Louis Malle’s Black Moon is one of those movies that I’ll be watching and Becca comes in and gets mad about.

“What the hell is that unicorn in this movie for?” she asked.

“It’s art” is always my answer. She doesn’t care that Malle made stuff like Pretty Baby, Atlantic City and My Dinner with André. No, she just sees someone breast feeding a goat.

Lily (Cathryn Harrison, Images, Eat the Rich) escapes a gender on gender civil war*, barely avoiding getting murdered by a firing squad, as well as encountering a flock of sheep standing around their lynched shepherd, militarized women torturing a boy and falling asleep on flowers that scream out in pain.

She then finds a château that is filled with animals and a strange woman who lies in bed, yelling at her pet rat Humphrey. She then begins making fun of Lily to someone on the other side of the shortwave radio before trying to strangle our heroine, who promptly slaps her so hard that she dies.

Then, she meets Lily (Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro) and Lily (Alexandra Stewart, The Uncanny), who breast feeds the old woman back to life. For some reason, they all share names and communicate telepathically. Then, a bunch of nude children run into the house and the unicorn tells her that the old woman is not real.

This is also a movie that goes on to feature male Lily beheading a hawk, a chorus of naked kids singing Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and a woman attempting to give a unicorn her mother’s milk.

Black Moon was shot in Malle’s own 200-year-old manor house and considered it a sexual awakening inspired by Alice In Wonderland. He called it his “mythological fairy tale taking place in the near future.” It failed at the box office and went unseen for many years.

*Malle referred to this battle as “the ultimate civil war…the war between men and women…the climax and great moment of women’s liberation.”

You can get this as part of the Criterion Collection.

A young nude-model is stabbed to death with a pair of scissors, the third in a series of victims who had all had their photos taken by Parisi, a potentially mentally unhinged individual who claims that his camera can photograph people’s thoughts.

Director and writer Helia Colombo made one giallo and here it is, rarely seen outside of Italy until today. It really has the best title — The Police Are Blundering In the Dark — because if you think about it, the police never do a great job in these films.

Now, reporter Giorgio D’Amato meets his friend Enrichetta at the photographer’s villa, but when he arrives, he learns that she’s the model we watched die at the beginning of the movie.

She’d been begged by Parisi — who is in a wheelchair and looks quite frail — to come to speak to him about his magical camera. And just like Clue — you know, but with plenty of graphic murder and no short supply of nudity — we meet the suspects, ranging from Alberto the butler to the photographer’s lesbian wife Eleonora, his niece Sara and the sexed-up maid Lucia, who is the next to be killed.

I have no idea why that camera figures in, but maybe the filmmakers thought that Four Flies On Grey Velvet was going to force everyone to have science fiction photography as part of their plot, so they ripped it off. There’s also little police involvement, but it’s not like there’s an actual rule that giallo titles have to make sense. I prefer when they don’t.

You can get this as part of the Vinegar Syndrome Forgotten Gialli Volume 1 set.

A series of murders are happening — it’s a giallo, so go figure, right? — but in each case, there is decomposed flesh under the victims. There’s also a genius named Professor Helmut (Gordon Mitchell!) who is doing brain transplants from human to baboon and he thinks that could be the secret to cheating death.

That’s why this movie is really known as The Skin Under the Claws, but it’s more romantic comedy with a giallo just begging to break though. Helmut dies early on and his organs disappear and the cops think the killer is a walking corpse, so there’s at least some horror in this one, but it takes forever to get there, what with Dr. Silivia and Dr. Gianni going to dinner, out sightseeing and anything and everything but solving the crimes that we came here for.

Alessandro Santini only directed three other movies — Beyond the Frontiers of Hate, Una Forca per 3 Vigliacchi (A Gallow for 3 Cowards) and Questa Libertà di Avere… le Ali Bagnate (The Freedom of Having…Wet Wings). He’s not shy with the nudity or the blood. And at least the ending is somewhat original and unexpected. Otherwise, as they say, for giallo lovers only.

You can watch this on YouTube.

As of December 20, 2020, if you can believe it, I’ve never seen Last House on the Left. But I have seen nearly every ripoff of it and movie that stole its ad campaign or title. I have no idea why. It just worked out that way.

This Aldo Lado-directed piece of Italian grime also went by the names Night Train Murders, The New House on The Left, Second House on The Left, Don’t Ride on Late Night Trains, Late Night Trains, Last House Part II and Xmas Massacre, depending on the whims of fate (and Hallmark Releasing).

