After the fall of the Hammer Horror Empire in the 70’s, Britain was no longer the dominant superpower of the Horror world. With a gap in “the market”, a group of Extreme, Explicit and Exploitative, Italian film makers saw a chance to shine. And shine they did.
The tagline above was taken from the video sleeve for Lucio Fulci’s “City of the living dead (1980)”, but it sums up the entire Italian horror revolution. These films shocked audiences everywhere. Never had films that explicit been made before. But, with no one putting a stop to them, more and more were made and they flourished.
The individuals responsible were Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento, Lamberta Bava, Mario Bava and Michele Soavi. Each bringing their own unique styles to the horror world, collectively, the genre was called Giallo.
As the 70’s slowed down and the 80’s arrived, so did the UK Video Nasty craze. Mainly down to the opinions of one Mary Whitehouse, many horror films were banned outright, locked away, never to be seen by the public. Unfortunately for the film makers, Britain was one of their main audiences, and so many films never made it here.
When American director Sam Raimi attempted to release his film The Evil Dead in 1983 over here in England, he and his associates Bruce Campbell and Robert Tapert were taken to court over some of the content of the film. The case was dismissed, but the film was still banned. Adding to the video nasty collection that was growing bigger.
The Americans joined in with the Video nasty wave and the Italian directors lost another major audience, much to the dismay of the fans. The Gore-masters went “underground” with their films, even though they were still acceptable in Italy. At the end of the 80’s and the beginning of the 90’s the Video nasty craze died down, and films were allowed through that wouldn’t normally pass inspection. Fans got to see what they had been missing for the past 10 years.
Unfortunately for the fans the ban was coming back and it was going to be even more publicly supported. A young toddler named James Bulger was abducted from a shopping centre by 2 10 year old kids and murdered. The kids said they were “inspired” by the Child’s play films; in which a possessed doll murders people. The ban was put back on again, and the Italians once again didn’t make it over here. Towards the end of the 90’s the films that were coming from the age of Italian horror were a mere shadow of their predecessors.
Now, with films such as Nine Songs showing full sex on cinema screens, the public, and the censor’s office, seem to have accepted graphic visuals. Yet the Italian directors are nowhere to be seen. Have they lost their crown to another country? If so, to who?
It is undoubted that there was a huge fan base and following for the new Italian horror films. Only people with a strong mind and stomach can regularly sit through the films. In most, the viewer is subjected to a plethora of violence, blood, guts, murders, sexual assaults and bizarreness.
These films are a million miles away from the horror they were used to before. For example “The Gestapo’s last orgy (1977) in which in one scene dinner party guests are served and enjoy “pot roast of unborn Jew”. Not only is it disturbing, it’s strangely surreal. The psychological sadism rife throughout the film cannot be taken seriously after one part when one of the leaders of the Gestapo party forces a girl to perform fellatio on the barrel of his Luger pistol”.
This is often the case in the Italian films. There will be a barrage of sickening content, yet due to the almost operatic extremity of what is shown it’s almost unbelievable, and in some modern circles the trend is to watch films of this genre, not for fear, but for laughs; The exact opposite of why they were made.
When writing their scripts, the Italians were thinking of the best ways to get to get extreme reactions from the audiences. The best way most of them found was to fill their films with plenty of blood, guts, and rape. The rape fad died out in the late 70’s. People and the directors themselves just didn’t want to see it.
One director dubbed “the Godfather of Italian gore”, Lucio Fulci found a way to get the best reaction from the audience. In Zombie Flesh Eaters (1983) a woman’s head is pulled onto a piece of broken wood, penetrating her eye in full detail. He repeated this scene of ocular devastation in 2 of his later films The Beyond and the New York Ripper.
