Spaghetti Cinema 2014 Programme

9-10 MAY 2014

LUTON UNI OF BEDS

#SPAGHETTICINEMA

AN ANNUAL CELEBRATION OF THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF ITALIAN GENRE CINEMA

CREDITS CONFERENCE DIRECTOR

ASSISTANTS

Monika Ciapala

All assistants are from the University of Bedfordshire: Robert Dogaru Anastasios Giapoutzis Bienvenu Kayij Jessaca Kearton-Moore David Moorhead Harold Penn-Timity Tom Waller

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE

INSPIRATION

Dr Austin Fisher University of Bedfordshire

PROGRAMMER

Neil Fox Falmouth University

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Prof Luke Hockley University of Bedfordshire Dr Carlota Larrea University of Bedfordshire Dr Gavin Stewart University of Bedfordshire Dr Johnny Walker Northumbria University

SPECIAL GUEST ORGANISER Dr Calum Waddell

INTERPRETER Nico Frame

SPAGHETTI CINEMA, ELSEWHERE:

w: spaghetticinema.tumblr.com f: /spaghetticinema t: @spaghetticinema #spaghetticinema

Spaghetti Cinema magazine, edited by William Connolly

SPONSORSHIP/SUPPORT

i The Research Institute for Media, Art and Performance University of Bedfordshire i The Department of Media Arts and Production University of Bedfordshire i Arrow Films i Synapse Films

WELCOME On behalf of everybody involved in organising this event, I extend a warm welcome to the second annual Spaghetti Cinema conference: a celebration of the weird and wonderful world of Italian genre cinema.

After last year’s highly successful event on the Spaghetti Western drew in scholars, fans and the general public alike, we are delighted to be running the event for a second year, this time with a focus on Italian horror cinema. Spanning a period of traumatic socio-political upheaval, an ever-increasing importation of American fashions and styles, and lucrative international co-production models, Italian cinema’s various vampires, witches, zombies, cannibals and serial killers document the complexity and diversity of their nation’s cultural output.

As well as welcoming a host of international scholarly experts on this subject, we are honoured to announce our very special guests, who will be sharing their experiences of working in Italian popular cinema's golden age: Ruggero Deodato (director of Cannibal Holocaust and Last Cannibal World), Luigi Cozzi (director of Contamination and The Killer Must Kill Again), Catriona MacColl (star of City of the Living Dead and The Beyond), and Me Me Lai (star of Last Cannibal World and Eaten Alive!).

The Spaghetti Cinema event has proved to be, not only a highly enjoyable celebration of perennially adored genres that brings fans and scholars together, but also the cradle for a dynamic international network of scholarship around the cultural-political significance of popular Italian cinema. The 2013 event has resulted in an edited volume (Spaghetti Westerns at the Crossroads), which will be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2015. It is our intention to grow this network year-on-year, to increase the international visibility of serious scholarship on popular Italian cinema and its ongoing influences on our contemporary culture.

Thank you for supporting the event.

Dr Austin Fisher Senior Lecturer in Media Arts University of Bedfordshire Director of the Spaghetti Cinema event

TIMETABLE FRIDAY 9TH MAY 2014 09:30 - 10:00 10:00 - 10:15

Conference Registration Welcome Professor Karen Randell, University of Bedfordshire

10:15 - 11:45

Panel A Russ Hunter, Andreas Ehrenreich, Mark Duffett

11:45 - 12:00

Tea / Coffee

12:00 - 13:30

Panel B Leon Hunt, Iain Robert Smith, Johnny Walker

13:30 - 14:30

Lunch

14:30 - 16:30

Panel C Mark McKenna, Lewis Howse, Michela Paoletti, Stefano Baschiera

16:30 - 16:45

Tea / Coffee

16:45 - 17:45

Keynote Lecture Professor Peter Hutchings: “Before Inferno: Early Argento, Late Bava and the Pre-Cult History of Italian Horror Cinema” Screening Phenomena (Dario Argento, 1985)

18:00 - 19:30

SATURDAY 10TH MAY 2014 09:30 - 10:00 10:00 - 11:30

Conference Registration Panel D Andreas Charalambous, Colin Gardner, Patricia MacCormack

11:30 - 11:45

Tea / Coffee

11:45 - 13:15

Panel E Anthony Page, Calum Waddell, Shelley O'Brien

13:15 - 14:00

Lunch

14:00 - 16:30

Industry Panel 1 Q&A with Luigi Cozzi / Screening: The Beyond (Lucio Fulci, 1981) / Q&A with Catriona MacColl

16:30 - 16:45

Tea / Coffee

16:45 - 19:30

Industry Panel 2 Screening: Last Cannibal World (Ruggero Deodato, 1977) / Q&A with Ruggero Deodato and Me Me Lai

OUR GUESTS OF HONOUR PROFESSOR PETER HUTCHINGS

Peter Hutchings is a globally renowned scholar of international horror cinema, and Professor of Film Studies at Northumbria University. He is the author of Hammer and Beyond: The British Horror Film, Terence Fisher, The British Film Guide to Dracula, The Horror Film and The Historical Dictionary of Horror Cinema as well as co-editor of The Film Studies Reader. Professor Hutchings’ keynote address will take place at 16:45 on Friday 9th May.

