Balsamus the Man of Satan was directed by Pupi Avati and nearly the entire cast and crew were close friends of his, including writers Enzo Leonardo and Giorgio Celli. It stars Ariano Nanetti (Bob Tonelli) is the dwarf of the title. He was an entrepreneur who had a man named Mister X — businessman Carmine Domenico Rizzo — who paid for most of the movie. It’s the director’s first movie and if you want to watch some of the better films that he would do, I would say The House With the Laughing Windows and Zeder are two solid ones.

Balsamus is a magician who says that he can solve human and animal sterility and who has been gathering several rich women around himself. Meanwhile, his wife Lorenza is sleeping with his assistant Alliata and his servant Ottavio does all of the work. He kills his mother-in-law and resurrects her, but when he tries to add to his magical powers, he fails. Depressed, he calls out all of his wife’s affairs and kills himself. The court mocks him other than the faithful Ottavio.

Based on Giuseppe Balsamo, Count of Cagliostro, a famous alchemist and necromancer. Avati said, “I was fascinated by readings on paranormal and alchemical themes, furthermore in the film there was a rural matrix, my rural life in Sasso Marconi. I wanted to write Cagliostro’s life, in grotesque terms, setting it in the present day.” 

Yet much like its protagonist, this all ended up as a movie that others didn’t understand. “I had a lot of hope in Balsamus, I hoped to be appreciated by who knows what critics, but in reality it was a resounding defeat,” concluded Avati. He also claimed that the movie would have been a bigger disaster if not for the assistance of director of photography Franco Delli Colli, who was on camera for Leone’s Duck, You Sucker! and lit Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot! as well as being the cinematographer for plenty of great movies like Ghosthouse, Rats: Night of Terror, Strip Nude for Your Killer and Avati’s Zeder. 

This was released in other countries as Blood Relations and The Man of Satan.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Lycanthropus was directed by Paolo Heusch (The Day the Sky Exploded) and written by Ernesto Gastaldi. Heusch used the name Richard Benson, as all Italian directors of that time had to have an American names.

If the title Werewolf In a Girls’ Dormitory isn’t good enough — and it is, it’s one of the best exploitation titles ever — it was also released as I Married a Werewolf, Ghoul in a Girl’s Dormitory, Monster Among the Girls and The Ghoul In School, which is the name of the song that Marilyn Stewart and Frank Owens wrote and that was sung by Adam Keefe. In case you wonder why a voice that sounds like Peter Lorre says, “Come with me to the corridors of blood,” that’s because this movie was on a double feature with Corridors of Blood. 

Director Swift (Curt Lowens) is trying to run a reform school that’s funded by Sir Alfred Whiteman (Maurice Marsac). Swift brings on a new teacher named Julian Olcott (Carl Schell, the brother of Maximilian) even though he’s aware of the fact that when Olcott was a doctor, some patients died.

One of the girls, Mary Smith (Mary McNeeran), is sleeping with Whiteman and also blackmailing him. She’s the first to die — shocking that the bad girl of all these reform girls is the first to die and that she’s also sleeping with the rich man paying for all of the school — and the police decide that she was killed by wolves. Priscilla (Barbara Lass, Roman Polanski’s first wife) believes that someone else did it, as she finds a note that was threatening Mary. Like a giallo main character, she ends up investigating the case herself with the help of the school’s handyman Walter (Luciano Pigozzi) and Whiteman. She soon learns that his wife Sheena (Annie Steinert) knows who killed the girl ruining her marriage but she won’t reveal the truth.

As you can tell by the title, there is a werewolf. It gets there and yes, it’s amazing when it happens. This movie looks so much better than you’d expect with its title. It’s also the only werewolf movie I’ve ever seen where the girls attacked by the monster have orgasms while in the jaws of the furry creature.

Want to see what Bill Van Ryn of Drive-In Asylum thinks? Check out what he has to say here.

You can get this from Severin.

Stephanie Morgan attended Brigham Young University — her Mormon faith informs her writing — before marrying at the age of twenty-one and graduating with a degree in English. Having no prior experience as an author, she got the idea for the Twilight books in a dream. Despite it being her first book, there were multiple companies vying to publish it. It took a month for her to be on the New York Times best seller list and four years later, Twilight was one of the most challenged books according to the American Library Association because of its sexuality and religious content.

As one of the first writers to use social media to connect with her readers. The books have sold over 100 million copies and it was optioned for a movie before the book was published.

