RICHARD STANLEY'S TEN FAVOURITE ITALIAN HORROR MOVIES
February 24th 2010 03:44
Ex-pat South-African director Richard Stanley, an auteur of sorts, burst onto the scene back in 1990 with his rogue sf-horror Hardware, a low-budget shocker that quickly gained a cult following. He followed up with an hallucinatory desert vision of a demon in human guise, Dust Devil (1992), however the movie was plagued with executive interference and distribution hell, yet still gained a fervent cult following.
In 1996 Stanley was hired to direct the big budget remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau, a cautionary tale of human-animal hybridization. It starred Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando (and an unrecognizable Eric Roth under elaborate makeup). Legend has it that Brando, playing the extreme eccentric, clashed with the director so swiftly and profoundly that Stanley was fired from production after only a handful of days shooting. Apparently Stanley snuck back onto the set disguised in a dog-man mask (!).
In 2006 Stanley co-wrote the under-rated and little seen ghost tale The Abandoned, directed by Spanish maverick Nacho Cerda. Currently Stanley is in pre-production on two action-thrillers, one called Vacation, set in the future where an American couple are stranded in a remote island paradise after a nuclear exchange wipes out most of the outside world, and they are forced to face the local population which turns on them. The second movie is called The Bones of the Earth (based on an earlier screenplay by the brilliant, late Donald Cammell) and sports a wonderfully lurid premise: A brain-damaged master survivalist is determined to exact a terrible revenge on the millionaire clients of a professional stalker on the verge of retirement.
Other unproduced screenplay adaptations he’s penned include: Shadowland by Peter Straub (one of Stanley's favorite novels), The Damnation Game by Clive Barker, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick, Flicker by Theodore Roszak, Cocaine Nights by J.G. Ballard and The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen.
Most recently Stanley was asked to submit his favourite Italian horror movies for the fantastic publication The Book Of Lists: Horror, and offer some rationale behind his selection, which, not-surprisingly, features mostly work by Bava, Argento and Fulci, the holy trinity of spaghetti nightmares.
I readily agree with half of Stanley’s selection, a few I haven’t seen (and very much want to!), and one that although I’m not much of a fan of, I can understand what Stanley gleans from it. What I particularly enjoy though is Stanley’s articulate appreciation of the oneiric, feverish quality of many of these movies, and how traditional narrative logic has to be suspended when viewing these phantasmogorical, often purely cinematic experiences.
1. Kill Baby … Kill! (1966)
Directed by Mario Bava
“Stirring the usual clichés into a vortex of Kafkaesque dreamscapes, exemplified by the sequence in which the protagonist literally pursues himself through a series of identical chambers, slowly but surely gaining ground, only to find he has gained nothing at all.
2. Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)
Directed by Dario Argento
“Byzantine plotting, warped sexual politics, swaggering set-pieces … and the most elegantly eroticized auto accident ever committed to film … one of my favourite flicks of all time, nationality and taxonomy aside.”
3. Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)
Directed by Lucio Fulci
“Fulci’s finest hour-and-a-half, and a further sampling of the transgressive possibilities of the giallo. A brace of strong performances, striking location photography, and a powerfully understated score.”
4. Lisa and the Devil (1972)
Directed by Mario Bava
“Some movies, like wars, can only be understood when inebriated or under the influence of powerful mind-altering substances. The entire film seems unstuck in time and place, with names, identities, and relationships fluctuating alarmingly. While admittedly an acquired taste, [it] remains unsurpassed in all its baffling glory.”
5. Deep Red (1975)
Directed by Dario Argento
“The giallo comes of age with a cinematic tour-de-force that turned the genre on its head. Like a demented hall of mirrors, the film’s surfaces conceal countless games of gender, perception, and identity. A bleeding masterpiece.”
6. Suspiria (1977)
Directed by Dario Argento
“From the opening frames, the viewer is propelled into an utterly different world, where normal rules no longer apply. The story, characters, and dialogue are subservient to a full-throttle assault on the senses; sound and constantly shifting multicoloured lighting are amped to the max.”
7. Zombie Flesh-Eaters (1979)
Directed by Lucio Fulci
“Rushed into production to capitalize on the success of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (which was re-titled Zombi in Italy, while this movie was originally called Zombi 2), this dime-store imitation is to some extent an improvement on the original. It may well be the greatest exploitation movie of all time …”
8. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
Directed by Ruggero Deodato
“No overview of the genre would be complete without mention of what many consider the most infamous horror movie ever made. The self-reflexive structure serves as an apt metaphor for Western exploitation of the Third World … the fictional crew committing to camera a series of scenes utterly beyond the pale of acceptable civilised human conduct in what amounts to … an enduring monument to mankind’s capacity for evil.”
9. Inferno (1980)
Directed by Dario Argento
“Argento’s follow-up to Suspiria … Developing the conceit of an infernal trinity akin to the three Norns, or sorrows, the maestro turns in his most undisciplined and essentially dreamlike work, a lunatic farrago of murderous events that take place around a Gothic apartment building which conceals the lair of Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness. Argento liberates himself to create his finest set-pieces, working at full-throttle, completely off his trolley and at the top of his form.”
