Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1957-1969

221 Pages·2015·76.06 MB·English

by  Roberto Curti

Italian Gothic
Horror Films,
1957–1969
ALSOBYROBERTOCURTI
Italian Crime Filmography, 1968–1980
(McFarland, 2013)
Italian Gothic
Horror Films,
1957–1969
Roberto Curti
Foreword by Ernesto Gastaldi
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
Curti, Roberto, 1971–
Italian gothic horror films, 1957–1969 /
Roberto Curti ; foreword by Ernesto Gastaldi.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-9437-8 (softcover : acid free paper) ♾
ISBN 978-1-4766-1989-7 (ebook)
1. Horror films—Italy—History and criticism. I. Title.
PN1995.9.H6C877 2015 791.43'61640945—dc23 2015006889
BRITISHLIBRARYCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE
© 2015 Roberto Curti. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
On the cover: Poster art from the 1963 film Black Sabbath
(American International Pictures/Photofest)
Printed in the United States of America
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Table of Contents
Foreword by Ernesto Gastaldi 1
Preface 3
Introduction: Gothic, Italian Style 11
Abbreviations 19
The Films 21
Selected Bibliography 201
Index 205
v
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Foreword
by Ernesto Gastaldi
In the late 1950s and early ’60s, we used to preserve the beauty of a duchess through
call it “cinema di paura” (“scary cinema”). weird practices.
“We” were young scriptwriters, called on However, it was Fisher’s Dracula that un-
to make up stories set in gloomy crumbling leashed Italian producers, and a hailstorm of
castles, isolated villas, dark crypts and foggy vampire movies flooded the screens: vampires
cemeteries packed full with crooked crosses, popped up everywhere, with a notable pref-
in the shade of cypress trees just like in an erence for musical stage plays. Opera was a
Ugo Foscolo poem—even better if those cy- typical wallpaper for these films and balleri-
presses were shaken by a howling wind that nas were the bloodsucker’s favorite victims.
recalled the echo of wolf packs or the gnash- Yet, at the end of the cycle, the poor f ang-
ing teeth of damned souls. toothed thing ended up fighting against …
In such pleasant places we had to develop Maciste!
characters of young virgins, unaware of the My debut as a writer and assistant director
facts of life, who confidently ventured in the came with The Vampire and the Ballerina
woods and cemeteries, without a red hood (L’amante del vampiro), by Renato Polselli,
but with the same appetizing charm that where a company of beautiful ballerinas had
would attract every wolf or werewolf in the decided to rehearse their ballet in the icy cold
area, either on four or two legs. and gloomy castle of Artena—just the per-
Usually the directors were established fect place, was it not? Our working hours:
names, with decent curricula, some artistic from 8 in the morning till midnight. We had
merit. They probably accepted those films for skeletons of poor devils, like my co- assistant
food, yet they had their share of fun shooting director, the unforgettable Franco Cirino, de-
those “scary” movies. manded. Home- made special effects. If some -
One of the first and best was Riccardo one had told me I was making a Gothic film
Freda, who shot I Vampiri in 1957, starring I would have laughed.
Gianna Maria Canale, a year ahead of the fa- Some time later I moved from vampires to
mous Horror of Dracula by Terence Fisher, werewolves. The film was Werewolf in a Girls’
starring the mythical Christopher Lee. Dormitory(Lycanthropus) by Paolo Heusch,
Freda did not start from Bram Stoker’s who told me we were making a horror movie.
novel, but he invented a mysterious Paris Actually, there was very little horror in it, but
where women were drained of their blood to the film benefitted from a beautiful b&w as
1
2 Foreword by Ernesto Gastaldi
well as the usual naïve young college girls. Very Gothic.
Looking back at it, well, it was a bit “scary.” Then came the “giallo.” Our coffee sup-
It was Riccardo Freda who explained to me plier Mara Maryl was also my wife, and I
that The Horrible Dr. Hichcock(L’orribile seg- wrote a story with four characters just for her,
reto del dr. Hichcock) was a Gothic film, due set in an isolated villa—but this time with less
to its mixture of romance and horror. He horror and more suspense. The result was Li-
shot it in two weeks with two crews working bido, which also marked the on- screen debut
at the same time in a house by a cemetery in of Giancarlo Giannini. This little black- and-
via Rubens, in Rome. Freda asked my permis- white movie cost 26 million lire and was sold
sion to cut out a final block of 12 pages from worldwide, gaining a profit of over 400 per-
the script, the ones that explained the mys- cent. It also served as a pretext for my degree
tery. I feebly objected that this way nobody in economics, with a thesis on the companies
would understand a thing, and Freda agreed, which produced prototypes: Libido’s com-
nodding vigorously. He smiled and said: mercial success pushed the late Luciano Mar-
“That’s the beauty of Gothic!” tino and Mino Loy on the road to Italian “gi-
