Director: Jess Franco
Writer: Erich Tomek
Release year: 1981
German Title: Die Säge des Todes
If only every slasher film had a stone mill saw at its disposal.
A boarding school is plagued by grisly murders. Cult director Jess Franco, with his inimitable ways of poor or artistic taste – you be the judge of that – gives us his take on the late 70′s/early 80′s whodunit slasher format.
Director: Alex de la Iglesia
Writers: Jorge Guerricaechevarría and Alex de la Iglesia
Release Year: 1995
English title: The Day Of The Beast
An acid comedy for Christmas!
Just as it happened in the film industries of many European countries, the horror genre in Spain had a slow and difficult development until the 60s, when people like Narciso Ibanez Serrador and Amando de Ossorio added a Spaniard flavor to the Eurohorror of those years. However, Spaniard horror lost steam as the 70s ended and by the 80s it was again in a deep slumber in which only cult figures like Jess Franco and Paul Naschy kept truly working within the genre. Fortunately, the 90s brought an entirely new generation of young filmmakers who, having grown up with the films of that golden age, started to create a new series of horror films for the modern reality of Spain.
Director: Jess Franco
Writer: Erwin C. Dietrich and Jess Franco
Release year: 1977
German title: Greta – Haus Ohne Männer
Germo-Latino tabsploitation
Abbie Phillips (Tania Busselier) suspects her sister – lets call her Sophie, shall we? – is being mistreated in a mental hospital. When she looses all contact with Sophie, she comes up with a plan to have herself committed to the asylum by Dr. Arcos (Jess Franco), who on his terms also suspects foul play within the walls of the institute. That’s her way to try and find out what happened to her sister. With holding the friendly Dr. Arcos at gunpoint while explaining her idea, you can already suspect that she didn’t think things through properly, let alone this being one of the more clever ideas she ever came up with. A poor girl with a plan doomed to failure, as the place she so desperately wants to get into is run be Greta (that’s Ilsa, the She Wolf of the SS re-incarnated as the exact spitting image of Dyanne Thorne), a very nasty warden who’s only joy in life seems to be torturing women, throwing depraved sex & rape parties, playing vicious S&M games and a bit of that good old killing for pleasure too.
Director, writer: Jean Rollin
Writer: Jacques Ralf
Release year: 1982
Jean Rollin’s LA MORTE VIVANTE (aka THE LIVING DEAD GIRL) – so far the one and only Rollin movie I’ve seen – is a very hit-and-miss kind of deal. But I’m not here to talk about the actual movie, of course.
(Spoilers!)
Director: Narciso Ibañez Serrador
Writers: Juan Tebar & Narciso Ibañez Serrador
Release Year: 1969
English title: The House That Screamed
The horror of all-girl schools: Spanish style!
This little known Spanish shocker tells the story of a naive teenage girl who arrives at a boarding school with a very dark (and dangerous) secret, all told in the most spooky and stylish way possible.
Director: Andrea Bianchi
Writer: Piero Regnoli
Release year: 1981
LE NOTTI DEL TERRORE or BURIAL GROUND or THE ZOMBIE DEAD or whatever else aka-title this steaming pile of zombie-turd is known by, easily is one of the best bad zombie-movies out there. And a must-see for all Italian zombie-fans. You know, the slow, dry & dusty kind.
(Spoilers!)
A year has come & gone and Offscreen Film Festival is ready to kick off the third edition of their annual festivities. From the 4th of March to the 21st, this year’s program will again take you on a voyage across extravagant cinematographic landscapes. A trip down Japanese, European & Italian genre cinema from past days as well as an introduction to some freshly released films from today’s world cinema.
“Film fans with a taste for the unconventional and the unusual, rejoice!”
In this news flash you’ll find the trailer of this year’s edition, a blurb from Offscreen’s website explaining briefly what all you can expect and to get your cinephilic juices flowing, we’ve compiled a photo gallery with some poster art & movie stills all related to the films on Offscreen’s 2010 program.
Images often say more than words, so we’ll leave it at that. Now proceed and go click on some things below… and be amazed!