10. The Beyond (1981)
Directed by Lucio Fulci
“Fulci’s gumbo-flavoured phantasmagoria takes off from familiar material to craft an incoherent fever-dream of a movie. As with other examples of what Fulci and Argento term “total cinema”, attempts to analyze or deconstruct events along traditional generic lines are hopeless. All you can do is sit back and experience this mad dog of a movie until you either vow to put it behind you or submit to its weird rhythms. Of course, a six-pack of beers or liberal recourse to other intoxicants goes a long way towards disengaging the conscious mind so that this visionary epic can be enjoyed on its own freakish terms. Fulci’s excremental opus is lurid and elusive by turns, a stumbling block to conventional motions of art, criticism, and rational thought.”
In 2006 Stanley co-wrote the under-rated and little seen ghost tale The Abandoned, directed by Spanish maverick Nacho Cerda. Currently Stanley is in pre-production on two action-thrillers, one called Vacation, set in the future where an American couple are stranded in a remote island paradise after a nuclear exchange wipes out most of the outside world, and they are forced to face the local population which turns on them. The second movie is called The Bones of the Earth (based on an earlier screenplay by the brilliant, late Donald Cammell) and sports a wonderfully lurid premise: A brain-damaged master survivalist is determined to exact a terrible revenge on the millionaire clients of a professional stalker on the verge of retirement.
Other unproduced screenplay adaptations he’s penned include: Shadowland by Peter Straub (one of Stanley's favorite novels), The Damnation Game by Clive Barker, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick, Flicker by Theodore Roszak, Cocaine Nights by J.G. Ballard and The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen.
Most recently Stanley was asked to submit his favourite Italian horror movies for the fantastic publication The Book Of Lists: Horror, and offer some rationale behind his selection, which, not-surprisingly, features mostly work by Bava, Argento and Fulci, the holy trinity of spaghetti nightmares.
I readily agree with half of Stanley’s selection, a few I haven’t seen (and very much want to!), and one that although I’m not much of a fan of, I can understand what Stanley gleans from it. What I particularly enjoy though is Stanley’s articulate appreciation of the oneiric, feverish quality of many of these movies, and how traditional narrative logic has to be suspended when viewing these phantasmogorical, often purely cinematic experiences.
Directed by Mario Bava
“Stirring the usual clichés into a vortex of Kafkaesque dreamscapes, exemplified by the sequence in which the protagonist literally pursues himself through a series of identical chambers, slowly but surely gaining ground, only to find he has gained nothing at all.
2. Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)
Directed by Dario Argento
“Byzantine plotting, warped sexual politics, swaggering set-pieces … and the most elegantly eroticized auto accident ever committed to film … one of my favourite flicks of all time, nationality and taxonomy aside.”
3. Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)
Directed by Lucio Fulci
“Fulci’s finest hour-and-a-half, and a further sampling of the transgressive possibilities of the giallo. A brace of strong performances, striking location photography, and a powerfully understated score.”
Directed by Mario Bava
“Some movies, like wars, can only be understood when inebriated or under the influence of powerful mind-altering substances. The entire film seems unstuck in time and place, with names, identities, and relationships fluctuating alarmingly. While admittedly an acquired taste, [it] remains unsurpassed in all its baffling glory.”
5. Deep Red (1975)
Directed by Dario Argento
“The giallo comes of age with a cinematic tour-de-force that turned the genre on its head. Like a demented hall of mirrors, the film’s surfaces conceal countless games of gender, perception, and identity. A bleeding masterpiece.”
6. Suspiria (1977)
Directed by Dario Argento
“From the opening frames, the viewer is propelled into an utterly different world, where normal rules no longer apply. The story, characters, and dialogue are subservient to a full-throttle assault on the senses; sound and constantly shifting multicoloured lighting are amped to the max.”
7. Zombie Flesh-Eaters (1979)
Directed by Lucio Fulci
“Rushed into production to capitalize on the success of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (which was re-titled Zombi in Italy, while this movie was originally called Zombi 2), this dime-store imitation is to some extent an improvement on the original. It may well be the greatest exploitation movie of all time …”
Directed by Ruggero Deodato
“No overview of the genre would be complete without mention of what many consider the most infamous horror movie ever made. The self-reflexive structure serves as an apt metaphor for Western exploitation of the Third World … the fictional crew committing to camera a series of scenes utterly beyond the pale of acceptable civilised human conduct in what amounts to … an enduring monument to mankind’s capacity for evil.”
9. Inferno (1980)
Directed by Dario Argento
“Argento’s follow-up to Suspiria … Developing the conceit of an infernal trinity akin to the three Norns, or sorrows, the maestro turns in his most undisciplined and essentially dreamlike work, a lunatic farrago of murderous events that take place around a Gothic apartment building which conceals the lair of Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness. Argento liberates himself to create his finest set-pieces, working at full-throttle, completely off his trolley and at the top of his form.”
10. The Beyond (1981)
Directed by Lucio Fulci
“Fulci’s gumbo-flavoured phantasmagoria takes off from familiar material to craft an incoherent fever-dream of a movie. As with other examples of what Fulci and Argento term “total cinema”, attempts to analyze or deconstruct events along traditional generic lines are hopeless. All you can do is sit back and experience this mad dog of a movie until you either vow to put it behind you or submit to its weird rhythms. Of course, a six-pack of beers or liberal recourse to other intoxicants goes a long way towards disengaging the conscious mind so that this visionary epic can be enjoyed on its own freakish terms. Fulci’s excremental opus is lurid and elusive by turns, a stumbling block to conventional motions of art, criticism, and rational thought.”
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