Il demonio
Her name, brilliantly chosen, is Purificazione: Purification. Scapegoated, slut-shamed, and viciously abused, Purif is arrestingly beautiful and sexually appetizing, uneducated and intelligent. Tormented, in a perpetual fever, she prowls her unadorned village and its windswept surroundings, armed with a cursed item, searching for the object of her desire, a lover soon to wed a more dominatable, well-behaved woman.
The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue
While it predates the entire Italian zombie phenomenon, the Spanish/Italian co-production The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue feels like an exemplar of Italian horror films of the 1970s…
Cemetery Man aka Dellamorte Dellamore
Directors love Magritte. William Friedkin modeled the iconic Exorcist streetlight image after the painting Empire of Light. Director Michele Soavi was inspired by the shrouded kiss depicted in The Lovers II for his 1994 film Dellamorte Dellamore (translation: Of Death, Of Love).
Planet of the Vampires
Planet of the Vampires is a film you haven’t seen at all if you haven’t seen it in the wee hours, with the lights off, and its hypnotic sound turned way up.
Nightmare Beach
The close of the ’80s brought a consummate entry in that decade’s trash-horror cinema. Nightmare Beach takes a sex-comedy setting—spring break at Miami Beach—and tosses in a killer, who so inconveniently disrupts the visiting horny teens’ partying agendas.