Boutique Blu Ray Label Interview with Producer/Author Troy Howarth- A Focus on All Things Giallo!!!

Hello there, and welcome back to the Disconnected. I am alive here with Troy Howorth, somebody that everybody's heard his name when you're watching a channel like this. Troy, thanks for making time for us tonight. Well, thank you for having me. Especially lately, it seems like your name's coming up a lot more on commentaries. Feels like you're beef and lows up. Is that something that you're noticing a big uptick for? Especially it seems like you

and Nathaniel doing a lot together lately. I mean it's been pretty steady actually over the last several years. It started at the end of two fifteen, and it took a little while for to build a little momentum, so I'd say probably since twenty seventeen has been fairly steady. Nathaniel and I started working together back in twenty nineteen, which seems like forever ago. Up until then,

I'd always worked alone. But you know, fortunately with him and several other people have worked with two, I've found a good report makes the more entertaining to do. So, yeah, there's been a lot and I'm sure there's a lot of people groaning and say, oh God, not him again. Get somebody else, which fair enough. There's there's plenty of voices out

there and they should all be heard. I agree with the diversity, but I will I will push back on your voice being boring because it seems like you, especially when you and Nathaniel lately have been together, there's something special about that chemistry. It's sort of magnetic, something that feels like you are learning from people that you are just hanging out with. It's basically just chill

time with smart friends. Well I don't know about the smart part, but it is it is designed to be conversational and hopefully Yeah, your description is pretty much that's all the more we could hope for. I don't like commentaries that feel like lectures. I don't like when they get very sort of dry

and pseudo intellectual and so forth. I mean, everybody has their approach, and I just, you know, from somebody starting listening commentaries all the way back in the nineties, kind of figured out what I like and what I don't like. And yeah, that's always been the goals, to try and make it hopefully partly entertainment as well as hopefully somewhat educational. I mean, you can't make everybody happy, though, that's true. That's true. A

lot of people really want that dry, educational aspect. But I'm just glad that a lot of the current ones they are getting more attention, aren't just pointing out what's happening in the movie. Yeah, those are bad, aren't they. I mean, I think a little bit of that is sometimes okay, just especially when you're working alone, it can be a challenge, so sometimes you need that little bridge. It gets you from one thought to another and say, well, now, John Saxon walks across the fiata, you

can do that. But if you do that the whole way through and you start doing oh, don't open that door girl, stuff like that, it gets really it gets really irritating really quick. Who are some of your favorite commentators listen to? Well, I've always enjoyed Oh, put me on the spot here tell you. Some of my favorites are Greg Mank who's done a lot of the universal classic horror films. I've always enjoyed his commentaries very much.

Christopher Frayling, who sort of specializes in sergeo Leoni, although he's done other things as well, but he's always great fun to listen to, very educational. Jonathan Rigby I like very much. You'll hear him on a lot of especially British films, hammer films, things of that. He's kind of the gold standard. Who else David Kllett who tends to do more kind of films and silent films and so forth. You might have heard him like Doctor

Mabusa for example, some of the Fritz Lang films. He's always good to listen to. I'm sure there's some others that are kind of escaping me right now, but I always like Kim Newman. Kim Kim Newman seems to be kind of uh uh love him or hate him kind of proposition for some people. I I I enjoy him though. I think he's I think he's very funny and uh but also quite interesting and he's able to sort of tap into a variety of different topics. So I always enjoy him very much as well.

And he get into someone like the noir commentators like Imogen Sarah Smith. I like her very much. He has a wonderful voice and it's very very articulate, very interesting to listen to. And Alan k Roadie and Eddie Eddie Bieler and so forth. So there's there's a bunch and you know, so obviously as far as directors go, I mean, there's there's a bunch there that I really like listening to as well. Yeah, and I love you hearing so many names because it really shows how rich this hobby can be.

It's certainly not a one man show or anything like that, because really you can ask a lot of people who buy a lot of these discs, and you can get five different answers and feel that they're all valid easily. Yeah. That's why I don't object personally to multiple commentaries on discs, because I think it's good to have options. Somebody may not like listening to me,

but they might like listening to somebody else, or vice versa. There's also the danger sometimes of kind of monopolizing certain subjects, which has happened traditionally with certain people. I suppose I'm in danger of monopolizing tar Argento and Lucho Polti, and I'd hate for that to happen, although I know other people have done them, so that makes me feel a little bit better. But I mean, but on the other hand, sometimes it's tough. I mean,

you gets somebody Paul Talbot, who when it comes to Charles Bronson. He can't do any better than Paul Talbot. I mean, he just he knows his stuff. I mentioned this, literally wrote a book too. He did well several books at this point, and he's he's great to listen to. Christopher Frayling I mentioned, I mean, you can't do better than that when it comes to talking about Sergio Leoni, although I like Alex Fox as well. But it's nice to have some variety, and I think it's a good

idea when they when they do that. I've been asked before sometimes you know, on certain releases, well do you mind if there's another No, So it shouldn't be a competition. To me, it's it's all about more bang for the buck and the kind of the real enthusiasts. They tend to like to listen to multiple tracks that they're available to. Some people don't listen to

any of them. That's fair enough to Yeah, And there's some of these newer films that are not newer films, but newer releases that are getting sometimes three commentaries, and it's always nice to see the variety there because usually when that happens, it's not even the same style, it's not the same topics

that they go over. There's just so much to glean from some of these films, especially the ones that have had wide, sweeping impacts, and it's just nice to hear, yeah, three might be gilding the lily a little bit. Sometimes. I know there was a release I was going to be involved in and there was some mix up and there was you know, I had an option to feed a third and I said, that's probably too much. I'll skip this one. But too certainly is always advisable. Sometimes you

can get away with three. I mean, it just really depends some some films really they're they're important enough and they have enough and as you say, it doesn't really matter. I mean, there's going to be crossover. That's why it's nice to know if there is going to be somebody else that way, if you're on speaking terms with them, if you know them or whatever, you can kind of coordinate and say, well, what are you you

know, planning to talk about. I'll try to avoid this. Maybe you can try to avoid that, but there's going to be crossover, and it's okay. Everybody's going to approach it differently. My approach is radically different from whoever else you care to mention and that's as it should be. And then on top of that, there are you know, there's certain films that have

these random stories, you know, like City of the Living Dead. Everybody knows the random these are real cow intestines or whatever you're gonna say in different scenes. So yeah, I imagine there are a couple of stories that even get copied. But you know, you you brought up Paul Talbot writing the book and how you've been monopolizing Folchi and Argento, But when you've also written the book. Here are three of Troy's books on Jello, we're gonna be

talking about Yallo just a little bit. That makes sense for you to sort of monopolize those a little bit. So what what got you into yallow originally? Well, you know, funnily enough, I saw my first Jallo films before I knew what Ajello was. I mean, in the in the eighties, growing up and in a small town in Pennsylvania, you know, you you were kind of limited to what was either on the video shelves or what

was on TV. And they did run some weird movies on Channel nine, including The Night Eveline Came out of the Grave, which was the very first commentary I ever did, and probably the first yellow I ever saw a phenomena. Creepers would have been one of the early ones too. That was a very early commentary for me as well. So I love them wearing that shirt as you as you mentioned there you go, yeah, I mean it all kind of goes back to Mario Bava for me becoming a fan of Bava by

way of Bar and Blood. Seeing it when I was very very young and kind of realizing there was something different about it. I couldn't articulate what or why or how at that time, because I'm just a little kid. I mean I'm less than ten years old. I've probably posted a five or six, and it was there was just something different about the different feel of it, the different look of it. It just had had a flavor that was

unique, and that stuck with me. And gradually I started seeing some of those other films as well and realizing something a little bit funky and weird about some these movies, like the music and the voices are a little strange. And it eventually started to figure that out. And I did see in Phil Hardy's Encyclopedia of Horror Films, which is one of my kind of seminal books that made me want to write about movies. He would refer to Jallo every now and again. I was like, Gallo, what is that? What

is that supposed to meet? And eventually came to realize that it was this kind of brand of Italian thrillers that are very sort of lurid, pulpy, and you know, not always especially violent. I mean, sometimes they're more

psychological than they are violent. But that was kind of a path. Eventually I started getting into through Boba's films and Ardento and Folchi and realizing this is really interesting stuff, and then just from there starting to seek out everything that I could and started to think about the idea of maybe writing a book that kind of cataloged all the films, because there had been not terribly in depth

book from I guess the nineties. I believe it was called Blood and Black Place, which was kind of a review book, but it seemed to me it was a little bit incomplete. It was certainly out of date at that time, and it seemed like the reviews were fairly sort of short. I thought it might be interesting to go back and do something a little bit more in depth. But now you know, here we are coming into twenty twenty three soon, which is like ten years after I started it, and I

think to myself, I'd like to do it over again. I could. I'd like to go back and redo it and revise it and revamp it. Maybe I will someday. I don't know. Interesting me personally, I love everything I've read through all three of these. I've taken so many notes,

discovered multiple films. They are incredible. Yallo is something that really hits people differently, and there's something about the way that they're written about in these that it sort of gives that tone that certain films are talked about different ways. And it's hard to explain, but they really it's not just the tone or what necessarily is in the film, but they they just speak to different generations

differently when you go back and watch them with different experiences. And it's nice to see somebody like you that gives a very neutral voice to something like Yallo, because they have so much behind them that a lot of the time, if you're just trying to educate on them, they kind of speak for themselves. Yeah, there's a lot to be said there. I mean, for one thing, there are movies that don't play really well for people who are

really married to the kind of British and American style of murder mysteries. They don't always play fair logically. I've always said they kind of make emotional sense rather than they make logical sense. If you're really concerned with all the loose ends getting gathered up and tied up in neat bo at the end, go watch Agatha Christie, Go watch you Know even and well it was out of

