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Stars: ‎ Edwige Fenech, Nino Castelnuovo, Erna Schürer, Solvi Stubing, Amanda, Franco Diogene, Femi Benussi, Lucio Como | Written by Andrea Bianchi, Massimo Felisatti | Directed by Andrea Bianchi

Strip Nude for Your Killer, directed by Andrea Bianchi, is a quintessential giallo film that adheres to the genre’s signature blend of eroticism, graphic violence, and intricate mystery. Originally released in 1975, this film encapsulates the lurid and sensationalist tendencies of giallo cinema, making it both a compelling and controversial entry in the genre.

The narrative revolves around a series of brutal murders targeting employees of a high-fashion modelling agency. The killer, dressed in motorcycle gear, executes victims with a mix of sadistic precision and sexual overtones, a hallmark of giallo films. The story’s structure follows the genre’s typical whodunit format, with a plethora of red herrings and an eventual unmasking of the killer that is both shocking and satisfying.

Bianchi’s...

With The Case of the Bloody Iris, director Giuliano Carnimeo and writer Ernesto Gastaldi constructed one of the quintessential giallo films from that genre’s peak period in the early 1970s. Though it may lack the operatic excesses of Dario Argento’s “Animal” trilogy, the 1972 film is meticulously assembled with a keen eye to visual stimulation, and conveys its commentary about matters of race and gender at an almost subliminal level. What’s more, the filmmakers knowingly tinker with some of the iconic tropes of the giallo.

The Case of the Bloody Iris’s narrative centers around a 20-story Genovese apartment complex of Brutalist architectural design. Most of the action takes place in three neighboring flats. These settings emphasize the alienation of modern urban existence, as well as the kind of creeping paranoia that stems from living packed in tiny cubes on top of each other. The opening set piece...

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats have announced a new album, Nell’ Ora Blu, arriving May 10th via Rise Above Records.

The 19-track opus is effectively a double-album and promises to be the most ambitious offering from the British doom band to date.

Previous Uncle Acid albums like Blood Lust, Mind Control, and The Night Creeper function like the aural equivalent of ’70s exploitation horror films, each with its own narrative arc. On Nell’ Ora Blu, the band stretch that concept to the limit, creating a seamless listening experience that blends the worlds of cinema and heavy psych.

“I know something like this might have limited appeal, but who cares?” said Uncle Acid mastermind Kevin Starrs. “Most of what we do has a limited appeal anyway! It’s just a real mix of different styles that I like. There are no singles or ‘hits’. Instead, it all just flows along one thing into the next.

Black Cats and Incest.

Last week we used our discussion of Mark Pellington’s The Mothman Prophecies to recover from our month-long theme on toxic masculinity, which included episodes on Funny Games, Deadgirl, Murder by Numbers and Hard Candy.

This week we’re diving back into the world of Giallo with prolific Italian director Sergio Martino‘s Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key (1972), which is truly the best title ever.

In the film, Irina (Anita Strindberg) is in an abusive marriage with Oliviero (Luigi Pistilli), her drunk womanizing writer husband. When his niece Floriana (Edwige Fenech) comes to visit, a plan is hatched to wreak revenge against the destitute author. As the film progresses, however, it’s no longer clear who is playing who.

Can Irina and Floriana trust each other? Or will the women turn on each other in madness and despair?

Be...

Adriana Chiesa, the pioneering Italian sales agent who has been a fixture at Cannes for 40 years, has sold her film library to Italy’s Minerva Pictures.

The 85-title Acek library comprises a broad mix of prominent works by revered directors such as Lina Wertmuller’s “Swept Away” (pictured) and “Summer Night With Greek Profile, Almond Eyes and a Scent of Basil” and cult movies including Lamberto Bava’s gonzo horror “Macabro,” revenge Western “Garringo” by Rafael Romero Merchant, and Asia Argento’s directorial debut, “Scarlet Diva,” on which Chiesa and Minerva chief Gianluca Curti jointly served as executive producers.

“I am particularly happy because I know that Gianluca appreciates the value of my library and will carry on its legacy with all the love and respect that it deserves,” Chiesa told Variety. She added that she will now continue her production activity, making documentaries such as “Water and Sugar: Carlo...

Italian auteur Vittorio De Sica triumphed at the Berlin Film Festival when his 1971 masterpiece “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” claimed the Golden Bear, on its way to the best foreign-language Oscar in 1972.

