I mentioned in yesterday’s post the austerity package the Italian government unveiled a few days ago to reduce the country’s deficit.
If the bill is approved, the cuts to culture funds will have a drastic impact on many Italian museums, theatres and cultural organisations.
One of the organisations that may suffer from the cuts is the Rome-based Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Experimental Cinematography Centre) that includes the "Scuola Nazionale di Cinema" (National Film School) and the "Cineteca Nazionale" (National Film Archive).
There was enough politics in yesterday’s post, so for today, rather than launching into another tirade against the Italian government, I will support the work of the Centro Sperimentale by presenting one of their latest projects, a brief festival celebrating lost and forgotten Italian horror films.
The mini-event (opening tonight) is entitled "Brividi Italiani" (Italian Shivers) and it’s organised in collaboration with the Fantafestival, a film festival that mainly focuses on fantasy, horror and sci-fi that has been going for thirty years.
In previous posts I wrote about the connection between fashion and death in horror films, the catharsis that maybe some horror themes and stories can offer us through contemporary theatrical performances and the dark glamour inspired by horror films and infused by some contemporary fashion designers in their collections.
So for today I’d like to concentrate on the style of some of the films included in this section of the Fantafestival and in how they may provide fashion researchers with interesting inspirations.
A lot of contemporary films filed under the horror category lack indeed style: too many directors and critics seem to confuse extreme and unnecessary bloodbaths, bad acting and vomit-inducing scenes or extremely tedious psycho thrillers with horror.
In fact there were probably more memorable catwalk shows by Alexander McQueen containing moments of suspense and disturbing yet thought-provoking and inspiring images than many contemporary “horror” films.
It's impossible not to mention for example McQueen's Spring/Summer 2001 "Asylum" collection with models trapped in a mirrored cube-shaped mental hospital with a masked Michelle Olley breathing through a tube, reminding of Joel-Peter Witkin’s 1983 photograph entitled "Sanitarium".
The “Brividi Italiani” festival is inspired by a stylish horror anniversary: Mario Bava’s film La maschera del demonio (Black Sunday) was released fifty years ago (on 11th August 1960 to be precise) in Italy.
Bava’s works can be read like manuals for stylish horror films (he also directed the first Italian horror that had strong connections with fashion, Sei donne per l’assassino) and his films also taught me one rule that works very well in life, especially if you want to survive in the fashion industry without piling up huge debts on your credit card, what I usually summarise in four simple words, “contained costs-maximum effect”. Indeed, the Italian director often worked on a budget yet he always managed to create incredible effects and illusions (the tripe monster in Riccardo Freda’s Caltiki entered history…).
The mini-festival opens tonight with La cripta e l'incubo (Crypt of the Vampire, 1964), directed by Thomas Miller (aka Camillo Mastrocinque), featuring Christopher Lee, José Campos and Adriana Ambesi and with costumes designed by Milosz (Mila Valenza). This is a classic and elegant gothic movie with main character Laura (Ambesi), the young daughter of a count (Lee), possessed by the spirit of a dead ancestor.
What’s interesting about this film is the focus on characters with multiple personalities but also the theme of lesbianism in connection with vampirism (that anticipates the vampire fatale theme).
Tonight’s programme continues with Il castello dei morti vivi (Castle of the Living Dead, 1964) directed by Luciano Ricci (Herbert Wise), Lorenzo Sabatini (Warren Kiefer) and Michael Reeves and also starring Christopher Lee.
Anybody who’s looking for an interesting location for a fashion photo shoot (especially for haute couture designs) should definitely watch this film: the plot follows the vicissitudes of a company of actors who ends up in Count Drago's gloomy and mysterious castle and some of the most inspiring scenes in this film were shot around the park of monsters in Bomarzo (in the film you will be able to spot for example the Ogre, the Elephant and Neptune statues; check out also the embedded clip).
Tomorrow’s programme opens with Max Hunter (Massimo Pupillo)’s La vendetta di Lady Morgan (Lady Morgan’s Revenge, 1965), interesting for Piero Umiliani (Peter O'Milian)'s soundtrack, rather than for its traditional macabre atmospheres à la Il boia scarlatto (Bloody Pit of Horror, 1965).
Fans of Barbara Steele will definitely enjoy Friday’s double bill that includes Il terzo occhio (Third Eye, 1966) by James Warren (Mino Guerrini), starring Frank (Franco) Nero as Mino, a character tortured between a suffocating mother and an obsessed family servant.
The director of the film, Mino Guerrini, was an Italian painter who, later on in his life, became a journalist and screenwriter. Guerrini’s past as a painter emerges in the elegant photography of this film especially if compared to Aristide Massacesi’s gruesome remake Buio Omega.
The Barbara Steele evening continues with Bava’s La maschera del demonio (Black Sunday, 1960). Essays could be written about this film that focuses on the consequences of the accidentally awakening by two doctors, Kruvejan (Andrea Checchi) and Gorovek (John Richardson), of a witch who has been lying dead in a coffin for centuries.
The film is rather interesting since it mixes literary (Nikolaj Vasilievic Gogol, H.P. Lovecraft…) and cinematic (Murnau’s Nosferatu and Terence Fisher’s Dracula) references with Bava’s imagination and includes a stylish reference to the doppelgänger theme.
Steele starred as Asa and Katia, the witch and the princess, the repelling and the beautiful woman, playing with ambiguities that are very much used in fashion to juxtapose fragile, ethereal and almost angelic women with powerfully strong and damned amazons.
The weekend will instead introduce audiences to horror films from the 70s-80s: Nero veneziano (Damned in Venice, 1978) by Ugo Liberatore with costumes by Silvio Betti, is a typical satanic horror with aesthetically strong images and decadent atmospheres à la Death in Venice with evil presences hiding in each corner and Venetian calle; 7, Hyden Park - La casa maledetta (1985) by Martin Herbert (Alberto De Martino) is a variation upon the theme of The Postman Always Rings Twice;
Chi sei? (Beyond the Door, 1974) by Olivier Hellman (Sonia Molteni - a woman finally!) and R. Barrett (Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli) moves from William Friedkin’s The Exorcist; Camping del terrore (The Eleventh Commandment/Body Count, 1987) by Ruggero Deodato is a classic tale of college kids on a nightmarish camping in the Colorado mountains that was actually shot in the abruzzese mountain resort of Campo Imperatore, while DNA formula letale (Regenerator, 1989) by Luigi Montefiori features a Dr Jekyll-inspired character and Deliria (Stage Fright, 1987) by Michele Soavi, with costumes by Valentina Di Palma (who worked between the 70s and 80s on a few Italian horror productions) is a sort of And Then There Were None tale taking place in a theatre that includes a few video clip moments in classic 80s style.
For decades Italian horror productions were dismissed by critics as films with no intellectual value.
Yet, while not every film produced in Italy and filed under this genre, had extremely high artistic purposes, there are quite a few ones that provide us with stylish and thrilling inspirations. Hopefully, the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia will have enough funds in future to keep on digging in the archives and finding for us these lost or forgotten gems.
"Brividi Italiani" is at the Trevi Cinema in Vicolo del Puttarello 25, Rome, Italy, until 6th June 2010.
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