Cinefantastique Online

Hailing from Edinburgh, Midlothian, in the United Kingdom, I'm a PhD student and self-employed computer guy who likes films, especially those that are a bit off the beaten track. My blog Giallo Fever is dedicated to "Taking Eurotrash seriously - but not too seriously."

This 1960 UK-France co-production was the third adaptation of French writer Maurice Renard’s novel of the same name. The first, THE HANDS OF ORLAC (Orlacs Hande), was made in Weimar Germany and released in 1924. The second, also known as MAD LOVE and starring Peter Lorre, was made in Hollywood and released in 1935.
These dates [...]

Although THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA (originally L’amanti del Vampiro ["The Vampire's Lover]) is certainly not the most important continental European or even Italian horror film made in 1960, it is nevertheless of significance for a number of reasons. In the first place, it marks the directorial debut of Renato Polselli. Polselli is one of [...]

That THE AVENGER (Der Racher) is perhaps mostly a footnote in the history of the West German krimi* film can be attributed to its production circumstances. Rather than being part of the Rialto or CCC series, it was Kurt Ulrich Filmproduktion’s only contribution to the cycle, one that they were not able to follow up [...]

Marked by unpleasant violence and quesitonable humor, Argento’s latest thriller sees the director following his own dark muse, regardless of whether the audience tags along.
Dario Argento’s films have always divided critical and audience opinions. To his supporters, he’s one of the cinema’s supreme visual stylists, his work further marked by a constant willingness to [...]

“…an engaging and well-crafted murder mystery.”
Hired to score a low-budget horror movie, Bruno (Andrea Occhipinti – from Fulci’s THE NEW YORK RIPPER) rents an isolated luxury villa for the month. The atmosphere of the place soon gets to him. Going to investigate a noise, he finds a young woman, Katya, who leaps out of the [...]

With a new DVD now available, Cinefantastique asks Giallo Fever’s Keith Brown to give us the low-down on Sergio Martino’s 1971 giallo thriller – “a well made suspense film that moves along briskly.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: As Cole, the reluctant time traveller played by Bruce Willis in TWELVE MONKEYS notes, time changes our perception of movies. When you re-view a film, it seems different, but it is the viewer, not the film, that has actually changed. This observation prompts our posting of this review. Dario Argento’s directorial debut, The [...]

[EDITOR'S NOTE: As part of our on-going celebration of Mario Bava this week, we enlisted the aid of Keith Brown, who writes voluminously - and, more important, fascinatingly - on the subject of Italian cinema.]
An Appreciation by Keith Brown of Giallo Fever 
If there’s one word which encapsulates the world of Mario Bava’s cinema for me it [...]