“Finzi” also earned Italian film and TV star Fabio Testi an Italian Golden Globe for best breakthrough actor. A half-century later, with over 100 credits on his resume, Testi remains active and game for parts that utilize his still stunning looks and hearty appetite for performing.

He’s also game for the role he seems destined to play in the Italian tabloids. A quick Google search of Testi’s current film and TV projects is dominated by stories – which Testi playfully plays along with – of current and past romantic adventures with women all over the globe.

Testi turns 82 this year and remains dedicated to two other passions beyond the aforementioned amorous actitivies: farming and acting.

“I did 102 movies with my name on them,...

Hello, everyone! We’re back with a brand new batch of home media releases, and this week’s assortment is an eclectic group. Code Red is showing some love to The Dead Pit and Arrow Video is keeping busy with their latest Giallo Essentials set and the 2-disc limited edition release of Mill of the Stone Women. Other titles headed home on December 14th include Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Amityville Vampire, Alone in the Woods, The Spanish Chainsaw Massacre, and Chicken’s Blood.

The Dead Pit

Dr. Ramzi (Danny Gochnauer), a deviant who enjoys torturing his patients, is killed by a fellow doctor and buried in the basement of a mental health facility. Twenty years later, the hospital is up and running again and a “Jane Doe” (Cheryl Lawson) arrives at the institute with amnesia. Upon her arrival, a major earthquake rocks the building and unearths the now undead Dr.

Arrow Video’s August films include a brilliantly original American indie comedy, a pair of out-there arthouse masterworks, a rediscovered 70s horror creepfest, a terrifying Korean ghost story, and definitive, collectable editions of an awe-inspiring science fiction blockbuster.

The releases will come in limited edition packaging, with beautiful new artwork, pristine restorations giving the films a new lease of life, brand new expert commentaries and feature-length documentaries,reversible sleeves, as well as goodies including fold-out posters, art cards, books and illustrated booklets.

First in August, Arrow Video presents the mind-blowing ‘acid-western’ El Topo, which shocked and bedazzled audiences upon its controversial original release, single-handedly inventing the American midnight movie phenomenon. A countercultural masterpiece which ingeniously combines iconic Americana symbolism with director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s own idiosyncratic surrealist aesthetic, El Topo is an incredible journey through nightmarish violence, mind-bending mysticism and awe-inspiring imagery. This era-defining film is now presented in a...

Most gialli are focused on the aesthetic, making sure all the black boxes are checked - black gloves, black hat, black, black, black – and that the tropes are trotted out in a fairly predictable (yet entertaining) fashion. Stemming from procedurals, it makes sense for a strong structure to support the weight of red herrings and redder victims. And then there’s The Case of the Bloody Iris (1972), a giallo that loves the form so much it can’t help but be affectionate towards it, resulting in something closer to comedy than horror. The result is surprising and wholly entertaining.

Released in Italy in August, The Case of the Bloody Iris (Original Italian title: Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer? Aka What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood Doing on Jennifer's Body? – a very giallo title if there ever was one) was met with positive reviews, especially...

[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!]

Happy Gialloween! The timing on this year’s theme is actually pretty perfect, because I have slowly begun dipping my toes into the giallo waters over the past few months. Once upon a time, giallo and Italian horror in general was a big “no” for me. It all seemed too weird and too unfocused. I just didn’t connect with Italian storytelling and would always wind up frustrated and bored.

But over time, I have come to warm to more loose, more abstract styles of storytelling, and decided to give it another go. And I really have been enjoying what I have been seeing. Sometimes age, life experience, or just changing tastes merit another chance on some of the art that you initially pushed away.

Over the past few months, I have watched (and enjoyed) films like Tenebrae, Don’t Torture a Duckling, Deep Red, and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage.

Slave of the Cannibal God

Blu ray

Code Red

1978/ 99 min.

Starring Ursula Andress, Stacy Keach

Cinematography by Giancarlo Ferrando

Directed by Sergio Martino

At the same moment the Korean War was ending and Eisenhower entered the White House, illustrator Samson Pollen found his niche; illuminating the fever dreams of suburban dads for action magazines from Man’s World to Stag. He enjoyed a long career and in 1978 he was handed an assignment right up his alley, a garish montage of anacondas, he-men and nearly-naked women. But his art for Slave of the Cannibal God turned out to be far from his best work. Blandly composed and indifferently executed, Pollen’s movie poster works best as a critique of the film itself.

