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It’s yet another masterpiece from the Italian director Francesco Rosi, adapting a fiction novel about a political murder conspiracy that is altogether too much of a good fit for the troubled Italy of 1975. Crime star Lino Ventura is the incorruptible detective investigating a series of killings of high-level judges, who begins to intuit that his superiors want the murders to continue. Dark and moody, Rosi’s picture is impeccably directed for a kind of nagging, uneasy suspense, with frightening hints that Ventura is being drawn into a bigger, more sinister frame. With Charles Vanel, Max von Sydow and Fernando Rey, and music by Piero Piccioni. The insightful audio commentary is by Alex Cox. The original Italian title is even more blood-curdling: Cadaveri eccelenti.

Illustrious Corpses

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1976 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 121 min. / Cadaveri eccellenti; The Context / Street Date September 28, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Lino Ventura, Tino Carraro, Marcel Bozzuffi,...

Tinto Brass's Deadly Attractions and Sinful Desires is showing September - October, 2020 on Mubi.Above: Salon KittyKnown today as a maestro of erotic cinema, Italian director Tinto Brass’s legendary status is hard-won and attributable to his dogged dedication to filming sex. There’s a whiff of aimless opportunism in his genre-hopping early career, which included flirtations with neorealism, psychedelic experimentalism, and even a spaghetti western. But in Salon Kitty (1976), his first English-language film, Brass began to consolidate and wield influences. Salon Kitty brandishes its references in plain acknowledgement of the director’s derivative tendencies, meanwhile offering glimpses of Brass-original motifs that he would later (rather ingeniously) repurpose in erotic contexts. In Salon Kitty, we can perceive the director’s artistic resolve stiffening, amounting to a film that’s greater than the sum of its cherry-picked parts. Based on the stranger-than-fiction, true story of a Berlin brothel of co-opted...

Sergio Martino’s Torso will be available on Blu-ray October 30th From Arrow Video

Enter… If You Dare!

A talented and versatile journeyman, director Sergio Martino has lent his talents to multiple genres across his long and varied career, but it is undoubtedly his giallo thrillers from the early 70s for which he is best known. Among the most highly acclaimed of these, 1973’s Torso revels in the genre’s time-honored traditions while simultaneously laying the groundwork for the modern slasher movie.

A sex maniac is prowling the streets of Perugia, targeting picturesque university town’s female students. Alarmed at plummeting life expectancy of the student body, Jane and her three friends elope to a secluded country villa only to discover that, far from having left the terror behind, they’ve brought it with them!

Also known as ”Carnal Violenc”e, Torso was released in Italy towards the end of...

Old dogs and new tricks, that’s me, as I’ve never seen a Sergio Martino film until now. If Torso is to be my first, so be it; a fun giallo with copious amounts of strictly gratuitous nudity is nothing to scoff at, and UK boutique label Shameless Films lovingly stabs their way onto your video shelf.

I certainly know of Martino’s work; as I delve deeper into Italian horror I hear of All the Colors of the Dark and Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (both from ’72), mostly due to the vibrant titles and his even more vibrant leading lady, Edwige Fenech, whose stunning visage graces my eyeballs on a regular basis. (Gratzi, Sarah.) But beyond that, I really knew little before taking my first trip into Martinoville. And thanks to Shameless, I plan to pop in more often.

Here’s our setting,...

Mubi will be showing the retrospective Philippe Garrel: Fight for Eternity from May 1 - July 5, 2017 in most countries around the world.Les enfants désaccordésQuestion: I must ask you here about one concept you discuss in your book, one that also might be thought of, next to the structural work, as another way to break from the story in the film. The concept is muzan, and I find it quite difficult to think of a proper translation of it into English. How do you employ this concept into your films, and does it, in fact, have anything to do with the way you wish to break away from the story?

Yoshishige Yoshida: I understand the word in itself, as you would understand the literal meaning of the kanji: something which expresses the impossibility of attaining stability or change for the better. Yes, I believe this is the meaning of the concept that I use.

