Salem Horror Fest starts this weekend and we’re beyond excited to be virtually covering some of the films! Just follow this link to get your virtual tickets for the festival. Here are a few of the films we’re excited about:

THE QUIET REVOLUTION: State, Society and the Canadian Horror Film: An in-depth look at the making of the Canadian horror genre in the 1970s.

I NEED YOU DEAD: A young punk births a strange fleshy creature… it mocks him, hurts him, and takes over his whole world!

SNAPPER: The Man-Eating Turtle Movie That Never Got Made: The story of an unfinished monster movie and the creative friendship that outlasted it.

SEEDS: A grieving mother holds on to her Catholic faith as her husband leaves to study and learn the secrets of an old New England cult.

WICKED GAMES: When Harley joins her new boyfriend for a long Halloween weekend at his country estate, they’re invaded by a band of masked freaks and forced to play a Wicked Game. To the intruders’ unpleasant surprise, Harley’s hard-boiled history has endowed her with some old tricks of her own which gives the game a surprise ending.

Let us know what films you’re watching!

The SYFY modern remake of Slumber Party Massacre is set to air on Saturday, October 16 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Just in time for Halloween, this power drill slasher is back and directed by Danishka Esterhazy, who made The Banana Splits Movie.

Check out the trailer!

I’m excited for this, as the Slumber Party Massacre films are so interesting because they take traditional male slasher stories and have always been made by female directors. Here’s hoping for a remake of Slumber Party Massacre 2 too!

Slumber Party Massacre is produced by Shout! Studios and Blue Ice Pictures and executive produced and directed by Danishka Esterhaz, written by Suzanne Keilly and executive produced by Brent Haynes, Bob Emmer, Garson Foos and Jordan Fields. The film stars Hannah Gonera, Frances Sholto-Douglas, Mila Rayne, Alex McGregor, Reze-Tiana Wessels and Michael Lawrence Potter.

Get ready! Starting tomorrow, the Drive-In Super Monster-Rama is presenting “Giallopalooza”, two big nights of classic, fully restored giallo thrillers from such maestros as Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and Sergio Martino!

On Friday, September 17, the line-up will be What Have You Done to Solange?, Torso, A Lizard In a Woman’s Skin and The Cat O’Nine Tails. Saturday, September 18 they will present Deep Red, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Blood and Black Lace and Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key.

Admission is $10 per person each night (children 12 and under FREE with adult guardian). Camping on the premises is available each night for an additional $10 a person, and that includes breakfast.

Advance tickets are available online at the Riverside Drive In’s webpage.

Here are the eight movies. To read a deeper review, just click on the link.

What Have You Done to Solange?: When a philandering teacher romances a student on a boat, they are witness to a murder on shore, the first of many that may be caused by the actions of the teacher.

Massimo Dallamano started his Schoolgirls in Perili trilogy, which includes What Have They Done to Your Daughters? and Rings of Fear, with this mixture of the German krimi film and the Italian giallo. He’s aided an abetted by an Ennio Morricone score and cinematography by Aristide Massaccesi, which is the real name of the man with so many of them, Joe D’Amato.

Torso: A serial killer is using a red and black scarf to murder several gorgeous college women. Is even an escape to a resort far away far enough?

Sergio Martino is one of the absolute master directors of giallo and while this film flirts with the slasher by the end, it still has many of the trademarks of the genre. It also has an astounding sequence where the masked killer appears in the morning mist that gets me every time.

A Lizard In a Woman’s Skin: The daughter of a British politician witnesses a death in one of her dreams and when she wakes up, she’s the suspect in this journey through madness.

If you only think of Lucio Fulci as a gore director — well, there’s goes in the too — this is one movie you need to discover.

The Cat O’Nine Tails: A newspaper reporter and a puzzle-obsessed blind journalist — and his niece — attempt to solve murders connected to a pharmaceutical company’s experimental, top-secret research project.

Dario Argento’s second film in the Animal Trilogy was written by Argento with Dardano Sacchetti and Luigi Cozzi. It’s also notable because it has two leads familiar to American audiences, James Franciscus and Karl Malden.

