Collector’s Editions from 88 Films provide an opportunity to re-evaluate two familiar Italian horror movies. My opinion of Pupi Avati’s creepy Zeder (1983), always favourable, has been confirmed, while I now have a new appreciation of Mario Bava’s Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970), which I’d always seen as a minor and not entirely successful addition to his filmography.
![Alice Campos (Florinda Bolkan) searches for her own past in Luigi Bazzoni’s Le Orme (Footprints on the Moon [1975])](https://www.cageyfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/footprints_01.jpg)
It’s taken me a while to work through some of the many Severin box sets that have been piling up over the past year – the folk horror set All the Haunts Be Ours, House of Psychotic Women and the latest set of Italian movies Violent Streets: The Umberto Lenzi/Tomas Milian Collection – along with some 4K special editions of movies by Dario Argento and Alex de la Iglesia.
More recent releases from Arrow: Nightmare at Noon (1988), a horror-thriller from prolific Greek filmmaker Nico Mastorakis; The Righteous (2021), a bleak, Bergman-influenced study of guilt and grief with supernatural intimations from Newfoundland actor/filmmaker Mark O’Brien; and a superb hi-def restoration of Mike Hodges’ late career masterpiece Croupier (1997) in a two-disk set which includes an engaging documentary in which the 89-year-old filmmaker reminisces about his life and career.
In a career lasting six decades, Bert I. Gordon co-wrote, produced, directed, sometimes photographed and created the special effects for a couple of dozen cheap-and-cheerful horror and sci-fi movies. He died this week at age 100, having directed his final feature in 2015 at age 93, a pretty good record for someone who mostly worked on shoestring budgets.
Recent Arrow releases include Japanese ghosts (a deluxe box set of Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On movies) and gangsters (Shinji Somai’s genre-bending Sailor Suit and Machine Gun [1981]) and one of the best early adaptations of an H.P. Lovecraft story (Daniel Haller’s The Dunwich Horror [1969]).
Asian genre movies often contain a dizzying mix of exhilarating action, slapstick comedy, graphic violence and gore, and wild supernatural horror – all of which are on display in recent releases from 88 Films and Eureka.
Vinegar Syndrome begin 2023 by casting a wide net to gather a range of exploitation movies from Hong Kong, Mexico and the U.S. It’s a mixed bag encompassing Stuart Gordon’s classic H.P. Lovecraft adaptation From Beyond (1986); three extreme horrors featuring iconic actor Anthony Wong; a sordid Mexican movie about a psychopath killing and raping for Satan; Tom Chaney’s Frostbiter (1995), a derivative low-budget horror from Michigan featuring ambitious special effects, miniatures, stop-motion animation and Evil Dead-inspired excess; and Curt Siodmak’s minor oddity Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956), the first from a new sub-label, Vinegar Syndrome Labs, intended to gauge interest in this kind of obscure title.
Two new movies by directors who interest me offer a mixture of pleasure and slight disappointment. Both Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool (2023) and M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin (2023) have a strong strain of psychological horror somewhat compromised by endings which are not fully satisfying.
Three recent releases blend reality and fiction to explore political themes, with varying success. Alain Jessua’s Les Chiens (1978) is an allegory of Fascism, while Jean-Claude Lord’s Mindfield (1989) and Jayro Bustamante’s La llorona (2019) are both rooted in real crimes, the former turning history into pulp entertainment, the latter into a haunting exploration of national trauma.
Three books which I read last year connect with my love of genre film, particularly horror: Tony Dalton’s hefty biography Terence Fisher: Master of Gothic Cinema from FAB Press; Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin, edited by Samm Deighan and now available as an e-book from Spectacular Optical; and – somewhat more esoteric – Powers of Darkness, an alternate version of Dracula first published in a Swedish newspaper from 1899 to 1900 and recently unearthed and translated back into English, published in an impressive limited edition by Centipede Press.