LUIGI COZZI

RUGGERO DEODATO

ME ME LAI

CATRIONA MACCOLL

Luigi Cozzi has been involved in many of the genre-defining moments of Italian popular cinema, both as director and writer. He directed such cult classics as The Killer Must Kill Again (1975), Starcrash (1978) and Contamination (1980), before working on the special effects of Dario Argento’s Phenomena (1985). He will be talking, and answering questions, about his career in our first “industry panel”, at 14:00 on Saturday 10th May.

Me Me Lai is an icon of the 1970s Italian cannibal genre, playing the lead in both Man From Deep River (Umberto Lenzi, 1972), and Last Cannibal World (Ruggero Deodato, 1977). She will be talking, and answering questions, about her career alongside Ruggero Deodato in our second “industry panel”, at 16:45 on Saturday 10th May.

Ruggero Deodato is one of the most iconic directors of Italian genre cinema, having made such cult classics as Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976), Last Cannibal World (1977), Cannibal Holocaust (1979) and The House on the Edge of the Park (1980). He will be talking, and answering questions, about his career alongside Me Me Lai in our second “industry panel”, at 16:45 on Saturday 10th May.

Catriona MacColl is one of Italian horror cinema’s most loved and recognisable faces, having appeared in Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead (1980), The Beyond (1981) and The House by the Cemetery (1981). She will be talking, and answering questions, about her career in our first “industry panel”, at 14:00 on Saturday 10th May.

ABSTRACTS Panel A: Reappraising Genre Histories Chair: Dr Gavin Stewart / University of Bedfordshire When: Friday 9th May / 10:15 - 11:45 DR RUSS HUNTER / NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY “MOSTRUOSO! ITALY’S SILENT HORROR CINEMA” Accounts of Italian horror cinema normally highlight the production and release of Riccardo Freda’s I vampiri in the late 1950s as marking the beginning of Italian filmmakers’ engagement with the horror genre. The logic that follows is often, after some sporadic interventions around what can broadly be called the European fantastic film in the early part of the 20th century, the nature of Fascist censorship impeded any explorations of the genre in the 1920 and 1930s, and that in the post war period it was only the commercial success of Hammer Horror that tempted Italian producers to venture into horror filmmaking. In this way Italian horror cinema is considered to have no antecedents and is frequently seen in relation to its readiness to ape production successes elsewhere. However, there are examples of films from both the 1910s and early 1920s that demonstrate a much earlier engagement with some of the tropes that we currently associate with the horror genre. Here films as diverse and temporally disconnected as L’Inferno (Bertolini, Padovan & de Liguoro, 1911) and Il mostro di Frankenstein (1921) allow us to see a much more complex and nuanced development of the history of both Italian and European horror cinema, challenging previous assumptions about the history of the genre as a whole.

ANDREAS EHRENREICH / UNIVERSITY OF MANNHEIM “ADAPTING THE GIALLO: THE SCREENPLAY OF SERGIO MARTINO’S NEXT!” The 1970s giallo is a film cycle that emerged out of a production culture aimed at quick wins that did not allow long development or production processes. The goal was to quickly cash in on promising textual models, which predecessor films had provided.

Sergio Martino’s Next! proved to be no exception. It might be reasonably assumed that the Martino brothers would have relied on the screenplay without demanding changes or realising it differently in order to keep up with the pace of their competitors. In this presentation, I will close-read a draft of Next! dating from 30 July 1970 and compare it to the definitive version that made it to the screen. Besides constant minor dialogue variations which result from the then common Italian practice of dubbing films shot with live sound, the screenplay offers formerly unknown narrative material that advances an understanding of the various adaptation strategies of streamlining and sublimation that the film pursues. In an unlikely twist on the giallo model, the definitive version tones down violent content: for example, Carol’s murder in the park is imagined in a much more detailed and atrocious way than it is finally staged.

Surprisingly, the film favours a sexualisation, which is not envisaged by the screenplay.

Perhaps the most intriguing insight that derives from this comparative examination concerns the intertextual relations between Next! as an entry to the giallo and other

popular Italian film cycles like the “mondo”. The draft suggests such a coherence by including the later omitted scenes of a bloody hamster fight serving as the background to the opening credits and the television broadcast of a corrida which was substituted by an inoffensive motorcycle race.

