Tag Archives: Venantino Venantini

The Gates Are Opening and The EVIL Wants to Squish Your Brains! “City of the Living Dead” reviewed! (Cauldron Films / 4K UHD – Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Cauldron Films’ “City of the Living Dead” on 4K and Blu-ray 3-disc Release!

In the Dunwich, a priest commits suicide by hanging himself in the Church’s graveyard.  In the same instance, a psychic based in New York City holds a séance where she witnesses the beginning of the gates of hell opening.  The order sends the psychic into sheer fright that nearly kills her.  A reporter digging deep into the near death of the young woman also buried alive and befriends the psychic, following his nose for a good lead despite its absurd sounding hoodooism of death apocalypse in less than 72 hours.  The psychic and reporter travel to the hard-to-find Dunwich town where the residents have been mysteriously vanishing or discovered dead of curious causes.   Baffled by all the strange occurrences is the town psychiatrist who witnesses first hand the troubles that stir fear into those close to him.  When the psychiatrist teams up with psychic and reporter, they must venture to the very depths of crypt Hell to close the gates and stop the dead for rising before All Saints Day.

The Godfather of Gore Lucio Fulci undoubtedly lives up to his title, establishing himself as one of Italy’s more profound and substantial horror filmmakers before his death in 1996.  “City of the Living Dead” came at the height of Fulci’s success after his breakout into the American market with “Zombie” or “Zombi 2,” an unofficial sequel to George A. Romero’s superb “Dawn of the Dead.”  Yet, Fulci didn’t follow suit with “Dawn’s” social commentary and pale-faced flesh eaters; instead, the writer-director stemmed his undead creatures from black magic hoodooism set in the sunny and sandy Caribbean islands with just as much visceral violence as his inspiring mostly Pittsburgh-based counterpart.  Alternatively known as “The Gates of Hell,” the Italian production of “City of the Living Dead” remains set in the U.S., filmed in New York and the surrounding metropolitan northeast, as the first part of the Gates of Hell trilogy that coincided with “The Beyond” and “The House by the Cemetery,” both of which were released approx. a year later.  “City of the Living Dead” is a Dania Film, Medusa Distribuzione, and National Cinematografica production with Fulci producing as well as the American Robert E. Warner (“Return of the Swamp Thing”) as executive producer.

A medley of nationalities make up “City of the Living Dead’s” who either are or are playing American characters.  Comprised mostly of Italian actors Antonella Interlenghi (“Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century”) as one of the first doomed Dunwich victims, Michele Soavi (director of “The Church”) as a canoodler with his brains being squished, Daniela Doria (“New York Riper”) as the other canoodler having her innards become outers, Fabrizio Jovine (“The Psychic”) as the hung priest who started all this mess and as the harbinger of the living dead, and Carlo de Mejo (“Women’s Prison Massacre”) in the psychiatric lead.  There’s an abundancy of diverse Italian flavor that definitely grounds “City of the Living Dead” as an Italian production, but a minor chunk of the cast are Americans with co-principal Christopher George (“Graduation Day,” “Pieces”) as a rakish NYC reporter forcing his way into a minor lead turned major forthcoming day of reckoning and Robert Sampson (“Re-Animator”) in a minor law enforcement role that bears little significance.  Sprinkled in the cast is also the Swedish-born-turned-Italian actress Janet Argen (“Eaten Alive”) as the psychiatrist patient and UK actress Catriona MacColl rounding out the principal cohort as the psychic.  MacColl is the only actress to have a role in all three of Fulci’s Beyond the Gates films, playing different characters in each.  Between Christopher George’s skeptic playfulness, Janet Argen’s uncontrollable hysterics, and in the unmalleable wrought shock of fear, the sundry cast doesn’t hinder the performances that mesh well under the greater air of portent and the hours leading up to end of days.  Giovanni Lombardo Radice (“Cannibal Ferox”), Luca Venantini (“The Exterminators of the Year 3000”), Adelaide Aste, Venantino Venantini (“Cannibal Ferox”), Robert Spafford, James Edward Sampson (“StageFright”), Perry Pirkanen (“Cannibal Holocaust”), Michael Gaunt (“Forced Entry 2”), and filmmakers Robert E. Warner and Lucio Fulci costar.

