Published by McFarland, 2005, 370pp.
"The Italian horror film has had its heyday. It has passed… [T]he purpose of this book is to recount the origins of the genre, celebrate ten specific auteurs who have contributed enormously, mention the many who have made noteworthy films in this genre, and also discuss the seminal influential genres associated with the Italian horror film. Hopefully you will enjoy reading about the obscure films, as well as reading about those that you may already be familiar with."
Thus states Louis Paul near the start of Italian Horror Film Directors (p. 9), thereby providing some criteria by which his work can be evaluated.
Unfortunately the book emerges as only a qualified success at best.
The essay containing the above remarks, "The Evolution of the Italian Horror Film", which follows forewords by Jess Franco – once again confirming his passion for B cinema – and Antonella Fulci and a personal introduction by Paul, emerges as one of the better sections.
Beginning his survey in the silent era with the influential Theatre du Grand Guignol, Paul charts the development of Italian horror through the seminal films of Freda, Bava, Argento and company – I Vampiri , Black Sunday , The Bird with the Crystal Plumage , Nonhosonno etc. – while also identifying several less-well known to downright obscure films such as Seddok and The Vampire and the Ballerina for readers to seek out.
While his knowledge of his chosen genre thereby comes through, some of Paul's remarks do lead one to wonder about his broader knowledge of Italian cinema and ability to fully contextualise the films under discussion.
He suggests, for instance, that I Vampiri is marred by "an infatuation with the concerns of the cinema of neo-realism" (p. 13) – an evaluation that would likely come as a surprise to Riccardo Freda, who explicitly set his cinema up in opposition to neo-realism and once remarked "I am not in the least interested in banal humanity, everyday humanity" (cited in Pierre Lephoron's The Italian Cinema, p. 179). Likewise, discussing the apparent anachronism of Freda's Maciste All'Inferno with its 17th century setting (p. 17), Paul seems unaware of the existence of a silent film of the same name which established a precedent of sorts for this by placing Maciste in what appears to be 19th Century Italy.
The ten directors profiled in detail are largely as one would expect – Dario Argento, Lamberto and Mario Bava, Ruggero Deodato, Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, Antonio Margheriti, Aristide Massaccesi and Michele Soavi – with the exception of Bruno Mattei, whose inclusion at the expense of Riccardo Freda is somewhat surprising.
Things get off to a bad start here as on the first page of the Argento profile (p. 37) Paul states that both Fiore and Asia Argento were the products of their father's marriage "to a woman named Marisa," which must come as something of a surprise to Asia's mother Daria Nicolodi!
While I did not spot any errors quite as glaring as this elsewhere – Argento probably being the director who I am most familiar with – it's the kind of thing that hardly inspires confidence in the value of the book.
Paul's evaluations of the filmmakers and their works follow a fairly conservative line for the most part: The Beyond is "as close as Fulci has come to a masterpiece of horror" (p.127), for instance, while his New York Ripper is "a disappointing and gruesome work [that] reveals little imagination" (p. 129).
The two directors who come off worst from this are, predictably, Deodato and Lenzi, thanks to their association with their cannibal film.
While Paul does offer a surprise in the latter's case by a positive evaluation of Nightmare City – "a highlight of Lenzi's horror filmography" (p. 148) – he relegates Lenzi's crime films – apparently outwith his purview, despite the marketing of Almost Human in the US as a horror film – to a single four line paragraph, with the resultant overall verdict on the director as someone who "never consistently excelled at any one genre" (p. 151).
The last two sections of the book, profiles of 39 other directors and a filmography of significant films by other filmmakers not otherwise mentioned, are better.
Though some of the filmmakers under discussion, such as Sergio Martino and Aldo Lado will be be well known to genre aficionados, relatively few are likely to have heard about the likes of Gianfranco Giagni or Mario Colucci.
Much the same is the case in the filmography with the inclusion of not only the likes of Frankenstein's Daughter but also No Thanks, The Coffee Makes Me Nervous . Again, however, there are some curious choices – if Django is included for its grotesque and horrific elements why is, say, Django the Bastard absent?
Overall, there's just about enough in Italian Horror Directors for it to be a worthwhile volume to have on one's cult film bookshelf. Therein lies the rub: It's not good enough to be an indispensible volume that the reader is likely to want to keep closer to hand and, for the price, that likely isn't sufficient.
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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