Hitchcock. Funn enough, Hitchcock's coms aren't always as logical as All I've Vertigo is a tearly a logical movie when you think about it, But a lot of his films tend to be, and they tend to focus more on the story and the plot, the plot very important, whereas with jaello films it's it's more about the set pieces, it's more about going for very specific effects

and so forth. And again, there are different types of Jalli. Some people think that all jallo films are just about, you know, men running

around in black trench coats with black cloves slicing up beautiful women. And that is true that there's a lot of those, but there's a lot of other types of films too, the kind of cosmopolitan sexy jelly for example, with these impossibly good looking people, you know, lounging around swimming pools and board with their lives and being absolutely hideous to one another and plotting against each other. So there's all kinds of different things that are hybrids that Flitzieski that became

very popular in the sixties and seventies kind of uses with the jallo. At one point they're Western jalli. I mean, I included some in my book, but you know, you could even make a case for a couple of films like Once Fun Time in the West and for a few dollars more as well, that have jallo elements in them definitely. And now even after a certain point they got so desperate that there's porno jali as well. Get things like play Motel and Jallo and Venice and so forth, and even more extreme

examples than that. So yeah, it's a it's a wide palette, and it doesn't do to take them all terribly seriously. Some of them are are quite interesting, and they're made by directors who have a real vision and have a real kind of artistic intention, and some of them are just garbage, and some of the garbage is fun, some of it's not. Some of the films are really really bad, and that was funny. I don't seek

out reviews of my books because it just doesn't pay to do that. But somebody pointed out a review to me one time, and they one of the books on Amazon, which is kind of assessed pool because anybody can go on there and say whatever they want to say and it doesn't even have to be a review. That's put upside, this guy sucks and they leave it.

It doesn't have anything to do with anything. But it was kind of complimentary, but at the same time saying, this guy, he's too negative about too many of the films, Like, what the hell do you want? I mean, you're talking about hundreds of films, some of them are awful. I mean, I'm sorry. It doesn't mean you have to turn in your fan card just because you don't like all of them. So yeah,

it is what it is. There are a lot of people that you spend a lot of time complaining about people being positive on films too, which I always laugh at. But a lot of times people just choose to talk about what they like. So if you're doing a real deep dive, and I mean three big books about Yallow, that's a deep dive. There's gonna be some trash in there. Well, I mean, I wouldn't have wasted all that time if I didn't like them. There is such a thing as toxic

positivity. I see this sometimes with you know, particularly horror fans, just say we got to support this film because we've got to support the genre, to which I said, to hell with that. That's that's ridiculous, because they're a bad horror film. They're bad films in any genre. So it doesn't mean that you have to like every You don't have to like everything that Dario Jenna ever made to be a fan. It's okay to say Dracula three

D sucks because it does, at least from my point of view. Some people do like it, but it is it is a matter of opinion, and I did talk about this recently. I've put something up on Facebook about, you know, these people who who sort of contort themselves into pretzels and and try to somehow invalidate opinions of other people and saying you've got it wrong, you're wrong to not like this movie, or you're wrong to like it. Who cares? Just if you like it, then be happy with that.

You don't need validation, You don't need other people to agree with you. If you like it, it worked for you. Yeah, that's that would solve a lot of arguments right there that I've got a lot of want to say about that. But man, that was just kind of a perfect statement. Let that sit. You brought up Fulch, you brought up oar Gento. What are some more of your favorite directors? Oh boy, there's so many. I mean, Mario Bava's number one for me. He's the

king. Uh Dario Argento, of course, ful Chi, Roman Polanski canceled. I know, but I love his movies. I think Man's a genius. Whatever one thinks of him as a human being, whatever, but his films are extraordinary. Scorsese, Bernard Hertzog, William Freakin, Fritz Lang, Michael Powell, Alfred Hitchcock, Parence Fisher, God Almighty. I mean, I'm sitting here with all these reference books. Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick. Yeah, I mean, the list just goes on and on on. Sidney

Lumett would be another one. Coppola, at least through the seventies, and you know it's choppier after that, but certainly the seventies, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, I mean a ton of Jean Pierre Melville be another one. I really love his films. Part Chen I love his work as well. Yeah, lots of good stuff. I just saw A Thirst for the first time, and my god, that is such a unique movie. Yeah, that's good. Well, all of his films are. I haven't seen his

newest one yet, but I'm sure it's good. I mean everything else has been. It would be hard to believe that he would all of a sudden make a lousy movie, but could happen. I suppose he is one. I don't. I don't think there's a single thing that I've even felt any sort of negative feelings about. No, I've liked them all. I mean, you know, not to the same extent. Some of them I like

a little less than others. But even something that is sort of a weird film, like I'm a Cyborg and that's okay, it's a really charming little movie. I mean, it's it's different than the other ones. It's slighter, perhaps, but it's it's an endearing film. I kind of feel the same way about Plans gam And he's been making films now for sixty years and

he's yet to make one that I think is a really bad movie. Some of them I like less than others, But you know, even a little little weird movie like what which many people throw aside, like Scarbage, I think it's a really good movie. Right, So yeah, I might certainly my people who are able to sustain that level of quality over that length of a period of time. That's pretty rare because most people, at some point or an they're going to end up making a bad movie. It just ends

up happening. Well, not only period of time, but genres too, because Polanski and a handful of others they they've like di Pauma's kind of the perfect example of this, that Diploma's made basically an incredible movie in almost every single genre. Yeah, it's so hard to transcend that type of thing, and it's it's really nice to reflect on somebody that can do it properly.

Yeah, I mean, you get somebody like Dario Argento who was a specialist and he's pretty much stayed within that wheelhouse for his career and has had a certain degree of success. It's gone a little choppier lately, but for a long time maintained a certain degree of success. Leoni was another one. Obviously, Sergio Leoni, you know, pretty much stayed with westerns most of his career, although he ends his career with a great gangster film, so there's

you know, obviously he had talents that went beyond it. People tend to think of Scorsese as the mob guy, but I mean he also made the Age of Innison's Last Temptation of Christ comedy. I mean, all these different films, great films and different genres. Fulci was a very eclectic filmmaker. He made movies and just about all the different genres and did very well by them. To Lenzi, who isn't quite on the same here as some of

them, but still a director I liked very much. Obviously, spent a long time writing about him as well as another guy who went from genre to genre and did very well. Baba did too, with the exception of the western. The western was the one genre that really he kind of didn't do so good at. I wouldn't necessarily say completely failed, but didn't do nearly as well there for reasons that really kind of makes sense when you think about it. But other than that, you know, going into different types of

films and so forth, did really well. So I admire that type of eclecticism very much. Yeah, me too. You finally brought up Lenzi. Why don't we spend some time talking about make Him Die Slowly. This is a brand new book that you literally just released. What is the official release date on this, like two and a half, three weeks ago something? Yeah about that? It is so far really nice this edition especially it's the hardcover, color pages, beautiful book by the way, it's it's an incredible,

incredible feat to get something like this out in twenty twenty two. I would say, Well, the aesthetic aspect of it, You've got to give a lot of credit to Tony Strauss at WK Books, who did the layout, did the design, and he just you know, he's phenomenal. Every time I've worked with him on a book has been a joy. It's a fun process working with him because he's got a very good eye, very good sensibility, and he really knows how to how to make me look good.

But yeah, I mean that was an interesting project for me because, as I talked about in the book at one point, if you ever would have said to me, you're going to write a book about Lensi, I would have laughed at the idea, because for years I really didn't take him seriously at all. I had formed an impression of him as this sort of obnoxious old curmudgeon in sweaters who just always talked about what a genius he was and make kind of hackey movies and didn't realize for years how good a lot of

his films really were. And part of that was being introduced to some of the weaker later films that came in the eighties, which is not the ideal way to be introduced to Lensi's work, and also bad transfers, so he didn't really get to appreciate the esthetic quality that he brought to his films was

very good. Crash yeah, so yeah. I mean when I finally started having to kind of think about his work a little more seriously doing commentaries because it just so happened I was hired to do a lot of Lensi commentaries, I started to realize, you know, there's there's something here that could be interesting, and there hadn't been a book written about him in English. He's obviously very popular among the Italian genre fans, so I thought, well,

I mean, it might as well be me. Nobody else is done it, so I'll go ahead and from my head into the ring and write a book about Lendsy. Hopefully not the only book. I'm hoping other people will follow, but it was a fun project to do. How much time do you spend working on this one? Oh, it's hard to say altogether.

