Tag Archives: Giallo

BAD MOVIE MONDAY: NEW YEAR’S EVIL (1980)

Posted on by

Today’s BAD MOVIE MONDAY column is about a film called NEW YEAR’S EVIL. It was released in 1980 and was directed by Emmett Alston. It stars Roz Kelly, Kip Niven, Grant Cramer and Chris Wallace. The film is a pretty good horror movie, but… is it a slasher? I’ve always said that from 1979 to about 1983 every horror movie was trying to force itself into the slasher subgenre, often with poor results, and NEW YEAR’S EVIL is the perfect example of a movie that feels like it was hastily rewritten to fit the trend. So you know what? Instead of a review, I’m going to answer the question of whether or not NEW YEAR’S EVIL is a Slasher Movie, and my answer will be definitive.
Continue reading →

BAD MOVIE MONDAY: PIECES (1982)

Posted on by

The word of the day, when choosing something for my friends and I to watch on BAD MOVIE MONDAY, has almost always been “agony”. However, on the particular night that we watched this movie I thought it’d probably healthier for their collective sanity to at least try to pick something that wasn’t gut wrenchingly awful. Hence, we watched 1982’s PIECES. Partially because it has Christopher George in it, who’s sort of become my own personal bad movie mascot, and also because no one else but me in the group had watched it and I thought it was a rather important film. It’s a quirky mix of Italian Giallo and American Slasher movie tropes, even though the film is Spanish. It’s also not a bad movie in any way. Let me be very clear about that. However, it has enough bonkers moments and questionable logic to be shown on a “bad” movie night.
Continue reading →

The Last Matinee (Al morir la matinee) (2021)

Posted on by

Back in the golden age of video stores, a lot of times when you weren’t informed on certain video releases, you’d pretty much have to rent something out of the blue. Sometimes you came home with a lemon, and sometimes you ended up renting something amazing. “The Last Matinee” feels like that lost video store gem, that movie inhabiting the corner of the horror section of the video store that is waiting to be discovered. And when it’s discovered it’s bound to blow you out of your seat.

Continue reading →

Francesca (2015) [FrightFest 2016]

Posted on by

FrancescaIn Italy, a detective and an inspector investigate a string of murders happening in their city.  They are soon led to a 15 year old kidnapping case which may shed some light on their current investigation. Director Luciano Onetti with his co-writer Nicolas Onetti builds an almost perfect old school giallo, however it was shot in 2015.  Their film builds a story and characters straight out of the subgenre and these create an entertaining film about two police detectives looking for a serial killer.

Continue reading →

Amer (2009)

Posted on by

Visually and viscerally, “Amer” is a film that is a throwback to the classic Giallo thrillers, but deep down it is much more of an academic breakdown of the Giallo sub-genre and not so much a straight forward giallo film. True it has shades of the visual flourishes with uses of color and specific dashes of sharp editing that suck us in to the narrative, all the while invoking memories of “Suspiria” and “Tenebre” upon which both directors call on to create something of an evocative sexual thriller, in the end. “Amer” is admittedly an exhausting film and that counts as a criticism and a recommendation.

Continue reading →