EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing the most classic of all giallo on Friday, Jan. 20, at midnight at The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, TN (tickets here). For more information, visit Cinematic Void.

here’s no way to calculate the influence of Blood and Black Lace. It takes the giallo from where Bava started with The Girl Who Knew Too Much and adds what was missing: high fashion, shocking gore and plenty of sex. The results are dizzying; it’s as if Bava’s move from black and white to color has pushed his camera lens to the brink of insanity.

Isabella is an untouchably gorgeous model, pure perfection on human legs. But that doesn’t save her as she walks through the grounds of the fashion house and is brutally murdered by a killer in a white mask.

Police Inspector Sylvester takes the case and interviews Max Morlan (Cameron Mitchell!), who co-manages the salon with his recently widowed lover, the Countess Christina Como. Soon, our police hero discovers that the fashion house is a den of sin, what with all the corruption, sex, blackmail, drugs and abortions going on under its roof. Isabella was murdered because she had kept a diary of all the infractions against God that happened inside these four walls.

Nicole finds the diary and tells the police she will deliver it, but it’s stolen by Peggy. As she arrives at the antique store her boyfriend Frank owns, the killer appears and kills her with a spiked glove to the face. The killing is shocking. Brutal. And definitely the forerunner to the slasher genre.

Even after the cops arrest everyone in the fashion house, the murders keep on piling up. Peggy claims that she burned the diary, so the killer burns her face until she dies. Greta is smothered to death. And Tilde is killed in the bathtub, then her wrists are slit open, spraying red into the water and marking her as a suicide.

So who is it? Come on. You’re going to have to watch it for yourself.

The success of Black Sunday and Black Sabbath had given Bava the opportunity to do anything he wanted. His producers thought that this movie would be a krimi film along the lines of an Edgar Wallace adaption. Instead, Bava gave more importance to the killings than the detective work, emphasizing sex, violence and horror more than any film in this form had quite before.

Blood and Black Lace was a failure in Italy and only a minor success in West Germany, the home of Edgar Wallace. And in America, AIP passed on the film due to its combination of sex and brutality. Instead, it was released by the Woolner Brothers with a new animated opening.

Today, Blood and Black Lace is seen as a forerunner of body count murder movies and the excesses of later giallo films. To me, it’s a classic film, filled with Bava’s camera wizardry and love of color. It is everything perfect about movies.

Not the first film Amando de Ossorio would make — that would be Lan Bandera Negra, a short political movie — Tomb of the Pistolero AKA Grave of the Gunfighter is about Tom Bogard (Jorge Martín) looking for the killer of his brother in the mining town of Carson City.

This feels like it has one boot in the old American westerns — indeed, one character is named Hopalong Tennessee — and the other in the new world of the Italian cowboy film. In fact, it was filmed in the same Spanish Western town as A Fistful of Dollars, a movie that would change Westerns around the world that came out the same year as this movie.

Salloon singer Taffy is played by Silvia Solar, who starred with Paul Naschy in Night of the Howling Beast and also shows up in Eyeball. Of course, Jack Taylor is in this. What actor has crossed over into so many genre subfilms? He’s in Mexican horror (The Curse of Nostradamus), lucha movies (Neutron, the Man in the Black Mask), the films of Jess Franco (so many), giallo (The Killer is One of Thirteen, Autopsy), slashers (Edge of the Axe) and so much more.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on December 25, 2017.

This is the absolute bottom of the holiday barrel, a trip through hell that one can never prepare themselves for. You think you’ve known pain? You’ve known nothing, to quote Samhain.

On Mars, Momar and Kimar are worried that their children, Girmar (Pia Zadora, who also sang the horrifying song “Hooray for Santa Claus,” but let’s forgive her because she was in The Lonely Lady) and Bomar are watching too much Earth TV. The big thing they’re all excited about is a live interview with Santa. But the kids have some pretty big issues — their education is fed directly into their brains with no individual thought.

The wise ancient Chochem has seen this coming for centuries and says that Mars also needs a Santa Claus. The Martians are all pretty much assholes, so they decide to steal Earth’s Santa instead of creating their own.

Along the way, the Martians kidnap two Earth children along with Santa. Voldar, a Martian hardliner, disagrees with this idea and keeps trying to kill Santa and the kids. Yes, in a holiday movie meant for children, Santa faces death. Sadly, this film is so painful, children very well may cheer for Santa’s doom in the hopes that this movie ends sooner.

Then there’s the wacky Martian named Dropo, who will challenge your will to live. There are all sorts of badly made toys, wacky hijinks and murder plots. The fact that parents would subject their kids to this travesty upsets me to this day.

Dell even had a comic tie-in, so kids could relive the ennui and forced humor of this film again and again.

