21 Nights of Giallo: Week Three

21 Nights of Giallo - All The Colors Of The Dark

WELCOME TO WEEK THREE of 21 Nights of Giallo! Over the past 14 nights of reviews, I covered movies from Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, Luciano Ercoli, Sergio Martino and more. I’ve been reviewing a classic Italian giallo film every night this month, as a fun lead-up to the March 22nd release of my 13th novel Five Deaths For Seven Songbirds. I love giallo films, and my novel is a homage to them… so…

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21 Nights of Giallo: Week Two

21 Nights of Giallo - A Bay Of Blood

21 NIGHTS OF GIALLO continues with Week Two! I am reviewing a classic Italian giallo film every night in March, as a fun lead-up to the March 22nd release of my 13th novel Five Deaths For Seven Songbirds. I love giallo films, and my novel pays tribute to them… so I hope everyone who loves these movies like I do will check out the book. You can read last week’s film reviews, which covered films…

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21 Nights of Giallo: Week One

21 Nights of Giallo

A survey of some of the best classic giallo films from directors Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino, Umberto Lenzi and more! Week One features A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, What Have You Done To Solange?, Death Laid an Egg, Puzzle, So Sweet…So Perverse, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and Deep Red.

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A Summer To Get Bond-ed

THIS WAS THE SUMMER OF BOND. I think my son Shaun and I will always think of it that way somehow. But last weekend, the Summer of Bond came to an end — kind of fittingly really, since it was the weekend after Labor Day, a holiday which always kind of signals the end of summer. On Saturday night, Shaun and I watched Spectre, the 24th “official” James Bond film, ending a summer-long 007 marathon.…

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Suspiria in 4K: Haunting Beauty in Horror

THERE HAS NEVER been a horror movie more beautifully shot than Suspiria. There has never been a release of Suspiria more beautifully realized than Synapse Films’ 4K remaster of the film. The film’s power has always been all about the color and the lighting, and the Synapse edition brings out the power of those elements like no previous release. The Blu-Ray is sharp, crisp and eye-poppingly colorful. Suspiria looks like it was shot using exclusively…

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Death Occurred Last Night – Artful Heartache in Italian Crime Cinema

“MY DAUGHTER IS A CHILD at whatever age.” That simple, and yet slightly deceptive sentence sums the pain at the core of Death Occurred Last Night (La morte risale a ieri sera) a 1970 Italian murder mystery/giallo directed by Duccio Tessari (also known for The Bloodstained Butterfly). The film has been restored and released on Blu-Ray with one video interview extra by Raro Video. At the outset of the film, we meet Amanzio (played by…

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Discovering the claws of PETS…

I LOVE FILM, and over the years I’ve gone through many “discovery” phases, where my curiosity drives me to focus on watching a particular genre of movies for an extended time (horror, noir, b/w ’50s sci-fi…). Over the past few years, I’ve been obsessed with European horror, drive-in, grindhouse and exploitation movies from the ’60s-’80s. I’ve gone through periods of focusing on the work of directors like Jean Rollin, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava,…

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Best Movies I Saw in 2015

SO, A LOT OF authors this week have been posting their Top 10 lists of Best Books Read in 2015 and I feel like I should follow suit, but honestly… I haven’t read 10 books in the past year. If I posted a Top 5 list, that would probably encompass almost everything I read — kind of pointless to post that. But I do watch a lot of movies. For many years now, every weekend,…

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Thumbs Up, Roger Ebert

MY WIFE CALLED ME at work yesterday to tell me Roger Ebert had died. I really wish that she’d called me to say something else. Like ‘could you pick up some milk on your way home.’ I wasn’t Roger Ebert’s friend; I never met him (though honestly, I always wanted to). But he was more of a rock star to me than most rock stars — which is saying something given that I was a…

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