Directed by Sergio Martino, this travelogue-cum-horror movie stars Ursula Andress, a paragon of beauty who built her brand on a supernatural physique and a come-hither gaze that might have inspired...

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 […]...

As the 1970s wore on and audiences began to tire of the tried and tested giallo formula popularized by the thrillers of Argento, Fulci and their contemporaries, filmmakers sought to reinvigorate the ailing movement by injecting elements from other genres. Some took inspiration from the then-burgeoning crime thriller movement, with tales of organised crime and corrupt police officials... while others decided to sex things up by crossing serial killer thrills with salacious softcore antics.

A spate of highly sexualized murders is rocking a prestigious Milanese fashion house. Ambitious photographer Magda and her on-off boyfriend, love rat Carlo, team up to crack the case. But, with t...

As the month of March continues to roll onwards, that means we have a brand new batch of Blu-rays and DVDs to look forward to this week, including a double dose of classic terrors from Scream Factory: The Witches (1966) and The Deadly Mantis. Arrow Video has put together an extensive Special Edition release for Strip Nude for Your Killer, and the indie horror film The Final Wish, featuring Lin Shaye, arrives on Tuesday as well.

Other March 19th home entertainment releases include Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Russian Bride, The Devil’s Restaurant, Crone Wood, and a Spiders triple feature set.

The Deadly Mantis

What’s worse than a horde of locusts? A gigantic man-eating praying mantis, released from a million years of deep, frozen sleep and ready to claw its way to world domination! This menacing insect kills everything in its path while scientists and military men work feverishly to stop it.

Exciting new for fans of 70s Italian horror films. Strip Nude For Your Killer (1975) will b available on Blu-ray March 19th From Arrow Video

As the 1970s wore on and audiences began to tire of the tried and tested giallo formula popularized by the thrillers of Argento, Fulci and their contemporaries, filmmakers sought to reinvigorate the ailing movement by injecting elements from other genres. Some took inspiration from the then-burgeoning crime thriller movement, with tales of organised crime and corrupt police officials… while others decided to sex things up by crossing serial killer thrills with salacious softcore antics.

A spate of highly sexualized murders is rocking a prestigious Milanese fashion house. Ambitious photographer Magda and her on-off boyfriend, love rat Carlo, team up to crack the case. But, with the motorcycle helmet-wearing killer clearing bearing a grudge against the agency s employees, it s surely only a matter of time...

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...

First they brought you The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh and then All the Colours of the Dark. Now, Shameless proudly presents giallo’s own royalty, the iconic Fenech-Hilton dream team, in their third sensuous outing: The Case of the Bloody Iris.

After two beautiful women are murdered in an apartment block, Jennifer (Edwige Fenech) and Marilyn (Paola Quattrini) move into the flat of one of the slaughtered girls. But before long, the unknown predatory pervert soon turns his salacious attentions to the gorgeous Jennifer. The list of suspects includes a woman and her deformed son, a crazy lesbian and even Jennifer’ s own lover.

Serenaded with Bruno Nicolai’s enrapturing score and featuring lush cinematography from Stelvio Massi, this long-sought-after 70s sleaze gem, directed by Giuliano Carnimeo (Ratman), will soon be available for your delectation, on a Shameless Blu-ray release presented in a 2K restored special edition for the first time ever.

Review by Roger Carpenter

Before Joe D’Amato became Joe D’Amato, he was Aristide Massaccesi, a respected cinematographer and camera operator. As such, he was largely responsible for the look of films ranging from low-budget spaghetti westerns to gialli such as Umberto Lenzi’s A Quite Place to Kill and, most famously, Massimo Dallamano’s What Have You Done to Solange. Massaccesi first co-directed several small films before directing the war film Heroes in Hell as well as the giallo Death Smiles on a Murderer, both in 1973.

But D’Amato, who would use his famous pseudonym for the first time in 1975, would become (in)famous for his extreme horror titles and adult films beginning in the late 70’s and continuing until his death in 1999. He is perhaps most famous for his string of over-the-top gorefests like Beyond the Darkness (Aka Buio Omega), Anthropophagus, and Absurd as well as his...

Old dogs and new tricks, that’s me, as I’ve never seen a Sergio Martino film until now. If Torso is to be my first, so be it; a fun giallo with copious amounts of strictly gratuitous nudity is nothing to scoff at, and UK boutique label Shameless Films lovingly stabs their way onto your video shelf.

