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My most underrated directors:






10. Brian De Palma
De Palma is generally thought of as a sort of weakest link from the 70's generation of Neo-Hollywood directors that includes Scorsese, Coppola and Spielberg. I think this is a bit unfair, he's made some of the most interesting films of the late 70's and early 80's. Theres truly a different side to his earlier work, nameley the forgotten giallo style classics Sisters, Dressed to Kill and Blow Out, and Carrie has to be one of the greatest horror films of all time.




9. Paul Verhoeven
Going on his Hollywood career alone, Verhoeven deserves a place here. His sci-fi trilogy of Total Recall, Starship Troopers and his English language debut, Robocop, are some of the most subversive, and violent, Hollywood movies ever made. He further changed the game with Basic Instinct, a neo-noir sex thriller that would open the floodgates for a slew of inferior, but similar, movies.




8. Pier Paolo Pasolini
One of my favourite Italian directors. He may have a cult following, mostly among film students, but I think he deserves to be as well known as any of his contemporaries of Italian cinema of the 60s and 70s. His cinema ranges from his early, neo-realist inspired films about the Italian underclass (Accattone, Mamma Roma), to mystical films dealing with Greek mythology (Medea, Oedipus Rex), to later movies inspired by erotic literature (The Cantebury Tales, Arabian Nights, Salo), and what are simply classics of European cinema (Theorem, The Gospel According to Matthew).




7. Bernard Rose
Bernard Rose has made a couple of films that I really like. Most notably the horror film Candyman, a biography of Beethoven called Imortal Beloved and a fairly unknown and darkly comic crime thriller called Chicago Joe and the Showgirl which stars Kiefer Sutherland and the amazing Emily Lloyd. I think all three of these are worth buying. Candyman is a fucking masterpiece anyway.




6. Enzo G. Castellari
This guy has made so much stuff in Italy, what I've seen by him is amazing. He's supposed to be like the Italian Sam Pekinpah. I guess the best example I've seen is Keoma, but also Inglorious Bastards and the spaghetti western that this blog is named after. His films are really fun and he just has a great sense of style and a great eye.




5. Richard Stanley
I think Richard Stanley's only made about two feature films but they're both amazing. Hardware is a little known gem of a post apocalyptic horror slasher film. I'd say it's one of my all time favourite sci fi movies. His other feature is Dust Devil, which I can only describe as a kind of horror-western-lovestory-roadmovie-drugtrip-dreamsequence thing. He's also made a few odd little documentaries about things like the Nazi's quest for the Holy Grail and the practice of Voodoo in Haiti.




4. John McTiernan
McTiernan is on this list solely because of Predator and Die Hard, probably the two greatest action films of the 80's. If you're a boy then you must love these movies. They're basically just examples of really high quality film making. The guys a genius.




3. Michael Reeves
Reeves died of a barbiturates overdose in 1969 after directing only three films, all of which are horror classics. The last and most famous was Witchfinder General starring Vincent Price. I also love his first two films: The She Beast with Barbara Steele, and The Sorcerers with the incredible Boris Karlof, which I've mentioned on here before.




2. Don Coscarelli
Coscarelli is the contributor of such incredible examples of film making as the Phantasm series, Bubba Ho-tep and the truly amazing Beastmaster. He writes all these rich stories himself and then directs them with a sort of very dark sense of humour which I think only special people can really apreciate.




1. Lucio Fulci
What can I say about Lucio Fulci that I haven't already said on here at some point? the guy is probably one of the most underrated and missunderstood film makers ever. His best films were also written by him and I think in Italy he was known as a fairly prolific writer of screenplays and books. This guy had some issues to do with women, religion and the establishment in general and it comes out in his films, a lot of which are pretty excessively violent and crazy. He became known as "The Godfather of Gore", but his formidible imagination wasn't simply limited to depicting violence, he made some of the most inteligent thrillers and horror films of the 70's and early 80's.
















