Articles
One piece every week or two. A steady trickle beats ten essays followed by two years of silence.
- survey · 9 August 2026
Gut-munchers: the Italian zombie boom, 1979 to 1983
There was no first one. Argento recut Romero, Fulci forged the sequel, and Italy spent four years feeding the British censors.
- survey · 9 August 2026
Blaxploitation, 1971 to 1975
Melvin Van Peebles caught gonorrhea on his own set, filed a workers' comp claim, and bought more film stock with the settlement. Four years later the studios had mined the audience out and moved on.
- survey · 9 August 2026
Mondo: the shockumentary, 1962 to 1978
An Oscar-nominated love ballad, a beach of dying sea turtles, a murder charge beaten before the film even opened, and a monkey brain made of cauliflower.
- survey · 8 August 2026
The giallo, 1963 to 1976
A line of yellow paperbacks, a killer in black gloves, and Mario Bava building the American slasher a decade before Hollywood cashed the cheque.
- survey · 7 August 2026
Poliziotteschi: the Italian cop film, 1973 to 1980
A moustache, a Magnum, and total contempt for the courts.
- survey · 6 August 2026
Fantaterror: the Spanish horror boom, 1968 to 1976
Two cuts of every film, one for the censor in Madrid and one for the drive-in. Democracy killed the trick in two years.
- survey · 5 August 2026
Ozploitation: the Australian genre boom, 1971 to 1986
An adults-only certificate, a tax loophole, and a Melbourne doctor who knew what happens to bodies at speed. Australia's fifteen years of cheap, mean, brilliant genre film.
- profile · 4 August 2026
Meiko Kaji and the art of not blinking
Toei hired her to headline prison quickies. She built the most-copied performance in Japanese genre cinema out of about forty lines of dialogue.
- survey · 30 July 2026
The video nasty panic
A drill on a video sleeve, a prosecutors' hit list of seventy-two films, and a censorship law that was void for twenty-five years on a filing error.
- deep dive · 28 July 2026
Wake in Fright is not an exploitation film
It was lost for thirty years, found in a bin marked 'for destruction', and it is the best thing on this site.
- survey · 14 July 2026
The Italian cannibal cycle, 1977 to 1985
Eight years, a dozen films, one arrest, and a court appearance to prove the cast were still alive.