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) and written by Melissa Rosenberg, the movie begins when teenager Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) leaves Phoenix for Forks, a small town in Washington to live with her cop dad Charlie (Billy Burke) after her mom Renée (Sarah Clarke) gets married to a minor league pitcher named Phil (Matt Bushell). She doesn’t want to be in this small town but does remember her childhood friend Jacob Black (Tyler Lauter) who lives on the Quileute Indian Reservation.

Once she’s in school, she becomes obsessed with the rich Cullen family, including Edward (Robert Pattinson), a 108-year-old vampire who looks the same age as her. He has an entire family of adopted siblings who are all taught by their father figure, Carlisle (Peter Facinelli). If it feels like the X-Men, I have plenty to say about that. The family also includes mother Esme (Elizabeth Reaser), precognitive Alice (Ashley Greene), super strong Emmett (Kellan Lutz) and his mate Rosalie Hale (Nikki Reed) and emotion manipulator Jasper Haale (Jackson Rathbone).

What follows — and stay tuned through all of these movies — is a love/hate/I can’t be with you/I can’t be without you relationship between Bella and Edward with Jacob always on the side, trying to escape being a friend.

There’s also another clan of vampires led by Victoria Sutherland (Rachelle Lefevre) and James Witherdale (Cam Gigandet) who want to kill Bella. Along with Laurent (Edi Gathegi), they start killing people in Forks. Eventually, Edward kills James and takes Bella to the prom, where Victoria is waiting for revenge. And oh man, I almost forgot Anna Kendrick is in this!

Twilight is a big dumb movie and I don’t say that in a mean way. It’s not a Universal vampire movie, it’s not Hammer, it’s not even Jess Franco or Jean Rollin. It’s vampires for older teens who want some level of safe erotic excitement as they move from girl to woman. Now, the fact that the vampire is 118 and the girl is 17, well, that is troublesome. The Native American appropriation is as well. But I can’t lie that I wasn’t entertained by these movies, even if I yelled at the screen like a lunatic for the entire film.

As part of THE TWILIGHT SAGA 15th Anniversary SteelBook® Collection 4K, Twilight has extras such as a tour featurette; an interview with creator Stephenie Meyer; features on the cast, music and kiss scene; Catherine Hardwicke’s “Bella’s Lullaby Remix” music video; the red carpet from the movie’s premiere and more. It’s an amazing package that you can get exclusively from Best Buy.

Enzo G. Castellari wasn’t too happy with how this movie was made or how it ended up.

According to Robert Curti’s Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1970-1979, he had become friends with a young writer named Jose Sanchez, who he was mentoring and had hired as an assistant. The script for this film was being produced in Spain and if they used Castellari’s name, there was a better chance the film would be made. However, in the credits, Jose Maria Nunes is the credited writer and Sanchez is an actor. But who are we to test the memory of the man who made Great White?

Castellari said, “Distributor Rodolfo Putignani and his associate Curti finished it their own way. But my name as director stayed.” They changed the name to Sensivita and it was released as Diabla in Spain. But they weren’t done. Seven years later, Alfonso Brescia was brought in to shoot new scenes, which Castellari saw years later at a horror convention. He laughed it off, saying, “After six minutes I walked out of the theater, horrified.” That new edit was released under the title Kyra – The Lady of the Lake.

Whatever the end result is, you know that I’m going to get excited by a movie that starts with a bloody hand that rises from a lake and drowns a woman, much less one about the occult secrets of a home being investigated by Lilian (Leonora Fani, Hotel Fear) who wanders the lake where her mother drowned and then finds a toad in her bed.

There’s also her sister — well, spoiler warning, sorry — Lilith (Patricia Adriani) who is a witch who lives in a cave that is constantly studying all of the symbols all over the area. She’s also connected to her sister in the way that all Italian exploitation films connect people. Yes, it’s sex. As Lillian makes love to a man, Lilith feels what she feels. They both pass out from a movie orgasm while the man drives off and immediately dies in a car crash. This is cinema.

Lilith can also speak to the woman inside the lake, who is named Kyra. There’s also a little blind girl who has more headless dolls than she knows what to do with, an axe murderer, Vincent Gardenia as a painter, a village filled with people in giant masks and Antonio Mayans shows up in a non-Jess Franco movie. I was beside myself with sheer happiness and that’s before the ending where the two leads have a clothes-destroying girl-on-girl fight to the death.