I mean I feel like from the time I started until the time it came out, probably about a year and a half, which is not really that much time really when you think about it, the amount of work that went into it. But part of it is because I should preface this by saying, I do have a day job, so I can't just sit home and write and watch movies all the time. I wish I could, but I've got to go to a day job and then come home, and you're tired

and everything. But when I get working on a project, I'm always terrified that I'm going to lose momentum, so I just keep going out a day after day after day after day, so I keep writing. I don't care how much he gets done. You go to get something done in the day in order to keep going because if you stop, there's always that potential just just lose it and you won't be able to get it back. So that was pretty intense concentrated work over that period of time. Helped too that I

had Eugenio Urkilani, who you've had on your show involved. He wrote a lovely forward because he knew Lendsy very well interviewing him. As a matter of fact, that's why I contact him because his book Darkening the Italian Screen as the best Lendsy interview you're ever going to read in your life. I mean it is a full tilt, no hold part. Roberto really just vomiting forth

in great detail, and I thought, God, this is great. And I didn't really know Eugenio at that time, but I knew I was going to lean heavily on that interview, so I thought i'd better get his I mean, you don't have to because it's published, it's out there. As

long as you're citing it, it's fair. But when you're gonna lean heavily on something like that, if I can, I like to try and contact person and say, hey, I'm going to use this luck you mind you, And of course he said no, that's perfectly fine, and he was able to help out a lot. Frederico Candeo, whose name you'll know too from extras. I think he runs of freak rama productions. We'll see their

interviews on a lot of Blu Ray releases. He had a lot of material too, especially pictures, so got a lot of great behind the scenes pictures and rare shots that were a great addition to books. And we're finally getting good releases of Lindsay's films. It was kind of lagging there for a while, but you brought up transfers. It is unreal in twenty twenty two,

the way that some of these films can be viewed. We just had a conversation about this recently, how it seems that many of these films are playing better than they've ever played, even in a theater, in home theaters across the world right now, because you know, four K scans are better than some old dim bulb in you know, some Washington, DC theater. What are some of the most remarkable upgrades you've seen recently. They've been just beyond

impressive. Oh boy, I know, that's an intimidating question. That's a tough one to answer. I only just recently went to four K myself for years saying I wasn't gonna do it. Of course, inevitably I did.

And the reason I did was because I got hired to do a commentary for Deep Red, which is one of my all time favorite films, and they put it out only in four K, and I was like, well, I guess I have to do it now, not just because of the obvious, you know, because I don't really listen to my own stuff, but I don't know, I don't particularly I'll maybe listen to a little bit, but I'm not going to sit there, you know, like normal Desmond.

We're living my former glories. But because it's Deep reds like, well, I've got to see what this looks like, because they did a scan and everything. I'll tell you what. The Synapse Suspiria, which I was also happy to be a part of, well that's an amazing, amazing looking transfer. If you get a chance to see that four K, that is really

absolutely a sort of mind melting experience in its own right. Some wonderful stuff with black and white movies too, like The Apartment, Billy Wilder's The Apartment fantastic, really really happy with that, and you know some of the John Carpenter stuff that's been upgraded as well. But also I think by far the best, the most satisfying home video release ever of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly from Pino, where they finally got it looking correct.

It doesn't have that sort of ugly tint yellow tint that it had for a while. And along the same lines, their new version of Fist Bowl Dollars was just amazing as well, because that last Blu ray they put out was hot garbage. It looked awful. I got rid of it. I was so disappointed when I watched it. This looked terrible, but the Blue the four K looks absolutely amazing. I've been very happy with Keno. It seems like since about twenty twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, they started to really listen to

feedback and they've come around to just suddenly being this powerhouse. It's astonishing to me that they can release like five movies a week and somehow three of those will be great releases of films. And it's not twenty fourteen anymore, where they would just put out a film with a trailer and call it good. They'll put out a film with the commentary and maybe one or two other things, and then on top of that, three months later Beyond Sale for eight

bucks. Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, there are a lot of really good labels now, which you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna go there. I'm gonna say I think some people think this they don't want to say. I really think Criterion has been coasting for years. At this point. Everybody gets so, you know, I hope they put this out on Criterion. Why I've got a fantastic addition, Why do you need it? But these people have this it's kind of like the name value, and they

earned that for years, going back in the nineties and so forth. But lately, I don't know, they've put out some very flawed discs. And when they when they upgrade their there are movies to four K, they're not adding new features, They're not doing anything really different with it. I mean, don't get me wrong, They've done some amazing work. I love their release at Night of Living Dead, for example. I thought that was, you know, an amazing release. But you know, they ain't all could

cracked up to be these days in my opinion. Anyway, Whereas you look at some of these other boutique labels, like, uh, you know, eighty eight has been doing amazing work lately. Ero obviously, you know, may lead some bounds over their early stuff too, h Synapps, Blue Underground and so forth. I mean, Criterion, you know, it's always going to have that cachet, I suppose, because it has that that kind of name value to it. You know, it's like Nike or Adidas or something.

It just has that, you know, that special something. But man, from my point of view, I think they've been eclipsed by some of these other labels. I agree fully, especially before prior to twenty twenty two. I've been saying since about twenty seventeen or eighteen that they're just not what they used to be. A lot of the stuff. This year the titles got me, but then they are coasting with the features again. And yeah, the four K re releases are nice to see some of these in the

highest quality. But like you said, it's like screen factory. When you're putting out a four K of something that you put out previously, at least give the fans something, and I get it. A lot of these a lot of the people involved are either dead or dying. But there's like fifty five people we can name right now that would be more than willing to do a new commentary for something. Well, they seem to have kind of a good old boys club going there as far as contributors are concerned. It's very

tough to get involved. I've not tried, and I'm not saying this out of bitterness or anything. I'd love to do something for them if they ever had an interest. They're not going to ask me, right, but if they ever did, sure, that'd be great. But they're all kinds of people. I mean, this is not a small field anymore. There's a lot of people jostling around looking for jobs, and you know, I think they would be spoiled for choice. You know, it would be I think,

really really worthwhile to get somebody in to do it. I mean, Okay, they put out Raging Bull on four K last year and they did a very nice job. Well it's got some nice features on it, and you know, it's a beautiful transfer. But it would have been really nice if they could have gotten somebody, you know, somebody interesting to go and do a commentary on a film like that, kind of delve into it, talk about it and so forth, but just don't they don't seem to be

interested in doing that. Well. Really disappoints me is when they get some you know, an old catalog title like Tunes of Glory, a really wonderful British film with John Mills and Alec Gunnis and Dennis Price, which is, you know, it's another one of his movies. Everybody's dead. Obviously they're not gonna get anybody connected to the film with it. But they only ever had like a five minute long interview with the director and a poster and still

gallery and that's all the more it's still gone. It's like, why didn't she had something in but a commentary or something, But I don't, you know, the people who are married to Criteria will be just actually cursing my name for saying this, because of course they can do no wrong. But they've also they put out some very compromised editions, spent a lot of controversy

with color timing on some of their releases and things. You know. Addressed to Kill was notoriously kind of batched initially, and every label has their mistakes, but she kind of hold Criteria to a higher standard. It's sort of surprising when sometimes you hear underwhelming things about their releases, and I don't I just I feel like, again, they seem to be slightly coasting a little

bit. I can't remember who it was. Somebody from Arrow I think it was about a year and a half ago said that some of these color timing questions with directors are directors coming in and saying something different about their film.

What I've suggested, just put out both versions if possible. I mean a lot of us they grew up with these discs for forty years seeing it one way, and if something comes out looking completely differently tinted, yeah, sure the director may like it, but what about the rest of the world that

viewed this as something different? Yeah, it's revisionism, and it's something that I've always respected Scorsese for refusing sort of tinker with his films, with the exception of New York, New York, which I think I understand why he did that, because he was a mess when he made it, and the studio kind of tampered with it and everything. They kind of went back with

a clearhead and was able to fix up with it. But even a movie like Kangs in New York, which we know was heavily compromised and material was cut and everything. He won't touch it, he said, no, no, it's it's my film, you know, it's I agreed to this version. It's ways to stay. Just get people like Coppola and James Cameron and Ridley Scott and Michael Mann, and they love to go back and with George

Lucas course famously, oh yeah, tinkering with their films. And I don't have a problem with it, but they should preserve the original version as well as the new version. I think that's perfectly fine. I mean, Papola going back and changing The Cotton Club and The Godfather three were improvements, definitely. He definitely made those into better and more coherent, cohesive films. And I know that The Godfather Part three is available in its original version as well.

I don't know if the Cotton Club really is or not, but it's nice when they make both versions available. But of course, William Friedkin is really well known for loving to tinker with the colors and so forth, and I said, let them tinker with it, but put as you say, both versions on there, so you can have a version of Cruising that's really very blue but let's have the version that we're familiar with the way it was originally shown as well, French connection, et cetera, et cetera. I

think that's perfectly fine. Or you have a really weird situation of something like Alien which the theatrical cut is the director's cut. Really. Scott has said this many times that is his The version that sold as a director's cut on video is not his preferred version. That was just something he did to kind of appease the fans. Add in a little bit of footage and take some

footage out that more or less runs the same running time. But they put in that scene with Tom Skarrett in the cocoon and all that stuff, and they shortened some other bits and so forth. It's not really a director's cut. The Exorcist to the two thousand version, which which I in many respects don't like, was really something he did to appease William Peter Bladdie, who had for years complained about all these things in the film he didn't like.

