I am lecturer, author and researcher in media and cultural theory at the Birmingham School of Media, Birmingham City University. I am currently completing my PhD on the political economy of Euro-Cult cinema fan production.
In April the Italian publisher Glittering Images will be releasing another volume in their lavishly produced Bizzare Sinema book series. The good news is that this volume will be purely devoted to the giallo. The book can be ordered direct from the Glittering Images website for €29.00 plus shipping. The front cover image, taken from Blood and Black Lace (Mario Bava, 1964), looks superb. As with their previous releases, text will be presented in Italian, English and French.
Optimum have recently announced that they will be giving Lucio Fulci's masterful giallo A Lizard in a Woman's Skin a UK DVD premiere on June 7. The blurb states that this release has been directly mastered from the original negatives and therefore 'should' be the definitive DVD release of the film. Fingers crossed that this one gets through the BBFC unscathed, I expect that the infamous vivisected dogs sequence won't cause any trouble. The cover art looks great.
I don't get much time to produce to fan DVDs anymore but I recently completed work on a fan DVD of Ferdinando Baldi's gialloNine Guests for a Crime (aka Nove ospiti per un delitto, 1977). The video and audio was taken from the Italian Surf Video DVD. As you can see in the attached screenshots, the picture quality of the Italian DVD is very good indeed. One of the problems with the Italian DVD was that the 16x9 flag was not set correctly by the original author of the disc. This meant that when played the image was squashed. Using a tool such as Ifoedit it is possible to correct such an oversight with a simple few taps of a keyboard. Subtitles were created by DjangoLi, the owner and master fan subtitler over at Italian Film Translation. I also included the original Italian trailer from the Italian DVD. The Italian Surf Video DVD can be purchased from Kult Video.
It was 1994. I read John Martin's review of the Redemption Films VHS release of Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso (aka Deep Red,1975) in The Dark Side horror magazine. I must have read it about ten times until I was curious enough to purchase the video from Tower Records in Birmingham City Centre. I recall seeing it amongst a number of other Redemption VHS releases, all of them having the same sleeve template but each with unusual front cover images. Once I got home I immediately watched the film. I was drawn into the investigation; just what was it that Marc Daly (David Hemmings) saw, who could be the murderer? Once the film ended I had to watch it again from the beginning, I had never seen anything quite like it before. From there on I was hooked on gialli. I started to seek out other Argento films, which was not an easy task in the pre-DVD era. I am now researching Euro-Cult fandom, it has become a large part of my life. And this all stems from reading a review of the Redemption Films VHS release.
Yesterday, it was announced that Redemption Films has gone into administration; a buyer is currently being sought in order to save the company. Redemption Films were undoubtedly one of the key players in the rise of giallo fandom in the mind 1990s. Their VHS releases, many in original aspect ratios and in original native language, enabled Euro-Cult fans to experience many rare films which they had only read about in fanzines. Titles such as What Have They Done to Solange? (aka Cosa avete fatto a Solange?, Massimo Dallamano, 1972), Who Saw Her Die? (aka Chi l'ha vista morire?, Aldo Lado, 1972) and The Fifth Cord (aka Giornata nera per l'ariete, Luigi Bazzoni, 1971) were given releases, many of which fell foul of the strict video censorship regime present during the James Ferman era of the BBFC. For those that wanted to find uncut versions of Redemption releases you would have to go to Holland or try your luck at some of the UK film fairs and find their 'Benelux' releases. I was able to purchase an uncut copy of Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (aka Reazione a catena, 1971) at a Memorabilia event at Birmingham's NEC in the mid nineties. The unusual cover designs separated opinion. Some fans liked the somewhat 'gothic' take yet others would have preferred the original cover art. Some did not care as long as they kept on releasing rare gems. Releasing niche titles meant low sales and little profit. The little known giallo Crazy Desires of a Murderer (aka I vizi morbosi di una governante, Filippo Walter Ratti, 1971) reportedly only sold 150 copies. Many fans hoped for Redemption to re-release their entire Euro-Cult catalogue on DVD but only a very few of their titles found their way on to the disc format. The quality of many of their releases left a lot to be desired. The last Redemption release I purchased was Killer's Moon (Alan Birkinshaw, 1978); a little-known British exploitationer set in the Lake District. Perhaps the giallo would not be as popular as it is if it were not for Redemption Films. Marc Morris, who worked on many of Redemption VHS releases, now has his own label Nucleus Films and works closely with Nouveaux Pictures, Arrow Films and this generation's incarnation of Redemption, Shameless Screen Entertainment. If Redemption fails to find a buyer and disappears into home video history like many other independent labels over the past few years it should never be forgotten forgiving Euro-Cult cinema the attention it deserved.
This has been my most sought after film poster and I have just purchased it from an Italian eBay seller. It cost more than I wanted to spend but this poster does not turn up on eBay too often. I will be getting it framed as soon as it arrives.
