Directed by Eriprando Visconti (Oedipus orca) and written by Luciano Lucignani, Fabio Mauri, Roselyne Sesboue, Lisa Morpurgo and Visconti from the book by Michele Prisco, A Spiral of Mist starts with Fabrizio (Marc Porel) killing his wife Valeria (Carole Chauvet) with a shotgun.

Maria Teresa (Claude Jade), his cousin, believes there’s no way he could do it. She hopes that her lawyer husband Marcello (Duilio Del Prete) can convince Judge Renato Marinoni (Stefano Satta Flores) that Fabrizio is innocent.

In flashback, the movie shows us the unhappy marriages of both women and how Valeria tried to set up Maria Teresa with another lawyer, Cesare Molteni (Roberto Posse). Today, Maria has a child that really was the child of her driver (Flavio Andreini) and housekeeper Armida (Anna Bonaiuto), as her husband is impotent.

The oral sex scene between Chauvet and Porel is really hard to watch because it’s unerotic and as disturbing as a sex scene can get. Supposedly, Chauvet actually was doing it for real while Porel’s wife was watching, which caused a major uproar. Or that could be IMDB BS. This movie has just as much male frontal nudity as female, which is rare for a movie from any county.

A Spiral of Mist is more about the disintegration of relationships and expectations of love than it is a giallo, but it does have some elements of the form.

Directed by Ramón Fernández and written by Juan José Alonso Millán, Death Haunts Monica* might seem like a soap opera, but hold out. It’s also a giallo.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this movie on January 8 at 10:00 PM PT at Los Feliz 3 in Los Angeles. For more information, visit Cinematic Void.

Before Fulci became known as the godfather of gore, he made movies in nearly every genre. This is the next to last film he’d make — Silver Saddle follows it in 1978 — before 1979’s Zombie announced to the world that he was here to tear eyeballs, unleash bats and provide dazzling if incomprehensible odes to mayhem.

Fulci is no stranger to the Giallo, with some of his most important films being A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Don’t Torture a Duckling and the unappreciated Perversion Story. The title refers to the film’s exploration of the duality of human nature, a theme that Fulci often revisits in his work. Here, he’d team up again with writer Roberto Gianviti and begin his long partnership with writer Dardano Sacchetti, who sought to lend a touch of Argento to the original script’s traditional mystery.

What emerged was a film shrouded in mystery and darkness—a rumination where death is inescapable and always close, a world where doom hangs over every moment, captivating the audience with its enigmatic atmosphere.

The film is set in Dover, England, in 1959, a time of social change and upheaval. A woman commits suicide by literally diving from the Cliffs of Dover. Forgive the harmful effects — Fulci tends to use wooden bodies in his films for some reason, much like the end of Duckling. The main point is that her daughter Virginia may be living in Italy, but she can clearly see her mother’s day.

Today, Virginia (Jennifer O’Neill, Scanners) lives in Rome and is married to a wealthy businessman named Francesco (Gianni Garko, Sartana himself!). As she drives him to the airport for his next business trip, she begins to see visions. An older woman is being killed. A wall is torn down. And a letter is under a statue. How strange is it that the house she is beginning to renovate looks precisely like the one in her visions?

When she tears down the wall that looks like the one in her dreams, she finds the skeleton of her husband’s ex-lover and the police want to charge him with the murder. Virginia becomes the detective of the story, obsessed with saving her husband with the help of psychic researcher Luca Fattori. Soon, they believe that the real killer is Emilio Rospini (Gabriele Ferzetti, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service).

So who is the woman? Why was her body in that room, which was once her husband’s bedroom? Why is the woman’s face on the cover of the magazine that Virginia buys? That’s because Virginia’s visions aren’t the past but premonitions of the future.

Meanwhile, she’s given a wristwatch that plays a haunting theme every hour in the house. This eerie soundtrack, composed by Fabio Frizzi, adds a layer of suspense and tension to the film and was reused to incredible effect in Kill Bill. The growing knowledge that the victim isn’t dead yet—and that Virginia may be that victim—darkens every frame of Fulci’s epic.

Quentin Tarantino was so in love with this film that he intended to remake it with Bridget Fonda sometime in the 2000s, but this never happened.

Perhaps just as interesting as the film is the life of its star, Jennifer O’Neill. Possibly best known for her long career as a Cover Girl model, she has been married nine times to eight husbands (she married, divorced, and remarried her sixth husband, Richard Alan Brown). By the age of 17, she’d already attempted suicide so as not to be separated from her dog, had a horse break her neck in three places and married her first husband. She’s also had a horrible history with guns, having accidentally shot herself in 1982 and being on the set of the TV show Cover Up in 1984 when co-star Jon-Erik Hexum accidentally killed himself. While waiting for a delay, he had been playing Russian roulette with a prop gun and was unaware that the discharge could still cause damage. Placing the gun to his temple, he fired and caused so much damage to his brain that he died six days later.

Directed and co-written (with Rubens Francisco Luchetti) by Jose Mojica Marins — the alter ego of Coffin Joe — Hellish Flesh is the tale of Dr. George Medeiros (Marins) and his wife Rachel (Luely Figueiró). He’s quite the scientist. But he’s neglecting his gorgeous bride over the need for science, so she hooks up with his best friend Oliver (Oswaldo De Souza). Together, they come up with a plan to kill him and take his money. Step one is throwing acid in his face. Step two is spending all his money. Yet he didn’t die during step one, so you better believe that he will come for revenge. Except that when he does come home, he doesn’t seem upset at all. As for Oliver, well, after spending most of his friend’s money, he got stabbed by another lover, leaving Rachel alone.

