV films could be a little mediocre and almost feel like near-pointless
rehashes, like Demons 3: The Ogre (1988), but Lamberto Bava also had a tendency to
catch you by surprise with TV movies like Demons
5: The Devil’s Veil (1989), the hilarious and ‘80s satirical Dinner with a Vampire (1989), and the (previously)
hard-to-find School of Fear.
Aside
from being an interesting take on the evil kid trope, School of Fear / Il gioko does present
a lot to chew on, and like Demons 5: The
Devil’s Veil and Macabre (1980)
is a little more of what I prefer from director Lamberto Bava. Don’t get me wrong, Demons and A Blade in the Dark (1983) are awesome
too, but I honestly lamented for a time that we never really got something as
twisted, different, and well-made as Macabre.
It’s still no Macabre, but School of Fear feels a little more in
the right direction towards something twisted and different.
Paul
Naschy had a lot of success in a wide range of film genres,
playing an even wider range of characters, but he is mostly remembered for his
brand of gritty and beautiful Spanish gothic horror films. These movies had their
low budget and pacing issues, but there was still something so attractive about
them, with a reverence for the classic monsters, most especially the
wolfman, and the inclusion of plenty of female vampires and femme fatales in
general. Plus, with his charisma and sincerity to the material, it’s always a
joy just seeing Naschy; whenever he
makes an entrance in these movies, he causes viewers’ eyes to light up like
they’re seeing a dear old friend. For me, it was always interesting to see what
a zombie movie, or a mummy movie, or a cannibal movie, or even a giallo would
be like after getting the Paul Naschy
treatment.
It was my tendency to read other people’s takes on Paul Naschy movies, be they positive or
negative, that inspired me to eventually take up the quill to see if I’d have
anything interesting to contribute as a genre film blogger.
With Count Dracula’s Great Love, a costume
horror drama with a satiable amount of violence and eroticism that according to
Naschy in his memoirs was a critic
and box office success,* we have one of my favorite classic monsters done by one
of my favorite filmmakers. It was directed by Javier Aguirre (Hunchback of
the Morgue) but was written by Paul Naschy
who also stars as Dr. Wendell Marlow and (forgive the spoiler) Count Dracula. I
believe it is also the first in a short but notable line of horror films with Naschy and actor Victor Barrera (sometimes credited as Vic Winner or Victor Alcazar);
the other three Naschy movies with Barrera are Hunchback of the Morgue (1973), Horror Rises from the Tomb (1973), and Vengeance of the Zombies (1973).
With his first four full length films, between 1968 and 1971,
Jean Rollin forged his own brand of
erotic and poetic vampirism. The one of a kind auteur painted over the ‘in
vogue’ gothic horror tropes, changed up the rules, and gave his vampires reign
over dark and melancholic vistas far removed from the familiar world. The experience
ends up being fantastically vampiric while also seeming at odds with the classic
notion of a vampire movie.
Rollin
would shed his brand of tragic vampire lore for a time to experiment with new
dark takes on death (The Iron Rose (1973)),
adventure, and revenge (The Demoniacs
(1974)). To compensate for box office failures, and in order to have steady
work between more personal projects, Rollin
also directed several porn films under a different name (Michel Gentil).
In 1975, Rollin returned to vampires with the
exceptional Lips of Blood, which
also ended up being a commercial failure, and so to try and bring in money, Lips of Blood was reformatted with new
hardcore pornographic inserts and transformed into the more exploitative movie Suce moi vampire (1976). For me, the
existence of Suce moi vampire
undermines the significance and spirit of Lips
of Blood, and, kind of similar to my feelings on House of Exorcism (1975) (the reworking of Bava’s masterpiece Lisa and
the Devil (1973)), I don’t have much interest in seeking it out.
The onset of the Halloween season this year has really put
me on a black-and-white horror kick for some reason. I’m looking forward to
checking out some classics I haven’t seen yet, such as City of the Dead (1960) and Eyes
Without a Face (1960), and revisiting some favorites like Carnival of Souls (1962) and Night of the Living Dead (1968).
I used
to approach black-and-white movies apprehensively, thinking that they would
likely be a boring chore to sit through. I missed out on discovering a lot of
classics when I was younger with this mindset, a mindset that surprises me
considering that I had always been able to enjoy black-and-white TV-shows as a
kid like Lassie and The Three Stooges, which happened to give
me the false perception that the world must’ve been in black-and-white back
then. I had always preferred color, but nowadays I really have no preference.
There’s something both oppressive and romantic about black-and-white
cinematography, a separate experience with its own charm that I don’t think is
inferior to color cinematography. What finally gave me a taste for
black-and-white film and caused me to not see it as a diminished experience due
to technological limitation was Mario
Bava’s Black Sunday (1960),
which also turned my interest to the black-and-white Italian horrors of the
‘60s that I probably would’ve had no interest in otherwise.