The Swedish DVD label Fin de Siecle Media are releasing The Sweet Body of Deborahon November 23; the cover and disc art looks great. It will look much better than my fan DVD attempt which was sourced from a widescreen Italian VHS print. You can see the video motion menu from my fan DVD below; it was not one of my better efforts.
German DVD company Camera Obscura have announced that they will releasing the sleazy gialloSo Sweet, So Dead on DVD. No release date has been given but this will be one to look forward to. I love the Italian Locandina art, I hope they use this for the DVD cover art.
UPDATE: The release date is scheduled for February/March 2010 and yes, the DVD cover art is taken from the Italian Locandina as you can see in the image below.
Being a fan of Tessari's other gialli, The Bloodstained Butterfly (1971) and Puzzle (1974), and his excellent foray into the poliziesco genre Tony Arzenta (1973) I had always wanted to see Death Occurred Last Night, his first addition to the giallo canon. To my knowledge there has never been an official English friendly release of this the only available version being a poor quality English subtitled bootleg available from Video Search of Miami. Even though I own a copy of the latter I was never able to watch it because of the poor video quality. The excellent Italian DVD label Rarohad intended to release the film but it never surfaced. An Italian DVD was released by Ermitage but, again, the picture quality, though better than the Video Search of Miami Bootleg, was still poor. I had intended to use this DVD as the video source for a fan DVD project but Polla of Pollanet Squad was very kindly able to supply me with a rip of a widescreen Italian television broadcast. I enhanced this high quality rip for 16x9 playback and added subtitles which were built by DjangoLi of the Lovelockandloadforum. Screenshots can be found below:
As you can see, the station logo is unfortunately burnt-in to the video. I tried to remove it in VirtualDub but the result was not very impressive. Thankfully most of it has been cropped off during the 16x9 enhancement and the remaining half is not that noticeable. Below is the motion menu I created and also a screenshot of the chapter selection menu:
The film, though not as good as The Bloodstained Butterfly which would be Tessari's next entry into the giallocanon, is a gripping police procedural giallo with no straight-razor wielding black-gloved killer to be found. Berzaghi (Raf Vollone) approaches Police Commissioner Lamberti (Frank Wolff) to help find his mentally retarded daughter Donatella (Gillian Bray) who has gone missing. Lamberti, along with his assistant Mascaranti (Gabriele Tinti), begin to search for Donatella whilst Berzaghi continues his own investigation until they both uncover the shocking truth. Death Occurred Last Night is very well acted and well executed. It is a pity that Tessari did not make anymore gialli, his offerings are more thoughtful than the majority. Obviously, it comes highly recommended.Some of you may have noticed that this is my tenth fan DVD. It is quite fitting that number ten is a Tessari film as my first fan DVD was a fan dub of The Bloodstained Butterfly. I have been quite busy producing fan DVDs over the past few weeks. Look out for posts detailing my 16x9 enhancements of:Blazing Magnum (1976) The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968) Death in Haiti aka Tropic of Cancer (1972) Spirits of Death (1972) My next fan DVD will be an English dub of Luigi Zampa's little seen giallo/poliziescoThe Masters (1975) starring Franco Nero. I also have a few other surprises up my sleeve.
I had been meaning to purchase the Italian DVD of Illustrious Corpses (Cadaveri Eccellenti) for some time only to recently find that it had gone out print. Typical! After months of searching a copy finally showed up on eBay.it; a great resource for those hard to find Italian DVDs and VHS. As the DVD has no English options I was keen to build a fan DVD of this forgotten film. DjangoLi of the lovelockandload forum managed to locate a subtitle file online and was kind enough to make it available for download. Jim Quigley, who built the English subtitles, certainly deserves a pat on the back as this is a dialogue heavy film and it must have took an age to subtitle.The DVD did not take long to build and was my first attempt at making a dual layer DVD. I also used my new favourite software, VirtualDubMod, to crop and 16x9 enhance the thirty minute extra feature "An interview with Franceso Rosi". Even though the extra feature does not have any English options I still thought that it would be worthy of inclusion. Again, I created a motion menu and used some of the shots of the "Illustrious Corpses" as the background pictures for the other menus. They look quite effective. Below is a video of the motion menu and some some screenshots taken from my fan DVD:
I have not had time to watch the film yet but even though it is little discussed it is one that is highly regarded by those who have seen it. It is also quite hard to classify: is it a giallo, a poliziesco or an Arthouse film? From what I have seen while building the DVD it bears some similarities to Investigation of a Citizen Under Suspicion (1970), The Masters (1975) and some of the other Italian political thrillers from this period. Plot wise the film is about a detective who is investigating the murders of several respected judges only to find that the Italian Communist Party are involved. Hopefully I will get round to watching it over the next few weeks.Next up will be a16x9 version of Death in Haiti (aka Tropic of Cancer, 1972) using the colourful widescreen Eire VHS as the source. I had a tinker around with the video in VirtualDubMod and was quite impressed with the results. I might also have a few surprises up my sleeve over the coming month. Stay tuned!
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