This is a movie filled with screaming and while strange, it doesn’t enter into the world of the Coffin Joe films. He doesn’t descend a staircase of naked women or go to Hell and learn that he is Satan. But still, it’s a movie where an acid-deformed scientist works on his revenge and even when making a morality story, Marins still can’t make a normal movie.

Arrow Video’s limited edition collection of the movies of Coffin Joe should be owned by every child. Hellish Flesh has extras including an interview with Andrew Leavold on Marins’ place in 60s and 70s Marginal Cinema and a new video essay by Kat Ellinger. You can get this set from MVD.

Based on Un’anima persa by Giovanni Arpino, The Forbidden Room has Tino (Danilo Mattei) come to Venice to study painting and stay with his Uncle Fabio (Vittorio Gassman) and Aunt Elisa Stolz (Catherine Deneuve). Yet the house just seems off; Fabio is abusive to Elisa. She just takes it.

He also starts to hear sounds from the attic in the section of the house he is never allowed to explore. It’s gigantic yet has fallen into ruin, cobwebs and cracks all over, even as it contains a full theater where Elisa once performed. The sounds come from a door behind the stage and soon, Tino learns that they belong to another uncle. Annetta (Ester Carloni), the housekeeper, allows him to enter that door and he learns that it is where Fabio’s brother (also Gassman) lives. He has gone mad after the death of Elisa’s ten-year-old daughter from her first marriage and screams, eats like a child and destroys baby dolls. But is the girl dead? And how did she die? The truth will ruin Tino, sending him away from painting and Venice, which always seems to attract the most gloomy of movies.

Director Dino Risi also made the original The Scent of a Woman. He wrote the script with Bernardino Zapponi, who wrote Deep Red. This has fantastic elements that show up before it’s over but is more drama than horror. However, it’s so well made that it will keep your interest for the whole film.

You can watch this on YouTube.

This movie doesn’t even take place in 2047, but I can only assume that Al Adamson and Sam Sherman saw Star Wars get hot and said, “Let’s put some tits on that.”

Overpopulation in the future is pretty bad, so the Controller (Erwin Fuller) makes sex illegal. Cindy (Catherine Erhardt) lives with her wicked stepmother — The Widow (Renee Harmon) — and two stepsisters —  Bella (Bhurni Cowans) and Stella (Adina Ross) — you know the story. You understand that she has a fairy godfather (Jay B. Larson) and that she’ll hook up with her Prince Charming, here named Tom Prince (Vaughn Armstrong). And yes, she disappears and he looks for her.

You may not expect robots to enforce the law against sex and the fact that this is a musical.

I love that the Canadian VHS release of this movie was so cheap that it was a duplicate of the hotel version of this movie. At six minutes, a voice tells viewers that the preview is over and that they must select to watch the whole movie and charge their bill. I can’t imagine anyone buying this thinking they were going to see more sex and instead getting more musical numbers.

Robert Sand (Jim Kelly), agent of D.R.A.G.O.N. (Defense Reserve Agency Guardian Of Nations), is just trying to play tennis when he gets called in to save Toki Konuma (Essie Lin Chia, Doomsday Machine), an ambassador’s daughter. This brings him into conflict with another group called Warlock who want the freeze bomb, a new weapon, and use drugs and voodoo ritual murder to get what they want.

They’re led by Janicot (Bill Roy), who has a whole army of people willing to dress up in voodoo costumes, along with an evil woman named Synn (Marilyn Joi) and even a vulture named Voltron.

Based on the book by Marc Olden, this was directed by Al Adamson and written by B. Readick and Marco Joachim.

It’s got a great cast, including Felix Silla (who has a whip and that’s worth watching this for just that moment), Cowboy Lang, Little Tokyo, Regina Carroll and even Aldo Ray as the leader of D.R.A.G.O.N.

It also has Jim Kelly flying with a jetpack like he’s James Bond. That’s worth watching this movie for. Oh yeah — he also punches two dudes right in the cock. And not over the course of the movie. I’m saying he gives them both Roshambo at the same time.

Whatever title you’ve seen it as — The Possession of Nurse Sherri, Black Voodoo, Beyond the Living, Hospital of Terror, Killer’s Curse or Hands of Death — you have to admit that you won’t forget this Al Adamson movie.

It’s somewhat inspired by Circle of Friends, a cult that was supposedly run by George G. Jurscek, who believed that a great political and economic collapse would occur before the year 2000. Or maybe it was actually run by a group of people that included Margaret L. Reinauer. They saw themselves as a capitalistic commune that was out to make its members healthy, wealthy and wise. So yes, while they used Gnostic Christianity, Anthroposophical Teachings and — you knew he’d get in here — the books of  Hal Lindsey to preach the end of the world, they also owned security, real estate, investment and construction businesses.

That’s where Reanhauer, the cult leader’s name, comes from.

Sherri (Jill Jacobson) is possessed by his spirit after he dies during an operation and he becomes a green chromakey blob that you could animate on your phone today and it’d look so much better. But hey, this is a small budget in 1977. Now, she’s out to kill all the doctors who let the cult master die unless her nurse compadres Tara Williams (Marilyn Joi) and Beth Dillon (Katherine Pass) can dig up the body of Reanhauer. Also: football hero Marcus Washington (Prentiss Moulden) has lost his eyesight and needs the aid of Tara, which means that yes, Marilyn Joi will be topless.

Did you ever wish that you could combine a possession movie with a New World nurses saga (thanks to Ian Jane for putting that in my head)? Then this is the only movie that I know that has ever tried to do that.