The Trash Vault with JJ, Nostromo and Swan

In this thread, JJ, nostromo87 and I will set a movie to watch within a week and then discuss it at our leisure. It will be broken into subgenres. We will explore the subgenre until we're ready to move on.

RECOMMENDATIONS ARE WELCOME.

Giallo

1. Blood and Black Lace (Mario Bava, 1964)
2. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento, 1970)
3. The Cat o' Nine Tails (Dario Argento, 1971) - NOT WATCHED

Roger Corman

1. X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (Roger Corman, 1963)
2. Little Shop of Horrors (Roger Corman, 1960) - NOT WATCHED

Lucio Fulci

1. The Beyond (Lucio Fulci, 1981))

It's going to be a rewatch for me. It's been a long time since my first viewing, and I am expecting my feelings to change. I remember not really enjoying the film at the time, but I remember certain details fondly.

Will be my first viewing. JJ mentioned in PM that this is basically the prototype of giallo, which sounds about right to me. I have liked what I've seen by Bava, which is Black Sabbath and Black Sunday, so I'm hoping I like this as well.

cool, I need to see more giallo and I was in need of some recs, so I should find this thread helpful

Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and Sergio Martino.

If Mt. Rushmore featured the faces of giallo filmmakers, these are the faces that would be on it. If you are interested in the genre, I suggest you look up the filmography of these guys.

I need to get into giallo flicks. I will keep an eye on this!

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Already heard of these guys (well, with the exception of that Martino guy), but I'm not familiar at all with their work, except for Argento of course.

I guess it's time to finally start exploring their filmographies + I'll probably check out anything you guys watch if it sounds appealing to me

Hopefully we can bring some attention to Sergio Martino in this thread. He only made five giallo films before making films of various other exploitation genres. The only film of his that I've seen is Torso, which I thought was pretty damn good. His four other gialli are well regarded amongst fans of the genre, and look like films that are undeniably unique and interesting. I am most excited about exploring his films.

I'm definitely excited to see Torso. My dad owns it and I have it ready to watch. I have seen none of his films so it will be my first Martino.

Nice thread, looking forward to this. I watched Black Sabbath for the first time quite recently and really liked it, would be good to read your thoughts on that. Also, would you be up for doing any Hammer Horror?

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Nice thread, should be interesting!

I thought that Blood and Black Lace was really underwhelming and was quite disappointed by it. Im eager to here your responses!

My next Bava is probably going to be Kill Baby, Kill from 1966, which i have only heard good things about.

I may sound like a broken record, but i hope you will check out Santa Sangre (1989) by Alejandro Jodorowsky at some point

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Yeah, we've been discussing possible categories via PM and I mentioned Hammer. That is one we are definitely going to get to.

Yep. We'll be hitting Hammer.

I still haven't seen any Jodorowsky films, so I might try to convince Swan and stromo to include a quick Jodorowsky filmography hit and run for this thread.

As Jodorowsky is one of my fave directors, I'm down.

I can see why TokeZa and JJ were underwhelmed, but I guess I wasn't simply because I went in knowing it might not be great. I did like it, I rate it a + which is a good rating, but it's definitely not the best giallo I've seen. This was one of the very first giallo films (I did a little research and it seems Bava's '63 The Girl Who Knew Too Much is considered the first one. Maybe we should have started with that, but like JJ said, Blood and Black Lace seems to be more of the prototype of giallo, and has had more of an impact than that one), and from what I have seen, the subgenre definitely evolved and became much more interesting and fun.

I also got the feeling while watching this that it was very influenced by film noir. Maybe I'm crazy, I don't know, but now I am wondering if the entire subgenre of giallo has it's roots in noir. The music of this film, the mystery, the dialogue, it was all very noirish. I don't know if JJ or nostromo feel the same, curious what they think.

Just pressed play. I'll be watching for the film noir influences, I expect the early Bava giallo films to have the same film noir feel. He probably made those murder mystery films with noir in mind.

The best Jodorowsky film I've seen is Jodorowsky's Dune and he didn't direct it (although he lived it).

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Maybe we'll add that to our Jodorowsky list.

Had to pause the movie because my neighbor came over for a short visit, so it took a little longer to finish.

SPOILER ALERT KINDA



I'd give it the same score as Swan or maybe half a popcorn higher. I enjoyed it a lot more than the first time around, but I still prefer Argento's style of giallo more. It's not entirely fair to compare though, because Argento had a template and the liberty to expand the concept to fit his imagination in part thanks to Bava and Blood and Black Lace. I think I also prefer the wacky giallo storylines that aren't entirely feasible or easy to follow than the type of mostly straight-forward storytelling employed in this one, sure there are some reveals at the end, but it's not the all over the place stuff that happens down-the-road by the other guys.

And as far as film noir influences go, I'd say it's pretty obviously influenced by the genre. You have the music, the claustrophobic action sequences, double-crosses, the usage of shadows, and I'd even say we get the femme fatale device. I think Massimo was the femme fatale in this case though, so Bava did switch it up a little bit.