Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts

Kaput Lager - Gli ultimi giorni delle SS (1977)

Durng World War II, an American major is captured by the Germans and thrown into a POW camp run by a sadistic Nazi officer, whose main pleasures are whipping the local female population and...

Director: Luigi Batzella (as Ivan Kathansky)
Writer: Luigi Batzella
Stars: Richard Harrison, Lea Lander, Isarco Ravaioli

Michelangelo Antonioni - Cronaca di un Amore AKA Chronicle of a Love (1950)

Michelangelo Antonioni's first narrative feature is a stark, minimal interpersonal drama that would establish many of the themes and techniques that would recur in his work for the rest of his career. Story of a Love Affair centers on the dynamic between Guido and Paola, two old flames re-igniting their passions for one another.

With subliminal influences on everything from Austin Powers (1997) to Fight Club (1999) to Daredevil's assassin girlfriend Elektra, The 10th Victim stands as one of the least known yet insider-influential classics of the Sci-Fi Cinema.

NEW YORK CITY, SOMETIME in the near future: Across a construction site, a fashionably clad woman is being chased by an Asian man who fires wild pistol shots at her. Remarkably, no bystander or policeman intervenes. For as a thin, feverish spokesman tells us, these two are engaged in the "Big Hunt," a socially sanctioned killing game.

Death Walks in High Heels (La Morte cammina con i tacchi alti, 1971) is a twisted tale that has a complicated plot structure guaranteed to surprise, but all the classic elements of the giallo are here in spades, from black-gloved murderer to psychosexual weirdness. Scott stars as high-class Parisian stripper Nicole Rochard, who is being stalked with threatening phone calls culminating in a visit from a blue-eyed maniac wielding a straight razor, going on about some diamonds.

Mexico City, 1940. Leon Trotsky (Richard Burton), the exiled founder of Russia's Communist revolution lives in constant fear of assassination. Moscow shows its control of Mexico's Communist movement by encouraging anti-Trotsky rallies, and on May 24 an attempt by armed gunmen to storm his house fails by fault of its own lack of organization. Trotsky continues to call for the overthrow of Stalin while his cheerfully long-suffering wife Natalia Sedowa (Valentia Cortese) maintains a cordial household for special guests. Trotsky's followers supplement the house's defenses, and a special security man comes down from the United States to help out. Meanwhile Gita Samuels, one of Trotsky's secretaries (Romy Schneider) has a new boyfriend, a mysterious businessman named Frank Jacson (sic) (Alain Delon). Frank is actually an agent for Stalin, waiting for the right time to pounce.

IL MESSIA (1976) was Roberto Rossellini's last feature film: the life of Christ, which he would have followed with a film about Karl Marx,had death not intervened. Commissioned and financed by FamilyTheater(U.S.), Il Messia was shot in Tunisia with everyone speaking English, but Italian productions were still dependent on post-production dubbing and, due to a dispute with Family Theater over miracles, the film was never finished in English and cannot be released in the US. Italian, French and German dubbings were made. This is the Italian, by far the best.

Cannibal Ferox (1981) is what could be the 'last great' or 'last worst' film in the popular catalogue of Italian cannibal films. It is often a contender with Ruggero Deodato's repulsive Cannibal Holocaust as the most revolting film ever made. While neither of them have any right to that title, they are both two of the worst good films ever made. While Cannibal Ferox may not be everyone's idea of a good time at the movies, it is one of the grimmest, most harrowing horror films ever made.

Cannibal Ferox follows a group of college students who set out in the Amazon jungle in search of a tribe of alleged cannibals.

Roberto Rossellini’s follow-up to his breakout Rome Open City was the ambitious, enormously moving Paisan (Paisà), which consists of six episodes set during the liberation of Italy at the end of World War II, and taking place across the country, from Sicily to the northern Po Valley. With its documentary-like visuals and its intermingled cast of actors and nonprofessionals, Italians and their American liberators, this look at the struggles of different cultures to communicate and of people to live their everyday lives in extreme circumstances is equal parts charming sentiment and vivid reality. A long-missing treasure of Italian cinema, Paisan is available here for the first time in its full original release version.

One of the beacon films of the European cinema of the Thirties. Celebrating the sound film as a rebirth of cinema, Treno popolare combines and harmonises, with genius, several characteristics of the cinema of the period. Talking pictures, of which it is too often said that they rendered cinema theatrical, also accentuated and stimulated realism. (...) This realism, born from sound and the possibility to make characters speak in their own langauage and with their true voices, here extends to a unanimist depiction of Italian society, and notably of the petite bourgeoisie of the time, portrayed with great veracity in its daily activity and behaviour.

Pulp fiction often deals with two seemingly unconnected cases, which become intertwined during the course of the story. In Night of Violence on one end we have a mysterious stranger stalking prostitutes and on the other a criminal organization connected to drug trade and call girls.