After realizing film was her
true calling, the first lady of Czech cinema Věra Chytilová enrolled in
the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) in
1957. At the time, she was the only woman at the school and was faced with
resistance. She was pushed back, but she wanted to direct and had ambitions to
make different kinds of movies. Chytilová recalls potentially upsetting the directors at the academy when she
told them the reason she wanted to study was because she didn’t like the films
they made, feeling that they were predictable and arranged. When the Academy
wanted to throw her out, it was a major blow for her that resulted in depression
and a suicide attempt. She ultimately resisted being driven out and graduated,
in the process directing successful medium length films Ceiling (1961) (of which she also wrote) and A Bagful of Fleas (1962). A
Bagful of Fleas and her first feature length film as director Something Different (1963) both won
film critics awards.
Chytilová married cinematographer Jaroslav Kucera (Morgiana 1972); they worked well together and collaborated on The Restaurant the World (1965), Daisies (1966), and Fruit of Paradise (1970).
Daisies is Chytilová’s most popular and well-known film. It is a
staple in the Czech New Wave movement that’s a fun, technically impressive film
with an unconventional narrative about two young, disorderly female leads sticking-it-to-the-man,
with copious amounts of style and entertainment ensuing. The movie is supposed
to be a cautionary tale on the consequences of destructive behavior, but for
me, it’s one of those films you fall in love with and get hooked on.
When it comes to the unique definitive Renato Polselli experience of histrionics, eroticism, violence, and
sadomasochism, movies like Delirium
(1972), The Reincarnation of Isabel (1972), and even The Truth According to Satan (1972) are the best examples of Polselli films that have
created a small but loyal fanbase. These have long been some of my favorite
cult films, but I also adore the romantic black and white early Italian horror
efforts from Polselli The Vampire and the Ballerina (1960)
and The Monster of The Opera (1964).
The seed for this auteur’s characteristic style of madness and set spectacles
was planted in Monster of the Opera,
the film itself still planted in the fun dance-meets-classic-monsters gimmick
featured in Vampire and the Ballerina,
but something wildly unhinged was taking shape. The entertaining delirium, screaming
mad characters, and disorienting editing that is Polselli’s signature would essentially be fully realized in Delirium and Reincarnation, but for the longest time there was a missing piece
of the filmography that Polselli fans
were literally deprived of for many, many years, a once lost film
called Mania.
Sanitized by the
censors and given a limited theatrical run in 1974, Mania quickly disappeared and was long considered lost until a 35-mm print surfaced in 2007 in a film archive in Rome, Cinema Trevi – Cineteca
Nazionale. It was going to be released on DVD by No Shame soon after, but they
went out of business before that could happen. Miraculously a crude version of Mania showed up on YouTube without
English subtitles back in September of last year. Thankfully, just recently,
Terence linked me to a decent version with subs (which is also now on YouTube),
and I honestly now feel like a significant void in my life has been filled.
I’m not much into demonology; I only remember a couple names
of demonic entities off the top of my head, like Beelzebub, Belial, and
Astaroth, but I had only heard about the demon Byleth in reference to the
Italian horror film Byleth – The Demon
of Incest (1972), and with the title to go off of, I pretty much thought of
Byleth as some sort of ghastly, incest inducing demon. I tried to look into it
a little, but other than this film, I found very little relating Byleth to
incest. The connection of the theme of incest to Byleth in this film is perhaps
more in reference to the belief that the demonically possessed display sexually
deviant behavior.
As far as lore goes, the demon Byleth (sometimes spelled Beleth
or Bilet) is a monarch of Hell and a fallen angel. He rides a pale horse and
commands eighty-five legions of demons. The sounds of trumpets and melodies
precedes his presence when he is conjured. His pale horse suggests he could
possibly be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death.
When summoned, Byleth
will test the courage and worthiness of the conjuror by appearing most
intimidating, frightful, and extremely pissed off, and if they are too
inexperienced and unprepared, the ritual will likely result in the conjuror’s
death (although it’s said that Byleth can be softened with a bottle of wine). If
through all manner of advanced esoteric ritual, they manage to subdue Byleth,
he reveals his true form, which is supposed to be that of a beautiful young
girl who has the power to make someone fall in love, kind of like a love genie.
For me, The Devil’s
Wedding Night is kind of like a Dracula movie but with Rosalba Neri playing Dracula, which is just a prepossessing idea. However,
that’s not quite what it is, as it plays more like a spinoff, fanfic, or sequel
to Dracula, where Count Dracula is the stuff of legend, with his power being
the focus of archeological research. It’s interesting that in the film’s story Edgar Allan Poe seems to be an upcoming
new sensation, which sets it around the first half of the 19th century, making
it predate the events in Bram Stoker’s
novel that occur around the 1890s. So, The
Devil’s Wedding Night could actually be a prequel to Dracula. I mean, who
was that mysterious smirking man in the woods, at the tavern, and on the castle
grounds we kept seeing? The mysterious man is a nice touch who’s most likely a
servant to the ring, but there’s nothing ruling out that he could have been
Dracula the whole time, perhaps a powerless Dracula who needs the black mass wedding ceremony to be reborn.