They kind of did this is shut him up. But now he's like, oh, yeah, it's it's my that's my cut of the movie. Wait a minute. Seventy three versions better, So I you know, all these kinds of things, this kind of revision, revisionism and so forth. As long as the directors are doing it, I don't have a problem with it, but they should preserve the original version that we're familiar with as well. And the hardest part for me is that there are some of these instances and

not to just continue shooting on Criterion or anything. But their Miller's Crossing disc is kind of the biggest example of that. Recently, they took like it's not a lot, but it's like seventy five seconds worth of footage out because the directors said that they wanted it cut from the film. That's not the same movie though, that's it's something completely different, and it's I'm really against censorship altogether. We got to be able to at least archive what we all

knew so that we can have that history. Yeah, I mean, even sort of bastardized versions that were put out by the studio against the wishes of the director. I think should be preserved just for comparative purposes. Growing up in the eighties, the version of the Fearless Vampire Killers that I knew and fell in love with does not exist. Anymore. It was the version that Martin Ransohoff had completely overhauled and cut and re dubbed it and tinkered with extensively.

It's vastly inferior to plant spuversion, but I'd love to see it again, you know, with the animated cartoon prologue and everything in it that they put in, and they kind of added all these silly sound effects and changed the voices and things. It's definitely travesty. But I think it should be preserved just because, you know, I think for the for the sake of sort of further research, you should be able to have access to it. That was one thing that was I was happy about when Nathaniel and I did

a commentary for Jess Franco's film Just Teen. This was just announced today. The specs were announced today anyway, and as part of the commentary, we were talking about this shorter version of the film that was available for years called Deadly Sanctuary. And you never know whether these companies actually even listen to commentary tracks. Sometimes I think they just take them and they slap on a distance

whatever. But these guys listen because they realized, oh, that would be an interesting extra feature to have so they are now presenting Deadly Sanctuary as an extra on the day for the first time ever. So I think that's really great. That's how you do it. I mean, listen to that. It's not it's not something especially with a lot of people don't know what it's

called. But seamless branching on these four K discs is where they take all the same footage that is in one version and utilize it for multiple versions of the same film, so you don't compromise the integrity of the compression levels or anything like that on the disc. And they unfortunately they have limited space they can put on these discs, and if they had to do that, I could see it being a problem. But with that, I mean, Blue

Underground is the epitome of high quality on four k's. I don't know how many you've seen yet, but their four k's are mind blowing. I've seen several. I mean I've been fortunate enough to be involved in several, and I've got more coming. They're great. I mean, I'm absolutely thrilled with the way that Zombie looks, for example in the New York Ripper. Yeah,

absolutely, absolutely beautiful. So yeah, that's great when they can do that, or alternatively, when you have a case like Roserrado Dotto going back and deciding to do an animal cruelty free version of cannibal Holocaust, which is fine, but you know, there again, if you offer both versions, if you've seen less branching or whatever, or do two discs or whatever you

need to do. As long as you're presenting it in a kind of a good way like that, and allowing people to have the often to see which version they want to see, which version they prefer, that's the way it should be. I completely agree. In terms of censorship. I didn't really plan on bringing this up, but we brought a plan. Ski For a minute, it sounds like you feel a lot of the same way about this whole cancel culture idea that I do. I'm curious, just so we could

try to share with everybody. How do you try to separate the art from the artist? Yeah, well, cancel colleture. It's a difficult thing to get in talking about because you sound like a right winger and I'm certain not that there. I've always maintained that art has no moral obligations whatsoever. I think the only sin art can commit is to be boring. So that's a very subjective thing. You know, you look at a film, you look at a painting, you listen to a piece of music and respond to it

or you don't. You like it or you don't. You either have the ability to articulate why you like it or don't like it or you don't. This is where you see online some people writing lengthy dissertations versus some people just saying it sucks. It's both reactions are valid, but you know, some people can can get a little deeper than others. Some people, you know, don't seem to have those skills when it comes to artists. I mean,

Planski is certainly example. Klass Kinsky is even greater example. I mean, there's a lot of stories about class Kinskin If even a fraction of them are true, he was a pretty despicable human being. However, he was also one of the most compelling screen presents of all time. And I'm not going to throw out I have films with him and them because of some of the things they say he did. I don't know that he did all these things. I expect he did at least some of them. Polanski, certainly,

there's no ambiguity there. We know what happened, you know, in nineteen seventy seven, and has been dogging him for years. Unfortunately, it's resulted in a situation where his last three films have not been released over here in any shape whatsoever. You can get them imported if you you know, you know where to look, but unfortunately that means that you're not getting an

opportunity to see some some really fine films. Now, whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, I mean, that kind of depends on what side of this argument to come down on. But my opinion is basically, you know, if we start looking at art as if it needs to be created by nice people, we're going to be getting rid of a lot of the best art ever created, because some of the best art ever created has been made by really awful people. I mean, go back,

even painting, literature, music, you name it. You have to get rid of everything that Richard Wagner ever wrote so many different examples down through the years of people who are what is the word I can't think of the word now, not compromised, but complicated, I guess in the contemporary sense, you know, because they did something that we disapprove of, or we know something that really problematic is probably what you were thinking of. Problematic. Problematic

is the word, Yes, thank you. It's it's kind of ludicrous, really, it's it's not up to me to pass moral judgment on these people. I'm not interested in having a argument about whether these are good people or bad people. They're great artists talking about and their works deserve to be preserved and deserve to be discussed. And you know, people were dismissing with the Allen based on allegations that have never really been terribly well but pantiated. I

mean there's a lot of reasons to think that. I mean, yeah, his relationship with Sunny might might be strange. I mean it might have been, you know, not the ideal. But she was of age, she was not a blood relative. Oh, I mean yeah, live and let live. I really don't care if you don't like his movies because you just

don't like his movies, that's one thing. But if you're going to adopt this kind of handwringing moral outrage over somebody just because they did something you disagree with or said something you disagree with, I mean, there are admittedly people who sometimes are shooting themselves in the foot. I mean, John Police has been shooting himself in the foot lately with some of the things he's been saying.

He's starting from a good place, which is talking about the dangers of losing our ability to use humor and satire because we won't engage certain subjects because you don't want to offend anybody. That's a valid point. But then he's taking it to a degree where he's just starting to sound like a bitter old man and it's kind of compromising his legacy a little bit. It's like, you're in your eighties, just shut up. You're not helping yourself at this

point. You're appealing, if anything, you're appealing to the people that you really don't like, because this is a guy who for years was lasting Trump, which is good in my book, But you're appealing to that kind of person now by arguing against all these sort of woke liberals and everything, you know, trying to cancel everybody and you know, take away our sense of

humor and take away our freedom of expression. So you're kind of, you know, you're losing the plot a little bit by by taking it too far. I don't think it's something that will ever be successfully resolved. It's just, especially now, I think social media has a lot to answer for. I mean, there's no good railing against it because it's not going anywhere.

I mean, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. But everybody having a platform and everything unfolding in real time, and everybody having the ability to comment on things immediately without thinking about it, without letting it sync in, without having that little bit of time to sort of process, and many of those being anonymous, too anonymous, and too immediate two knee jerk, and everybody just wants to have a hot tape, and it's it's created a

lot of problems too. So there are these these kinds of ridiculous situations that come up. Some of the situations that are brought up are admittedly things that are being said by a very very small number of people that somebody reads about and they think, oh my god, all these lefties want to do this.

Oh not not everybody left lust There's just a few people. So it all just becomes terribly, terribly muddy and terribly everybody just shouting over each other and wanting to kind of vertue signal all the time about you know, I refuse to support this artist because I you know, I respect women. I respect women too, but I also happen to love on a plant movies. I'm sorry that, you know, what he did is not what I'm celebrating.