Margaret (Irene Miracle, who was also in Midnight Express, Inferno and Puppet Master) and Lisa are set to taking the night train from Germany to Italy, but the train is full and they have to sit in a long corridor. They help Blackie (Flavio Bucci, Suspiria) and Curly (Gianfranco De Grassi, The Church) hide from the ticket taker as they board the train and hide from the cops. Of course, instead of saying thanks, they end up decimating the two girls, along with the help of an upper class blonde (Macha Méril, Deep Red) who has already turned the tables on Blackie’s attempts at assaulting her by seducing him. The two thugs really have no idea what they’re in for, because this mysterious blonde is more dangerous than both of them put together.

The whole time the girls are being victimized, murdered and forced into suicide, Lisa’s parents are hosting a Christmas dinner party where her doctor father speaks on the ills of a more violent society.

Later, when they arrive at the station to get the girls, they are worried when they don’t arrive. If you wonder, “Will they end up taking the people that killed them home?” then yes, you have seen your share of revenge movies. The most shocking thing is that the blonde may be the only survivor of the evil trio, as her fate is left open.

This video nasty is the kind of movie that I don’t put on when people come to visit.

While some decry the bumbling cop comedy in Craven’s film, this one jettisons any attempt at levity, adds some 1975 Italian style, gets a soundtrack from Morricone and gets way, way dark.

Lado also made Short Night of Glass Dolls and Who Saw Her Die?, two of the more original and downbeat giallo to follow in the wake of Argento. Even when he’s ripping someone off — not that Craven didn’t also rip off The Virgin Spring, so there are no innocents here — he can’t help outdoing his competition.

Kinji Fukasaku (Battles without Honor and Humanity, Battle Royale) adapted Goro Fujita’s gangster novel of the rise and fall of real-life gangster Rikio Ishikawa, a man who lives up to the lack of honor or humanity references by Fukasaku’s other film.

How horrible of a person is Ishikawa? Within minutes of the opening credits, he steals money from the Aoki gang, robs a Sangokujin gambling den with Imai, stashes his gun with a geisha named Cheiko, gets arrested and returns for his gun and to assault the girl.

Meanwhile, the leader of his gang is running for Japanese parliament and the out of control antics of the film’s protagonist are too much for them. Despite a talking to by the family boss, he blows up the leader’s car. This unpardonable crime leads to the gang telling him to slice his fingers off in the ritual of yubitsume. He refuses and goes to the cops before leaving Tokyo for 18 months, drifting to Osaka and a drug-filled haze.

Of course, the first thing he does when he heads back to Japan — ten-year exile or not — he comes back for a whole other round of mayhem, which includes battling two Yazuka families and the police all at the same time, followed by driving Cheiko to suicide and, inevitably, cannibalism, a sword battle in a graveyard and suicide.

Noboru Ando, who appears in this movie, was an actual mob figure for some time, saying “In Japanese, the only difference between yakuza and yakusha (actor) is one hiragana character.” Very noticeable by the knife scar on his cheek, he appeared in plenty of mob-related movies, including movies directly based on his life, such as his sexual experiences while hiding from the police (Ando Noboru no Waga Tobou to Sex no Kiroku) and life of crime in Takashi Miike’s Deadly Outlaw: Rekka.

You can get this movie as part of the Graveyards of Honor set recently released by Arrow Video. It comes with Takeshi Miike’s 2002 version of the movie, as well as new audio commentary by author and critic Mark Schilling, a new visual essay by critic and Projection Booth podcast host Mike White and an appreciation of the director. Like everything Arrow releases, this is a great set.

Taken from footage of Super Robot Mach Baron — the sequel to Super Robot Red Baron — this Hong Kong version predates the notion of using native actors within a Japanese show that Power Rangers would perfect a decade or more later.

Stranger still, this was released in Spain as Spain Mazinger Z – El robot de las Estrellas, even though Go Nagai’s famous robot is nowhere to be found.

The Universal Rescue team and their Super Iron Robot struggle to battle the evil that is within the Bermuda Triangle in a movie that smashes together an entire season of a TV show into 86 or so minutes. So you know that it’s going to make no sense — and therefore be awesome — before you even start playing it.

Stephan Yip, who directed Lady Exterminator, acts in this, as does Godfrey Ho, who is probably better known for his multiple ninja movies and insanity like Robo Vampire, Scorpion Thunderbolt and Kickboxer from Hell.

This was originally directed by Koichi Takano, who did the puppet effects in King Kong vs. Godzilla before doing the effects for several Ultraman series, including Ultraman: Tiga, Ultraman Towards the Future, Ultraman 80 and Ultraman Leo.

To see a modern version of this, the movie BraveStorm has recently come out in the U.S. on blu ray.

You can watch this on Tubi.