I certainly know of Martino’s work; as I delve deeper into Italian horror I hear of All the Colors of the Dark and Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (both from ’72), mostly due to the vibrant titles and his even more vibrant leading lady, Edwige Fenech, whose stunning visage graces my eyeballs on a regular basis. (Gratzi, Sarah.) But beyond that, I really knew little before taking my first trip into Martinoville. And thanks to Shameless, I plan to pop in more often.

Here’s our setting,...

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...]...

By Adrian Smith

Julie Wardh (Edwige Fenech) is a woman who needs some time off men: she attempts to escape her sado-masochistic relationship with Jean (Ivan Rassimov) by marrying Neil Wardh (Alberto de Mendoza), an ambassador at the Italian embassy in Austria. But things are not that simple. Julie suffers from erotic nightmares, wherein she makes love to Jean whilst being showered in broken glass, but continues to proclaim her hatred for him to anyone that will listen, including jean himself. At a friend’s party, where women tear paper dresses from each other and wrestle naked, Julie meets the cool George (George Hilton) a man determined to seduce Mrs Wardh, regardless of her husband or complicated romantic history. He seems kind and he rides a motorbike, so it does not take Mrs Wardh long to fall for him.

Of course, this being a giallo, in the middle of this...

Guest Reviewer Lee Broughton is back, with another Italo Western double bill DVD review. Wild East’s ongoing Spaghetti Western Collection continues to grow and this double bill release is particularly welcome since it features two obscure and wholly idiosyncratic genre entries from 1969. Italian Western directors had found it relatively easy to appropriate key plot points and ideas from Sergio Leone’s Dollars films during the genre’s early years but when Leone’s sprawling, mega-budgeted, meta-Western Once Upon a Time in the West was released in 1968 it was clear that this was one genre entry that local filmmakers would not be able to easily emulate.

With scriptwriters and directors now essentially being forced to come up with their own ideas and generic trends, a new wave of Spaghetti Westerns were produced that effectively took the genre in a multitude of new directions. The two films featured here were part of that wave.

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,...

The UK's Shameless Films seem to have a particular fondness for the torture and torment of Italian film siren Edwige Fenech at the hands of giallo legend Sergio Martino; but then again, I can't really blame them. Fenech became one of the most recognizable - and indisputably beautiful - faces of the '70s giallo boom in Italy when she arrived on the scene. She starred in many a classic from this underground subgenre that has only recently begun to receive the kind of notice it deserved. While she worked with some of the most notorious filmmakers in the business in films that went on to become cult classics, like Andrea Bianchi's Strip Nude for Your Killer and Mario Bava's Five Dolls for an August Moon,...

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

Looking back on this still-young century makes clear that 2007 was a major time for cinematic happenings — and, on the basis of this retrospective, one we’re not quite through with ten years on. One’s mind might quickly flash to a few big titles that will be represented, but it is the plurality of both festival and theatrical premieres that truly surprises: late works from old masters, debuts from filmmakers who’ve since become some of our most-respected artists, and mid-career turning points that didn’t necessarily announce themselves as such at the time. Join us as an assembled team, many of whom were coming of age that year, takes on their favorites.

The torture scenes in writer-director Eli Roth’s Hostel openly evoked the 2003 Abu Ghraib photographs, which depicted United States military and Central Intelligence Agency personnel subjecting Iraqi prisoners to acts of profound cruelty and abuse. The film also addressed post-9/11 U.

Shudder will take viewers to the place that's "not as brightly lit" this Halloween season, as the 1980s anthology series Tales From the Darkside will be available to watch in its entirety on the horror streaming service beginning October 1st:

Press Release: New York, New York – September 26, 2016 – The AMC-backed streaming service, Shudder, is The entertainment destination for everything you need to watch this Halloween season. Whether you’re a hardcore horror fan or simply looking for the scariest films to celebrate this time of year, Shudder has something for everyone in its sweeping library, carefully curated by some of the top horror experts in the world.

As Halloween approaches, Shudder is expanding its database with a variety of new titles including cult favorites, blockbuster hits, and classic thrillers. Additionally, for the first time ever, Shudder will be offering horror TV series to complement its expansive film library.

Premiering October 20th...

★★★★☆ Anna Biller's The Love Witch is a movie aesthetes of kitsch will embrace with open arms. Not that the film's distinct look is mere window-dressing or getting by on camp charm alone. A political work of true authorship if ever there was one, Biller not only directed, she wrote the screenplay, she's the film's editor, its set decorator, served as the costume and production designer, and also found time to compose the music. All of it a striking success.

