This isn’t Red Rings of Fear, a 1978 Fabio Testi movie that is also a giallo-type film. Not is it the 1993 Dario Argento movie. Instead, it’s a Spanish film directed by Leon Klimovsky (The Vampires Night Orgy, The People Who Own the Dark).

This is all about a gorgeous inn in the country that seems like the perfect place for Daniel to do some writing. However, from the moment he meets Veronica, nothing will be as it seems, as guest after guest gets dispatched by the razor of a killer. In the morning, even the luggage of the sex-crazed guests is gone and so are they.

This gets the sex and nudity part of the giallo right, if not the fashion and originality. It’s not a bad film, but not one you’ll remember.

Trauma is available on the Vinegar Syndrome Forgotten Gialli box set.

We’ve been covering the films of Luciano and Nicolas Onetti, two brothers who are seemingly obsessed with Italian giallo circa 1973, despite coming from Argentina. Otherwise known as Los Olvidados (The Forgotten), which is also a title of a Bunuel film, this movie finds them moving away from Argento worship and creating their own version of The Hills Have Eyes and, more to the point, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The real star of this movie is Epecuen, which was once a thermal water spa that drew thousands of tourists. In 1985. the city was submerged underwater. Those that didn’t want to leave were taken by force and it took nearly thirty years for the flooding to subside, which left a desert behind.

The plot itself is rather threadbare, with a documentary crew getting stranded and killed one after the other by the residents of the town that have gone nowhere. There’s also a father looking for his daughter and some of the worst leading characters ever, but then again, if you are going to emulate Chainsaw, you should go all the way. After all, they rode into town in that van.

I like the Onetti brothers and look forward to the day where they push past the movies they love and make something brand new that can inspire someone else.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime and Tubi.

As I started watching this movie, I thought, “This is the exact kind of movie Mondo Macabro would put out.” Which makes sense, because it was volume one in their Greek Collection.

The Tango Club is where the swinging characters of this movie spend their tome. There’s Rosita (Dorothy Moore, who is one other movie, another Greek giallo Death Kiss), who uses drugs and her womanly wiles to get Joanna (Erika Raffael, Four Dimensions of Greta) into bed. Stathis (Lakis Komninos, using the boring Western name Larry Daniels) reacts to this as no man before or since has. He flips out and beats both of them, killing Rosita. Things are just starting, trust me.

Meanwhile, rich voyeur Joachim is filming the killer while he brings home other women from the club. And then there’s Joachim, who was impotent until he discovered the dead body of Rosita and now, he’s in love.

We covered Dangerous Cargo, another Kostas Karagiannis movie, a few weeks ago. Needless to say, this movie makes that one look tame by comparison. Drugs, fuzzy psychedelic music, rampant nudity, sex, murder, gratuitous dance numbers and all manner of perversion, including romantic fantasies between the living and the dead abound. Yep, this one has something for every member of the family.

You can order this from Mondo Macabro.

Emerson Graham (Casey Dillard, who also wrote the film) has lost her lover, her friends and even her motivation to be a stand-up comedienne. Now, she spends her nights as a cab driver, but on this fateful night, a mysterious passenger named Roger (a welcomed Richard Speight Jr., Gabriel from TV’s Supernatural) gets her involved with his battle against the demonic curse against his family.

Basically, this is a movie between two actors for a good chunk of the film, shot within Emerson’s rideshare car during a four hour period. I really liked how the demonic parts of this movie just sneak up on you. I’d done no reading about the film before starting to watch it and it really surprised me. I was hooked the whole way through.

I really enjoyed how the romantic parts of the partnership between the leads was played down. This is more about the battle to save the world — and their parts in it, too — than anything else. It was pretty realistic, for a movie where demons are possessing people, that is.

Driven arrives on-demand (Amazon) and on DVD on June 16 from Uncork’d Entertainment. You can learn more about the works of Glenn Payne at his official site. You can also ad-stream the film for free on Tubi.

Driven is the sixth feature film by Glenn Payne, a founding member of the improvisational comedy troupe West of Shake Rag based out of Tupelo, Mississippi. He’s currently in post-production on his seventh film, the horror-thriller, Killer Concept, due in 2021. He’s also written and directed the impressive against-the-budget science fiction set piece, Earth Rise (2014; also on Tubi), about the effects of space travelers on the way to Mars.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR team.