So I think those things have to be sort of separated. I agree, And there's a lot of times that's even come up recently, like Keino just put out a four K of the Usual Suspects, and I have to I had to remind people, like, you're not a bad person for liking a film that Kevin Spacey was in. It's not like you watching that in

twenty twenty two means that you are morally reprehensible or anything. You almost have to bear in mind that films are made by hundreds of people, sometimes thousands of people, and it is terribly unfair to suppress or somehow try to remove the efforts of all these people just because of the actions of one. If you went to every single company across the globe, every single manufacturer, every single publishing house, et cetera, whatever it is, you're going to run

into problematic people in every single place. What do you do? Just shut everything down? There's only so much. You complete, you know, allegations that were made against Kevin Spacey, which again may or may not be true. I gather they recently were dismissed. The case was decided in his favor. You know that he was on trial for It's not for me to get into it. It doesn't interest me. I happen to think he's a good actor. He's not one of my top ten favorites or anything, but I've

always enjoyed watching him. Uh And I'm again, I'm not going to throw out my copies of you know seven or Glengarry Glenn Ross or even you know during early his appearance on The Equalizer, or his role in See No Evil Here No Evil with Dean Wilder and Richard Pryor. I'm not going to get rid of those because of you know, the stories that or or to get rid of a film produced by Harvey Weinstein, for example, who is undoubtedly a a greade as Gumbag. It is what it is. I mean,

it's it's not something that you know, decided. It's the same thing that happened when Trump was in office and Robert de Niro was was going on a tear about Trump every chance he got Trump and everything else, and all these right wingers were getting really bent out of shape about that, and people saying, well, I'm not going to watch anymore Robert Niro movie. Do you think he really cared? Do you think it's hurting him that you are getting

rid of your copy of Taxi Driver? It's not hurting him one bit. It's kind of a ridiculous knee jerk thing, and it happens on both sides of the equation, and unfortunately it doesn't fix the problem. It does nothing to fix the problem. The problem is already, it's already happened, it's already done. You're not making anything better by saying, well, I refuse to watch anything that so and so has his hand in. So okay, I mean that if that makes you sleep better at night, then that's fine.

But I just I don't see the sentiment I agree. And it's not like watching Kevin Spacey film, even if the allegations are true, it's not like those you watching that film means that somebody else is getting assaulted tomorrow or something. So art we still have it. It's like going back and cutting the animal violence out of some of the Italian cannibal movies. I'm gonna bring those animals back to life. I don't like that they did that either.

You know, it's not something that I personally am a fan of. I love animals. I mean I'm also a meat eater, so I guess I'm a hypocrite on a certain level, or at least at least I mean, I don't yell them myself. I just go to the store and buy them wrapped in plastic and I cook them. But you know, what good does cutting it do? I mean, to remove that footage? What does that?

And it's not something limited to just grubby Italian exploitation film. You could point the scenes in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kids, the Sampack and Palm movie, for example, or Apocalypse. Now. You know, these things happenferent times, different sensibilities. And that's the other thing, too, is the danger of trying to look at old art through a contemporary lens and trying to impose these things on it. Yes, there are certain films from the

thirties that are outrageously racist. If you look at the Mask of Pu Mantu, for example, with Forrest Carlock that, even by nineteen thirty two standards was outrageously racist, but it's so over the top, how could you possibly

take it seriously? It's just fun the same token. You could look at the ones that Christopher Lee did in the sixties and say, wow, it's still kind of racist, but me Lee's playing it more straight and it's not nearly as cringey, and it doesn't seem to be done with quite that sort of racist sensibility in mind. So it's just something, you know, you just have to put things into a certain context and understand that when certain things

were made, it was acceptable you could get away with it. There are certain things that you know you wouldn't get away with today, nor should you get away with today, But you can't. You can't impose that on on something that was made fifty years ago, sixty years ago, seven years ago. I remember when I was in college, a friend of mine was dating a girl who was a very, very outspoken feminist. I have no problem

with feminists. I wanted people to understand that, but I thought it was hysterically funny that he said that they watched The Seventh Seal together and this girl was just absolutely appalled by the way the women were treated in this film. It's set in the medieval time, right, this is how it was. You can't make this into an enlightened thing just because that's how it is now.

It would be unfair, it would be inaccurate, and it really would grossly distort everything, so that, in my opinion, that'd be more misogynistic. You were erasing the travesties that occurred. At least at least have them be visible so that we can keep them in mind so that we can learn from them. Well, it'd be like suggesting you can't talk about slavery, or you can't talk about, you know, any of the other terrible things that have happened. You have to acknowledge these things. You have to be

aware that they happen. The best way to ensure that something terrible is going to happen again is never talk about it. You know why banning books is so bad. It's not banning, but any kind of censorship. I'm not in favor of. I mean it, really, it's it's just not again, it's not addressing the problem. I mean, certain words are are not advisable to say. I don't use them myself, but I understand that in a certain context you can have a racist character without being a racist person yourself.

There's there's a racist language in some of the Sorsese films. Does that mean that he is a racist? Absolutely not, But it makes sense for some of the characters that he deals with that are scumeback that they would have these kinds of beliefs, So therefore they're going to say nasty things and that's

just the way it is. That's a damn fine point. Uh. The other thing I wanted to point out too, is where some of these films are made, because we're we were watching films in such a global sense now, especially people that are really in a home video that you can't really just brush aside that, you know, the Philippines were different in nineteen sixty than the US in nineteen sixty or even something like Germany from a few decades ago,

like Necromantic. That movie came out and there is a rabbit. It's not even like online it's described as a rabbit torture scene. It's just a rabbit butchering scene. There's not even anything like inhumane about it. They're just butchering a rabbit for food, it looked like, and everybody describes it online as this most horrendous, awful thing, which, yeah, it's not fun to watch necessarily, but the movie itself was made to go against censorship.

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to fall to film when it's trying to when it's subjective, is really to be disturbing. It's meant to be sort of confrontation on me. I think there's a limit to how much anybody can take. I mean, I remember there was something called August Underground that I saw years ago, and it was I mean, it's fine for what it is. I mean, if you just want to watch an hour and a

half of atrocities, it's it's fine. I mean, it's it is successful what it sets out to do. A more contemporary example would be a Serbian film, which is you know, it's quite a well made movie. I mean to me, after a certain point, it took on an amazing predictability. I knew where it was going to go because I could just sense you're trying really hard to upset people's I know, or we're going to get to

it the end, and that's what happened. Yeah, I mean to me, after a certain point, it also becomes almost sort of unintentionally funny because it's like, it's just it piles on so much that it just it's too much. But I mean, if a film is really setting out to do that, if it's that is it's m then one must accept that and go along for the ride, or else just not watch it. I mean, don't don't watch Sallo if you have a particularly delicate tensibility, because that movie

hit you over the head for two hours with really harsh imagery. You know, all in the name of decrying fascism. We all know fascism, well, we don't all know it some people, but we you know, most of us reasonable people know that fascism is good. But two hours being punched the face and the fascism is bad. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what it is. And it's hard to get too worked up about that sometimes,

you know, if that's what the filmmaker is trying to do. Sometimes kind of confrontational, nasty, vicious, violent movies work, and sometimes they don't. It's very true. Protest cinema is is there and exists for lots of different reasons. Period. So back to Yellow, how about we get into shallow We were we were speaking beforehand, what we all want to talk about and you and I share the sense of bbil of enjoying a lot of

different things. So I was curious what's to talk about first? But really the thing that really got me into Troy was these these Yallow books, and so I figured, why not go back to something that I loved hearing from you about. So I wanted to share with everybody Troy's thoughts on five five to get into Yallo if it's your first time or you're getting interested in the genre, and then five great deep cuts. So let's go with the intro to Yallow films. First, let's go with your first one, well Blood

in Black Place Mario Bava. I mean it's the one that kind of sets the uh sets the golden standard in many respects that it's the first of the body count Jalley. It all kind of goes from there. I mean, there's really how much said beyond that. I mean it is it is the first film to feature that sort of iconic imagery and the really incredibly intense murder sequences. WHI they're still disturbing because it's a real physicality to them. I

think particular of the scenes the girl getting her face really nasty. I mean, it has a real intensity to it, but you know, contrasted with the glamour and and the sexiness and the beautiful sort of poetic imagery and so forth. You know, if you really want to get a sense of what it Jallow is all about, it's hard to talk that one as a prime and it's it's genuinely still such a great film, especially for when it was made. It it shines. I'm I'm trying to think. I don't think

there's any even current release of that one in print right now? Do you know if any? Because I know the Era one went out of print? Oh did it? I didn't know that. I know bc I put out a version, but I never looked at it because it's BCI. I'm sorry that I tend to avoid their discs. Uh. Yeah, I wasn't aware it had gone out of print. Well, hopefully somebody will pick it up

and do a nice four K at some point. Yeah, I would agree with that, And I think a lot above his films would benefit from four K. And not when people hear four K, they just are to think of the resolution. But a lot of these because of the dark imagery and literally the dark cinematography that hdr to stop the black banding in the corner of your screen when you're watching on you know, some shitty LCD panel or something. That's where these are really going to show up and shine for you.

Yeah. I it was recently announced. I can say I was. I was absolutely thrilled to do a commentary on the Whip and the Body, another one of my great favorites by Bava Forrady eight Films. And they went back into the new scan, which is gorgeous. I mean, I've only seen a standard definition, but they finally got it looking right. The previous high def version looked awful. The colors were all wrong, it was far to murky. Somehow or another they got a hold of some materials did this new

transfer. I thought it looked amazing and I said, is this gonna be a UHD too, And he said, no, no, we don't think the materials are quite good enough for that. Well, I mean, even in a standard definition version of this thing popped. So I can't wait to see what looked like blue or Baba has. I think there's only been one UHD release so far. I think there was a French release of Black Tabbath The Spoken Cat. I believe interesting. Yeah, that's the only one.

