BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964) / AMER (2009) GIALLO ROUND TABLE!!

BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964) d. Mario Bava (Italy)
AMER (2009) d. Bruno Forzani / Helene Cattet (Belgium/France)

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In 1963, director Mario Bava made The Girl Who Knew Too Much and gave birth to the Italian film genre known as the Giallo. Named after a series of crime paperbacks with yellow covers, the Giallo was boldly contemporary, eschewing the cloaks and capes of Hammer’s Gothic melodramas. A year later, Bava made the film that would define and popularize the giallo for years to come, Blood and Black Lace.

WITHOUT WARNING (1980) Blu-ray Review

Without Warning (1980) d. Greydon Clark (USA)

Despite the emphatic warnings of the local gas station attendant (Jack Palance), a quartet of hormonal teens head out to the ol’ swimming hole for a weekend getaway and find themselves in the middle an extraterrestrial’s private hunting preserve. The result is a don’t-go-in-the-woods thriller that swaps out the requisite blade-swinging psycho with a melon-headed space alien given to flinging blood-sucking parasites at myriad hapless victims (including a young David Caruso in his second screen appearance, sporting some wicked short shorts).

FRANKENSTEIN'S ISLAND (1981) movie review

Frankenstein's Island (1981) d. Jerry Warren (USA)

When you see a cast list comprised of Steve Brodie (The Giant Spider Invasion), Robert Clarke (The Hideous Sun Demon), Cameron Mitchell (Toolbox Murders, Silent Scream) and John Carradine (every movie ever made), your optimism might rise in spite of - or because of - the low IMDb rating (1.9!) and the presence of below-decks dreck merchant Jerry Warren. Lest ye be fooled, as I was, heede my warning: Abandon all hope and brain cells, ye who enter heere.