Gothic, Giallo, Gore Masters of Italian Horror
When
8 Sep – 1 Oct 2017
Where
Gallery of Modern Art & Cinema A
About
Co-presented with Brisbane Festival, 'Gothic, Giallo, Gore: Masters of Italian Horror' celebrates the works of three major figures of the Italian giallo film: Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, and Dario Argento.
The word giallo is Italian for 'yellow' – a reference to the colour of the covers that adorned pulpy paperbacks in post-war Italy. This film genre first emerged in the 1960s and was popularised by these three directors as highly stylised and gruesome thrillers that took horror cinema to new and often outrageous extremes. Throughout the 1970s, the style became more pronounced – with innovative cinematography, convoluted scenes of death and mayhem, and an intense psychosexual edge – making it one of the most alluring forms of European horror.
This program explores the world of giallo cinema by presenting a collection of the genre's greatest titles, alongside a selection of its most important gothic horror influences. It also looks at the more visceral and blood-spattered works of Bava and Fulci in particular, which would themselves be key in shaping international horror cinema for decades.
Bava, Fulci, and Argento were masters of their craft and played an outsized role in the advancement of Italian horror. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the best of these directors on the big screen - from Bava's gothic bone-chiller Black Sunday 1960, to gory descendants such as Fulci's Zombi 2 1979, and Argento's masterpieces Deep Red 1975 and Suspiria 1977. The program features rare 35mm prints from private and national archives, alongside vibrant new digital restorations.
The program also includes the incredible live performance 'Claudio Simonetti's Goblin Play Suspiria' on Friday 22 September at The Tivoli. At this special event, masters of Italian horror movie soundtracks Claudio Simonetti's Goblin will perform their iconic Suspiria soundtrack live alongside a screening of the film. Tickets are now on sale for this unmissable event.
On the opening weekend of the program, film critic and author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas delivered a free lecture 'Strange Vices: The Lush Perversity of Giallo Cinema' which can be viewed here.
List of Works
- La maschera del demonio (Black Sunday) 1960
- I tre volti della paura (Black Sabbath) 1963
- Sei donne per l'assassino (Blood and Black Lace) 1964
- Operazione paura (Kill, Baby, Kill) 1966
- L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) 1970
- Ecologia del delitto (A Bay of Blood aka Twitch of the Death Nerve) 1971
- Una lucertola con la pelle di donna (A Lizard in a Woman's Skin) 1971
- Non si sevizia un paperino (Don't Torture a Duckling)
- Lisa e il diavolo (Lisa and the Devil) 1974
- Cani arrabbiati (Rabid Dogs) 1974
- Profondo rosso (Deep Red) 1975
- Suspiria 1977
- Zombi 2 1979
- Paura nella città dei morti viventi (City of the Living Dead) 1980
- Inferno 1980
- L'aldilà (The Beyond) 1981
- Quella villa accanto al cimitero (The House by the Cemetery) 1981
- Tenebre 1982
- Phenomena 1985
- Dèmoni (Demons) 1985
- Dèmoni 2 (Demons 2) 1986
- Opera 1987