Jean Seberg in Les hautes solitudes. Courtesy of The Film Desk.It is a raw experience. No title, no credits of any sort. No soundtrack—although I defy anyone to watch it in absolute silence and not “hear” something, at some point, in their head. Just a series of “moving images” (for once the currently fashionable artworld term is correct), portraits in black-and-white, mostly trained on faces, or the upper parts of several bodies. There is no make-up, only minimal lighting and staging, and no post-production effects or clean-up whatsoever. The on-screen participants include Nico, Tina Aumont, Laurent Terzieff. And, most extensively, Jean Seberg—which may come as a shock to viewers not entirely au fait with the biography of the film’s director, Philippe Garrel. “Garrel’s camera sees Seberg honestly,” wrote David Ehrenstein in his book Film: The Front Line 1984, “as if discovering her for the first time,...

Joseph Losey doesn't normally make trendy, lighthearted genre films, and in this SuperSpy epic we find out why -- an impressive production and great music don't compensate for a lack of pace and dynamism, not to mention a narrow sense of humor. Yet it's a lounge classic, and a perverse favorite of spy movie fans. Modesty Blaise Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1966 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 119 min. / Street Date August 23, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Monica Vitti, Terence Stamp, Dirk Bogarde, Harry Andrews, Michael Craig, Clive Revill, Alexander Knox, Rossella Falk, Scilla Gabel, Tina Marquand Cinematography Jack Hildyard Production Designer Richard MacDonald, Jack Shampan Film Editor Reginald Beck Original Music John Dankworth Written by Evan Jones from a novel by Peter O'Donnell and a comic strip by Jim Holdaway Produced by Joseph Janni Directed by Joseph Losey

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

When I first reviewed a DVD of Modesty Blaise fourteen years ago,...

Hotels are cinematic. First of all, they are perfect microcosms, whether of a nation or of the world. Also, they work as a metaphor for cinema itself: a space where individuals, couples and families check in briefly, abandoning their regular life to be somewhere else. In La donna del lago (The Woman in the Lake, 1965) writer-directors Luigi Bazzoni and Franco Rossellini set their mystery in a hotel by a lake, where the writer protagonist soon finds himself lost in a narrative labyrinth, unable to tell fantasy from reality. Here, the hotel is like a projector (a dark box full of dreams) with the lake as its screen, upon which crazy lies and imaginings are projected.

In other words, this film is a prototype both for the whole giallo genre, and for Antonioni's Blow-Up and its descendants. Yet Rossellini, nephew of the more famous Roberto, and Bazzoni, brother of the less famous Camillo,...

The Film of Memory is a much better title than "A Matter of Time", isn't it? Especially with those prissy quotation marks. The former is the title of the novel by Maurice Druon which became the latter, Vincente Minnelli's last film.

Samuel Z. Arkoff's American International Pictures is a long way down from the Freed Unit at MGM, and however you cut it, this is a movie you have to make allowances for. A film out of time, a film about nostalgia which is itself a product of that impulse: set in a supremely unconvincing 1949 (location shots of 70s Rome feature copious non-period extras and automobiles), its heroine harkens back to a pre-wwi, prelapsarian paradise, while Minnelli himself is harking back to, well, 1949 or thereabouts, the period of his cinematic heyday.

Minnelli populates his movie with one great 40s star, Ingrid Bergman (as senile countess recalling her glorious...

Hitting movie theaters this weekend:

50/50 – Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick

Courageous - Alex Kendrick, Ken Bevel, Kevin Downes

Dream House – Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts

What’s Your Number? - Anna Faris, Chris Evans, Ari Graynor

Movie of the Week

50/50

The Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick

The Plot: A comedic account of a 27-year-old guy’s cancer diagnosis, and his subsequent struggle to beat the disease.

The Buzz: I don’t know, I’m not that excited about 50/50, but it’s gotta be better than Dream House, right? Naomi Watts and Rachel Weisz are both great actresses, generally known for choosing good films, but this Daniel Craig guy, really? He’s looking so haggard, like he’s strung out on heroin, and he just emanates this brooding whininess, and I sense zero acting talent within. How in the world did he become a leading man? I...