Samantha Robinson (who looks like giallo icon Edwige Fenech) is Elaine, a narcissistic young witch. Her new aim in life is to cut out all the hard work in relationships and make them perfect, so she won't ever be rejected again. On the hunt for Mr. Right, her philosophical outlook is a melange of staunch feminism - she wants control (not an unfair demand) - but the methods are anti-feminist...

Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key calls to mind what Orson Welles said of Paper Moon – “That title is so good, you shouldn’t even make the picture, you should just release the title!” For the first twenty or thirty minutes of Your Vice, I thought Welles’ advice especially apt. People keep dying in grisly ways around Oliviero (Luigi Pistilli), a failed writer who’s nonetheless held onto a pretty great mansion and is plenty creepy enough to be a rather obvious suspect. He regularly hosts parties for hippies as a way to amuse himself, feel connected to the kids, and provide a public platform from which he can get off on abusing his wife, Irina (Anita Strindberg). She’s timid, trapped in a hellish marriage, and genuinely terrified of Oliviero’s late mother’s cat (in her defense, the cat is named Satan...

A "lesser" Mario Bava is still a fountain of great filmmaking; and this annihilating melodrama sees a score of greedy folk wiped out at an island retreat, for fun and profit. Shot (and stabbed) through with Bava's visual imagination, it's a sexy, memorable murder thriller. With an authoritative Tim Lucas commentary. 5 Dolls for an August Moon Region B Blu-ray + Pal DVD Arrow Video (UK) 1970 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 81 min. / Street Date February 1, 2016 / 5 bambole per la luna d'agosto / Available from Amazon UK £14.99 Starring William Berger, Ira von Fürstenberg, Edwige Fenech, Howard Ross, Helena Ronee, Teodoro Corrà, Ely Galleani, Edith Meloni, Mauro Bosco, Maurice Poli Cinematography Antonio Rinaldi Production Designer Giuseppe Aldrovandi, Giulia Mafai Film Editor Mario Bava Original Music Piero Umiliani Writing credits Mario di Nardo Produced by Luigi Alessi Directed by Mario Bava

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The experts say that Mario Bava kicked off the giallo parade with his 1964 Blood and Black Lace...

Happy Friday, guys and welcome back for the ninth installment of Daily Dead’s 2015 Holiday Gift Guide. We’re now officially three weeks away from Christmas so let’s get right to today’s gift ideas, picked with horror and sci-fi fans in mind.

For today’s guide, we take a look at two books on very different subjects—Tremors and Giallo films—the recent expanded release of the Friday the 13th documentary Crystal Lake Memories, some Goosebumps gift ideas for the younger genre fans out there, the astonishingly great artwork featured at Printed in Blood, Horror Decor’s truly fun holiday items, and much more.

This year’s Holiday Gift Guide is being sponsored by Rlj Entertainment and their recent terrifying yuletide release, A Christmas Horror Story, and to help you guys get into the spirit of the season, we’ve put together 10 amazing prize packs filled with goodies,...

Happy Monday, everyone, and welcome back for the fifth installment of Daily Dead’s 2015 Holiday Gift Guide. Today, I wanted to mix things up so I’ve given you guys a bevy of graphic novel gift ideas to choose from, including two projects involving John Carpenter, two novelizations from Michael Dougherty, a new series featuring Rick and Morty and the deluxe edition of The Sandman: Overture (to name a few).

We’re also taking a look at the apparel from Tee No Evil, a variety of horror and pop culture-inspired Nail Wraps, the new Scooby-Doo Lego sets, and much more.

This year’s Holiday Gift Guide is being sponsored by Rlj Entertainment and their recent terrifying yuletide release, A Christmas Horror Story, and to help you guys get into the spirit of the season, we’ve put together 10 amazing prize packs filled with goodies, a t-shirt and your very...

Hell's Kitchen: Soul stew image likely from the 1922 Benjamin Christensen horror classic 'Häxan / Witchcraft Through the Ages.' Day of the Dead post: Cinema's Top Five Scariest Living Dead We should all be eternally grateful to the pagans, who had the foresight to come up with many (most?) of the overworked Western world's religious holidays. Thanks to them, besides Easter, Christmas, New Year's, and possibly Mardi Gras (a holiday in some countries), we also have Halloween, All Saints' Day, and the Day of Dead. The latter two are public holidays in a number of countries with large Catholic populations. Since today marks the end of the annual Halloween / All Saints' Day / Day of the Dead celebrations, I'm posting my revised and expanded list of the movies' Top Five Scariest Living Dead. Of course, by that I don't mean the actors listed below were dead when the movies were made.

