Exploitation films from Spain

Horror Rises from the Tomb

A decapitated warlock's head, still working. Naschy wrote it himself.

The Loreley's Grasp

A Rhine myth relocated to Spain, with a monster that only works in long shot.

Exterminators of the Year 3000

The Italian Road Warrior with sand instead of the Bronx, muscle car included.

Conquest

Fulci does Conan through so much fog you can barely see the gore. Somehow that helps.

Night of the Seagulls

The Blind Dead ride out one last time. A quiet, sad closer to Spain's best monster series.

The Ghost Galleon

The Blind Dead put to sea on a model boat in a visible fish tank. The runt of the four.

Cannibal Apocalypse

Vietnam veterans as cannibals. Sillier and kinder than the jungle cycle.

Death Walks on High Heels

Ercoli's best. Structurally cleverer than most of the cycle.

High Crime

Castellari's breakout in the genre, and Franco Nero furious for ninety minutes.

Hunchback of the Morgue

Naschy's grisliest, and the one where the rats were not an effect.

Nightmare City

Zombies that run and use guns, decades early. Incompetent in enjoyable ways.

Return of the Evil Dead

Blind Dead again, this time besieging a whole village. The best of the four.

The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman

Naschy's Waldemar Daninsky at his most enjoyable.

Lisa and the Devil

Bava's most personal film, and his strangest. Telly Savalas as the devil, holding a lollipop.

99 Women

Franco doing the formula early, with Mercedes McCambridge as the warden.

Hell of the Living Dead

Bruno Mattei rips off Dawn of the Dead with a Goblin score he also stole. Gloriously shameless.

Pieces

Spanish, incoherent, and gleefully stupid. 'Bastard! Bastard!'

The Blood Spattered Bride

Spanish Carmilla adaptation with an unusually pointed anger about marriage.

The Case of the Scorpion's Tail

Martino at his most efficient. Nobody wastes a frame.

Hatchet for the Honeymoon

A bridal-couture killer who narrates his own psychosis, and the best ghost gag Bava ever staged.

Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot!

Nothing to do with Django, and one of the strangest and cruelest westerns Italy ever shot.

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh

The Martino/Fenech formula, arriving fully formed. Cut and retitled Blade of the Ripper in the US.

Tombs of the Blind Dead

Eyeless Templars on skeletal horses in slow motion. Best monster design of the 70s.

Who Can Kill a Child?

Spanish, sun-bleached, upsetting. The opening newsreel is a hard sell.

All the Colors of the Dark

Satanic paranoia in Swinging London. Edwige Fenech is excellent.

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie

Spanish-Italian, shot in England, and much smarter than its stablemates.

Planet of the Vampires

Bava builds an alien planet out of fog and two rocks, and Alien quietly borrowed the skeleton.

The Awful Dr. Orlof

Where the entire Franco machine started. Everything he made for forty years is in here somewhere.

The Big Gundown

Sollima's best. A manhunt that keeps turning into a political argument.

Companeros

Zapata western with Franco Nero and a very good Morricone theme.

Face to Face

Sollima's smartest western: watch a decent man discover he likes it.

The Mercenary

Corbucci's Zapata western. A Polish gun-for-hire, a peasant revolutionary, and Jack Palance in a frock.

Vampyros Lesbos

Franco's most watchable. The soundtrack outlived the film by decades.

Hercules

Steve Reeves, a Mr Universe title, and the start of the Italian genre machine.

The Colossus of Rhodes

Leone's actual debut, three years before the westerns.

Django

A coffin, a machine gun, and mud everywhere. Banned in Britain until 1993.

A Fistful of Dollars

An unlicensed Yojimbo remake. Toho sued and won. Started everything.

For a Few Dollars More

Van Cleef arrives and the formula locks into place.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The cemetery sequence is the best three minutes in the genre.