Deep Red: The murder of a psychic leads a pianist and a journalist on their own investigation into just who could be committing a series of horrific crimes.

Argento’s first team-up with both Daria Nicolodi and Goblin. Plus, this movie has perhaps the most frightening appearance of a doll ever.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage: An American in Paris witnesses an attempted murder and tries to solve the mystery. But does he remember everything?

Dario Argento’s 1970 film was a hit worldwide, signalling a rush for nearly any Italian exploitation director to make films with animal titles, black gloves, POV killers, jazzy soundtracks and no small number of murders.

Blood and Black Lace: A fashion house of ill-repute is where models engage in sin and pay the price in a movie that is quite literally a pornography of violence (and style).

This is my favorite giallo of all time and you have no idea just how excited I am to see it play out on the big drive-in screen, the places where movies are most meant to be viewed.

Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key: I remember in the time before I watched this movie where I’d just stare at the poster and the title and wonder, how is this even a real thing? And it is, a glorious Sergio Martino-directed opus.

Also released as Gently Before She Dies, Eye of the Black Cat and Excite Me!, Martino’s fourth giallo is a direct reference to the note the killer leaves for Edwige Fenech in his first take on the form, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh.

Remember — the event is this Friday and Saturday with admission just $10 per person each night (children 12 and under FREE with adult guardian). Camping on the premises is available each night for an additional $10 a person, and that includes breakfast. Advance tickets are available online at the Riverside Drive In’s webpage. I hope to see you there — stop by and ask for a drink of J&B or one of the many cocktails I’ll be making up for the evening.

Night one cocktails:

Che cosa hai fatto al gatto nero? AKA Drinks of The Black Cat (adapted from this recipe)

• 1 oz. blue curacao
• 1 oz. vodka
• 3 oz. lemon-lime soda
• 1 oz. cranberry juice
• .5 oz. lime juice

1. Fill a shaker halfway with ice, then add curacao, vodka and lime juice. Shake.
2. Add soda and stir.
3. Pour cranberry juice into a tall glass. Over the back of a spoon, strain the mixed ingredients over the cranberry juice and see how gorgeous it looks, like Barbara Bouchet showing up in motorcycle gear in Perversion Story.

Una mela che porta le tracce della violenza AKA The Apple Murders (from the J&B site)

• 1 5 oz. J&B
• 4 oz. sparkling apple juice
• Apple, cored and sliced

1. Put on black gloves and play with a switchblade, noticing how it catches the light.
2. Core and slice apple, then place in glass with ice.
3. Pour apple juice and J&B over top. Enjoy!

Night two cocktails:

6 drink per l’assassino AKA Blood and Penny Black Lace (adapted from this recipe)

• 1.5 oz. J&B
• .5 oz. pink grapefruit juice
• .5 oz. honey syrup
• Dash of lemon juice
• Dash of bitters
• A cherry

1. Shake all ingredients with ice in a shaker until cold.
2. Told with a cherry, then watch out for spiked gloves to the face.

L’uccello dal piumaggio giallo AKA The Bird Who Dreamed of Another Cage (adapted and changed from this recipe)

• 1.5 oz. rum
• .75 oz. Campari
• .5 oz. lime juice
• .5 oz. maple syrup
• 1.5 oz. pineapple juice

1. Watch a murder happen with no context, then get dragged into the investigation.
2. When that’s done, pour everything into a shaker with ice, shake it up and pour into a glass. Enjoy!

The artwork for this article comes from Bill Van Ryn and it’s awesome.

We’re big fans of Dianna Koch’s Giallo of the Month Club podcast. She’s got a huge new episode where she got the opportunity to speak with James Wan, the director of movies like Dead Silence and The Conjuring, as well as the upcoming giallo-influenced Malignant.

She also has another episode up that covers a movie we’ll be getting to shortly, The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears.

Dianna really understands the form and, if it can even be possible, makes me want to watch more giallo!

You can listen to the new episodes wherever you find podcasts or right here!