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...

Welcome back to This Week In Discs! If you see something you like, click on the title to buy it from Amazon. Edgar Allan Poe’s Black Cats (Arrow Video) In Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, an uninspired writer living a life of lazy cruelty becomes the main suspect in a series of murders, but is he the killer or just an abusive prick? In The Black Cat, the residents of small rural town begin falling prey to a series of not-so accidental deaths. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” has been the basis of numerous adaptations, some more literal than others, but this pairing offers an Italian perspective from two of the country’s genre masters, Sergio Martino and Lucio Fulci. Martino’s works Poe’s tale into a giallo complete with a shadowy killer, vicious murders, and a sexualized environment, and...

Hope everyone has their boomsticks ready, as this final week of October is looking to be yet another banner week for genre Blu-ray and DVD releases, highlighted by the anticipated Collector’s Edition set for Sam Raimi’s cult classic Army of Darkness from Scream Factory. The recent thriller, The Gift, is also making its way to multiple formats on October 27th and for those of you fans of The Fifth Element out there, Sony is putting together a nifty Cinema Series release that arrives this Tuesday.

Olive Films is also keeping themselves busy this week with several cult classic releases including Breeders, Sometimes They Come Back, Dr. Terror's House of Horror and Saul Bass’ Phase IV, with Warner Home Video resurrecting several classics in HD as well—The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Son of Kong, Them! and the Special Effects Collection box set.

Other notable titles coming out on...

English language film has long been a place for some of the greatest horror film directors of all time. All the way back to Alfred Hitchcock, we have seen the genre grow and develop sub-genres, thanks to the public’s ongoing thirst for fear and the possibility of danger around every turn. But, for every Saw or Hostel or terrible remake of classic English-language horror films, there are inventive, terrifying films made somewhere else that inspire and even outdo many of our best Western world horror films. This list will count down the fifty definitive horror films with a main language that isn’t English; some may have some English-language parts in them, but they are, for the most part, foreign. Enlighten yourself. Broaden your horizons. People can get murdered and tortured in every language.

50. Kuroneko (1968)

English Title: Black Cat

Directed by: Kaneto Shindo

Japanese for “Black Cat,” Kuroneko is...

When we think of classic Poe movies we tend to think back to the Roger Corman movies, though he wasn’t the only director to have adapted the writers work. Edgar Allan Poe’s Black Cats, from Arrow Video, brings together two adaptions of Poe’s classic tale, with some Italian flair.

Featuring Lucio Fulci’s The Black Cat, and Sergio Martoni’s Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, this is an interesting take on the story with two different styles. While Fulci didn’t go too gory with this one, there are still moments, and he goes for the more fantastical side of the tale. Your Vice is a Locked Room… takes a much more sophisticated take on the story creating a macabre tale where everybody seems to be guilty and the only thing reliable is the Giallo style murders, and of course the black cat.

By Daniel D’Arpe

As a cult favorite, actress Edwige Fenech has numerous movie moments that are ingrained into the minds of many Italian men who came of age in the 1970’s. Yet there is one particular moment, running topless in slow-motion through a field of flowers, that is probably more memorable then the rest. Many words come to mind when trying to describe this scene: Crude. Low-brow. Gratuitous. All of these are excellent adjectives to use when trying to sum up 1973’s Ubalda, All Naked and Warm. Besides giving audiences an (extremely) intimate look at Ms. Fenech, this was the film that famously (or infamously) proved that the Italian “sexy comedies” could be commercially viable. Although not a for everyone, Ubalda is perfect for fans who wish to delve more deeply into the overlooked cult titles of Italy’s yesteryear.

Olimpio (Pippo Franco) is a hapless knight who has...

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...

English language film has long been a place for some of the greatest horror film directors of all time. All the way back to Alfred Hitchcock, we have seen the genre grow and develop sub-genres, thanks to the public’s ongoing thirst for fear and the possibility of danger around every turn. But, for every Saw or Hostel or terrible remake of classic English-language horror films, there are inventive, terrifying films made somewhere else that inspire and even outdo many of our best Western world horror films. This list will count down the fifty definitive horror films with a main language that isn’t English; some may have some English-language parts in them, but they are, for the most part, foreign. Enlighten yourself. Broaden your horizons. People can get murdered and tortured in every language.

