In ’60s cinema, Italian superhero movies were 2 lire a dozen. However, only one is from the guy who would give cinema a naked Amazonian girl impaled anus-to-mouth on a spiked pole. Working under the Americanized moniker Roger Rockefeller, future Cannibal Holocaust chaos agent Ruggero Deodato wrote and directed Fenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankamen … Continue reading Fenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankamen (1968)
Since childhood, I’ve admired the concept of the advent calendar more than using one — a case of each door revealing “That’s it?”-level disappointment after so much buildup. That feeling extends to Deathcember, a festive horror anthology constructed as such a calendar, with a short from a different director (Ruggero Deodato, Lucky McKee and Trent … Continue reading Deathcember (2019)
A fine line exists between European arthouse films and European horror films, argues Ian Olney, and he makes a convincing case for it in Euro Horror, a paperback study for Indiana University Press. Of course, many closed-minded people think no line exists between horror and pornography, so Olney also spends a great deal of time … Continue reading Euro Horror: Classic European Horror Cinema in Contemporary American Culture
One would expect Ruggero Deodato, the director of the notoriously nihilistic Cannibal Holocaust, to bring something different to an Italian cop film. In Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man, he does just that: basic disregard for human life. Enjoy! The best part of this crime story comes right out of the gate, as … Continue reading Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976)
“Ruggero, old friend! Listen, the Americans are all so crazy over these Airport pictures. First there was one, then there was two, and now they do four! It is called The Concorde, then ‘dot dot dot,’ then Airport ’79. Dramatic, no? “Well, listen, we want to do what the Americans do right away, so you, … Continue reading Concorde Affaire ’79 (1979)