LAST CANNIBAL WORLD is a goodie, but it doesn’t impact upon me like HOLOCAUST. Like I mentioned, that ending is a sledgehammer to the skull. Love it.
I’ve only experience in spaghetti, giallo and little bit in polizio…whatever you spell it. I don’t see arthouse, Fellini’s comedies etc. as genre movies, so I don’t count them here.
So for me it’s spaghetti as runaway favorite, giallo at distant second place, and polizioteschi as mildly interesting. Pemplum , zombie, sex comedies etc. haven’t attracted me so far and I doubt they will soon (although I would like to see that Leone’s pemplum).
What I like about spaghetti is that it is perfect mix of art and mundane. It is also only genre that has Sergio Leone. Giallo at its best can be dreamily hypnotic, with ocasional flashes of visual brilliance. I think that my biggest problem with polizio… is that unlike spaghetti (and to some extent gialli), since it is crime and police procedural type of movies, it requires a lot of talk, and dialogue is probably weakest part of these Italian genre movies. In spaghetti you can just show people riding horses over mountains for 5 minutes with some music and that’s great, in poliziotesco there’s a lot of bad dialogue instead. All 3 genres have great music though, which is what primarily drove me to them. Spaghetti again win in that category because their music sounds like nothing else and is truly original and is very listenable outside of movie.
Admittedly, my depth of knowledge when it comes to Italian cinema wasn’t very deep until I started working with Dorado Films a few years ago, but I’ve tried to make up for lost time!
- Spaghetti Westerns - Obviously.
- Eurospy - Put Ken Clark or Roger Browne in a tuxedo, and let them show James Bond how it’s done!
- What category would Argoman best fit in? Whatever that is, that’s one!
- Horror (especially if it stars Barbara Steele!)
- I’m still trying to figure this one out . . . a lot of the Eurocrime I’ve seen has left me cold, but I do like Franco Nero and High Crime a LOT. Peplum? I’ve not seen enough to really be able to say, but, again, what I’ve seen, I’ve liked. There are a few sci fi efforts out there that are enjoyable on SOME level . . .
Spaghetti Western is first and foremost for me…
- EuroCombat - Inglorious Bastards, Five For Hell, Eagles Over London, Churchill’s Leopards
- Horror - Fulci, Bava, Lamberto Bava, and Soavi
- Giallo - Argento and Fulci
- EuroCrime - the one that I love is Danger: Diabolik