In terms of titles that encapsulate the appeal of a whole genre, there aren’t many competitors, are there? You have the murder, you have the obsession, and every giallo must feature both, but only one of them is called Murder Obsession. Riccardo Freda’s final film, reissued on Blu-Ray by Radiance […]
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Savage Guns – Four Classic Westerns (1968-1975) A Quartet of Bleak and Gritty Late Period Spaghetti Westerns (Review)
Four of the Italian western’s hardest, cruelest, bloodiest classics are released to Blu-ray this week in Arrow’s ongoing limited edition series of Spaghetti Western boxsets. Under the umbrella title Savage Guns, this third volume brings four unsung classics of the genre aficionados of heavily dubbed, violent and sun-baked horse operas: Paolo […]
Gang War in Milan (1973): Violence, Misogyny and Political Commentary (Review)
The Horrible Dr Hichcock (1962) & The Night of the Devils (1972) Radiance Italian Gothic (Review)
The House by the Cemetery (1981) The Odd Duck of the Gates of Hell Trilogy (Review)
Blood and Black Lace (1964) Style Over Substance in Vignettes of Violence (Review)
Newly restored from its original negative and presented in its original uncut form, Mario Bava’s classic 1964 giallo Blood and Black Lace has recently been released by the good people at Arrow Films. Starring Cameron Mitchell and Eva Bartok, this stylish slasher concerns a series of murders centring around Rome’s […]
Commedia all’italiana: Three Films by Dino Risi (1959-1962) (Review)
Commedia all’italiana, or Italian-style comedy, was a genre of Italian cinema that achieved considerable success from the 1950s through to the 1970s. These films, though farcical and/or satirical, placed a greater emphasis than before on realism, shooting on location and creating believable, three dimensional characters. They were united by the […]
Cosa Nostra (1968-1975): A Trilogy of Corruption, Italian Style (Review)
Radiance Films celebrate a remarkable trilogy of films from renowned Italian director Damiano Damiani (of 1966’s A Bullet for the General fame) and arguably the country’s most celebrated male star, Franco Nero, with their Cosa Nostra boxset released today. In the postwar period, Italian cinema led the way with their […]
The Iron Prefect (1977): Giuliano Gemma Cleans Up Sicily (Review)
This week’s release from Radiance is Pasquele Squitieri’s 1977 movie Il Prefetto di Ferro, alternatively known as both The Iron Prefect and I Am the Law in English speaking territories. Fans of Italian genre cinema take note, Radiance offers this up as a delicious primer ahead of their epic Cosa […]