Most of Bob's films are controlled by Alfred of Leoni would be slightly difficult to deal with, So I think, I hope somebody somewhere is going to explore they were supposed to do Planning of the Vampires as the qHD. That was my understanding. And then they put it out again on Blu Ray, which made no sense to me whatsoever. Yeah, same disc as before and everything. They added a new commentary not by me. Well, yeah, they did add a new commentary that the Old Woman. Uh, and it was

a new transfer of the lague. But it was. Oh, I may be thinking of one of the other Vinent Price films that they announced. I apologize, Yeah, I might have been thinking of that. They just re released couple of the really old Vincent Price ones they did in like twenty fourteen. Oh yeah, nothing. They've been putting out some of the like the Poe films and Last Man on Earth, I think, yeah, yeah, the Bava things. Speaking of Kino all of I think all of their Bava

titles were going out of print. I don't know if they're all out out now, but the word going behind the scenes is that they they might be, or the people who hold the rights might be noticing how much their stuff is in demand and suddenly be charging a lot more for the licenses. So I really hope it's not the end of the home video stuff for a while.

It happens unfortunately. I mean, I was so impressed that David Gregory was finally a hole to get Rene Chateau to agree to doing Faceless, because he's been asking for The Moon of the Stars for ages for that film. I mean, some of these people they ask for you know, there's a lot of complaints about re releasing the same films over and over again, and why don't they put out this film, put out that film. There are a lot of reasons for this. One of them is sometimes the right holders

are impossible to deal with. Sometimes the materials just simply aren't there. Sometimes they can't figure out who owns the rights some Lendsi's best film, For example, I've been pushing for releases of from Fully Owning Brooklyn and Violent Naples and they just can't seem to figure out who owns the rights. I mean, we thought we'd figured out who it was, and it turned out they denied

it. So it was like well, I don't know. I don't know who owned the film, so there are certain ones that are just difficult to get access to for that reason. But I also don't object to re releasing the same films over and over again as long as you're going to do them better if you can get a better transfer and hopefully add into new extras too. I don't see a prom with that, all right, What is your second intro to Jolly Film? Keep read? Nice choice? Keep Read is

my favorite Giallo. I mean, it's another one if you really want a sense of what these films are like, what they're all about. It's an ideal primer in many respects. It is probably the most coheats of Argento's Galley in many respects. I think he really benefited from the participation of Bernardino's and Pony on the screenplays that Tony had worked a lot with Billin and was great. It takes kind of wild ideas and giving them a tape of something and

creating a coherent narrative. So this is one of the movies that actually kind of kind of makes sense. I still some bits that really don't make a lot of sense. The doll doesn't really make any sense, But I'm glad it's there, so it's okay. And the movie does wander off into the irrational, but that's intentional, so it's not like it's sloppy things that Ardento like to do. I love David Hemmings and it I love Darian Nickelodeon and

they make such a great couple. And of course the music by Goblin is just absolutely, you know, mind blowing to this day. I was fortunate enough about two and a half weeks ago to see Goblin playing with Suspiria at the local theater here. They played it live and afterwards they did like a full hour hour and ten show of just other themes modern music that they've been working on. And when they play Deep Bread, it just it hits so

hard live in person. They yeah, they're special. Yeah, it's my favorite of the scores they've done Deep Read, even though it's not entirely theirs. But Georgia GASLINI was hired to do the score originally, and so some of the music is his. I love that score. I love the film. I mean, it's just an amazing piece of work. I mean, it's really Ardento coming back to the Gallo and saying I'm going to, you know, make the Jallo end All Galley, which I think he did to

me. It's it's the absolute best that the genre has to offer. Absolutely. Number three then well, I hate to keep with Argento, but I will put number three with Berber's Crystal Plumage, just because I think that's another one that's just a great primer for people. It's another one that actually tells a really kind of gripping, compelling story that essentially makes sense. It calls a nice coherent through line. It's it's a little more sort of straightforward and

linear than some of his later films. It's a little less eccentric as wonderful, wonderful humorous touches in it too. Some of the characters, the stammering temp so long, for example Borrow Adorf as the cat eating painter who's pulled himself up in the house, that it paints mystical scenes because it's feeling mystical. I love I love that film. It wouldn't, frankly but wouldn't be in my top ten if I'm making a top ten list of Gallo films.

But I think, as you know, intro movies go, that's a really solid place to start. Did you did you happen to see Dark Glasses yet? Yes? I did? How do you? How do you feel about that one? I think it's the best thing he's done, best feature he's done since the spend All Syndrome. I think spend All Syndrome is his last great film today. Dark Glasses is not a great film. It's one of

those things. I was talking with somebody recently about the Halloween sequels lately, and I do this parallel that, you know, fan Sometimes it's like when you're being fed dog food for years and all of a sudden your handed a fatty overdone, you know, rock hard piece of steak, but it's still steak. He's think this is really good. Eh. You know, the new Halloween movies weren't that good, but they're better than the ones that came

right before it. Dark Glasses I wouldn't put down there. I think it's a good film. I think it's a genuinely good film. I did see some of the fans really kind of losing their minds over it, like it was active. It's good. It's a good movie, and for twenty first century ardento that will do so I like it. I actually do like it. I think has some really interesting things that I love. The relationship between the girl and the little little boy, which recalls the relationship to Carl Malden

and Tinsia Carlist in Cana nine Tales. So it's a movie that has all kinds of callbacks to his earlier films. And it's a slight plot, which is borne out by the fact it's a very short film. It's less than an hour and a half, which is very short for ourgento. But it's got energy and he shot in an Italian It's the first movie he's shot in Italian since The Five Days back in nineteen seventy three, which really helped. I think. So the movie doesn't have that ear splitting issue with some of

the voices that have heard some of the more recent films. Right, all righty, what's your number four intro to jiallo movie? I think another really good intro to jiallo would be Palokavara's film The Black Belly of the Tarantula with gian Carlo Jemini. I don't know where that movie is on Blu Ray. Please somebody make it happen. Invite me along if you wish, I'd love to do it. I it has probably any of Morconi's best score for a

jello, which is a big recommendation of itself. It has an unusually complex policeman protagonist in the form of Genini, who's just you know, if you don't know the name right off the top of your head's a brilliant factor. Worked a lot with Lena wurk Miller films like Castaway in Seven Beauties, but more recently even things like Hannibal and Casino Royal and so forth. He's one of the great Italian actors. And it is one of those movies with the

killer and black slicing up gorgeous women, so it is. It is kind of a classic example. Is very much a imitation of what was going on with Argenta's films at the time. But it's a really, really good invitation. And I think, uh, you know, a movie that ticks off all those boxes if you're looking for something that really gives you a sense of what a gallo is all about, which is what I'm trying to limit myself

to with these ones. I think that's a good example. Yeah, And I think for the people that are trying to get into the genre, that's got to kind of be where you start is what are the quintessential this is what it's all about type of titles, and so far these four have nailed it. Eager to see your fifth one here? So what is number five?

Then number five? I could go in a couple of different directions, but I feel like I need to have Bolshie here, and I think for a kind of classic representation, you would be hard pressed to do better than Elizabeth and Woman's Skin one of his best films. Great cast, I mean, really really distinguished actors in it, like Famley Baker and Leo Gain in addition to the more familiar Jallo faces like Anita Strindberg and John Stirell. Another

great more Tony score, trippy imagery of Francis Bacon inspired dream sequences. There's an animated bird at one point. It's like something out of the alf Pitchcock, Salvador Dolly dream sequences in spell, Mountain, lesbianism, lots of blood,

you know, hippies. What else could you ask for? I mean, it's just a great little montage with Leo again and his family sort of having dinner, a very stuffy, you know, buttoned down Leo again complaining about you know, those neighbors next door making old that racket and they're having an orgy next door and smoking pond. That's just great. It's great stuff. It is a really great blue ray at from Anto Macabreau on this one. This is yet another one I think would do very well on four K,

especially with ful cheese. I don't know, there's something about his cinematography that just begs you to pause every scene and digest it in because he has such an eye for like his angles are just one of a kind on most of his films, like Don't Torture a Duckling. I don't know if that's going to be a part of the other top five, but that movie is astonishing for every single scene that you pause and just look at every quarner and go, he knew what he was doing in every single shot. Yeah.

It mystifies me when people dismissed him as a hack, because I suspect it because of some of the later films. The later films were heavily compromised a by his own health, B by the budgets. I mean, you know, he just wasn't capable at that point of getting the same results. Although they're better film than they're off given credit for the later movies. I tend

to like them more than most people do. But if you look at his stuff in the sixties and seventies and into the eighties, oh, he was doing things that Brian de Palmer got a lot of credit for later, using split screens, split diopter, things like that, especially in Lizard and Woman's chem but also in Perversion Story, which was his first Gallo from nineteen sixty nine. Really really cutting edge stuff, really inventive dynamic filmmaking. And another

man who just you know, had boundless talent. He made great westerns. He did one Pilitzisco, but it was a really good one. Did some good comedies, He did some good action movies, I mean, did a little bit of everything and did them really really well. You know, since we get on his subject for a moment, I'm curious. Obviously Severn is diving deep into Franco and Mono Micabroo has done a few. Fulci is kind

of similar in a lot of aspects to to Franco's output. At least, do you think there's a chance anytime soon that we get to see any of those early Fulci comedies on Blu Ray because I don't think anybody's dive had Dovan dive in whatever into any of those movies. Yet, Uh, it would sell great for like three people. I think you and me and Nathaniel Thompson if we would buy them. I don't know if anybody else would. Uh.