Why has this not yet been placed on blu ray and upgraded and presented with scholarly commentary tracks that pretend that it’s art instead of lurid Italian exploitation filmmaking — which is art, so this is a double positive and hey, physical media companies, I will totally record that commentary track — and man, I’ve been super down as of late and then a movie like this crosses my path and I have to think, “I live in a world where the cosmic coincidences or simulation that created my reality eventually led to thousands of years of evolution which eventually produced this, a film of staggering achievement that literally ones of people are obsessed over.”

The Virgin of Nuremberg — released in the U.S. as Horror Castle — was based on the Italian paperback La vergine di Normberga by Maddalena Gui. They were published by G.U.I., who sold these Gothic erotic horror slices of sleaze as British books translated into Italian, claiming that their real writers were just the translators.  Produced by G.U.I.’s owner Marco Vicario, this was directed by Antonio Margheriti, who wrote the story — well, rewrote it to add the surgical terror and World War II ideas — with Renato Vicario and Edmond T. Gréville, who directed The Hands of Orlac. The other name listed as a writer is Gastad Green, who may either be Vicario’s brother Renato or Ernesto Gastaldi.

Shot on the set of Castle of Blood in just three weeks, this finds Mary Hunter (Rossana Podestà, Seven Golden Men) newly married to Max (Georges Rivière) and living inside his large castle. One night, she wakes up and finds herself walking down to the dungeons below the ancient structure and finding an eyeless woman inside an iron maiden. Everyone believes that she’s making these things that she’s seen up and that they are just dreams. Cared for by the sinister servants Marta (Laura Nucci) and Erik (Christopher Lee), she soon discovers that the castle once was the home of The Punisher, an evil monster of a human being who loved to torture women.

Well, he’s definitely at it again, engaging in all manner of deranged tortures, including a rat cage face mask — complete with hungry little rats — being placed over a girl’s pretty face in a scene that predates torture porn. Yet this isn’t all shock for the sake of cheap jump scares. This has a dark and twisting story that takes us into how war can destroy people who end up destroying others.

It looks beyond impeccable and over this past year, I’ve become such a fan of Margheriti. Yes, Bava may be the master of Italian horror, but you can make the case for Anthony Dawson to having a space quite near the crown.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Count Gabor Kernassy (Walter Brandi) lives in a castle surrounded by darkness and a forest, so when an entire group of exotic dancers, their piano player and their manager ends up on his doorstep, it all seems like a buffet. Yet one of those dancers, Vera (Lyla Rocco), is the reincarnation of his long lost wife Margherita Kernassy. How does this keep happening to these vampires? Well, maybe he isn’t the undead one. Ever think of that?

Directed by Piero Regnoli, who was one of the writers of I Vampiri as well as Patrick Still Lives, Burial Ground, Demonia, Nightmare City and so many great films, has made a movie that seemingly shares so much with The Vampire and the Ballerina. This film, however, has more of a lost romanticism and had the original title L’ultima preda del vampiro (The Vampire’s Last Prey). It was released in the U.S. as an adult movie and then edited for TV as Curse of the Vampire.

Regnoli co-wrote this with cinematographer Aldo Greci, who shot this and so many other movies including Play Motel.

This has a good vampire and a bad one, so to speak, as well as a housekeeper Miss Balasz (Tilde Damiani) and groundsman Zoltan (Antonio Nicos) who are on the side of good. But still, this is a movie where Katia (Maria Giovannini) can die and get buried and everyone keeps on dancing because, I mean, why stop dancing? It’s also the kind of early exploitation that has her get a stake to the heart and blood pours all over her shapely legs. Didn’t Russ Meyer say it best? “While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favorite mantle still remains… sex.”

Roberto Mauri isn’t talked about as often as he should be. There’s his oddball King of Kong Island, his Westerns like He Was Called Holy Ghost and his masterful Madeleine: Anatomy of a Nightmare. Now, after this, I need to look up more of his movies.

Released in America on TV as Slaughter of the Vampires and then as a double feature with The Blood Beast Terror — renamed as The Vampire Beast Craves Blood — as Curse of the Blood Ghouls, this has the kind of tagline that definitely made me want to watch it: “Satan’s Horror Henchmen enslave beautiful women through weird ways of love transforming them into Blood Ghoul Vampires to satisfy an insatiable LUST.”

This stars Walter Brandi, who was also in The Vampire and the Ballerina and The Playgirls and the Vampire. He plays Wolfgang, who has just become married to Louise (Graziella Granata), and they are unaware that a vampire (Dieter Eppler) has entered the party they’re having. He soon seduces Louise and bites her, which means that Wolfgang must look for a cure, finally meeting Dr. Nietzche (Luigi Batzella).

