Hey, Horror Nerds. Take a second out from huffing the glue from your Aurora models and cast your orbs on this Entertainment Weekly article on up-and-coming director Dario Argento. Were you aware that people make horror films in places other than America, or even Japan? Like, Oh My God! They even have their own name for horror movies, called Giall-O or something. It’s a kind of dessert, but you can only eat it with black gloves.

[Argento’s Animal Trilogy is] also singlehandedly responsible for earning Argento the nickname ”The Italian Hitchcock,” which to be honest would only really fit if Hitchcock had a sweet tooth for lithe Italian models in go-go boots and the kind of psychedelic freakout music that’s one part Ennio Morricone and two parts European porno soundtrack.

Of course, the three films he’s referring to were scored entirely by Morricone, but that was during his “porno” period, so all is forgiven.

I’d love a job at Entertainment Weekly, but it looks like I’m overqualified. That or it’s because I’m a mouth-breathing, tranchcoat-wearing horror nerd.

Just when it seemed as if the proprieter of DVD Trash was taking a few weeks off, he comes out swinging with a bevy of Turkish movie clips from Onar Films, from superheroes to Kilink and even giallo! This is exactly the kind of exploitation trash I covet. Cheap sets, brutal action, and hot Turkish women in bikinis.

That Kilink is a fucking badass. He sure gets a lot of play for a guy in a skeleton costume.

With the rise in mp3blogs and vinyl sharity, it’s become remarkably easy to find obscure horror soundtracks. Most of these treasures are collected together under a specific film which, while great, has the disadvantage of not giving a very diverse sampling of various composers’ styles. It’s rare to find a site which has that kind of diversity, but the Giallo Index is one such animal. While the sound quality isn’t the greatest, it does have the advantage of letting you sample tracks from 26 different gialli before committing yourself. Click on the CD covers to dowload the mp3s. Enjoy!

I don’t know what it is, but I get the biggest kick from the most obscure shit. Take the thread on DVD Maniacs where the board members discuss the conspicuous placement of J & B Scotch bottles throughout various European cult flicks. KH Brown even went to the trouble of contacting J & B for their opinion on the matter.

A: Thanks for your email.

We had heard of this before being in what they call in Italy “Yellow” flims. We think that it is because of J&B being very popular with the Rat Pack (Franck, Dean and Sammy) and perhaps that is where the Italian connections comes in!! probably something we will never really know but a nice story.

We still have very strong Hollywood ties and still appear in some great films the earliest being Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the most recent being The Cooler

regards,
J&B

If you’re obsessive like me, go check out the fun. There’s plenty of beautiful screengrabs available to support their case. Oh, and take a shot anytime someone says that the thread makes them thirsty.

Remember the days when they incorporated decent songs into horror pictures? Yeah, me neither. The Winged Avenger snaps us out of it with some finger-snapping loveliness from Bava’s Five Dolls For An August Moon. Believe it or not, they’re just perfect for whiling away a summer day, swinging on a hammock and enjoying a cool glass of lemonade.

Everybody’s getting in on the fun. Hot on the heels of Masters of Horror emulator Fearmongers is The Italian Masters of Horror.

This blatant rip-off of the North American Masters of Horror fills me with glee. Italy is a country with a distinguished history of taking successful genre films from abroad, adding their own twist to them, and rereleasing them to an unsuspecting world in a completely different form, many times for the better. I’m really glad that this new format has enticed some of the old masters back into the game. Who knows, maybe this will kickstart a new Italian horror renaissance.