Italian Horrors

Limited to 500 copies!!

This stunning book from the Dark Side team chronicles the best and the worst of Italian Horror, a genre that frequently favours style over narrative sense and is characterised by over-the-top gore, lurid sex and strong violence.

It has also given us many memorable imitations of foreign box office hits, from The Exorcist to Jaws and of course George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, inspiration for Lucio Fulci’s classic Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979). 

And the Romero version didn’t include an underwater encounter between a shark and a zombie! It’s interesting to note how many Italian horrors from the 1970s and 1980s made it on to the DPP’s Video Nasties list, Cannibals, Zombies and Last House on the Left-type rape and revenge films being a staple of spaghetti cinema at this time. 

The Dark Side editor Allan Bryce strikes up the banned to cover this phenomenon in a lengthy chapter peppered with little-known facts about censorship cuts made to each movie on the list and containing many (literally) eye-popping stills and posters. Delve further into this glossy, lavishly illustrated volume and you will find chapters on the major players of the Italian horror scene. FrightFest legend Alan Jones examines the career of Dario Argento, while Giallo Pages expert John Martin covers Lucio Fulci and Sergio Martino, as well as taking a salacious look at the Ladies of Giallo. 

Alongside features on master stylists Mario Bava and the origins of Giallo in print, you’ll find up to date interviews with the likes of Ian McCulloch Luigi Cozzi and Ruggero Deodato and a colourful report on the Cannibal genre by Eugenio Ercolani and Gian Giacomo Petrone. 

Eugenio is the author of the seminal book, Darkening the Italian Screen, and he also contributes a fascinating final chapter on the sad decline of the Italian horror scene after all those zombies, cannibals and psychopathic killers were forced into retirement by changing economic conditions. As always with Dark Side books, this is a great value volume, beautifully produced and full of never-before-published stills and posters. It will tell you everything you need to know about this hugely popular subject and is an essential purchase for any true fan.