Black Leather Gloves: Cruising as a Global Giallo

In this chapter Cruising is discussed in the context of Italian giallo. The tendency of thrillers by Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and others has in fact a lot in common with Friedkin’s film: the sexualized violence, the queerness of the killer, leather fetishism, and the investigations of an outsider. Cruising can thus be seen as a ‘Global Giallo’, alongside similar efforts such as Dressed to Kill, Maniac or The New York Ripper.

Appropriating the abject: Witchcraft in Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi’s Suspiria (1977) and David Kajganich and Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake

This article explores representations of witchcraft in relation to Julia Kristeva’s 1980 essay Powers of Horror. It begins by investigating the genesis of Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi’s depiction of witchcraft in their 1977 horror film Suspiria, drawing on historical studies of witchcraft by Ronald Hutton and Marion Gibson. In particular, it examines the characterization of the witches’ coven as an all-female, all-powerful death cult ‐ before proposing that Kristeva’s essay on the abject can be seen to explain this specific conceptualization, in line with Barbara Creed’s analysis of how horror film has inherited the role of ‘purifying’ the abject from religious ritual. The second half of this article then focuses on David Kajganich and Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of Suspiria, reflecting on how the later film can be seen to attempt to redeem the association between witchcraft and abjectness. In doing so, this article reflects on how the attempt to rescue the witch while maintaining an association with the abject is contiguous with other contemporary depictions of witchcraft. It is proposed that such efforts amount to a Foucauldian attempt at a ‘reverse discourse’ celebrating the subversive potential of an initially derogatory identity formation ‐ but that Kristeva’s writing points to the limitations of appropriating the abject in this way.

Hitchcock’s Interlocutors

Pure cinema is read as an aesthetic philosophy and stylistic practice that synthesizes an art cinema sensibility and a mainstream studio aesthetic design Hitchcock observed and further developed in his American films. Pure cinema thus incorporates both the radical self-awareness of the European auteur cinema and the generic narrative and image form of the American studio system. This synthetic style is then situated within a larger historical narrative that incorporates B-grade cinema traditions and styles (the Italian giallo cinema of Mario Bava and Dario Argento) and Brian De Palma’s self-conscious reconstruction of the B-grade thriller form. The chapter argues that the pure cinema ethos of these films and their filmmakers makes explicit a “visual vernacular” in mise en scène and montage construction that is then traced through Brian De Palma’s formal visual experimentation in Carlito’s Way.

The Art of Pure Cinema

Alfred Hitchcock’s notion of a “pure cinema” has continued to fascinate and perplex film audiences, critics, and theorists alike. The concept first emerged loosely in the 1920s, as European avant-garde artists and intellectuals grappled with the essence of the moving image as an aesthetic form. But what, precisely, was pure cinema as an artistic philosophy and style? How did it evolve within Hitchcock’s body of work, and how was a pure cinema artistic style then developed by the filmmakers who came after Hitchcock, such as Dario Argento and Brian De Palma? The Art of Pure Cinema connects film history and philosophies of image and sound to better understand the legacy of this aesthetic tradition.

LGBTQ+ female protagonists in horror cinema today: The Italian case

This article examines representations of LGBTQ+ female protagonists in three recent Italian horror films: La terza madre (The Mother of Tears) by Dario Argento (2008), A Pezzi: Undead Men by Alessia Di Giovanni and Daniele Statella (2013) and The Antithesis by Mirabelli (2017). As homosexuality traditionally falls within the realm of the abject (that which is expelled) in horror films, the genre serves as a medium through which we may assess national and global sensibilities about LGBTQ+ identities. Filmic textual analysis and a consideration of horror and melodrama conventions reveal how these protagonists expose cultural anxieties about non-normative sexual orientations in Italy today. While these films include minority protagonists and offer some resistance to discrimination, they ultimately represent homosexuality as a threat to mainstream Italian culture.