Now that our new house is settling, we wanted to bring back our weekly DVD & Blu-Ray Releases posts. We are calling this weekly post “Home Invasion”. If you plan on purchasing these items via Amazon, all you need to do is click on the buttons provided or on the artwork and not only do you get the same price you normally would with Amazon, but you help us out a little bit as well – which is all we ask because this list does take some time to put together.

All Descriptions are from Amazon.com unless otherwise noted. We have excluded the Netflix code on this particular post. This is due to all of the changes with Netflix and their DVD mailing program. If you want us to include the code in future Home Invasion posts, where you just click a button to add it to your queue, leave us a comment below.

Blue Underground will give the 1973 psycho-sexual thriller movie Torso by controversial Italian cult film director Sergio Martino (Mountain of the Cannibal God) its Blu-ray debut on July 26.

Suzy Kendall and company are stalked by a killer in Torso.

Containing both an uncensored English version and a full-length Italian Director’s Cut, the Blu-ray will carry the list price of $29.98. Blue Underground’s updated DVD version will also be available for a list price of $19.98.

Starring Suzy Kendall (To Sir, With Love), Tina Aumont (Salon Kitty) and John Richardson (One Million Years B.C.), Torso concerns a series of sex murders that shock a college campus, prompting four beautiful young girlfriends to head for the safety of an isolated country villa. But as they succumb to their own erotic desires, their weekend of pleasure becomes a vacation to dismember at the hands—and blade—of the lecherous maniac.

Originally released in America...

Welcome to the sexual revolution as only Tinto Brass could have imagined it! Featuring Deadly Sweet (Col Cuore in Gola) a cinema fumetti pop art giallo thriller, starring the sexy Ewa Aulin (Candy). The Howl (L’Urlo) a surreal cult classic, with Tina Aumont (daughter of Maria Montez) now for the first time ever Uncut on DVD. And Attraction (Nerosubianco), a psychedelic pop art experience, with music by Freedom (ex Procal Harum)

www.cultepics.com

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tags: cult epics, cult film, psychedelic, tinto brass...

While there are no mainstream horror releases this week, it's a Huge week for fans of under-the-radar titles, vintage frights, indie and international horror.

There's quite a few re-issues, some titles hitting Blu-ray for the first time, and several collections hitting stores. Below the jump you can view the full list of genre DVD & Blu-Ray titles arriving tomorrow, Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 in this weekly version of the famous Fangoria Chopping List - updated with all the last minute additions and deletions.

The 10th Victim

It is the 21st Century, and society's lust for violence is satisfied by "The Big Hunt," an international game of legalized murder. But when the sport's two top assassins (Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress) are pitted against each other, they find that love is the most dangerous game of all. As the world watches, the hunt is on. Who will become The 10th Victim?

The 10th...

MADRID -- French director Philippe Garrel will be honored by the 55th annual San Sebastian International Film Festival, which will showcase his work as part of its contemporary director retrospective, organizers said Friday.

The festival, which runs Sept. 20-29 in Spain's northern Basque region, called Garrel "one of the most independent figures on the French movie scene" and an inspiration for such modern filmmakers as Gus Van Sant, Olivier Assayas and Jose Luis Guerin.

Son of veteran actor Maurice Garrel, brother of La Sept broadcaster Thierry Garrel and father of actor Louis Garrel ("The Dreamers"), the French director has worked with actresses including his partner Nico, Jean Seberg, Bulle Ogier, Tina Aumont, Anne Wiazemski, Emmanuelle Riva, Mireille Perrier, Anemone and Catherine Deneuve.

His films, which mix extreme emotions and heavily utilize closeups, include "La cicatrice interieure" (1970), "Un ange passe" (1975), "L'enfant secret" (1979), "Les baisers de secours" (1988), "La naissance de l'amour" (1993), "Le vent de la nuit" (1998) and "Les amants reguliers" (2005), winner of the Venice Film Festival's Silver Lion for best director.