Italy

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Federico Fellini’s second feature, *I Vitelloni* (literal trans.: “fatted veal calves”; figurative trans.: “the guys”), is an honest, unpretentious work from the Master before he became besotted with his own self-indulgence.

It’s autobiographical in several indirect ways. The depictions here of young men who are not quite so young anymore, living with their mothers, settling for dead-end jobs or simply not working, and generally languishing their lives away, are based on Fellini’s own observations of such fellows in his boyhood home of Rimini. Autobiographical too in its sense of style: the movie is inescapably stamped by the Neo-Realism of Fellini’s apprenticeship. The grimy faces of working-class people, crumbling tenements, and weed-choked rail-yards are all here. But with a difference: Fellini casts a critical eye on this scene, eschewing the usual Neo-Realist appeal to our presumed socialist sympathies. *I Vitelloni* is not a political film in the usual mid-century Italian manner. Fellini gives us a quintet of heroes who, for the most part, aspire to be bourgeois big-shots of their shabby seacoast town. Not content with that, he makes them lazy, as well . . . and then he asks us to root for them, to actually like them! Needless to say, the intelligentsia of the period didn’t warm to this film, even as the film-going public in Europe loved it, recognizing themselves and their friends and their own hometowns in it.Read More »

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Well, it’s not big and it’s not clever – but Sex with a Smile is great fun, and rather funny in places; plus it features performances from five of Italy’s hottest ladies, so what’s not to like? The stories in the film apparently focus on Italian humour, but to me it seemed pretty universal and I think that even people who don’t know anything about Italian humour will find this funny. The film features five separate stories, all involving sex and all ending with a funny and ironic little twist.Read More »

AMG:
A leather-clad killer who hides his identity under a motorcycle helmet goes on a depraved killing spree in this unabashedly sadistic giallo directed by Andrea Bianchi (Burial Ground) and starring Nino Castelnuovo and Femi Benussi. A fashion model has died while receiving an illegal abortion, and after the abortionist is slain, the black-clad killer begins targeting the deceased model’s former co-workers. One by bloody one the models begin to fall prey to the mysterious killer, and all of the crimes have one thing in common – the victims were all forced to strip nude before meeting their grim fate. — Jason BuchananRead More »

Left alone in Paris whilst their parents are on holiday, Isabelle (Eva Green) and her brother Theo (Louis Garrel) invite Matthew (Michael Pitt), a young American student, to stay at their apartment. Here they make their own rules as they experiment with their emotions and sexuality while playing a series of increasingly demanding mind games. Set against the turbulent political backdrop of France in the spring of 1968 when the voice of youth was reverberating around Europe, THE DREAMERS is a story of self-discovery as the three students test each other to see just how far they will go. THE DREAMERS was helmed by Bernardo Bertolucci, whose THE LAST EMPEROR swept the 1987 Academy Awards garnering nine Oscars© including Best Director and Best Picture. It marks his third film shot in Paris, following THE CONFORMIST and the Oscar-nominated LAST TANGO IN PARIS. The screenplay, adapted for the screen from his original novel, is by English author and film critic Gilbert Adair. THE DREAMERS was produced by Jeremy Thomas (BROTHER, SEXY BEAST) who teamed with Bertolucci on THE LAST EMPEROR, THE SHELTERING SKY and LITTLE BUDDHA. THE DREAMERS strikes a personal chord for both Bertolucci and Adair, for although their paths never crossed, they were both living in Paris at the end of the 60s, experiencing the events against which the film is set. Their love of cinema took them to the birthplace of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), immersing them in a strong international cinema culture.Read More »

SYNOPSIS
Though fans of typical Italian horror films may find House With the Windows That Laugh lacking in the stylistic excesses of many of its contemporary companion pieces, it exceeds its contemporaries in almost every other area. Imbued with an overwhelming sense of dread that grows to an almost unbearable pitch, director Pupi Avati sets the deliberate pace of the film in contrast with the sense of solemn oppression that never ceases from the first to the last frame of the film. As the painter hired to restore a fresco in the church of a small Italian town learns more of the sordid legacy of its original artist, the calm pacing of the film reveals each twisted secret at impeccably timed intervals, never revealing details too soon, and often leaving the viewer hanging just long enough to build the appropriate anticipation needed for each revelation to have an acute and horrifying impact. Characters seem to be literally swallowed in the sea of darkness surrounding the mythology of the deranged painter of the original fresco and his mysterious sisters. With the soul of the main character at stake as he begins to feel possessed by the same disturbing compulsions that propelled the original artist into madness, the question as to if he will solve the mystery in time, or become another sacrifice in the black legacy, is a testament to Avati’s masterful ability to manipulate the expectations and emotions of his audience, only to shatter whatever preconceptions they may have in the film’s shocking climax. (Jason Buchanan on All Movie Guide)Read More »

This story opens in 1938 in Rome, where Marcello has just taken a job working for Mussollini and is courting a beautiful young woman who will make him even more of a conformist. Marcello is going to Paris on his honeymoon and his bosses have an assignment for him there. Look up an old professor who fled Italy when the fascists came into power. At the border of Italy and France, where Marcello and his bride have to change trains, his bosses give him a gun with a silencer. In a flashback to 1917, we learn why sex and violence are linked in Marcello’s mind. (IMDb)Read More »

It’s another one of Guazzoni’s ancient dramas, this time about Agrippina, the mother of Nero. After she manages to make him emperor of Rome, he finds her a nuisance.
Sadly she is immune to poison and sinking her ship didn’t kill her either – she simply swam ashore. In the end a sword through her stomach did the trick: Few people are immune to that.
Actually not all of the above features in the film… Basically Nero’s just cross because mamma doesn’t like his new mistress. Read More »

Journey to the lost tribe…
The succulent Annie Belle (of HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK and BLACK EMMANUELLE, WHITE EMMANUELLE fame) stars as Laura, a free-spirited young woman whose bold philosophy of pleasure enflames the passions of every man and woman she encounters in the steamy city of Manila. But when she’s invited to join a deep jungle expedition with a hunky filmmaker (Al Cliver of ZOMBIE and THE BEYOND) and a beautiful anthropologist (Arsan), Laura discovers that no sexual hunger can ever be truly forbidden. Can one woman’s insatiable lust create a new dimension of love, or will her complete carnal surrender to a strange native tribe lead to the most shocking act of all?Read More »

A writer returns home from World War I. He has developed a very bad case of post traumatic stress disorder. His genitalia was also blown away during the war. He contemplates suicide, but becomes interested in the 12 year old niece of the innkeeper at the place where he is recuperating. He doesn’t seem to mind that he is spending so much time with her. He becomes deeply infatuated with her, but can’t physically consummate any kind of relationship with her. She brightens his day, but her sexuality is just beginning to bud. When she begins to prefer a male closer to her age than the writer, the finality of the plot is set. Read More »