It gets worse. There was an album version, so kids could listen to the shrill theme song until they puked! I’ll do you a horrible favor and share the song with you right now!

If you can make it through this movie, you get whatever you want for Christmas!

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I was reading through old holiday movie posts, trying to get myself in the spirit of the season, and some of them made me laugh. I decided to pick out my favorite holiday movies — some new, some old — and in the spirit of giving, share them all with you. This originally appeared on December 25, 2019 but has some new material and editing.

Much like The Wizard of Oz, The Magic Christmas Tree thinks that reality is in black and white while dreams are in color. Both films have a witch. Both movies have wishes. But only one of them had a budget. And only one of them is a classic beloved by families for generations.

Sorry Richard C. Parish. Your one-and-done directorial effort isn’t getting a 4K re-release this year. Or any year, really.

In the black and white real world, three boys are walking home from school on Halloween. One of them, Mark, helps a witch get her cat Lucifer out of a tree. The moment someone told me I had to climb a tree to save a demonic cat, I would honestly be out of there, but Mark instead falls out of the tree and gets knocked out.

When he wakes up, the witch gives him a magic ring, as well as some magic seeds that need planted. On Thanksgiving, while everyone else is sleeping off the turkey, Mark is combining the wishbone of a turkey with the magic seeds and the magic words and the magic ring to grow the magic Christmas tree. His turtle Ichabod just watches in terror as Mark engages in a rite of eroto-comatose lucidity.

This tree that grows is unkillable, even when Mark’s dad cuts the grass in the middle of November. I guess we should assume that they live in California. Also — Mark’s dad is played by the director and his dialogue appears to appear as if by magic. In fact, this entire film appears dubbed even when it isn’t.

While Ichabod the turtle eats the grass, dad has a wacky grass-cutting session that ends up with the mower in flames and him acting drunk. The way he talks to his wife, you can only assume how he really treats her. This film cuts deeply into the dark underbelly of post-war America. The dream is dead. The power mower is in flames. The Christmas tree is alive.

That’s right. On Christmas Eve, the Magic Tree comes to life and can talk. It grants Mark three wishes. The Magic Christmas Tree also speaks with all the snark and pomp of Charles Nelson Reilly. Seriously, it’s as if the tree has seen it all and is bored with this charade. He’s merely indulging Mark.

Now, Mark’s a smart kid, so he wishes for an hour of absolute power, which he promptly is corrupted by absolutely. That said, he’s not that smart, because why wish for only an hour? Just wish for absolute power. Don’t put any limits on it, Mark. And don’t talk to trees.

What does Mark do with all that power? He makes flowers appear and disappear. Mark has obviously not gone through puberty, because if I had magic power in 1964, I would use the entire hour with Barbara Steele. Or Mamie Van Doren. Or Bardeau. Ah, you get the picture, even if Mark doesn’t.

Instead, he makes people run all over the place and throw pies in one another’s faces, but the camera is so far away you may wonder exactly what’s happening. It’s all kind of like Benny Hill but terrifying instead of madcap. Firemen get pies in their faces while their antique engines careen out of control. Happy holidays, La Verne, California. Hope you survive the experience.

Yes, the same town where the wedding scene in The Graduate was shot (and Wayne’s World 2) is subject to the Magic Christmas Tree gifting Mark with the power to be a complete jerk.

Mark’s second wish is to have Santa Claus all to himself. He couldn’t think of any other wishes. I mean, you have any power in the world and you can’t think of a wish?

Santa really seems like he’s senile. He also seems like he can’t stand up from the chair he’s stuck in.

This wish causes every other child in the world to grow very sad, so Mark uses his third wish to send Santa back to the children. That’s because he gets sent to a pocket dimension where his selfishness leads him to meet the very personification of Greed. The giant man yells, “You are my little boy!” and offers him a mountain of cake and toys to stay.

Greed is played by Pittsburgh native Robert “Big Buck” Maffei, who uses his 7’1″ frame to his advantage, playing monsters and aliens in a ton of television shows and movies, including a creature (actually a Taurus II anthropoid) in “The Galileo Seven” episode of Star Trek and the giant cyclops on Lost In Space. His last movie appearance was in Cheech and Chong’s Nice Dreams.

Mark gives Santa back to the children. But of course, it was all a dream. A horrible, horrible dream. Maybe Mark learned something. Maybe we all did.

The bastards at Goodtimes released this on VHS in 1992, pairing it with Rene Cardona’s Santa Claus. I can’t imagine a more horrifying double feature ever — the battle of Santa and Patch directed by the man who brought you Night of the Bloody Apes paired with this film that feels like it was shot on one of those Price Is Right Showcase Showdown sets with all of the lights turned out.