Through an unexplained mysticism and preformed stipulations on why the priest was the be all end all gatekeeper to the dead’s awakening on Earth other than Dunwich was original built upon the ruins of a witch-burning Salem, Massachusetts or why the day after the unmentioned Halloween season (likely because Italians do not celebrate Halloween with an abundance of candy and custome), All Saints Day, becomes the zero hour date when clearly the dead are already fatally impacting lives in the corporeal realm, Lucio Fulci masterful magician qualities diverts attention away from seemingly crucial elements of the plot toward a complete and total elemental atmosphere of fear, using eerie fog, whipping wind, and phantasmagoria imagery of the macabre to implant chthonic horror slowly rising above ground.  Makeup artist Franco Rufini recesses the sight sockets with deep, infraorbital darkening under the eyes in stark contrast with the pale shade skin, creating that classic yet effective zombified corpse casing in conjunction with special effects artists Gino de Rossi (“Burial Ground:  The Nights of Terror,” “Cannibal Ferox”) use of ground raw meat or whatever the gushy material used to construct the cerebrum contents that just squishes to a pulp between the fingers of the undead when they grab a fist full of hair, skin, and brains from behind an unlucky left living.  There’s quite nothing like a Lucio Fulci film where the ghouls knock on the door from the other side, threatening the land of the living, the world even, with a sound and steady ghoulish malevolence and death in a well-lit and framed Fulci-scope to hammer down defined purpose that drives a penetrating stake through the chest bone and into a chilled soul.

“City of the Living Dead” goes beyond the format gates and arrives onto a 3-disc 4K/Blu-ray release from Cauldron Films.  2160p Dolby Vision 4K and a 1080p AVC encoded high-definition options really put this Fulci classic back on the map, unlike the small, forsaken city of Dunwich. The 4K UHD is an HEVC encoded, 2160p Dolby Vision ultra high-definition resolution while the AVC encoded Blu-ray sports 1080p high-definition, presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Through the translucent mist of natural, good-looking grain, Cauldron Films have hyper-accentuated the atmospherics with a clean rendering of the innate cooler-to-warner photography grades of blue-to-yellow with creating a harsh contrast transition. The encoding never shows an ounce of detail distress to keep textured and palpable image of the darkened crypt or the thick fog exteriors that often would degrade decoding with omitted data. The Cauldron Films release retains and sustains bitrate that fastens the dark levels to a robust and effective pitch black. What’s neat about this release is the ability to toggle between the English DTS-HD 2.0 Mono and the Italian DTS-HD 2.0 mono, both post-recorded in standard with Italian productions. Both tracks are comprehensibly sound with a clear and clean dubbing with the only detailed differences being one in English language and the other in Italian and the title card switched out for the each. Between the two, range is exact on both with not a lot of superfluous ambient sound and both tracks offer a near blemish free experience in a robust context of atmosphere. Disc 1 and 2, 4K UHD and Blu-ray respectively, come with new audio commentaries, including with cult film critic Samm Deighan, author of Italian horror cinema Troy Howarth and film critic Nathaniel Thompson, as well as individual archival commentaries with actors Catriona MacColl and Giovanni Lombardo Radice. Disc 3 includes an interview with production Massimo Antonello Geleng, actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice, and on-stage Q&A with Venantino Venantini and Ruggero Deodata (“Cannibal Holocaust”), a Q&A with Catriona MacColl, a Q&A with composer Fabio Frizzi, interviews with special effects artist Gino de Rossi and principal actor Carlo de Mejo, A Trip Through Bonaventure Cemetary – an explorational and historical account on the main cemetery where the priest in the film hangs himself, trailers, an image gallery, and other archival interviews in a near feature-length collection of conversations with cast and crew reminiscing about Lucio Fulci during filming. The 4K UHD and third disc packed with special features are region free while the Blu-ray remains region A locked in licensed playback on the format. Both features have a runtime of 93 minutes and the release is unrated. Emerging from the gates of standard definition hell, Cauldron Films tempers Lucio Fulci’s “City of the Living Dead” to a foreboding crust, burgeoning with ominous clout the undead’s underscoring resurrection.