DR MARK DUFFETT / UNIVERSITY OF CHESTER “‘ WHEN HORROR GOES METAL’: DARIO ARGENTO AS ROCK FAN” Best known (in musical circles) for his collaboration with the prog rock band Goblin, Dario Argento directed some of the most prominent examples of 1970s and 1980s Italian horror cinema. In his own country Argento adopted the role of a public celebrity and Master of Horror in order to further his auteurist project. He was not only known as a creative film director, however. He was also widely known as a heavy rock fan. Argento used his interest in popular music to create synergies between his films and his public profile. The coincidence of rock and horror was also used by musicians who in turn expressed their appreciation of Argento’s films and sometimes worked with him. In this piece I will use Matt Hills’ notion of “inter-fandom” to begin thinking about the cultural and economic work of Argento’s expressions of music fandom in the public sphere. In particular, I suggest that Argento’s high profile passion for rock helped him to position his cinematic output in a marketplace organised around defined clusters of taste and gender.

ABSTRACTS Panel B: Transnational Routes of Influence Chair: Dr Neil Jackson / University of Lincoln When: Friday 9th May / 12:00 - 13:30 DR LEON HUNT / BRUNEL UNIVERSITY “KINGS OF TERROR, GENIUSES OF CRIME: GIALLO CINEMA AND FUMETTI NERI ” 1962 and 1964 are both key years for mystery and horror in Italian popular culture.

1962 saw the release of both Mario Bava’s first giallo, La ragazza che sapevo troppo / The Girl Who Knew Too Much and the first issue of the comic book Diabolik (created

by Angela and Luciana Giussani), which initiated the first cycle of Italian comics aimed at adults – the fumetti neri (black comics). In 1964, Bava would direct a more influential giallo (at least in the long run), Sei donne per l’assassino / Blood and Black Lace, whose intermingling of sexual titillation and graphic violence would also characterise the fumetti neri, none more so than one that debuted the same year – Max Bunker and Magnus’ Kriminal, whose notorious fifth issue ‘Omicidio al riformatorio’ closely resembled Bava’s film in its overheated imagery of a masked villain running amok in an institution (a fashion house in Bava’s film, a girls’ reformatory school in Kriminal) occupied by beautiful female victims. This paper explores the relationship between these two lurid and controversial cycles – Diabolik, still in publication after fifty years, still carries the label ‘Il Giallo a Fumetti’. Moreover, the fumetto nero draws on another important precursor to the giallo cycles of the 60s and 70s – the figure of Fantomas (the direct prototype for Diabolik), popular culture’s pre-eminent masked criminal and killer in novels that interspersed formulaic ‘flat’ narratives and characters with outlandish murders and an atmosphere of dread. While the giallo’s connections to Anglo-American crime and mystery fiction are well known, this paper examines it as also emerging out of a particular Franco-Italian cultural exchange.

DR IAIN ROBERT SMITH / UNIVERSITY OF ROEHAMPTON “REMAKESPLOITATION: TRANSNATIONAL BORROWINGS BETWEEN TURKISH AND ITALIAN EXPLOITATION CINEMA” In 1972, Turkish filmmaker Mehmet Aslan directed Aska susayanlar seks ve cinayet (Thirsty for Love, Sex and Murder), an unlicensed remake of the popular Italian giallo Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh (Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, 1971). Exploring the ways in which the film adapts and reworks material from its source, this paper will consider what this tells us about the global circulation of exploitation cinema. Building on IQ Hunter’s valuable observation that exploitation cinema can be usefully thought of as a mode of adaptation, this paper will explore the implications this has for our understanding of cross-cultural borrowings between exploitation film industries.

Indeed, there are a significant number of borrowings between Turkish and Italian cinema in this period – including Turkish adaptations of the Italian comic book films Zagor, Il Comandante Mark and Killing – so this paper will explore the complex relationship between remakes and exploitation cinema that these examples indicate.

Moreover, given that the Italian giallo is a genre which was itself reworking AngloAmerican detective fiction, this account will position these films in relation to wider processes of cultural globalisation, showing the diverse ways in which exploitation cinema functions in terms of intertextuality. Bringing together scholarship on the Italian giallo and Turkish Yesilcam that are rarely considered together, this paper will show the ways in which these industries were actually very much intertwined.

Ultimately, then, by focusing attention on cross-cultural borrowings between exploitation film industries, this paper will make the case for the importance of attending to the transnational dimensions of exploitation cinema.

DR JOHNNY WALKER / NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY “BETWEEN ‘ITALIANATE’ AND ‘ITALIAN’ HORROR CINEMA” In English-speaking culture, the “legacy” of Italian cinema, until very recently, was dominated by studies on neo-realism and its afterlife. In histories of Italian cinema written in English, “popular” genres such as horror were not considered at all.

Throughout the 1990s, horror film production, and the work of some of the country's most prolific genre directors – Argento, Fulci, Lenzi et al – were maligned in the UK and America to the most peripheral of cults. Many Italian “horror” filmmakers were caught up amid the British video nasties panic and, as a result, became valued by collectors and cultists as opposed to legitimate film culture. Because of this, the legacies of one of Italy’s most popular directors, Dario Argento, was about as far removed from the critical “mainstream” as one could get. Yet, following somewhat of a critical reappraisal of Italian popular cinema, and the emergence of cine-literate filmmakers from Europe and the USA in the 2000s, the legacy of Italian horror cinema has become valorised in recent critically-acclaimed films that seek to nostalgically pastiche the Golden Age of Italian horror/exploitation cinema. As a result, “old school” Italian horror has maintained a currency in the contemporary mindset, in films such as Amer and The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, that recent Italian horror productions have not.

