The films

▶ watchcult

Lisa and the Devil

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

▶ watchcult

Maciste in Hell

A muscleman drops into a full gothic hell. Peplum crossbred with a haunted-castle picture, and it looks it.

▶ watchcult

Race with the Devil

Satanists chase a Winnebago across Texas. Better than that sounds.

▶ watchcult

Shock Waves

Underwater Nazi zombies rise off a tropical island. Peter Cushing, John Carradine, and real dread.

▶ watchcult

Successive Slidings of Pleasure

A nouveau-roman novelist makes a nunsploitation film and refuses to let it mean anything.

▶ watchcult

Succubus

Franco's arthouse credentials, such as they are. Fritz Lang liked it.

▶ watchcult

The Blood Spattered Bride

Spanish Carmilla adaptation with an unusually pointed anger about marriage.

▶ watchcult

The Boss

Di Leo's most cynical crime film. A mob enforcer navigates a Mafia war where everyone is corrupt.

cult

The Immoral Mr. Teas

Historically pivotal, formally inert. Watch ten minutes and read about the rest.

▶ watchcult

The Indian Scarf

Ten heirs in a Scottish castle, strangled one at a time. Kinski included.

▶ watchcult

The Italian Connection

Mario Adorf on foot versus a car. Best chase in Italian cinema.

▶ watchcult

The Shiver of the Vampires

Rollin with a fuzz-guitar band and a vampire who lives in the clock. His most fun.

▶ watchcult

The Toolbox Murders

A proto-slasher that front-loads its nastiness, then becomes a different and stranger film.

cult

Veerana

The Ramsay brothers' witch movie, with musical numbers between the murders.

▶ watchcult

Vigilante

Lustig doing it straight. Robert Forster deserves better and knows it.

▶ watchcult

White Line Fever

Trucker versus the cartel. Earnest, blue-collar, better than expected.

▶ watchcult

Women's Prison Massacre

Late Italian entry. Laura Gemser, and a body count instead of a plot.

▶ watchcult

99 Women

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

▶ watchcult

Alucarda

The most hysterical nunsploitation film ever made. A convent, two possessed girls, and constant screaming.

▶ watchcult

Black Caesar

Larry Cohen shooting Harlem guerrilla-style. James Brown scores it.

▶ watchcult

Cleopatra Jones

Tamara Dobson, six feet two, government agent. Shelley Winters overacts gloriously.

▶ watch⊘ bannedcult

Contamination

Alien via Rome, with exploding chests and a Goblin score doing heavy lifting.

▶ watchcult

Flavia the Heretic

Far angrier and more political than the packaging suggests.

cult

Goliath and the Vampires

Maciste renamed again, fighting a shapeshifter. Cheerfully incoherent.

▶ watchcult

Goodbye Uncle Tom

Jacopetti and Prosperi's slavery reconstruction, and the most indefensible thing the mondo pair ever shot.

▶ watch⊘ bannedcult

Hell of the Living Dead

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

▶ watchcult

Kill, Baby... Kill!

A ghost child with a white ball. Fellini and Scorsese both stole from it.

▶ watch⊘ bannedcult

Killer Nun

Anita Ekberg, morphine, and a plot that gives up around the hour mark.

▶ watchcult

Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance

A disgraced executioner and his toddler take the assassin's road. The pram has blades in it.

▶ watchcult

Pieces

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

▶ watchcult

Q: The Winged Serpent

Larry Cohen, a dragon over Manhattan, and a great Michael Moriarty.

▶ watchcult

Revolver

Di Leo's saddest. Oliver Reed, and a Morricone theme that hurts.

▶ watchcult

Short Night of Glass Dolls

Narrated by a paralysed man presumed dead. Unusual and very good.

▶ watchcult

Squirm

Electrified worms in Georgia. Rick Baker's early effects are the draw.

cult

The Case of the Scorpion's Tail

Martino at his most efficient. Nobody wastes a frame.

▶ watchcult

The College Girl Murders

The point where the black-and-white krimi tips over into full-colour giallo delirium.