La danza, una narrativa corpórea del horror, en Suspiria de Luca Guadagnino

El siguiente artículo pretende analizar la danza en la última película de Luca Guadagnino, Suspiria, una versión extendida del clásico del terror, Suspiria, de Dario Argento. En Suspiria de Guadagnino la danza va a cobrar un papel fundamental, ya que el cuerpo en movimiento es el soporte sobre el cual no solo se inscribe la acción dramática, sino también lo misterioso y lo horrible. Para ello, en este trabajo se va a estudiar el cuerpo desde la filosofía posestructuralista y el psicoanálisis para comprender los distintos mecanismos por los que se construye el relato corpóreo no solo del horror sino del poder. La danza se convierte en un personaje invisible, toma poder en los cuerpos de las bailarinas hasta llevarlos a límites incompresibles. Supone un regreso a los orígenes pre-aristotélicos, en que la danza era la unión con la naturaleza, el medio donde los individuos interactúan y exteriorizan sus emociones. En la película de Guadagnino comprobaremos cómo la danza transforma el espacio narrativo y el espacio cinematográfico, dejando herido al espectador y sin ninguna herramienta para defenderse contra el horror en la película de Guadagnino.

Capítulo 7. Los ecos del caníbal: homenajes estilísticos y pilares cinematográficos de Hannibal.

En 2013 Bryan Fuller propuso a la NBC llevar a la pequeña pantalla una nueva adaptación del personaje de Thomas Harris, Hannibal, serie de televisión que recogería un gran éxito de crítica y crearía un fiel fandom. La serie destaca por su composición visual, algo acorde con el interés de Fuller por la estética de la imagen fílmica. En Hannibal se reflejan otras imágenes cinematográficas: el ambiente pesadillesco que habita en el corazón de Hannibal tiene mucho en común con el de la producción de Lynch; el tratamiento del cuerpo está influenciado por la dismorfia corporal característica de David Cronenberg; y la influencia de la plasticidad de los maestros italianos del giallo es algo que el espectador de Hannibal detecta con rapidez. En la serie laten las influencias de todos ellos, así como de Hitchcock, Dario Argento y Kubrick entre otros, tal como se desgranará en este capítulo.Palabras clave: Hannibal, Argento, Cronenberg, Lynch, cine.

Early Extremity on DVD: History, Precursors and Exploitation Auteurs

This chapter uses a historically and geographically mobile approach to map a range of films and filmmakers often absent from discussions of extreme cinema. The chapter starts with an exploration of the extreme works of directors like Luis Buñuel, Ingmar Bergman and Roman Polanski, stressing their importance to the creation of an extreme art aesthetic. The chapter focuses on the paratextuality of these filmmakers, and studies DVD and Blu-ray versions of their more extreme texts. Focusing closely on how exploitation marketing traditions co-exist with their art film counterparts on these objects, the chapter highlights the complexity of extremity’s commercial identity. The chapter takes the same approach to its study of European exploitation cinema. Using home entertainment paratexts to highlight influential films, the chapter investigates companies such as Arrow Video, Vipco, Anchor Bay, BFI and Redemption DVD, paying special attention to their handling of a range of directors, including Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento, and Jean Rollin. The chapter underscores the crucial role exploitation cinema had in shaping extreme art cinema and highlights the contradictory role extremity performs within the commercial sphere.

Do suspense ao êxtase: paradigmas da trilha musical no filme de horror em Prelúdio Para Matar (1975)

Este artigo procura revelar esquemas convencionais e subversões no uso da trilha musical num filme de horror propostas por Dario Argento em seu filme Prelúdio Para Matar (1975), que ajudaram a formalizar um estilo sonoro próprio às características expressionistas do gênero giallo como também a difundiram uso de gêneros da música popular com finalidade não diegética em trilhas sonoras originais. Será realizada a decupagem de algumas cenas levando em consideração a relação entre as músicas e o conteúdo imagético a partir de noções dos usos e qualidades do som no cinema e da trilha musical, elaboradas por estudiosos como Michel Chion, Claudia Gorbman e Rodrigo Carreiro.Palavras-chave: Giallo. Trilha sonora. Cinema italiano. Cinema de gênero.