Cauldron Films’ “City of the Living Dead” on 4K and Blu-ray 3-disc Release!

Kissing Cousins and a Foreboding EVIL Feline in “Seven Deaths in the Cats Eye” reviewed! (Twilight Time / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on



“Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye” now available on Limited Edition Blu-ra from Twilight TIme!

Set in the 1970s, the aristocratic McGrieff is on the verge of collapse with financial ruin that’ll cost the once respectable family their castle set in a small Scottish village.  Full of intrigue and ominous mystique, foreboding supernatural superstitions surrounding the McGrieff name, but that doesn’t frighten the young London residing Corringa from visiting her aunt Lady Mary’s castle.  Not before too long, Corringa’s mother, Lady Mary’s sister, mysterious dies in her bed and in the wake of her death more bodies are found with their cut throats all in the presence of the Castle’s roaming domestic feline.  Suspects range from Lady Mary herself in desperation for her sister’s sudden fortune to her unstable, gorilla-saving son James to also her in-house doctor lover who’s also sleeping with a live-in promiscuous woman intended for the young James.   Melodrama runs rampant and so does a killer who cuts down McGrieff Castle residents one-by-one in the dark corridors and gothic-laden rooms.

The Gothic-“Clue” of the 1970’s, “Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye” is the wildly entertaining Italian-produced giallo horror from the “Castle of Blood” and “The Long Hair of Death” director Antonio Margheriti credited under his more English-sounding pseudonym of Anthony Dawson.  Otherwise known with more animal ferocity as “Cat’s Murdering Eye,” as well as simply “Corringa, or in the native tongue as “La morte negli occhi del gatto, this mad family murder-mystery thriller is speculatively based off a novel by Peter Bryan, an extremely English sounding author whose original novel has yet to be revealed as the adapted base for Margheriti’s film or if a book even ever actually existed on what is more than likely, in my opinion, based off an obscure Italian author’s oral narrative or short story since the country at that time had laxed or nonexistent copyright laws – a method that produced a mass amount of unauthorized piggyback sequels for quick cash in on the popularity.  Either way, “Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye” is a thrilling, uncontained, and verbose black letter giallo co-written by Margheriti and Giovanni Simonelli (The Crimes of the Black Cat), produced by Luigi Nannerini (“A Cat in the Brain”), and is filmed in Italy under Capitole Films who appealed to westernized audiences with low-budget popular genre films at their peaks. 

