In its heyday from the late 1950s until the early 1980s Italian horror cinema was often characterised by an excess of gore, violence and often incoherent plot-lines. Films about zombies, cannibals and psychopathic killers ensured there was no shortage of controversy, and the genre presents a seemingly unpromising nexus of films for sustained critical analysis.
But Italian horror cinema with all its variations, subgenres and filoni remains one of the most recognisable and iconic genre productions in Europe, achieving cult status worldwide. One of the manifestations of a rich production landscape in Italian popular cinema after the Second World War, Italian horror was also characterised by its imitation of foreign models and the transnational dimension of its production agreements, as well as by its international locations and stars.

This collection brings together for the first time a range of contributions aimed at a new understanding of the genre, investigating the different phases in its history, the peculiarities of the production system, the work of its most representative directors (Mario Bava and Dario Argento) and the wider role it has played within popular culture.

Stefano Baschiera is Lecturer in Film Studies at Queen's University Belfast.
Russ Hunter is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television at the University of Northumbria.

Cover image: Zombie Flesh Eaters, Lucio Fulci, 1979

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Acknowledgements; Introduction; Chapter 1: Preferisco l'inferno: Early Italian horror cinema, Russ Hunter; Chapter 2: Domestic Films Made for Export: Modes of Production of the 1960s Italian Horror Film, Francesco Di Chiara; Chapter 3: The 1980s Italian horror cinema of imitation: the good, the ugly and the sequel, Stefano Baschiera; Chapter 4: Knowing the unknown beyond: 'Italianate' and 'Italian' horror cinema in the twenty-first century, Johnny Walker; Chapter 5: Bavaesque: The Making of Mario Bava as Italian horror auteur, Peter Hutchings; Chapter 6: The Argento Syndrome: Aesthetics of Horror, Marcia Landy; Chapter 7: Scrap Metal, Stains, Clogged Drains: Argento's Refuse and Its Refusals, Karl Schoonover; Chapter 8: The Giallo/Slasher Landscape: Ecologia del delitto, Friday the 13th, and Subtractive Spectatorship, Adam Lowenstein; Chapter 9: Kings of Terror, Geniuses of Crime: giallo cinema and fumetti neri, Leon Hunt; Chapter 10: Political Memory in the Italian Hinterland: Locating the 'Rural Giallo', Austin Fisher; Chapter 11: The Horror of Progressive Rock: Goblin and Horror Soundtracks, Craig Hatch; Chapter 12: 'The Only Monsters Here Are the Filmmakers': Animal Cruelty and Death in Italian Cannibal Films, Mark Bernard; Chapter 13: Italian Horror cinema and Italian Film Journals of the 1970s, Paolo Noto