We love movies — did you know that? — and just as equally, we love having toys that are based on the movies that we adore so much. Back when Sam first started collecting toys, way back around 1977 or so, his first superhero toy was a Mego Pocket Heroes Aquaman. After a few years, he had just about every Mego he could get his hands on, including that amazing Thing figure that had a fabric rock costume!

Starting this week, those Mego dolls are now available for the first time through Topps, the folks who sold you baseball cards and cool stuff like Dinosaurs Attack!

Topps.com will feature the most iconic action figures throughout the decades, from every genre imaginable. The exclusive Mego figures, including new characters and reimagined classics — we can spy Chucky, the Rocketeer and Hannibal Lecter in the photos they sent us — will be available to purchase only through the Topps website, with new action figures releasing every Monday!

These exclusive Mego figures will be available in a variety of sizes, including a combination of 8-inch and 14-inch versions.

The first two exclusive figures are Shazam! and Black Adam, who is due for a new movie starring the Rock soon. To learn more — and get a 10% offer — just visit the Topps site today!

DISCLAIMER: This is no ad. We were asked to share this out and thought it was pretty cool. I mean, don’t you want a Cliff Secord Mego figure on your desk? How about that General Ursus figure?!?

We’re always looking for more writers to be part of the site. Sure, we don’t pay, but we’re willing to let you write about just about any movie that you want to, at any length and in any style or format. We get around 1,000 visitors a day and share our reviews on Letterboxd, IMDB, Amazon, Rotten Tomatoes, Facebook and Twitter, so your work will get an audience.

Back in September, we paid homage to Shot on Video films. Check out our SOV ’80s category link to see what we’ve done, but here’s what’s left on our SOV to-do list.

• Hell Spa
• Shock Chamber
• Invitation to Hell
• Curse of the Screaming Dead
  
• The Last Night
• The Hereafter
• Bloodstream
• Mark of the Beast (1986)
• Escape from the Insane Asylum
• Hallow Gate
• Sledgehammer
• Blodarden
• Copperhead
• Black Devil Doll from hell
• Truth or Dare (1986)
• 555
• The Vicious Sweet
• Addiction to Murder
• Bloodletting

Also back in September, we paid homage to the Video Nasties of the ’80s. We still need help moping up our three-part U.K. Video Nasties “Exploring” lists. You can visit the links for more information. Also check out this IMDb list of all the “Nasties” to help in your deciding on the films you want to review. Here’s what’s left:

Section 1

• Island of Death

Section 2

• Boogeyman II
• Women Behind Bars

Section 3

• Demented
• Blood Rites
• Erotic Rites of Frankenstein
  
• Foxy Brown
• Headless Eyes
• Hell Prison, aka Escape from Hell
• The Killing Hour
• The Last Hunter
• The Les Demons
• Love Butcher
• The Mark of the Devil
• Scream for Vengeance!
  
• Street Killers

If you want to be part of the site, just email us at bandsaboutmovies@gmail.com. We look forward to having you write for us!

Italian westerns are an amazing genre because somehow, they take the west out of the west, transporting it to Cinecittà studios and various dusty settings around southern Italy and Spain. They were made by directors who often had never been to the actual west themselves, but were able to see either the archetypes within their stories or the dollar signs at the box office.

These are grimy, rough, dirty and bloody films that begin the decline of heroism and moral certainty in Italian genre cinema. Starting in the peplum, we have heroes like Maciste and Hercules who may have foibles, yet are men of courage and conviction. The next Italian exploitation trend is the Eurospy fim, knockoffs of the higher budget Bond films, in which everyone has a license to kiss kiss bang bang. The Italian western comes next, following the lead of Leone, Ringo and Django. Then there’s the giallo, in which hero, villain, gender and motive are as fluid as the gels that pour neon hues into the color palettes of these affairs. By the time we arrive at the poliziotteschi — a time in whch the heroes are as uncompromisingly sinister as the villains they are hunting — not to mention the cannibal, zombie and Filmirage time of Italian low budget gutchurning horror — morality is pretty much dead.