Here are some more of my all time favourite films in no particular order:


















33. Mamma Roma (1962)
Pier Paolo Pasolini's subtly beautiful and tragic masterpiece of his early period. Mamma Roma tells the sad tale of an ex prostitute, 'Mamma Roma', played by Anna Magnani. After her pimp, Carmine (played by Pasolini regular Franco Citti) gets married, she decides to rescue her estranged son Ettore (Ettore Garofolo) from the small town he lives in, and start a new life with him in the city, selling fruit and vegetables in a market. Soon Carmine returns demanding money and she is forced to go back to the streets at night. Meanwhile, Ettore meets local girl Bruna (Silvana Corsini) and falls in with a a group of street hoodlums. As the 16 year old Ettore starts to develop feelings for the thoroughly unsuitable Bruna, Mamma Roma's fears that he will become tainted and dragged down by their surroundings are realised in a tragic chain of events. Pasolini's early films, including Mamma Roma and his debut, Accattone, dealt with the forgotten underclass of pimps and prostitutes and small time criminals of post war Italy. They are stylistically rooted in Italian post modernism, and infact Pasolini never abandoned the rough aesthetic of this genre, using non actors and making the improvised, hand held camera style his own, long after many other directors had abandoned it.





























32. Bad Lieutenant (1992)

Abel Ferrara's masterful character study, about an un-named, corrupt New York police detective (Harvey Keitel), follows him on a journey from total abandoned debauchery and corruption to a type or unexpected salvation, surrounding the case of a raped nun. It was co-written with actress Zoe Lund, who appears in the film as the lieutenants heroin dealer. Lund would later die in Paris of a cocaine related heart attack. This film is undoubtedly Ferrara's best and it remains one of the greatest and most thorough character studies in all of cinema.




























31. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).

This film is just incredible. It looks great, it's possible to forget how artfully filmed it is, not just a typical slasher. It's definateley my favourite slasher film. Tobe Hoopers other films don't quite work as well, but somehow Chainsaw Massacre just comes together and it's perfect. It's like some sort of amazing fluke. An undisputed classic, the Citizen Kane of horror films.






























30. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975).

I find this film so terrifying. The story is just really creepy and apparently the novel, from which the film is adapted, is based on a real event. Supposedly, on valentines day 1900, three school girls and one teacher vanished around a volcanic rock formation in south east Australia known locally as Hanging Rock. There were numerous search parties in the months and years after, but not one clue as to what happened was found. Some of the events surrounding the disappearance are just as strange. Peter Weir's film shows the place it self as a sort of antagonist. Theres something just really unsettling about the way its filmed and the atmosphere of evil that seems to permeate the area. The rock is symbolizing the mysterious and malevolent side of nature. A seemingly incomprehensible, primordial force.





























29. Heart of Glass (1976)
Werner Herzog famously hypnotized all the actors in this film, wich is one of his most beautiful and mysterious. I love all Herzog's early films, I think they're amazing, especially Aguirre The Wrath of God, Nosferatu and his follow up to Heart of Glass, Stroszek. Heart of Glass is about a town in Bavaria, sometime in the last century, where the chief glass blower dies taking with him the formula for the special red 'ruby' glass for which the town is known. Much of the dialogue was apparently made up by the hypnotized actors. The only actor that wasn't hypnotised was the lead Josef Bierbichler, who plays Hias, the prophetic shephard who partially narrates the film.






























28. Torso (1973).

One of the best ever giallo's. It's directed by Sergio Martino and is one of the most suspensefull films I've ever seen. I love everything about this film, even the music and just the look of the killer, its another perfect kind of flukey film. In fact I kind of regret not putting it in my top ten, one of the reasons I keep doing more lists is because I keep remembering films like this.





