So this isn’t really a giallo. But then again, Near Dark really isn’t a gothic horror movie, but it does a damn good job of updating that genre too. That’s due to Kathryn Bigelow, the only woman to ever win a Best Director Academy Award.

From Point Break to Strange Days and the film that won her that honor, The Hurt Locker, she’s able to take the conventions of film, remix them and come up with her own unique take. She also doesn’t shy from the ballet of violence, either.

Back when Vestron Pictures tried to go legit, this movie was almost released under their auspices. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer got the rights and the film died in theaters.

Interestingly enough, Roger Ebert saw this movie as a sequel of sorts to Halloween, while remaking that it was more interesting than just another replaying of the Michael Myers formula because “the filmmakers have fleshed out the formula with intriguing characters and a few angry ideas.”

Ron Silver, one of cinema’s greatest assholes, plays Eugene Hunt, a mystery man who falls for rookie cop Megan Turner (Curtis) the moment she blows gigantic bloody holes into a young Tom Sizemore. He takes the criminal’s gun away, which in effect makes Turner a criminal instead of a cop, shooting an unarmed man with such deadly force over and over again.

Turner finds herself torn between Hunt and the man investigating her, Detective Nick Mann (Clancy Brown, the Kurgan in Highlander). It’s an intriguing idea, as nearly every male relationship in her life is abusive, from her father to even the way that Mann speaks to her upon their first meeting. She’s trying to achieve in a male-dominated field as well and the only positive relationship — with her friend Tracy (Elizabeth Pena) — is also brutally torn away.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Louise Fletcher plays her mother. And also doubly guilty if I didn’t remark that she is also in Exorcist II: The Heretic. But I digress.

The end of this film plays nearly as a parody of action movie cliches. There are no people in Times Square, usually the most crowded of spaces and each character has too many bullets in their guns. That said, we’ve come too far, Turner has given up too much and Hunt must pay in blood. So much blood.

Also known as Angel: Black Angel, this is one of the sleaziest giallo that I’ve come across. Seeing as how I’ve watched Play Motel, Strip Nude for Your Killer, Giallo In Venice and own multiple copies of The New York Ripper, that’s saying something.

Director Stelvio Massi was the cinematographer or director of photography for plenty of great movies like The Case of the Bloody Iris, Sartana’s Here…Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin and Giovannona Long-Thigh. He knows how to make things look gorgeous, particularly in the way he shoots women, which comes in more than handy here.

Arabella is a woman obsessed with the carnal act. Sadly, her husband has been rendered impotent and confined to a wheelchair ever since he wrecked his car while she was dirty facetiming him (he was driving, because the opposite is impossible) on their wedding day. She’s filled his role with trips to brothels, including one that gets raided while she’s assaulted by a cop. She gets back at that officer by inviting him back to her place and while he’s yodeling in the valley, she bops him upside the head with a hammer. Her cucked husband, who has been watching all of this hammer smashed face action go down finally feels the blood flow down below, which means that he has to keep setting up his wife to kill off more and more people. He also finally gets back the urge to write and they start to fall in love again, but of course, he has to keep watching her make love to other people.

Also: lots of genital mutilation.

Ida Galli plays the mother-in-law. You’ll remember her from The Sweet Body of Deborah and Fulci’s The Psychic. Rena Niehaus, who is in the absolutely baffling strange film Damned In Venice, is also on hand.

The problem for our heroine is that everyone she makes loves to dies, including a cowboy who gets his member sliced clean off. The next day, as the cops are gathering evidence, one of them is so upset that he can’t stop eating his sandwich. The world of this movie is insane, because there’s a photo of that mutilated wang on the cover of the next day’s newspaper.

There’s also a scene in the Freak Boy Zone, a place where Arabelle cruises all the gay men and picks one to take home. This entire moment is absolutely insane, as the homosexual side of town feels like it came out of an Enzo G. Castellari post-apocalyptic movie.

This movie looks grubby, makes little to no sense and will offend pretty much everyone that watches it. That means that you’re definitely going to want to watch it.