BORN IN FLAMES

BORN IN FLAMES Production: USA, 1983 Director: Lizzie Borden Category: Political A radical feminist feature, set in a hypothetical future New York, where a vigilante group called the Women’s Army assert their right to violent intervention. When one of them, a black militant lesbian, dies in police custody, women from all parts Continue Reading

MONDO CANE

MONDO CANE (“Dog World”) Production: Italy, 1962 Director: Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi Category: Mondo The film that gave its name to a whole genre of cinema – the mondo movie. With Europa Di Notte in 1958, Italy’s cinema of the weird, exotic and shocking began to turn its Continue Reading

PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES

PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES Production: UK, 1966 Director: John Gilling Category: Horror/Zombie Hammer’s Plague Of The Zombies concerns a voodoo cult at work in darkest 19th-century Cornwall, with the local squire (John Carson) creating a band of zombies to slave in his tin-mines. The film features freshly-disturbed graves, the dead walking the countryside, Continue Reading

LA ROSE ECORCHÉE

LA ROSE ECORCHÉE (“The Flayed Rose”) Production: France, 1970 Director: Claude Mulot Category: Sex/Sadism/Freaks English title: The Blood Rose German title: Das Blutige Schloss der Lebenden Leichen (“Bloody Castle Of Living Corpses”) Promoted as the first “sex-horror” film, Mulot’s phantasy was a conflation of sex, nudity, violence, gore, and two sinister dwarfs. Continue Reading

NIHONTO MONOGATARI

NIHONTO MONOGATARI (“Japanese Sword Story”) Production: Japan, 1957 Director: Asano Tatsuo Category: Documentary/Martial Arts Sacred film dedicated to the samurai sword, showing its crafting, its many uses, and its cultural and symbolic significance, all accompanied by spiralling Wagnerian music. It was the Japanese sword that allowed the Shogun’s samurai to Continue Reading