27. Castle of Blood (1964).

A little while ago I saw a film by Mario Bava called Black Sunday, it stars a British actress called Barbara Steele who is basically an icon for all goths and wannabe vampire women. She made hundreds of films in Italy, including a part in 8 1/2 as the young beatnick girlfriend of a movie producer, but she was most famous for her run of horror films which followed Black Sunday, of which Castle of Blood is one. I think this film is adapted from an Edgar Allan Poe story, which is always a good sign, and I love these 60's horror films with imposing castles and carriages racing through fog. It's a great look. Particularly in black and white, the kind of photography which seems to suit the proto-Mortitia image that Steele had at the time.





























26. Don't Torture a Duckling (1972)

Lucio Fulci's greatest giallo thriller, this film is just so incredible structurally and just the plot is totally amazing. Like a lot of his films, he wrote the screenplay himself. I think Fulci is one of the most underrated film makers. The story is about a series of murders of young boys in a small Italian town, and the plot tackles themes of pagan idolatry and superstition and Catholicism in sort of rural Italy. It's just a great murder mystery with some really interesting scenes.




























25. Tarantula (1955).

The other "King of the Bs", Jack Arnold directed this film just before his other minor masterpiece, The Incredible Shrinking Man. Tarantula is even better in my opinion, everything about this film is just of a certain quality, especially the amazing script, with naturalistic dialogue and this sort of incredible story structure and pace. It reminds me a bit of The Birds. This is even more amazing when you consider the slightly ridiculous premise: a small American town being terrorized by a giant spider. Its simultaneously quite funny without meaning to be, but also really good. The special effects are really well done.





























24. River's Edge (1986).

This film is really odd, it has an incredible atmosphere. Harmone Korine's Gummo was basically just a rip off of this in a lot of ways and the story is also similar to Larry Clark's Bully. A teenage boy kills his girlfriend for no reason and then his friends try to help him cover it up after he shows them the body. It also features Dennis Hopper as the local drug dealer, Feck. Obviously Hopper co-stared in some other iconic 'youth films', most notably: Rebel Without a Cause and Easy Rider, this fits in with those pretty well. Other actors who are amazing in this film are Crispin Glover and the mysterious child actor, Joshua Miller.































23. Django (1966).

Django. Probably the most iconic spaghetti western ever made, it really is the most quintisential of the westerns made in Europe. Beautifully shot and edited by Sergio Corbucci, it tells the story of the mysterious drifter, Django, who arrives in a frontier town draging a coffin behind him. A coffin with a machine gun inside. This kind of macabre touch is typical of the spaghetti western genre, which this film helped to invent (along with A Fistful of Dollars, a film made a few months earlier with a remarkably similar plot). Corbucci's films tend to be a bit darker than the films of Leone. Django is particularly violent and nihilistic.





























22. Days of Heaven (1978).

Days of Heaven is a classic from famous auteur director Terrence Malick. It has quite a vague plot but its basically just a really beautifully shot melodrama to do with three destitutes, played by Richard Gere, Brooke Adams and Linda Manz, as they look for work on the Texas pan handle around the time of the first world war. Sam Shepard plays their dying farm boss. The end is quite mysterious and tragic. It also features another amazing score from Ennio Morricone.

Morricone's Westerns, Post-Apocalyptic Trash, Jodorowsky, Moebius, More Youtube

Quentin Tarantino keeps copy-pasting old Ennio Morricone themes into his films. L' Arena, which is featured in both Kill Bill 2 and Inglorious Basterds, is from a film called The Mercenary by Sergio Corbucci, starring Fanco Nero and Jack Palance. I don't think its necessarily a bad thing to use old Morricone scores but I think its harder to appreciate them out of the context of the films they where written for.






Il Tramonto (The Sunset) is a piece of music Morricone wrote to introduce Lee Van Cleef in The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, where his character represents 'The Bad' of the title. It only appears once in the film. I think this sequence is one of the greatest introductions to a character ever. Tarantino re-used it in Kill Bill 2.











Kind of been on a post-apocalyptic flex since I watched this film called A Boy And His Dog. Enzo Castellari contributed to this genre with a film called The New Barbarians. He made it under a false name but it looks pretty good.