So, when I finally got to work with Maes- allo.”
tro Mario Bava, I knew quite well how it had But, as they say, that is another story.
to be done. The Whip and the Body(La frusta With this book, Roberto Curti will take
e il corpo) is undoubtedly a Gothic film, and you by the hand through a labyrinth of titles,
Bava outdid himself by using colored lights, among vampires, werewolves, witches and
allowing actors to do more or less what they other assorted monsters. You will descend
thought was right, and composing colorful with him in the humid dungeons and eerie
shots of a beauty that are still unparalleled in crypts, walk in the g houl-i nfested graveyards
the genre. … but also peek into beautiful girls’ dormito-
Meanwhile the Gothic had created a solid ries and hot alcoves where horrible murders
market, and everyone was looking for more have taken place under magical nights of full
and more intriguing and gruesome stories. moonlight, in a w ell-d ocumented and en-
From Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, Tonino grossing journey.
Valerii and I wrote Terror in the Crypt (La Like every good vampire hunter, Roberto
cripta e l’incubo), which we completed in one has done his research and documented his
night on the terrace of my house, with a con- prey by collecting a great deal of vital and ex-
tinuous supply of coffee on the part of the clusive information in the dusty Archive of
beautiful Mara Maryl. State and consulting scripts written with rick-
Such a marathon was due to the false claim ety old typewriters. In doing so, he has un-
that we had a Gothic script ready to be filmed, earthed a small yet invaluable treasure of lit-
which we had made the day before to a pro- tle lies and big oversights, w ell-k ept secrets
ducer. At dawn Tonino was so upset that he and ingenious fabrications, hidden details
started singing ramshackle sonnets in rhyme and secret identities—which is to say, a com-
that ended with “sarà forse Rowena che le suc- mon practice in the glory days of Italian
chia la vena? / Ma il sospetto più atroce e che genre cinema. And I should know it very well,
si tratti di froce!” (“could it be Rowena that since I used to sign my own scripts with the
sucks blood from her vein- a? / But the worst name Julian Berry!
suspicion so far is that they both lesbians are”). Bon voyage … and sweet nightmares!
Preface
It is customary to apply the term “Italian commercial feature films, and the Gothic was
Gothic horror” to a relatively homogeneous no exception: Its imagery would be frequently
number of films, made in Italy during a lim- used as a pretext to show erotic scenes, and
ited time: not even a decade, from 1957—the even stretched out to accommodate out- and-
year Italy’s first true horror movie, Riccardo out hardcore.
Freda’s I Vampiri, was released—to 1966. Such The Gothic horror is usually considered as
a classification does not comprise the whole a genre, but the Italian term filone(streamlet)
of the horror films produced in Italy, but it is perhaps more apt when referring to the var-
merely highlights the genre’s heyday, with the ious undercurrents of the popular Italian
emergence of its characteristic traits, main movie industry. As Canadian film scholar
personalities and most significant works. Donato Totaro explains, “The word filonehas
Howev er, despite a hiatus due to production many meanings in Italian, which expresses
and economic reasons—such as the Spaghetti the multifarious forms it can take in cinema.
Western phenomenon—more films were pro- Depending on the context (geological, liter-
duced in the m id-t o-late ’60s which can also ary, quotidian) it can refer to a loaf of bread,
be labeled as Gothic. These works retained a thread or cord, or the principle vein in a
the main ingredients of the previous period mineral, or to express when something is ‘in
and even enhanced them beyond the bound- the tradition of’….”
aries of genre filmmaking, before a crucial re- As Totaro correctly points out, the filone
shaping of the Gothic imagery took place in “is a better way to account for the fullness/
the 1970s. richness of the … ever- changing Italian film
Therefore, I decided to include the films industry, always ready to veer production off
produced and released up to 1969, a year into a current popular cycle. From this per-
which marked a crucial turning point in Ital- spective, the filoneis more flexible than genre
ian society and the film industry as well, with or subgenre, taking in the idea of cycles,
the loosening of morals and the relaxation of trends, currents, and traditions.”1Therefore,
censorship after the turmoils of 1968. With given the way the Italian film industry
the advent of the new decade, the Gothic worked from the mid– 1950s onwards, what
would take on new elements which radically is perceived as a film genre is actually “a clus-
altered its identity. Besides the commercial ter of concurrent streamlets, veins, or tradi-
explosion of the giallo, which paved the way tions”2—something which, in the case of the
for a number of hybrids, the 1970s saw the Gothic, would become evident in the 1970s.
rise of nudity as the main selling point of The films produced during the late 1950s
3