This film, also known as Call Girl '66, is an interesting proto-giallo that links giallo filone with its influences such as American film noir, German krimi and even French crime films. Almost expressionist B/W-photography and amoral characters recall noir films. Soundtrack, plot and jocular tone are typical to krimi films and the way the police procedural unravels and the main investigator himself recall French crime films.

A Sicilian nobleman is very jealous of his mistress and when she gets married flies off his handle and commits a murder of which an innocent man is accused. He is however tormented by his conscience. (IMDb)

What sort of man could rape, kill, and eat dozens of women and children, yet remain uncaught for nearly twenty years? Meet "Evilenko".

The main character is based on prolific Russian woman/child killer/cannibal Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo. A Russian professor, Chikatilo murdered over 50 women and children from 1982 to 1990. He enjoyed cutting them, raping them while they bled, then killing them - and, in some cases, eating them.

Thanks to his orgiastic feasts of gothic horror and comic book pop art, no one ever described Mario Bava as a restrained director. However, few could have anticipated the unbridled ferocity of his trendsetting 1971 shocker, Reazione a catena (Chain Reaction), which turned up in Europe under such titles as Antefatto, A Bay of Blood, and Ecologia del Delitto before terrorizing U.S. drive-ins for years as Last House - Part II and, most unforgettably, Twitch of the Death Nerve. Here Bava essentially tears the horror genre apart from the ground up, dispensing with linear plotting or realistic characterization in favor of a mechanical, devious catalog of murders, all served up with the tricky, sumptuous photography which gives his films their unforgettable artistic stamp. Even more than his earlier Blood and Black Lace, this is the body count movie par excellence.

This powerful true tale of one boy's struggle out of isolation and silence is perfectly captured on film by the renowned Taviani brothers, Paolo and Vittorio. Based on the autobiography by Gavino Ledda, who at the age of six was taken from school into the mountains wherre his father enslaved him as a shepherd. Gavino eventually broke free discovering the outside world and his own identity within it.
A Grand Prize winner at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival Padre padrone is an incredible story of perseverance and is an exhilarating example of filmmaking (-DVD Cover)

Alessandro Blasetti - 1860 [+Extras] (1933)

Alessandro Blasetti directed this historical drama focusing on the Battle of Calatafimi. In May, 1860, the citizens of Sicily rebelled and defeated the troops sent by the King of Naples to put them down. Blasetti uses an amateur cast speaking in regional dialects, which gives his film an authenticity in sharp contrast to most of the pompous epics being churned out at the time.

The story concentrates on the rebels themselves, including a rebel's wife and the young shepherd (Giuseppe Gulino) who travels to Genoa to enlist the aid of Garibaldi. The film's style (and its focus on peasants) is almost a precursor to neo-realism, and presents a very human portrait of the forces behind battlefield spectacle. (Xploited Cinema)

The movie starts in a documentary stile, with an interviews to Tomas Milian the commissioner of Milano, with a neapolitan accent, who talks about the raise of the crime in the north Italy, and depicts the world of the mala. After a while, a robbery is baffled, one of the gang arrested and the pursuit of the others begins. Here's a long flashback on the activity of the gang, the 'real' movie.

Inspired by real events, the movie is dominated by the personality of Gian Maria Volontè, (Piero Cavallero in the movie). His monologues, his way of dealing with people, the others of the gang, or the robbed, or his family are everytime a good pretext to give vent to his incredible histrionic talent. This is the best italian genre's movie in my opinion, maybe only for the intepretation of Volontè, supported by very well written dialogues.

Romance in a Nazi death camp

The Gestapo's Last Orgy concerns an unlikely romance between a Nazi death camp commandant and a Jewish female prisoner, Lise Cohen. Shortly after the war they rendezvous at the dilapidated remains of the concentration camp they met. From here, the story is told in flashback. We discover that the camp was used to incarcerate Jewish women. These women were subsequently subjected to all manner of sexual degradation, torture and death. Lise refuses to be broken by her Nazi oppressors and, subsequently, becomes the object of the camp commandant's obsession. This leads to her being treated in increasingly degrading ways. But the commandant's obsession also offers her hope of salvation.

As an example of the Naziploitation sub-genre, The Gestapo's Last Orgy is a more hard-edged entry than the very silly SS Experiment Camp. Unlike the latter film, there is more of an attempt at authenticity. The victims are clearly referred to as Jews and the treatment meted out to the women is often very disturbing. That is not to say that the film is a convincing depiction of events in a Nazi death camp - it is pretty ridiculous a lot of the time. However, there is a definite mean-spiritedness about this exploitation movie. The women seem to be constantly undressed. There is a great deal of sexual assault, humiliation and torture. The victims are hung naked from chains, fed to dobermans, drowned in quicklime - you name it. This, of course, all sounds extremely lurid and nasty. And it is. But the film isn't terribly well-made, so it isn't quite as shocking as it sounds. The crazy dubbing does not help matters either. Nevertheless, I would be very surprised if this film finds itself released uncut on DVD in the UK. With it's combination of sex and violence, this is one of the infamous 'video nasties' that would still pose some problems to UK censors. So, if that is enough of a recommendation for you then go for it.
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Bruno Mattei - KZ9 - Lager di Sterminio AKA S.S. Extermination Love Camp (1977)

A prisoner (Lorraine De Salle) is forced to serve as a doctor's assistant, giving her a front row seat for the horrible goings-on. There's the experiment to revive Nazi soldiers who have frozen to death by having nude women rub their bodies all over the corpse (that one works), and the experiment tries to "cure" homosexual men by having nude women dance for them. This is only some of the horrors that are going on there.