What might be considered the most “Italianate” of horror films have not come from Italy at all. This paper questions the implications of this as we look to the future of Italian horror, and examines how certain Italian horror filmmakers have sought to challenge dominant paradigms of Italian horror's history.

ABSTRACTS Panel C: Italian Horror's Distribution Tails Chair: Dr Paul Rowinski / University of Bedfordshire When: Friday 9th May / 14:30 - 16:30 MARK MCKENNA / UNIVERSITY OF SUNDERLAND “COMING BACK FROM THE DEAD: ZOMBIE DISTRIBUTORS AND THE UNOFFICIAL FRANCHISE” The Italian film industry was largely built upon the success of its export market with a long tradition of adaptation based on successful box office imports: from Leone’s breakthrough A Fistful of Dollars (1964), adapted from Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961), to Lado’s Night Train Murders (1975) – a reimagining of The Last House on the Left (1972).

These home-grown versions were often cast with actors from the UK or US to give them a broader international appeal and were then sold back to the territories that originally inspired them: dubbed, repackaged and retitled for an English-speaking audience. If a film were successful domestically, there would often be numerous unrelated sequels until all opportunity for profitability had run its course. In the late 70s and early 80s these films became increasingly accessible on New York’s 42nd Street.

Distributors like Terry Levine imported and retitled the most extreme that Italy had to offer and screened them on this now infamous stretch. Worldwide, the introduction of home video, the technology that would eventually usurp the grindhouse introduced an international audience to Italian horror. To fully exploit the potential profits both in the UK and in the US, distributors took a creative approach to titling the films – renaming individual films from territory to territory in an effort to “localise” their appeal and prolong their shelf life. Nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of the zombie film. In this paper, I will examine how Italy’s adaptive approach to cinema has had implications beyond its own borders. It will explore the repercussions that can arise when film that once was considered as transitory and “designed to create a fast profit” has ultimately proved to have a value and longevity beyond that original commercial impetus and explore the repercussions from the distributor serialising what could possibly be deemed an ephemeral product.

LEWIS HOWSE / DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY “IS THERE ANYBODY ALIVE OUT THERE? DECLINE, TELEVISION AND THE ‘DEATH’ OF THE SPAGHETTI NIGHTMARE FILM” The Italian horror film has a long and rich legacy. Its influence is vast and can be seen in a variety of different international filmic forms spanning the last fifty-odd years, and is still evident today in neo-gialli such as Amer (Forzani & Cattet, 2009) and Berberian Sound Studio (Strickland, 2012). This international recognition and continued homage comes in spite of the fact that the Italian horror film (and Italian genre cinema in general) has been on the decline, in terms of both the quality and quantity of its output, over the last twenty or thirty years. This paper seeks to address why the Italian horror film, given its substantial commercial appeal, began to wane

during the early-to-mid 1980s. Whilst critics and academics are keen to offer analysis of particular Italian horror film directors and their films during the genre’s “golden age”, there has been neglect in the examination of what lead to its inability to sustain itself (there are exceptions, see Bondanella, 2009). Italian horror film directors and other key personnel, in bemoaning this trend, have posited a variety of reasons for it such as the inability to compete with American effects-driven product, lack of financial support from governmental institutions and film studios, deterioration in the quality of writing as well as the general downtrend of the Italian film industry itself (Mistretta & Palmerini, 1996). This paper will consider these factors, with specific focus on the perceived lack of quality in the films themselves. I will argue that as well as an inability to continue to capitalise on current trends in horror cinema, financial concerns and the proliferation of horror on television played a pivotal role in the decline of the theatrical spaghetti nightmare film.

MICHELA PAOLETTI / UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA “WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THEM? BRIVIDO GIALLO, ALTA TENSIONE AND HOUSES OF DOOM: THE HORROR CABLE SERIES OF RETEITALIA” In the 80’s the Italian production of horror movies was at its best: beside Lucio Fulci, the last of the genre’s fathers, many young directors, often using English pseudonyms, worked to make their way in the horror world. Yet, after a decade of hard exploitation in the late 80’s, the genre was unable to reach the previous success, even in the US box office. In 1988 Reteitalia, a Fininvest association, decided to produce two cable television series directed by Lamberto Bava and written by Dardano Sacchetti each consisting in four full-length movies: Brivido Giallo (with Graveyard Disturbance, Until Death, The Ogre and Dinner with a Vampire) and Alta Tensione (with The Prince of Terror, The Man Who Didn’t Want To Die, School of Fear, and Eyewitness). The series was never released together but each film has been released around the world separately, sometimes under different titles. Nevertheless one year later, in 1989, the same production company re-tried the project with Lucio Fulci and the Le case maledette series. Fulci himself directed two films: The Sweet House of Horrors and The House of Clocks. Umberto Lenzi made the other two: House of Witchcraft and House of Lost Souls. Unfortunately the movies were never broadcast because producers deemed them too violent. Through an analysis of the relations between the decline of the success of horror movies and the television boom I will assess the reasons why these TV projects were never aired.