You can watch this for free on The Internet Archive and Tubi. I would advise you to avoid it and ensure that your Christmas Day isn’t filled with relentless horror.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally was on the site on May 21, 2022. Now you can see it this weekend at the Drive-In Super Monster-Rama! Get more info at the official Drive-In Super Monster-Rama Facebook page and get your tickets at the Riverside Drive-In’s webpage.

Castle of the Living Dead is a movie of mystery.

Who directed it?

Warren Kiefer, who couldn’t be directly credited for the film as the film required an Italian director?

Herbert Wise — Luciano Ricci, the film’s first assistant director — whose name was used to fulfill that needed native director credit?

Riccardo Freda, who left I Vampiri for Mario Bava to finish and also made Double Face and Tragic Ceremony?

Michael Reeves, the tragically lost too song director who made Witchfinder General? Depending on who is asked, Reeves either did minor second unit work, a polish on the script’s dwarf character, a complete takeover of the movie or nothing at all.

And did Mario Bava do effects?

So many mysteries!

This gothic horror movie stars Christopher Lee as Count Drago, a man who embalms humans and animals, making them part of his eternal theater thanks to a chemical formula that instantly kills and embalms anything that lives, arresting them at the very moment of death.

Beyond Lee, the cast includes Gaia Germani (Hercules In the Haunted World), Philippe Leroy (The Laughing Woman), Luciano Pigozzi (the Italian Peter Lorre), Luigi Bonos (Frankenstein 80) and Donald Sutherland in his first movie playing a witch, an old man and Sergeant Paul.

Co-writer Paul Maslansky would go on to produce tons of movies like Death Line, She Beast, Race with the Devil, Damnation Alley and Ski Patrol amongst so many others, as well as creating the original concept — and producing — all of the Police Academy movies.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cannon didn’t produce this movie but did release it on video in Germany on the Scotia/Cannon label.

Made by Compton Films, directed by Robert Hartford-Davis and written by Derek and Donald Ford. I watched this because those three men also made one of the wildest British horror movies, Corruption, which we all know is not a woman’s picture.

It feels like British filmmakers trying to make an Italian film, as it starts with Lucy Judd (Edina Ronay) being chased through the woods by a black hooded figure and strangled. We then meet Sir Richard Fordyke (John Turner) and his new bride Elizabeth (Heather Sears) who have come to town so that she may meet her father-in-law Sir Giles Fordyke (Joseph Tomelty). She worries about her first impression, but his father has been weakened by a stroke and can only speak sign language, which can only be understood by his first wife’s sister Diane (Ann Lynn). And oh yeah — Anne killed herself a few years ago when she was told she couldn’t get pregnant. Oh these British upper-crust families and their horrific family trees!

When they finally get there, everyone — from villagers to family — treats them with cold eyes and whispers, because the rumor is that Richard killed Lucy, even if he was far away in London at the time. Witchcraft is in town and the Fordykes are said to be the cause. In fact, there are reports of Richard riding his horse about the village while the dead Anne follows him shouting “Murderer!”

Obviously, someone is trying to destroy Richard. But who? And why?

If you enjoy period dramas with a bit of the supernatural thrown in, well, this is certainly for you. I love that Hartford-Davis would go on to direct a toy tie-in movie, Gonks Go Beat, as well as School for Unclaimed Girls, Incense for the Damned and The Fiend.

Castle of the Living Dead is a movie of mystery.

Who directed it?

Warren Kiefer, who couldn’t be directly credited for the film as the film required an Italian director?

Herbert Wise — Luciano Ricci, the film’s first assistant director — whose name was used to fulfill that needed native director credit?

Riccardo Freda, who left I Vampiri for Mario Bava to finish and also made Double Face and Tragic Ceremony?

Michael Reeves, the tragically lost too song director who made Witchfinder General? Depending on who is asked, Reeves either did minor second unit work, a polish on the script’s dwarf character, a complete takeover of the movie or nothing at all.

And did Mario Bava do effects?

So many mysteries!

This gothic horror movie stars Christopher Lee as Count Drago, a man who embalms humans and animals, making them part of his eternal theater thanks to a chemical formula that instantly kills and embalms anything that lives, arresting them at the very moment of death.

Beyond Lee, the cast includes Gaia Germani (Hercules In the Haunted World), Philippe Leroy (The Laughing Woman), Luciano Pigozzi (the Italian Peter Lorre), Luigi Bonos (Frankenstein 80) and Donald Sutherland in his first movie playing a witch, an old man and Sergeant Paul.

Co-writer Paul Maslansky would go on to produce tons of movies like Death Line, She Beast, Race with the Devil, Damnation Alley and Ski Patrol amongst so many others, as well as creating the original concept — and producing — all of the Police Academy movies.

You can watch this on Tubi.