From imdb:
This movie´s a sleazeball. There´s no other way of describing it. I guess, that´s no big surprise for you, knowing other Italian Nazi-Exploitation-Films like "La Bestia In Calore" or "SS Camp 5: Women´s Hell". But this movie is different. It´s not as campy as the others. On the contrary, it tends to take its story serious, which doesn´t make it easy to watch, because some sequences are very disgusting and depressing. So, it´s one of the rare serious efforts by Bruno Mattei, King of Sleaze-Boredom. Although very cheaply produced like simply all his other films, this one´s not the right choice if you want to have a cheap laugh at his incredibly bad directing skills and, surprisingly enough, he might have intended it that way, perhaps to give us all something to think about. But why? He doesn´t come up to our Sadiconazista- Expectations, he simply doesn´t deliver. So, now you´re warned.

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Ruggero Deodato - Una ondata di piacere AKA Waves of Lust (1975)

A young couple becomes embroiled with the personal problems of another couple on a yacht moored off Sicily during a turbulent weekend of fun, games, sex games, betrayal, spouse abuse, and murder.(Internet Movie Database)

NOTES
Ruggero Deodato made a comeback, after working in advertising business, with this sleazefest, where he directs his wife Silvia Dionisio. Waves of Lust's premise is obviously stolen from Antonioni's L'avventura with some extra inspiration taken from Polanski'sKnife in the Water. In other words, the film is apart of "ambiguos characters on an island/yacht" film cycle following Giuliano Biagetti'sInterrabang, but not quite reaching the sleazy heights of Ottavio Alessi's Edwige Fenech / Rosalba Neri vehicle Top Sensation. All we need to know is that there are a lot of T&A, sexual games, humiliation, abuse, and violence. Needless to say that this film was a smash hit in Italy in the year of its release even though Deodato never wanted to direct it. He also tried to steer the movie away from sleaze to the thriller territory. Let's just say that he failed.
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Claude Chabrol - Jours tranquilles à Clichy AKA Quiet Days in Clichy (1990)

DIR Claude Chabrol
EXEC Pietro Innocenzi
PROD Antonio Passalia
SCR Claude Chabrol, Ugo Leonzio, Henry Miller
DP Jean Rabier
CAST Andrew McCarthy, Nigel Havers, Barbara De Rossi, Stéphanie Cotta, Isolde Barth, Eva Grimaldi, Stéphane Audran, Henri Attal, Anna Galiena, Giuditta del Vecchio, Mario Adorf, Elide Melli, Matthieu Chabrol, Thomas Chabrol, Vadim Glowna, Jacques Brunet, Béatrice Kruger
ED Monique Fardoulis
PROD DES Alain Paroutaud, Marco Dentici
MUSIC Jean-Michel Bernard, Luigi Ceccarelli, Matthieu Chabrol
SOUND Maurice Gilbert, Stanislav Litera

"Different from many other Chabrol movies that follow "Hitchock-like" patterns, _Jours tranquilles à Clichy_ relates the days a young American writer (Henry Miller) spent in the Gay Paris of the early thirties, with his polish-descent friend and their young Colette, a 14 years old-ish girl with whom they both fall in love. The story in itself doesn't send us from a surprising even to another but slowly lifts the curtain over the prostitution, pornography, libertinage and partying that seemed to oppose Paris so much to New York, in the eyes of Miller, searching for a change from the dull like he lead before. The story is a quest for Proust and his lost time, a quest for a new life, for thrills, for truth in forgetting oneself..."

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Kaput Lager - Gli ultimi giorni delle SS (1977)

Michelangelo Antonioni - Cronaca di un Amore AKA Chronicle of a Love (1950)

Elio Petri - La Decima Vittima aka The 10th Victim (1965)

Luciano Ercoli - La Morte Cammina Con I Tacchi Alti aka Death Walks On High Heels (1971)

Joseph Losey - The Assassination of Trotsky (1972)

Roberto Rossellini - Il Messia AKA The Messiah (1975)

Umberto Lenzi - Cannibal Ferox (1981)

Roberto Rossellini - Paisà aka Paisan (1946)

Raffaello Matarazzo - Treno popolare (1933)

Roberto Mauri - Le notti della violenza AKA Night of Violence (1965)

Pietro Germi - Gelosia AKA Jealousy (1953)

David Grieco - Evilenko (2004)

Mario Bava - Reazione a catena AKA A Bay of Blood (1971)

Paolo Taviani & Vittorio Taviani - Padre padrone (1977)