Panel C: Italian Horror's Distribution Tails Chair: Dr Paul Rowinski / University of Bedfordshire When: Friday 9th May / 14:30 - 16:30 DR STEFANO BASCHIERA / QUEENS UNIVERSITY, BELFAST “ITALIAN HORROR CINEMA ON DEMAND”

The purpose of my paper is to investigate the streaming distribution of Italian horror cinema, analysing its presence on the British platforms Netflix UK and Lovefilm Instant, in order to engage with the role played by the “niche” in the long tail of online distribution and the new availability of previously banned films. The subscriptionbased business model of streaming platforms made the availability of a wider selection of titles the most compelling element for online market competition, as is evident from Netflix’s annual report to its stakeholders. With production companies and distributors less keen to give away streaming rights, in the hope of developing their own online platforms, the access to a world cinema catalogue, alongside the production of original content, is one of the solutions to expand the offer to subscribers. Traditionally, Horror is one of the genres that manages to travel and to appeal to a global market. Therefore, it is not surprising to see several films belonging to “world cinema” listed under the Horror category on the streaming platforms. On the one hand, I will analyse the presence of Italian Horror and giallo films of the 1970s to engage with the new online availability of films previously banned or that have a limited circulation in the UK. In this way I will engage with the new categorizations made by the VOD services and the use of the “national” label in transnational online distribution. On the other hand, I will argue that looking at the streaming presence of Italian Horror and comparing it to its previous international distribution (in particular VHS and DVD formats) we can grasp different developments in the understanding of the genre and the role played by distribution in its categorisation.

Keynote Lecture Introduced by Bill Rammell Vice Chancellor, University of Bedfordshire When: Friday 9th May / 16:45 - 17:45 PROFESSOR PETER HUTCHINGS / NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY “BEFORE INFERNO: EARLY ARGENTO, LATE BAVA AND THE PRE-CULT HISTORY OF ITALIAN HORROR CINEMA”

Dario Argento and Mario Bava are the two most revered Italian horror directors and are often seen as major cult auteurs. But what were they before they were “cultified”? This paper goes back to the 1960s and 1970s and considers Argento’s and Bava’s films in terms of their place within the Italian film industry and their relation to Italian society. It also addresses the extent to which these filmmakers engaged with international markets for genre fictions. Both Argento and Bava emerge from this as less marginal and iconoclastic, and indeed more mainstream, than has sometimes been supposed.

Viewed from such a perspective, their achievements in the 1960s and 1970s are all the more striking for being embedded in a contemporary reality.

ABSTRACTS Panel D: The Politics of Perverse Desire in Italian neo-Gothic Cinema Chair: Dr Austin Fisher / University of Bedfordshire When: Saturday 10th May / 10:00 - 11:30 ANDREAS CHARALAMBOUS / ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY “MONSTERS AND FACIAL PERVERSION” Deleuze and Guattari state: “If the face is a politics, dismantling the face is also a politics, involving real becomings, an entire becoming”. They explicitly stage a cinematic destruction of the face – faciality as a locus of signification and subjectivity.

I propose to look at the Deleuzian notion of affective-intensity desire through the facial close-up in Italian horror cinema – using the perverse peeled masquerade faces of Baron Blood, House by the Cemetery and The Virgin of Nuremberg as specific examples. I intend to discuss the defacialisation of the human body, and the disruption of the representational codes that define our social and gendered identities - thereby revealing the “inhuman” aspect of our embodied beings and the becomings of perverse desire they elicit. Both Baron Blood and The Virgin of Nuremberg are primarily set in a castle, and have many indicators of the torture/masochists “dungeon” – complete with torture (sadomasochistic) devices. The antagonists’ monstrous appearances as human when masked and inhuman when revealed have much to discuss in terms of monstrous faciality and the face’s capacity for an affective sado-masochistic gaze.

Baron Blood’s Baron Kleist spreads fear amongst the locals for his reputation of being a notorious sadist – torturing and murdering victims for the sole purpose of watching them die. Virgin’s libidinal relation between the facially deformed Erich and Punisher operates a new dialectic of queer designified perverse desire. House’s Freudstein is in a state of facial germinal emergence and simultaneous regression. These catalyse the concept of “perverse voyeurism”. Ultimately the paper argues the human face is most liberated when it is de-localised, by deformity but also by cinema’s apprehension of the face itself, leading the spectator into a sado-masochistic contract of perverse face-toface sexuality. Through Italian neo-gothic cinema, the face is liberated from signifying strictures and delivers the viewer into a world of intensities of cinesexual horrors.

