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So you say you’re itching to watch a mystery - an old fashioned, pick ‘em off one by one whodunnit that ratchets up the tension until you’re begging the filmmakers to spill the beans? Well, consider that particular itch scratched. But believe me when I tell you that The Killer Reserved Nine Seats (1974) has different itches moving around for its whole running time, offering up gothic soap, incest, lesbianism, copious amounts of nudity, a bit o’ bloodletting, ghosts, and a goofy clear mask-wearing killer. The Italians have always been kitchen sink susceptible with their exploitation, and The Killer Reserved Nine Seats leaves nothing behind but the pipes.

Successful in its homeland, the film certainly has the tech specs afforded bigger productions; well shot by Giuseppe Aquari (Frankenstein: Italian Style), it features a large and attractive cast put through a Ten Little Indians scenario in an abandoned manor. If it already sounds very Italian,...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Black Sabbath is playing on Mubi in the Us through November 13, and Bay of Blood is playing on Mubi in the Us October 15 - November 14.Starting as a cinematographer and director of documentaries and shorts, Mario Bava would ultimately explore a variety of genres, from spaghetti westerns and sword-and-sandal adventures, to a modish detective film and even a romping sex comedy. It is his work within the horror genre, however, for which he is most widely, and justly, lauded. Among the Italian filmmakers who rose to prominence on the international horror scene of the 1960s and 70s, few would attain his degree of diverse stylistic virtuosity, nor would they cover the genre in such an expansive fashion. As the years of his career happened to fall, Bava ended up documenting the horror film in the process of profound transition.

Ryan looks back at Mario Bava’s gore classic, A Bay Of Blood, a film that provides the link between Italian pulp literature and American slasher movies...

In their native Italy, they're known affectionately as giallo. Cheap, paperback novels so named because of their lurid yellow covers, their pages were filled with mystery and murder. While the genre had existed in the pages of pulp fiction since the 30s, it was director Mario Bava who brought the sensationalist themes of giallo to the big screen with The Girl Who Knew Too Much (La Ragazza Che Sapeva Troppo) in 1962.

It was Bava, with his operatic direction filled with dramatic shadows and often drenched in colour, who established many of the trappings that would become familiar in giallo cinema. His heavily stylised camera work, expressive use of lighting and, above all, imaginatively brutal murders would have a profound, lasting impact on filmmaking,...