50. Kuroneko (1968)

English Title: Black Cat

Directed by: Kaneto Shindo

Japanese for “Black Cat,” Kuroneko is...

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.

Here’s another installment featuring Joe Dante’s reviews from his stint as a critic for Film Bulletin circa 1969-1974. Our thanks to Video Watchdog and Tim Lucas for his editorial embellishments!

Plenty of perverse sensationalism for the sex fans in this outlandishly lurid Italian import. Strong sell should produce hot boxoffice in appropriate markets. Rating: X.

This triumphantly decadent enterprise is so incredibly prurient in design that it looks like a sure winner for metropolitan sex-ballyhoo situations. With a flashy exploitation push from Jerry Gross’ Cinemation Industries, The Seducers should attract and amuse a sizeable chunk of the undiscriminating voyeur market, to whom exotic sex is more important than coherent filmmaking. Originally titled Sensation, the dubbed 1968 Italian smutfest features an unintentionally farcical plot, which reaches new heights (or depths, depending on your point of view) of calculated depravity, structured solely to cram-in as much sensationalism as possible.

Thanks to this pragmatic approach,...

A young woman enters a crowded high-rise apartment elevator. She doesn’t notice the man next to her slipping on a pair of flesh-colored rubber gloves. Soon, they’re alone, and the mysterious stranger overtakes her with gleaming blade in hand. Brian De Palma’s twisted 1980 thriller Dressed to Kill took a page from this opening scene in Giuliano Carnimeo’s 1972 giallo The Case of the Bloody Iris (directed under the pseudonym Anthony Ascott). Carnimeo also borrows things, looking to Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace and Dario Argento’s playbook for the guise of his murderer and several stylistic choices. Giallo queen Edwige Fenech stars in the Ernesto Gastaldi-scripted story (also known as What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood Doing on Jennifer's Body?) which pairs her with genre icon George Hilton again, months after the release of All the Colors of the Dark. There’s a...

We’re back with another edition of the Indie Spotlight, highlighting recent independent horror news sent our way. Today’s feature includes multiple teaser trailers, a call of submissions for the Hollywood Horrorfest, a Fear Clinic casting update, a Q&A with Hannah Cowley from Haunting of the Innocent, and much more:

Hollywood Horrorfest Details: “From the man who brought you both The Los Angeles Animation Festival and the Boobs & Blood Film Festival, comes the first annual Hollywood Horrorfest (March 28-29, 2014).

Hhf not only showcases new films in competition, but also helps guide filmmakers through the new digital age of filmmaking – from new approaches to financing and production to how to get sales and distribution.

Screenings, awards, red carpet photo opps, industry panels and networking – Hhf has it all, and under one roof, the legendary and now Quentin Tarantino owned, New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles.

“Our focus is on the filmmaker.

Euro Cult cinema probably wouldn’t be all that interesting had it not been populated by the genre queens I have listed below in what I hope is a rather comprehensive overview of the best actresses renowned for their work in this particular area of filmmaking. Each and every one of the actresses gathered here are deliriously beautiful – but beyond that, they all have a strong presence and natural charisma that makes it easy for them to light up the screen.

Of course, mainstream cinema is populated with fine-looking women, but Euro Cult babes have a certain je ne sais quoi. Maybe it is their ready willingness to shed all of their clothes and get down to it at a moment’s notice. Or maybe it’s because they always appear to be entwined in a web of sleaze and depravity. Whatever it is, give me Dagmar Lassander in her...

Lamberto Bava cut his teeth in cinema working with giallo legend Mario Bava, his father, and alongside Dario Argento and Ruggero Deodato. Italian horror fans have a special place in their hearts for his two Demons films and the underrated A Blade in the Dark contains some of his finer work. The comparisons are unfair, but Bava has never displayed the visual prowess of mentor Argento, his famous father, or even collaborator Michele Soavi. He does, however, deliver an occasionally entertaining film — even if the greatest moments are derivative of the masters.

Delirium is a late giallo, which must have been somewhat strange for fans during its 1987 release. Curvaceous red telephones, harbingers of doom for the red-lipped women answering them, were replaced with clunky cordless phones. The shoulder pads, hair, ridiculous wardrobe, and decor are epically '80s — but 26 years later, it works. Sales are booming for Pussycat Magazine, but...