PROFESSOR COLIN GARDNER / UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA “THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS: PERVERSITY AS ETERNAL RETURN AND WILLTO-POWER IN ANTONIO MARGHERITI’S THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBURG” At first glance, Antonio Margheriti’s The Virgin of Nuremburg utilises and expands conventional horror tropes to almost ecstatic excess – the innocent-but-inquisitive woman in distress; a predatory, facially-deformed Punisher (who may or may not be a long-dead ancestor) as well as a prowling American agent investigating the family’s ties to a possible Nazi past. However, the film’s culminating Götterdämmerung cum homo-erotic liebestod suggests that a far more immanent, Nietzschean approach to the genealogy of both history and aesthetics might be in order. Drawing specifically upon

Twilight of the Idols and Thus Spake Zarathustra as well as Deleuze and Guattari’s more machinic explorations of perversity as contagious, polyvocal becoming, this paper will attempt to redefine the monstrous – with its traditional corrollaries of the need to rein in or sublimate excessive desire and irrational falsehood – as itself an aesthetics of creation, a stimulant and guarantor of both eternal return and of will-to-power. Margheriti’s “avenging” Punisher is the manifestation of this becoming, a probehead or the cutting edge of a deterritorialising libidinal force that that has learned to “go through faciality” (the dominant forms of subjection) in order to disrupt existing modes of organisation from within the structure of the organisation itself (not unlike Margheriti’s own treatment of the horror genre). In this way, the Punisher escapes the clichéd, the habitual (and the human) in favour of a displaced desiring production that permeates both time and space, transforming the conventions of the real (e.g. the Oedipus Complex, heterosexual marriage, nationalism, monumentalising history) into an artistic will to deceive. As Nietzsche notes in Twilight, “Any distinction between a ‘true’ and an ‘apparent’ world […] is only a suggestion of decadence, a symptom of the decline of life. The tragic artist is no pessimist: he is precisely the one who says yes to everything questionable, even to the terrible – he is Dionysian.”

PROFESSOR PATRICIA MACCORMACK / ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY “NECROSEXUALITY” Non-aggressive examples of necrophilia in three films, Beyond the Darkness (Aristede Massaccesi, Italy, 1979), Macabre (Lamberto Bava, Italy, 1981) and Flesh for Frankenstein (Antonio Margheriti, Italy, 1973), which include both male and female corpses, emphasise the ways in which necrophilic desire requires a destratification of the body into a Body without Organs. Accidentally but nonetheless relevant, these three films have all been banned, thus conflating the transgressive nature of their content and the act of viewing them – another point at which the residue of the problematic notion of transgression arises. Forensics describes the ruptured body in death as “dishevelled”. Organs become genital, surgery sexual and the striation of the gendered body is dishevelled through the planes of pleasure offered by the corpse. Necrophilia is configured into dialectic and onanistic practice, confusing subject and object, desire and disgust. These corpses are physically bodies with organs, but entirely reorganised, as is the desire of the necrophiles. When Deleuze and Guattari ask us to sing with our rectum, here we see those who fuck with their entrails, launching on becomingviscera. Reading the body through gender signifiers of genitals is no longer relevant in these “heterosexual” relationships. Whether it is within or between entities or as ubiquitous dissipative force sexuality effectuates alterations in patterns of subjectivity through desire, pleasure, sexual events and affects. The corpse is the actual material residue of “the human”. Necrophilic desire is located around this involvement. Even the discrepancy in describing desire for corpses or for the corpse raises issues of necrophilia being a generic sexuality – the necrophile – or a specific dialectic – desire for a corpse invested with particular individual qualities or memories of those qualities. This paper will explore the liberatory potentialisations of unravelling perverse desire in the 3 “heterosexual” relationships of these films.

ABSTRACTS Panel E: Stylising Violence Chair: Neil Fox / Falmouth University When: Saturday 10th May / 11:45 - 13:15 ANTHONY PAGE / UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE “BLACK AND WHITE NAZIS” Of all filoni produced, none attracted as much criticism and censorship as the Sadioconazista. This Italian Nazi sadism cycle, part of the wider “Nazisploitation” sub-genre, caused furore for their concentration camp settings, explicit sexual imagery, extreme violence, and the regular breaking of the last taboo of Holocaust filmmaking: graphically portraying the concentration camps’ gas chambers. This breaking of the final taboo and the images of torture, violence and death that are depicted there move the Sadioconazista away from the “sexploitation” genre that Nazisploitation is often grouped with. Indeed, the images and violence within the Sadioconazista are more akin to modern day body horror and 1970s new horror than any sexploitation film made for mere sexual titillation. With over 24 of these films produced in Italy within a short two year period (1976-77), it has long baffled both mainstream and paracinema critics what the appeal was to the Italian public. With this paper I will argue that due to the state of violence within Italy during this period these films can be seen as a comfort blanket to the watching audience and not just an excuse to make a film more shocking than ever before. While most critics denounce the lack of black-and-white areas within the films’ character portrayal it is my argument that this is in fact this cycle’s greatest strength. By presenting violence akin to that witnessed during the such terrorist attacks as the National Agrarian and Peteano bombings but leaving no doubt as to who is to blame for the violence and just who are the good guys, these films offer a catharsis to the viewers, denied in real life where no such answer as to who was to blame and just who was going to protect them was forthcoming, just a promise of more unstoppable violence.