I would love to see it happen. Daniel and I've talked about this before, because there are other directors who like Massimo Dlamano, And you know there's some some lesser known films that he did, like the End of Innocent for example, or Innocent of Desire. Oh, I'd love to see that put them. I don't know, but you know you say that. And Severn's got The Five Days coming out not just on rate but on a four

KUHD. Now that you could have knock me over with a feather. I thought they were just doing Blu Ray, had no idea they were going at well, go go big or go home. I'd love to see it happen. I think they should absolutely do a box set of full two comedies. You know, I mean companies like Severn as they are releasing more and more box sets that are intriguing people and buying them and so forth. They might be able to rope some people in with something like that. I think it

would be worth a try. I would certainly love to see it happen. His comedies have a lot of manic energy to them, especially his Franco and Chichio films. Franco and Chiccio were kind of, you know, they were like Abin and Costello, you know, Sicilian comics. The humor doesn't always translate. It's very topical, it's very political, it's very you know, it's very relevant to the time, and a lot of the gags just aren't planned. But I think they're interesting films and I would certainly love to see

it happen. I don't know how they would do, and I don't know if anybody's wanted to take a chance on it, but I hope that somebody will. I think with Severn's Box as a good seven Luciofolgi comedy box, that would do Gangbusters. I mean, if they can sell us Adamson and have that go out print immediately, come on, well, I think you know they would do. If they would do it, they would be wise to also include something like Young Dracula, which is you know, that's Buci

in Vampire Terrain, Scot John Steiner in it. You know, it's got some names that would be actually chi chos in that one as well. Funnily enough, grass isn't that Uh? You could maybe put in My Sister in Law, which is Ed beach Baneck film that he did, sexy comedy,

and The Eurotosist, a totally nonsensical title. The original title was something like The Senator Likes Women Despite Public Appearances, which is a very very stylish, very visually inventive and I think extremely funny movie that really has a lot to say about Italian politics, Italian kind of gender politics as well, but also

the church. It's very very bitter and it's portrayal of the church. So maybe put those three films in and add in a couple of the early black and white ones and maybe you'd have a maybe you'd have a winner, and then give us like a fulcy documentary. I'd kill I'll take my money right

now. That'd be incredible, all right For people that checked out your five that you just gave and now they're looking to get deeper, what are some of your deep cuts, Maybe some overlooked titles, something that are just these are the heart of great jolly films, well deeper cut movies. I would certainly say one of them for me would be Pupi Avati's film House with the Laughing Windows, which is an incredibly creepy and disturbing film so far unavailable on

Blu Ray, although hopefully something will change with that. Some of Avati's works are starting to come out, so there may be some hope there for that. It's Uh. It's also one of the relatively few regional ja Alley. It's not the film set in the city. It's set in a very small village community and deals very much with you sort of superstition in addition to sort of a series of killings that are going on, comes to very very memorably creepy finale. It's it's I think it's a master Yeah, it's a great

movie. There's a I think there's a Shameless DVD that's probably the most common release that people pick up for this one. But Shameless is uh is kind of shameful a lot of the time, So it's not one that I recommend. They're well, they're well named. When they get it right, they get it right, but they very often get it wrong. Yeah, not much really be said about that, but uh, and they often trash their movies up too, and they make them look really goodly trashy, which is

is unfortunate. Ban Arrow did that too in the beginning. Lest we forget the early days. If anybody remembers the cover for Pay of Blood or Inferno, they they threw good taste out the window in the beginning, but they made up for it later. Yeah, they think have turned it around. What's what's number two on this list? Well, that's one you've already mentioned. It's my favorite Lucco Bulci film and and really one of the great films

of all time for me, one of my top ten favorite films. Forture Duckling when another regional Jallo film that again very much rooted in uh sort of superstition and dealing with class conflict and prejudice and superstition and all these things kind of going on. What's a kind of barbed commentary about the church and about

the authorities and so forth. The movie that was one of the one of the two Filmschi was proudest of. They both start to mass Milia and the other one Theater Tenci, which is another movie very much political and very much pointed against the church. He was man of a very complicated relationship with and

uh, it's it's just an amazing, an amazing piece of work. The most famous infamous scene in the film, of course, is when a character is brutally beat to death in a graveyard anticipates the opening of the beyond. There's change whipping going on, but the use of sound and editing and camera angles everything that seems just well, yeah, uh, don't torture Duckling is one that kind of changed Jallo's for me. By the time I finally saw

this, I said, so, this is what they can do. Basically, it really elevated the appreciation for these films so much for me because this is, in my opinion, Fulchee's masterpiece. Everything about this is just a breath taking, immersive experience that is so hard to not have it sit with you for a couple of days afterwards because it's so thought provoking. I love that movie. Yeah, I know some people had some problems with the effects at the end, which I you know, I get if I like the

symbolism. I've always found a fascinating, full sort of fascination with the destruction of the body, sometimes going even into cartoonish extremes with something like the Spider scene and the Beyond for example. Yes, it's very fake, but at the same time it's something kind of fascinating about the way he just loves seeing seeing the body being torn to pieces, very often slow motion. So the

ending I think absolutely works that. Yeah, it's in a great cast too, if you're if you're immersed in these films, it's not a cast that is going to be well known among more mainstream people, but if you're familiar with Italian films are diventage, you've got people like Comas Milian, Barbara Bouchet, Florinda Bulkan. It's a great cat absolutely all right. Getting deeper,

what's our number three? I'm trying to think of more kind of offbeat, unusual jalli and one that comes to mind is then of Macabo put out recently called Hotel Fear or Pension Poor, a nice Francesco Gurelli film, which is a very very interesting film. And other regional film Believe me, there aren't too many of them, but it's a thing. We have three in a row like this, and stars the French actor Luke Mirenda, who was very

popular in the time film at this time. Plays a very nasty kind of proto fascist character in that film, and a very very interesting, kind again, kind of weirdly unsettling film that sneaks up on you. It's a movie of subtlety. It's got a lot of great sort of tactile little touches and it that really kind of immerse you into the film sort of set around the time of the Second World War, and yeah, it's an off beat film, very interesting, not one that's necessarily going to appeal to the body count

crowd perhaps, but I think a very worthwhile movie. I unfortunately have not been able to see this one yet, so that just intensifies my desire to see it. And from everybody that has picked up as Blue, I've only heard great things that it is. It was the winner of that bundle. It was one that people really appreciated. And Monto Micabro they are definitely deserving of all of the championing any of us can give because they've brought out some

offbeat, wild off the wall titles for years. Pete and Jared together, they they've got something magical going on because none of the movies are truly when you put twelve of them together. They're not similar necessarily, but the label has this odd personality that is just like I know that when their name is on something, I know I'm probably gonna love it. Yeah, not everything

they put out necessarily appeals to me. There's certain things I'm like, yeah, I'm good, But you know, a lot of them really do.

And I'm very very grateful to them, in particular for diving into some of the Jess Franco stuff they've done, the Paul Nashy stuff they've done, for example, and some of these other just wonderfully offbeat titles that they've picked up and given really nice additions to. I mean, I was so glad when somebody finally put out a good edition of The Devil's Nightmare for Exit, which is another one of those early sort of formative euro Code experiences with me.

IF used to show on USA network a lot in eighties, So nice to finally have that in a really nice edition. Also, Legend of Blood Castle of Blood Ceremony to Cordy Grau film, well not really about Countess Bath three, but based loosely on really excellent film. So yeah, they've done a lot of good stuff. I realized as we were talking about that I may miscounted. I don't know if that was number three or four, but I know that we got at least one more left. I think it was three.

So this one, I feel like I have to have a Lensi in here, So I'm going to go with Orgasmo, which was the first and I think best of his jali. He is somebody who did a lot of work in jalli ninjallo genre in general. He did a number of them through the sixties and seventies, and they're all well worth seeing. They're all interesting, they're all kind of radically different from one another. I mean, some

of them are closer to the Argento mold than others. This is part of that kind of group of sexy jali I was talking about before, about good looking people being atrocious to one another in beautiful settings. It's very much based on Diabolique, the great arm Joors Blueseau film the fifties. So it's it's a plot film. It's it's all about trying to drive somebody crazy, but

there's a couple of really nice twists along the way. A great soundtrack by Piero Omaeani and yeah, yeah, it's good, good, good stuff. This is one that is a part of the wonderful box set from Severn for the Lindsay Baker box set, and it is that box set. I feel like, and I've said this before, but I feel like that is going to be the turning point for Severn. I feel like after from that box set on, they've sort of gotten this air of prestige, that everything is

just taken this this quality leap. And not that they were terrible beforehand, but it seems like they really got in touch with what makes Severn truly great and that box set was just that specific turning point. And it's so well done. The films they chose for mostly all great. Obviously the Carol Baker of all she's incredible, but just a really good choice, great great movie.