Where John Wayne, Tom Mix, Roy Rogers, Lash LaRue and so many other Hollywood cowboys made the west into a land of legend, Italian westerns tend to make once upon a time in the west — pardon the pun — into anything but myth.

Between 1964 and 1978, hundreds of these movies were made. In the Italian film industry, the easiest way to being successful is not doing something new. It’s often found in recreating a film or formula that has already been successful. You’d think that this thinking would lead to rote and boring films. And sure, there are some of those. Yet by and large, all of the Italian genres I mentioned above have led to incredible movies made on middling at best budgets.

Italian westerns are packed with betrayal, revenge, ritualistic disfiguring of the hero — often choosing his hands, the very tools he needs to be deadly in the gun-heavy world he lives in — and even ties to the films of the East, as Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars is the same story as Yojimbo, transported to the other side of the Earth.

So how do you pick four movies to sum up Italian westerns? if you’re Arrow Video, you pick four movies that all have revenge in common:

Antonio Margheriti’s And God Said to Cain stars Klaus Kinski as a man whose ten years of prison time comes to a close, only to be succeeded by a stormy and near-supernatural night of violent retaliation against anyone and everyone who ever done him wrong.

Lucio Fulci’s Massacre Time stars Franco Nero and George Hilton as the Corbett brothers, estranged at the start of the story but who must join forces to stop the powerful businessman and his sadistic son who’ve ruined their hometown.

Maurizio Lucidi’s My Name is Pecos is an anomaly in the genre, as a Mexican gunfighter comes back to Houston to kill the racist man who slaughtered his family.

Massimo Dallamano’s Bandidos is about a sharpshooter whose hands are ruined by a student; years later he finds another man wronged by the same criminal and joins him on the path of revenge.

This four-disk limited edition set features 2K restorations of all four films from the original 35mm camera negatives, along with an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by author and critic Howard Hughes and double-sided poster featuring newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx. Each of the movies features the extras that you’ve come to demand from Arrow, such as commentary tracks, interviews with the cast and crew, trailers, alternate endings and dubbed and original cuts of each movie.

You can order Vengeance Trails from MVD. It has our highest recommendation whether you’re new to the Italian side of the western film or want to own better quality copies of movies you’ve loved multiple times.

All four movies are also available on the ARROW player. Head over to ARROW to start your 30 day free trial (subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly). ARROW is available in the US, Canada and the UK on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.

The Daimajin Trilogy contains the three film series that transplants the legend of the golem to Japan in the 16th century, as an ancient stone god defends the peasant people from the greedy and unjust.

These movies barely made it to America — the first played theaters, the second only TV, the third didn’t make it to our shores in official release until 2012 — yet they’re incredible documents of Japanese movie-making ingenuity and special effects skill.

The three movies in this set are:

Daimajin (1966): The two children of a benevolent ruler are chased from their home and their father killed by a brutal usurper. Years later, the sorceress who saved them is killed by the same man, now the ruler of their land, who can only be stopped by the god who sleeps behind a crumbled stone idol.

Return of Daimajin (1966): When an evil warlord enslaves two small islands and destroys the statue of the stone god, vengeance is not far away, as Daimajin rises and literally parts the ocean to save his people.

Wrath of Daimajin (1966): Four boys take on a magical quest to call upon the spirit of the stone god to save their families, who have been taken by a tyricannical leader.

This limited edition set includes 1080p versions of the three Daimajin films with optional English subtitles, a lushly illustrated book featuring new essays by Jonathan Clements, Keith Aiken, Ed Godziszewski, Raffael Coronelli, Erik Homenick, Robin Gatto and Kevin Derendorf, postcards of the original Japanese artwork for all three films and reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matt Frank. Each of the films also have tons of extras, like the U.S. openings of Daimajin (Majin – The Monster of Terror) and Return of Daimajin (Return of the Giant Majin), video features on the special effects and a variety of interviews and commentaries on the films. If you love kaiju films, you need this in your collection. You can order it from MVD.