Where Hammer has rich color, this is shot in black and white, but it’s a whole different type of beautiful filmmaking. The real castle adds quite the scenery and if this movie can’t have crimson blood, it can have bosoms barely held back by their costumes and that is always enough.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The only movie directed by Garibaldi Serra Caracciolo, who used the name Finney Cliff, The Seventh Grave is one wild movie.

Written by Caracciolo, Antonio Casale (who plays Jenkins in this movie as the Americanized name John Anderson; he was also assistant director using the name Paul Sciamann) and Alessandro Santini (using the name Edmond W. Carloff; he also directed and wrote La pelle sotto gli artigli and Questa libertà di avere… le ali bagnate, which was co-written by Renato Polselli). this all takes place in Scotland after Sir Reginald Thorne dies from leprosy. As happens in these movies, the family comes to his estate for the last will and testament to be read.

Attorney Bill Elliot (Nando Angelini) and his assistant, a waitress named Betty (Germana Dominici), prepare to tell who gets what to the assembled friends and family, who include Jenkins (Antonio Casale) and his mistress Mary (Bruna Baini); his brother Fred (Gianni Dei, Patrick Still Lives); Sir Reginald’s assistant Patrick (Calogero Reale); Reverend Crabbe (Ferruccio Viotti) and Colonel Percival (Umberto Borsato) and his psychic daughter Katy (Stefania Nelli).

According to Sir Reginald’s request, everyone must stay together for 48 hours and explore the mansion, as the treasure of Sir Francis Drake is hidden there. Huh? Well, soon Patrick is dead, the coffin with Sir Reginald’s body is empty and Inspector Wright (Armando Guarnieri) is on the case.

This feels like The Cat and the Canary meets an Italian Gothic with a seance and a masked killer and oh, maybe we should add some psychic powers. I mean, that’s exactly what it is. And I loved it. It’s such a baffling movie, made with so many people who didn’t do much else and I’m kind of obsessed with learning more about it.

You can get this as part of Severin’s Danza Macabra Vol. 1 box set or watch it on Tubi.

Giandomenico Fracchia (one of the many characters of comedic actor Paolo Villaggio) is given a challenge that he must succeed at or lose his job: sell a castle in Transylvania to nearsighted Arturo Filini (Gigi Reder), who doesn’t realize that he is buying Castle Dracula.

The duo get involved in the family drama of Count Vlad (Edmund Purdom!) and his sister Countess Oniria (Ania Pieroni, Mater Lachrymarum!), who is about to be married in an arranged ceremony to Frankenstein’s Monster (Romano Puppo, Lee Van Cleef’s stuntman and one of the pallbearers at his funeral). There’s also a beautiful vampire slayer named Luna (Isabella Ferrari) waiting to take out all of the undead.

Director Neri Parenti is known for his comedy films with Villaggio, as well as cinepanettoni, or comedy movies intended to be watched over the holidays. He also made The Face with Two Left Feet, a parody of Saturday Night Fever.

There’s a scene where Fracchia takes his girlfriend to the movies. They’re watching Return of the Living Dead. It scares the character so much that he nearly decimates the theater. By the end of the movie, this has all been a dream and our hero is back in the same theater except that Dracula is sitting behind him.

This looks way better than you’d expect but that’s because the cinematographer was Luciano Tovoli, who shot Suspiria, The Passenger, Tenebrae, The Sunday Woman and many of Barbet Schroeder’s films. I won’t mention that he also lensed Dracula 3D.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Dr. Jekyll (Paolo Villaggio) is the director of the powerful multinational food company PANTAC. He’s unleashed so many harmful products on the world, but when he drinks the serum of good, he becomes the much nicer Mr. Hyde.

Directed by noted Italian comedy director Steno, who wrote the script with Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Giovanni Manganelli, Franco Castellano and Giuseppe Moccia, this finds the doctor telling his servant Pretorius (Gordon Mitchell) that he secretly wants to be good. Well, it just so turns out that the real Dr. Jekyll lives in the basement and can turn him into a good version of himself, the one that his secretary Barbara (Edwige Fenech) falls for.

The commedia sexy all’italiana movies seem strange and maybe not funny to American audiences, but you know, Edwige Fenech is in it and isn’t that good enough? It’s good enough.

As for the film, well, it never really gets going past that major twist of having Hyde become good.

You can watch this on YouTube.