Another post-apocalyptic film I saw recently is The Last Combat.

Its an old Luc Besson film, kinda wanna see Subway now, I think his early films are all pretty amazing.










Apparently Alejandro Jodorowsky wants to make a post-apocalyptic film... I do hope it happens. He was meant to make Dune but the producer, Dino De Laurentis, fired him and gave the project to David Lynch. I don't think Lynch was ready to make an epic film like Dune. In cinematic terms the finished product is a bit boring but its still well directed by Lynch and the art designs and costumes that Jodorowsky did with Moebius and H. R. Giger are still amazing. Many of them can still be seen in the film.











Moebius is a really unique comic artist. His stuffs a bit psychedelic. You can see his influence in Tron, Blade Runner, the first Alien movie.







Here's a video I found of Jodorowsky talking about his films.

Santa Sangre has to be one of the greatest movies ever made.


These are also quite interesting, about the making of Fulci's Lizard In A Womans Skin...



...and Peter Jackson's Bad Taste.


The rest of these are on Youtube.



I want to get this.

Spaghetti-Westerns, Franco Nero, Antichrist, The Room

Kill Them All and Come Back Alone. It's the name of a film. I want to try and make this blog just about films, we'll see. Here is the trailer to prove I'm not lying:



This film was directed by Enzo G. Castellari who made Inglorious Bastards and the truly amazing spaghetti western film: Keoma. I'd say Keoma is probably the greatest italo-western I've ever seen so check it out if you can. I would describe it as A Fistfull of Dollars meets The Bible meets Mad Max.

Franco Nero is also famous for being the original Django in the iconic italo-western of the same name. If you were wondering what Jimmy Cliff is watching in the cinema sequence of The Harder They Come, well: it's Django. The film was made around the same time as FistfullofDollars but is a bit more violent and surreal. Apparently it set a trend in spaghetti westerns for featuring a machine gun and a coffin or box filled with gold as a major element of the plot. These became re-ocuring motifs in most italo-westerns including the hundreds of Django sequels. It was directed by Sergio Corbucci, who I gather was a close friend of Sergio Leone (who made Fistfull.. etc), and I'd say his films are made with a similar style. Corbucci also made a film called Navajo Joe starring Burt Reynolds which I haven't seen, and The Mercenary also starring Franco Nero. Needless to say Nero was pretty huge in europe in the seventies and eighties. I guess no one really knows who he is in Britain and North America.


By the way most of these 'facts' are off the top of my head and probably wrong.

Another incredible italo/spaghetti western that I've recently discovered is Django Kill a.k.a. If You Live, Shoot. I think it was marketed as a Django 'sequel' in the hope of making more money, but it has nothing to do with the former film. I'd say it's even more violent and disturbing than its namesake and infinately more entertaining/funny. The plot revolves around an unnamed "half breed" played by the amazing Tomas Milian, who seeks revenge on the outlaw gang that betrayed him and left him for dead. After he is revived by two indians (played by two clearly italian character actors) they give him some golden bullets and tell him they will help him take his revenge if he leads them to "happy hunting ground". They track his former accomplace's to a town the indians call The Unhappy Place, and from there the rather complexed and violent story unfolds, featuring another gang of basically gay mexican outlaws called Los Muchachos. This film is totally hilarious and beautifully directed (although the guys name escapes me), and you can buy it in HMV.


My other favourite spaghetti western is Blind Man featuring Ringo Starr. The Italian trailer has been on my facebook page for ages. Here is an American version:



I can't wait to watch Antichrist even though it's directed by Lars von Trier who made such unwatchable dross as The Idiots and the even worse by far Dogville starring Nicole Kidman who is the worst actress in the world probably. Antichrist actually looks really good though! Apparently it features a talking fox and Charlotte Gainsbourg castrating herself, nice. I guess you've probably seen the trailer but here it is anyway:


I also kind of want to watch The Room.