DR CALUM WADDELL / UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN “TROPICAL THUNDER: THE ITALIAN CANNIBAL FILM AND THE ART OF MISINFORMATION” The Italian cannibal film was a short-lived genre that began with Man from Deep River (Umberto Lenzi, 1972) and concluded with the little known Natura Contro (AKA Green Inferno, Antonio Climati, 1988). The most famous production is undoubtedly Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1979) a film that, despite its initial critical dismissal, has undergone some reappraisal in the Academy. My intention with this paper is to propose that four of the most famous films from the trend present an image of developing countries that presents misinformation for the purpose of upholding a (sometimes reflexive) cultural distinction between first world “order” and third world “lawlessness”. Rape, primitive methods of punishment, brutal (and unsimulated) animal sacrifice and, of course, the consumption of human flesh are presented as a

normalcy of the countries that these films purport to represent. Asking the same questions of film and nation that Smith proposes in his essay “Images of Nation”, predominantly related to ethnicity and cultural verisimilitude, I will discuss the locations used (including the Batu Caves for Last Cannibal World, the city of Kandy, and its national park, for The Mountain of the Cannibal God) and indicate how they are distorted, and reappropriated, to the “western” viewer. Highlighting the repeated generic tropes of these films, and indicating their aspiration towards a neorealisminspired sense of actuality (purveyed, frequently, by stock footage or real animal slaughter and text that indicates the story is based on fact), I propose that further academic consideration be given to the style of the cannibal genre and the related use of nation and location to express a confusing, but nonetheless repetitive, imperialism vs. grassroots rebellion scenario. In conclusion, I will argue that these are films of their time but also out of time – indicative of a visual misrepresentation than goes far beyond the more commonly discussed brutal corporeality or faux-documentary shooting techniques – instead highlighting a thematic of colonial frustration.

SHELLEY O'BRIEN / SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY “SCORING VIOLENCE: THE IMPORTANCE OF RIZ ORTOLANI'S MUSIC IN DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING AND CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST” Lucio Fulci and Ruggero Deodato have created some of the most violent and disturbing images in Italian horror cinema, and both directors have achieved a certain level of notoriety due to this focus on gruesome excess. A good deal has been written about Fulci's work generally, and Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust has been the subject of scholarly analysis as well as being vilified by the majority of the international press.

However, one aspect of their films that is rarely mentioned is the way that music is used quite specifically to heighten the impact of their savage set-pieces, as well as to provide continuity and coherent underscoring of the films’ themes and imagery as a whole. Music score often has a significant role to play in Italian horror (for example, the work of Ennio Morricone, Fabio Frizzi, and Goblin) but its importance seems to have been unfairly neglected. This paper, therefore, will focus on Riz Ortolani’s scoring of Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling and Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust. It will explain how Ortolani utilises a range of musical devices, orchestration, and instrumentation, to complement fully the psychological and physiological impact created by the imagery. For example, in Fulci’s film, the juxtaposition of a beautiful melody being sung

by Ornella Vanoni as the village “witch” is brutally beaten to death on screen, or the haunting and melancholic main theme used in Deodato’s film contrasted with violent actions and horrific images. Ortolani has composed scores for numerous Italian genre pictures (including Deodato’s inspiration – Mondo Cane, 1962), but these scores are particularly notable in terms of the crucial role they play in enhancing the unsettling effects generated by these two films.

OUR SPEAKERS STEFANO BASCHIERA

is Lecturer in Film Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. His work on cinema has been published in a variety of edited collections and journals and he is the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded project, “World Cinema On Demand: Film Distribution and Education in the Streaming Media Era”.

ANDREAS CHARALAMBOUS

is Lecturer in Media at Anglia Ruskin, Harlow College, UK where he teaches in the areas of horror cinema, Continental Philosophy, Gender and Sexuality and Visual Representation. He is writing his PhD on monsters, faciality and masks in horror cinema.

MARK DUFFETT

is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Chester, and his research focuses on popular music fandom. In 2012 he was keynote speaker at the MARS conference organized by the Sibelius Academy in Finland. In 2013 Bloomsbury published his book, Understanding Fandom. He is currently working on a book about Elvis Presley for Equinox Press.

ANDREAS EHRENREICH

gained a MA in German literature and film studies from the University of Vienna. He worked on the historicocritical edition of Ödön von Horváth at the Literary Archives of the Austrian National Library and is a research associate of the Institute of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Mannheim. He is

currently preparing a conference on the German exploitation film Mark of the Devil.

COLIN GARDNER

is Professor of Critical Theory and Integrative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he teaches in the departments of Art, Film & Media Studies, Comparative Literature, the History of Art & Architecture as well as The College of Creative Studies. He is the author of Joseph Losey (Manchester UP 2004); Karel Reisz (Manchester UP 2006); and a new critical study of Samuel Beckett’s film and television work entitled Beckett, Deleuze and the Televisual Event: Peephole Art (Palgrave Macmillan 2012).

