Behind the Couch

Barbara Steele, Daria Nicolodi and Edwige Fenech are but several women that spring to mind when contemplating Italian genre films. Moving behind the camera though, women are much less represented; in fact their presence is downright scant. There are however a few notable individuals who have proved they’re just as able to create cinematic shocks as the boys. One such woman is composer Nora Orlandi. Orlandi’s jazz-infused score for Sergio Martino’s dazzling giallo The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh , enhances the decadent story, and mirrors the dark sensuality pulsing at the heart of it. Head over to Paracinema to read my review. While you’re there, why not pick up issue 19 of Paracinema Magazine. Inside you’ll find the likes of Aural Enigmas: Sound Design in Ti West’s The Innkeepers by Todd Garbarini, and  Corpse Fucking Art: A Guide to Necrophilia in Horror Cinema by Samm Deighan. It also includes my own feature, What’s In A Name? The Rise and Decline of Hollywood Fall Guy ...

In this month's edition of Audiodrome: Music in Film , I take a look at Roy Ayer’s astoundingly funky score for Jack Hill’s 1973 blaxploitation classic Coffy . Starring Pam Grier as a nurse who turns vigilante on the dealers who get her younger sister addicted to drugs, Coffy combines exploitative thrills with sly social commentary and barbed pot-shots at police corruption. The film made Grier into a genre icon, and its psychedelic-funk score brilliantly showcases Ayers signature vibes. Head over to Paracinema to read the full review and treat your ears to a track. While you’re there, why not pick up a copy of the latest issue of Paracinema Magazine ? Inside you’ll find damn fine reading in the shape of articles and essays such as The Goriest Film You Never Saw by Jose Cruz, Marriage Bites: Lesbian Vampires and the Failure of Heterosexuality in Daughters of Darkness by Erin Wiegand and “When Single Shines the Triple Sun”: Duality and Self Discovery in The Dark Crystal b...

1970 Dir. Jess Franco 17th Century England is in the grip of Satanic Panic, and amongst those seeking to rid the land of traitors to the throne and anyone 'in league with the devil’, is Judge George Jeffreys, whose unreasonable sentences and excessively violent tortures are dished out with puritanical abandon. He soon becomes obsessed with Mary, a young women whose sister he accused of witchcraft and whose lover is a rebel against King James II. When the rebels are defeated, Mary tries to save her beau by surrendering herself to the Judge’s cruel lust. Betrayal, bloody torture and murder ensue. Believe it or not, The Bloody Judge marks the first time I’ve reviewed a Jess Franco film for this blog. Despite his insanely prolific career - spanning decades and genres alike - this humble scribbler has seen but a mere scrap of Franco’s films, which, not including my recent indulgence in The Bloody Judge , includes his kitsch classic Vampyros Lesbos and his more recent not so...

2011 Dirs. Tom Mattera and David Mazzoni Set during the early Seventies, at a time when society was reeling from the Manson Family murders and the brutal end of the Summer of Love, The Fields is a thoughtful, atmospheric and quietly powerful film. At its core is a rumination on the end of childhood and innocence - the young protagonist’s rites of passage unravelling during a time when social unrest and the backlash of the Manson murders shook society to its foundations. Hippies were demonised and their ideologies lambasted and tarnished. Due to the setting and circumstances, the hippies in the film are actually portrayed in quite a sinister way. Their behaviour doesn’t sit right, their motives are ambiguous. This is the only horror film I can think of that actually presents the Love Generation in such disquieting light. The Fields explores how society changed in the wake of the Manson family killings. Paranoia was rife. Society became aware that human monsters hid in plain...