Yeah, I was glad that they did that. Obviously. That was the first ever LENSI set probably anywhere in the world actually, that they attempted to do kind of a set specifically devoted to Lenzi And yeah, it's a good one. All the films in that set are well worth watching, you know. And yeah, they really went all out on it, so they deserve all the high marks they can get for that one. I agree, all right, let's bring it in for Landing. What is our fifth one?

For our deep cuts five? I think I'm gonna go with five dollars for in August Moon Mario Bova film kind of in the Ten Little Indians vein, a perversely blood free film, but at the same time, again beautiful settings, of beautiful cinematography and extraordinary soundtrack. Biro Ominiani again did one of the great scores for not just any Dowalo, but for any film. For this movie, it's an amazing contract. It's a movie Bob I hated because

it was an assignment that he came to late in the day. He had nothing to do with setting it up, He had nothing to do with casting it, so everything was just kind of you given to him. He hated the script, threw it away and improvised the movie. And you can kind of tell because it doesn't always make sense, but it's okay because it's just so beautifully done. And it's a great example of a great director taking a

not very good script and making something really interesting out of it. And had that been handed to a less inspired filmmaker, I think it would have been a really plotting movie, but the movie that he made certainly is not plotting. I think the last time I saw this I had none of that context, not knowing that was thrown together. It was very confusing at the time. But knowing that and knowing knowing much more so who Baba is now it

is much much richer than if you would. You know, if you saw this as an opening to Giallo film and that was one of your first tastes, you would probably be turned off pretty quickly. So, yeah, this is a good deep cut choice, and I think that it's it's one that is deserving of a nice, really strong release and needs one. Yeah. They Keino put it out over here, and Iro did it in the UK, and they did nice enough with it, but you know, there's a

room for a better version. Hopefully it'll show up again. Uh you know, I'm I don't think we've mentioned vinegar syndrome at all tonight. How do you feel about their their their little forgotten jolly box sets that they've put out so far. I was involved in the first one. I did a commentary on a movie called Trauma, not to be confused with the Argento film, but it was play on Claymobski's last film, the Argentinian film director who who

did a lot of calling Ashty's film. It's a really odd film and actually a movie that significantly improved seeing it again in a better version character when I first saw it, when I wrote about it in the third volume of The Dead least so perverse. So again it's helpful to see these things in good editions. I mean, I thought they were sort of hit and miss as far as collections go. Some of the films were you know, they were they were from the shallow end of the poll, let's say. But some

of the films were really, really quite good. And I was really glad to see something like Autopsy, for example, or My Dear Killer another one that thinks a really really good film getting a release. Forgotten. I don't know about Forgotten, I mean, because some of them are fairly well known, so I thought that was slightly slightly odd is a name? But and of course it gets into the complicated issue too of what is it jallow and

what it's not a gallow? And different people have very different feelings on that particular subject. So but I thought there was a worthy series, and I hope they do more. I agree fully. The forgotten part is that the only thing that I've ever really had an issue with, Because many of these are titles people have been clamoring for for years, I wouldn't really call them necessarily forgotten. Last question for you, just so you can have your night

back. I always laugh because there's so many people that are quick to say something that comes out in twenty twenty two is like a modern American jallo or something like that. So often I don't even get the parallels. It seems like sometimes they're just grabbing on to bright colors or something. Are there any films from the last say, ten years that you would say really fit the mold of a modern jallo and really kind of hit all the spots for you

that you've enjoyed quite a bit. I'll give you one that was supposed to be and that it wasn't. That was Last Night Soho, which I saw I didn't particularly care for, to be honest with you, and I was like, I don't see how this is anything like gallow Uh and the colored lighting. Okay, yes you get that in Baba. You'll get that to a certain extent with Fulk and Argenta, but not so much in a lot of the other films, it's not really they don't really tend to go.

That's really more of an Italian horror thing. That's the Gothic or like, you know, the Argento Suspiria Inferno type thing. So I think that was that was a bit of a you know, mishmash uh kind of an idea that that people lacked onto. It's like a Gallows. It really isn't over the last few years something that that really got it, I mean, I think, and I didn't like it at first. It took me two or three viewing to really come to like it, but I really grew to like

Barbarian sound studio. M hm. That is admittedly probably closer to like DNIONI felt than it is to a typical Gallow. The typical Gallo is really more of a mainstream kind of a slightly trashier movie, so it's not really as a sort of ethereal and yea artsy is all that. But I thought that film got that atmosphere and that that kind of feeling of suspense down rather well. So I would certainly point to that one as a good example. It's

a good choice. I'd probably throw out Knife plus Heart. I think it got the you know, the black glove killer aspect. I think that even a lot of the thematic sides of it you could throw in with some of the sexier jallo. At least it is. It's a really well made movie and also got a good release from Altered Innocence the Vender Syndrome partner label very very interesting, too, nice, nice modern take. I would say, yeah, I'd like to see somebody like us Fornoe do something in that thing.

Yeah, I'd love to see him do something like that. He definitely has that capacity for that kind of stuff. You look at something like I feel like the climax is far closer to the remake of Dyspiria than the remake that we got, which was an interesting film, not nearly as good as the original. It's interesting. It was too much, it was too excessive, it was too indulgent, it was far too long, and there was far too much too to swin for my taste. But you know, at

least they took it in a different direction. I could respect that. But I thought the climax was really like, oh, that's closer to what I thought, you know, with the pounding music, and the aggressive style and everything, and just kind of unrelenting, just punching it, punching it, punching it. I thought that was far closer to what a really good remake of Suspiria ought to have been. So I'd like to see him do something like that. He's he's a director kind of rises above any kind of real

genre though he's he's almost just a genre unto himself. So I don't see him doing a straightforward There was talk of Nicholas finding Refin was going to do or at least produce a remake of What Have You Done to Salange, which is another one of the great Gallo films, massive with Delemano's film Ininte seventy two. I don't know. I mean, why if he could do it, if he could do justice to it, then why not. It could

be interesting, but I kind of wonder. I don't know how that subject matter would play today, very timely now, certainly with some of the controversy that's going on with bro v Wade and all that. You know that that could be interesting, but I don't know how that would go over So but no, definitely somebody that I would love to see you know if he was going to do something a little bit along those lines, I'd be the first

one in mine to see that. Yeah, and I agree with you for the most part on Last Night and So, I'd honestly love to see Edgar Wright do an all out horror with his attempt at some of his jump cut editing. I feel like he could do something frenetic and interesting, but I don't know. I feel like he wanted to go there with Last Night and Soho, and just something held him back for some reason. It's almost like

I just always felt like that way with Tim Burton. I mean, when Timbert was still making decent movies, it was like he was afraid to commit seriously to something, so there was always this kind of jokey thing, like, you know, Sleepy Hollow has got the look of an Italian Gothic across with like a Hammer or Roger Corman Poe movie. Some of the visuals are really beautiful, the story's a mess, and the jokey tone just throws me out all the time. It's like, can't you just commit something now?

He did get closer to that with something like Sweeney Todd, which I thought was more interesting on the Wold. But you know, it's like they get the aesthetic aspect right, but they can't quite get the mood of the atmosphere. Right. I mentioned Halloween sequels. The reason Halloween sequels, you can tell that David Gordon Green has studied John Carpenter and studied it very closely, but he doesn't get it. He doesn't understand it. He doesn't understand how

to time things. He doesn't have Carpenter's sense of how to time those scarets, you know, and how to generate the tension and suspense. There's no suspense in those mountain sometimes. Yeah, it's just it's it's like you get it, your heart's in the right place, but somehow or another you just can't quite add it up quite right to get the right effects. I agree fully. I'll remind everybody make them die slowly. Just released link for this

will be in the description below, So deadly superverse. I think you're still out there to purchase right now, right, yeah, all those books should still be you know, they are technically, like you know, printed on demand, so as long as people want to buy them, they should be. They should be available all through Amazon. I would love an updated hardcover of all three of them in one giant book with some updates. Yeah. I it's tough. You know, you worry about you don't want people to

think you're just being indulgent and ridiculous. And you know, I've done two versions of the Bava book, but I still don't feel I got it right. I'd like to go back to do a third, but you know, how many times can you do that before people get this book. I'd like to revisit the fool g to a certain extent as well, and certainly the Jallo books. I would approach it differently now, I would. I would

definitely do it differently now than what I did at the time. So I thought about it to a certain extent, and I'm like, you know, I could theoretically go back and do a slightly different approach and just do a different book on the subject. But I don't know. I'd have to give it some more thought. Uh that sounds yeah, I get that. It's difficult to write that line properly. Troy. Thank you so much for your time. This has been incredible. I really hope everybody checks out a lot

of these recommendations. They are they were There were some great picks and then not to mention, the entire conversation just went to some of those places that a lot of people won't be willing to talk to, so I'm appreciative of that. I don't know, I'll find myself being burned in effigy maybe, but no, it was. It was a lot of fun, and I thank you for having me. Hopefully you'll come back some time and we'll see you next time. Thanks, be happy to to me. No