Behind the Couch

1963 Dir. Mario Bava Nora Davis (Letícia Román), a young American visiting her ailing aunt in Rome, witnesses a vicious murder in a deserted piazza after dark. She cannot convince anyone that what she saw was not a dream. She eventually discovers a box of newspaper clippings about a series of gruesome killings in the local area dubbed the ‘Alphabet Murders’. Fearing she is next on the killer's list, she decides to try and track down the malicious culprit with the help of the dashing Dr. Bassi (John Saxon). Can they find the killer before they too become victims? Mario Bava was a director who not only wielded a great mastery over gothic horror traditions in films such as Black Sunday , Kill Baby Kill and Black Sabbath , he also cut a formidable swathe through the contemporary thriller genre too. With films such as Bay of Blood , Blood and Black Lace and The Girl Who Knew Too Much - a work generally considered to be the first ever giallo film - Bava placed his edgy stories f...

1966 Dir. Curtis Harrington 1990. Scientists on Earth receive a distress call from an alien ship that has crash landed on Mars. A small rescue team made up of scientists and astronauts are dispatched to rescue the alien crew. Only one survivor is found, a strange woman with lurid green skin. Back on board their own ship, the scientists discover that their guest has an insatiable appetite for blood and it isn’t long before she begins to pick off the crew, one by one… In the 60s Roger Corman’s production company AIP bought the rights to quite a few Russian sci-fi films and wrote new stories around the various special effects sequences; reusing the expensive footage in new low budget films. Queen of Blood is one such film and reuses footage from Russian sci-fi epics Niebo Zowiet and Meshte Nastreshu . These scenes provide a number of the film’s highlights, as much of Harrington’s footage, particularly in the early scenes, with their kitschy ideas about how the future (1990) would l...