At the heart of the story is Corringa, a progressive and modern Londoner travelling to join her mother and aunt at Castle McGrieff a few days earlier than expected after being kicked out for sneaking out on late nights from her all-girl Catholic boarding school and consorting with boys.  The “Dark Places’” English actress Jane Birkin embodies Corringa’s free-loving and innocent spirit becoming the white sheep amongst the Castle’s broody and plotting inhabitants.  Corringa is thrusted into the happenstance heroine of unravelling a mystery that causes her to freak out upon every discovery whether be the gruesome and distressing visual she walks into to the mere mention of someone’s throat being sliced open that sends her running and screaming into the arms of her cousin James, played confidently cool with a hint of madness in a red herring role by American actor, Hiram Keller.  The “Smile Before Death” actor had a small stint working in the Golden Age of Italian cinema with “Seven Death’s in the Cat’s Eye” being one of those projects, but his role of James is an interesting one as the Lord of the Castle who is considered mad, uninterested in either women or continuing the family lineage, and keeps a former circus gorilla caged up in his room.  One other at a loss and gross side of James, and also of Corringa, is their incestuous affair.  Yes, that’s right, the first cousins get it on like Donkey Kong as they share the bedsheets whilst embroidered in another arcana that’s more in the life and death taboo category.  Yet, all the characters are essentially in some wanton fashioned relationship with each other.  While cozying up to the Lady of the Castle, French actress Françoise Christophe (“Fantômas”) in order to gain favor within lordliness, physician Dr. Franz (Anton Diffring, “The Man Who Could Cheat Death”) also porks the “French Tutor” Suzanne on the downlow for some lust and relaxation.  German actress Doris Kuntsmann plays nomadically alluring to the dark-haired red herring outlier who is hired off the streets from her solicitating sex position by Lady Mary and Dr. Franz to be James’ break from his internal shell, bedfellow companion.  Meanwhile, the promiscuous Suzanna tries to sack up with Corringa in this full house of varied sexual appetites.  The ensemble cast continues with Dana Ghia (“My Dear Killer”), Serge Gainsbourg, Luciano Pigozzi, Venantino Venantini, Konrad Georg, and Bianca Doria. 

With an international cast, “Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye” enlists heterogeneous talent to continuously keep one on their toes surrounding every dead body that winds up throat mangled or moved from the original death stroke spot and Margheriti certainly has a firm grip on our attention between the polyamorous and dissolute sexual anarchy and the tension toned suspiciousness that ceaselessly keeps not only the characters on edge of each other but also rattles audiences anxiously squeezing their pressurized minds wrapped tightly around a castle-sized amount of distrust and suspects. “Seven Deaths of the Cat’s Eye” evokes the mad family subgenre with Margheriti’s family contending to be one of the most psychosexually and depraved group of backbiters and backstabbers of its time. Margheriti and Simonelli’s story is sensationally complex without being terribly complicated by beginning with the death of an unknown man where rats gnaw and eat away his decaying flesh. From then on, the narrative works ever so hard to purposefully not touch upon or identifying the mystery man’s demise until the bitter encounter end with a revealing finale exposure of a shocking killer that speaks volumes on the filmmakers’ intrinsic misdirection, a machination that keeps characters endlessly on the fence with their motives, and a conversation that is indecorous in a gothic setting.

If you’re looking for a different kind of giallo, “Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye” is that atypical wild card and now the Antonio Margheriti 1973 film has been released onto a limited-edition Blu-ray from Twilight Time and distributed by MVD Visual. The unrated, region A Blu-ray runs 95 minutes long in a 1080p high-definition resolution, presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. I wouldn’t say the image is a complete polished look, but the transfer restoration from Rewind Film and the Screen Archives Entertainment has excellent detail surrounding the textural complications of the cast, interiors, and exterior settings, especially the graveyard. There are minor instances of banding around the skin in low lighting and the illuminating contrasts is rather low, leaving quite a few frames in the dark so to say. Although an Italian production, English is the language spoken and amongst an international cast, dubbing over certain performances was more than likely done, but the overall dialogue track didn’t match precisely the image in about a quarter of a second delay on the English LPCM 2.0 stereo track which also very muffled like being underwater. However, the “Cannibal Holocaust” composer Riz Ortolani has a score of majestically inspirational proportions as far as horror soundtracks go with a tingling guitar riff that sits heavy in the pit of your stomach as the master of orchestration compositions brings this feature to ahead with this arrangement. The Italian LPCM 2.0 is a more obvious lips out of synch dub but offers an equally robust Ortolani soundtrack. While there are no bonus features on the release, the Blu-ray package itself comes with a 11-page color booklet with images and an essay by author Mike Finnegan along with a reversible Blu-ray cover art containing images from the film and a snazzy disc cover art designed by Twilight Time. Much deserved and sorely underrated, “Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye” is back on the prowl with a new limited-edition release to sink your teeth into.

“Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye” now available on Limited Edition Blu-ra from Twilight TIme!