LEWIS HOWSE

is a Masters by Research (MRes) student at De Montfort University, Leicester. His research is funded by an AHRC studentship award. His current work is concerned with the change in cultural status of Italian horror cinema, specifically looking at how changes in technology and new critical approaches have raised the status of genre cinema to “art object”. This follows on from his undergraduate dissertation, which was concerned with the problem with definition relating to the giallo film.

LEON HUNT

is a Senior Lecturer in Screen Media at Brunel University. He is the author of British Low Culture: From Safari Suits

OUR SPEAKERS to Sexploitation, Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger, The League of Gentlemen (BFI TV Classics) and Cult British TV Comedy: From Reeves and Mortimer to Psychoville, and co-editor of East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film and Screening the Undead: Vampires and Zombies in Film and Television. He is currently the editor of the online journal Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media.

Afterimage of Gilles Deleuze’s Film Philosophy). She is the author of Cinesexuality (2008) and the co-editor of The Schizoanalysis of Cinema (2008).

Her most recent books are Posthuman Ethics (2012) and The Animal Catalyst: Toward Ahuman Theory (2014). She has appeared interviewed on a number of DVDs including the Jean Rollin Collection for Redemption, BFI’s Maitresse, Nouveaux Cinema’s Suspiria and Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide.

RUSS HUNTER

MARK MCKENNA

is a Senior Lecturer in Film & Television at Northumbria University. His research is focused upon film reception, Italian genre cinema and European horror. He is currently preparing an edited collection (with Stefano Baschiera) on Italian horror cinema and is also writing a monograph entitled A History of European Horror Cinema for Edinburgh University Press, as well as editing a forthcoming special edition of Horror Studies on the work of Dario Argento.

PATRICIA MACCORMACK

is Professor of Continental Philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.

She has published extensively on Italian, Spanish and German horror, Continental Philosophy and Sexuality.

Her work includes Masochistic Cinesexuality: The Many Deaths of Giovanni Lombardo Radice (Alternative Europe), Inhuman Ecstasy (Angelaki), Becoming-Vulva (New Formations), The Great Ephemeral Tattooed Skin (Body and Society) and Cinemasochism: Time, Space and Submission (The

is a PhD candidate at the University of Sunderland. The focus of his study is the marketing and distribution of the video nasty.

SHELLY O'BRIEN

is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Sheffield Hallam University. Her MPhil was entitled Body Horror Movies: Their Emergence and Evolution (Sheffield Hallam University, 2000), and her research interests include horror cinema, film music and sound. Her recent publications include a book chapter entitled "Killer Priests: the Last Taboo?" in Roman Catholicism and Fantastic Film (ed. Regina Hansen, McFarland, 2011), and she is currently writing on Herschell Gordon Lewis and Tobe Hooper.

ANTHONY PAGE

completed a BA (Hons.) degree in English Literature, Film Studies and Journalism and a Masters degree in Film and Television Aesthetics at the University of Hertfordshire. He has previously presented a paper on

Italian Nazisploitation at Cine-Excess in 2011, and a paper on 1970s American dystopian science fiction. He is currently working on a PhD proposal relating to the Italian filoni of the 1970s and their relation to the Italian “Years of Lead” of the 1970s and early 80s.

MICHELA PAOLETTI

is a PhD student at the Alma Mater University in Bologna. Her BA thesis was on The Fourth Sex. Adolescence in American Movies of 90’s and 00’s.

Her MA thesis was on The Sceneggiata Napoletana Between Theatre and B-Movies of Mario Merola and Nino D’Angelo. She is now working on her PhD project: The Emotion of Disgust in the Movies.

IAIN ROBERT SMITH

is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Roehampton, London.

He is author of The Hollywood Meme: Transnational Borrowings from American Film and Television (Edinburgh University Press, 2014) and editor of a book-length special issue of the open-access journal Scope entitled Cultural Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking, Transformation (2009). He is co-chair of the SCMS Transnational Cinemas SIG and co-chair of the transnational research network Media Across Borders.

CALUM WADDELL

recently passed his PhD in Film and Philosophy at Aberdeen University.

He was awarded a full stipend and scholarship for his research, which focused on defining the style of

American exploitation cinema. He has also worked for Arrow Video, and other DVD/ Blu Ray, labels in directing/ producing their extra features since 2009. In 2013 his first feature-length documentary, Slice and Dice: The Slasher Film Forever, was released by 88 Films in the UK.

JOHNNY WALKER

is Lecturer in Media at Northumbria University. His writing on horror cinema has appeared in journals such as Horror Studies and the Journal of British Cinema and Television.

Currently he is working on the book Contemporary British Horror Cinema: Industry, Genre and Society for Edinburgh University Press, and co-editing Snuff: Real Death and Screen Media for Bloomsbury. His website can be accessed at: johnny-walker.org

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