Italian Genre Films & a Fulci Marathon Coming Soon!
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February 16th, 2025
When I first started watching The Cinema Snob back in 2011, I got exposed to an entire subculture of film that I had no idea even existed. That show put a spotlight on some of the most obscure and strange films from the 1970s-90s at the time, and I found so many hidden gems that have gone on to greatly influence my taste in film. I could make a list of all of them, but the thing I have to thank the Snob for the most is sparking my love for Italian genre films. I've already made small entries on cash-in films like Alien 2: On Earth and Contamination, but those two only barely begin to scratch the tip of the iceberg. There's so much more to explore.
Like any country, Italy's film landscape consists of many genres; comedy, drama, fantasy, et cetera. But what I want to focus on here is specifically genre films from the 1970s to the 1990s: horror / exploitation, action, and sci-fi. Each of these genres has so many subgenres to go along with them, and if I were to list every single one, it would go on and on. In just the umbrellas of horror and exploitation alone, you have: giallo films, standard slasher films, zombie films, cannibal films, killer animal films, and so on. At this point, you may be asking: "Why specifically Italy? What makes them so special?" Well, for some reason, Italian filmmakers made some of the goriest, sleaziest, goofiest, and generally out-there genre films of that era. While us Americans were getting upset at the levels of sex and violence in horror films, the Italians were putting so much violence and nudity in their films that they were getting banned in various countries. The same year that Friday the 13th and Maniac got unleashed upon America, Italy released the infamous Cannibal Holocaust, as well as Antropophagus, a film infamous for a scene where its killer devours a fetus. Pretty out-there compared to what we were making here!
An interesting phenomenon to observe with Italian genre films is their sometimes-derivative nature. These genre films would often follow a popular trend at the time, and various filmmakers would dip their toes in the water to try to cash in on the "big thing" of the moment. Luigi Cozzi, the director of Contamination and Starcrash, was once quoted as saying: "In Italy, when you bring a script to a producer, the first question he asks is not 'What is your film like,' but 'what film is your film like?" If you look at the chronological release dates of some of these films, you can watch whatever trend it is coming and going. For example, after the release of The Exorcist in 1973, there were four Italian rip-off films released between 1974 and 1975: The Eerie Midnight Horror Show, Beyond the Door, The Antichrist, and The Possessor. Beyond the Door was even subject to a lawsuit from the rights owners of The Exorcist for being too similar, and The Possessor went so far as to be marketed as "The Return of the Exorcist" in some territories. In the world of action films, after 1981's releases of Escape from New York and Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior), Italy gave us 1990: The Bronx Warriors, 2019: After the Fall of New York, and Escape from the Bronx all across 1982-1983.
It would be exhaustive to list every trend in Italian genre films and every single cash-in or rip-off that was released in these decades. However, don't let this trend of cashing in make you think that that's all these filmmakers were capable of doing. Many directors had lots of original work that could be considered masterpieces in this area of film. Mario Bava kicked off the entire giallo genre with The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Blood and Black Lace, and A Bay of Blood. Dario Argento gave us the Technicolor fever-dreams of Suspiria and Inferno, as well as fantastic giallos such as Deep Red and Tenebrae. Ruggero Deodato gave us cannibal classics such as Last Cannibal World and Cannibal Holocaust, as well as the edge-of-your-seat sleaze-fest The House on the Edge of the Park. That's only naming a few directors and that's not even counting one of my top favorites: Lucio Fulci, known by fans as "The Maestro."
I actually wrote this post because I've been in a massive mood to revisit Fulci's filmography. He had a career that spanned decades and several genres, but he became most known for his graphic horror films. My introduction to his work was Zombi 2, an original zombie film that was retitled by its distributors to appear as a sequel to Dawn of the Dead, and it's my favorite zombie film of all time. Beyond that, he tackled the giallo genre with Don't Torture a Duckling, The Psychic, and the ultra-sleazy The New York Ripper. He showcased the gates of Hell itself with the trilogy of City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, and The House By the Cemetery. That's only naming some of his most well-known films, and his career only got weirder as he got older and began to suffer from many illnesses. The films became much lower-budget, and suffered from poor production values and bad distribution. It's a bit of a sad end to such a legendary director, but regardless of the low points, he remains one of the most iconic Italian horror directors for good reason.
While I own almost all of Fulci's genre films, I have yet to watch the films that he made post-sickness. So, I've decided that I'm going to try to watch through all of his movies that I own, and write my thoughts after each one. Some of these I've seen several times, while all of the ones post-Zombi 3 will be entirely fresh viewings for me. I can't guarantee a set schedule because of personal life circumstances, but I'm going to try to be as consistent as I can. If you're interested, keep an eye out for these write-ups coming very soon! You may want to hold on to those eyeballs, though. Fulci has been known to yank those things out on more than one occasion.