SPAGHETTI NIGHTMARES
Italian Fantasy-Horrors as Seen Through the Eyes of Their Protagonists
by Luca M. Palmerini and Gaetano Mistretta
Published in 1996 by Fantasma Books
Reviewed by Michael Bolvary



   If you're looking for an exhaustive reference guide to Big Boot horror, suspense and fantasy films--complete with reviews, interviews, biographies and filmographies--Spaghetti Nightmares is the book for you.  Directors, producers, screenwriters, actors and special effects artists all contribute their words to this extensive study, making it a must-have for any aficionado of the genre.
   Following a short but sweet Preface and Introduction--which provide a clear, concise history of the origins and development of horror, fantasy and suspense films in Italy (it "officially" began with Riccardo Freda's 1957 film I Vampiri)--we jump into an alphabetical list of interviews with the following film artists: Fabrizio de Angelis, Claudio Argento, Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava, Mario Caiano, Stefania Casini, Luigi Cozzi, Armando Crispino, Ruggero Deodato, Mimsy Farmer, Franco Ferrini, Claudio Fragasso, Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, Antonio Margheriti, Aristide Massaccesi Luigi Montefiore, Daria Nicolodi, Giannetto de Rossi, Dardano Sacchetti, Tom Savini, Romano Scavolini, Michele Soavi, Terence Stamp, David Warbeck and Bernardino Zapponi.  Each interview comes with a short biographical sketch and complete filmography.  
   After all this, we get a brief but humourous essay entitled "The Critics Who Knew Too Little," in which British horror critic John Martin raves about the importance of Italian horror cinema and its influence on American horror.  Then there's a one-page summary of the Italian "Mondo Movie" sub-genre and, finally, an exhaustive series of indexes that cover every single Italian horror, mystery-thriller, violent adventure, science fiction, and heroic fantasy film made between 1957 and 1993. There's even one section called "The Dead Zone (Strange and Unclassified Films), which reviews Italian films that couldn't fit into any of the previous categories.
   The sheer variety of interviews alone make this book worth reading, although some of the subjects aren't as communicative as one would hope.  Fabrizio de Angelis, for example, offers very terse, almost disinterested answers to the interviewers' questions:

   Q: How do you rate the second horror film you produced, ZOMBI HOLOCAUST, by Marino Girolami?

   A: Not a bad film, though it could have been better, had the means at our disposal been greater.

   Q: What do you think of your trusted scriptwriter, Dardano Sacchetti?

   A: Dardano Sacchetti is a scriptwriter who rarely disappoints.  I hope we'll have other occasions to work together.

   Sacchetti himself provides far more interesting and insightful statements in his interview:

   Q: What does the word "fear" conjure up in you?

   A: Although I'm not Catholic, I grew up among religious superstitions and in a gothic atmosphere and consequently I love the unexpected, the unknown and the perturbing.  I constantly have nightmares while I'm awake, and yet I'm not afraid.  I feel only a great curiosity, a thirst for knowledge.  Fear of the dark, creaking noises and so on leave me indifferent.  I'm interested in primordial panic, in what pushes our unconsciousness to see what our mortal eyes cannot, to find terror everywhere, even in day to day life, to focus upon horror.  I believe that fear is the main spring of everything.  It is fear that motivates humanity and excess hurls us over the threshold towards goals which would otherwise be unobtainable.

   I was particularly pleased that the authors included an interview with producer Claudio Argento, as he is so often overlooked in favour of his more popular older brother.  Although he is proud to have worked with Dario on some of his best films, Claudio's most impassioned words come when he recalls his involvement with Alejandro Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre, which he describes as "the best experience of my life."  Half of the interview is spent talking about various aspects of Santa Sangre, and it provides a fascinating account of that fascinating film.
   Dario himself gives expected answers to the expected questions asked of him, such as:

   Q: Whatever happened to the final chapter of the "Trilogie delleTre Madri"?
       
   A: After INFERNO I had the story more or less ready, but by the time I'd revised it, a whole year had gone by and I realized that it had lost its appeal.  So I decided to drop the project and instead brought forward the making of TENEBRE by a year.  I think I felt restricted by seeming almost under obligation to make the final chapter.  I did take another look at the story after completing PHENOMENA, and tried to imagine the story of the "Third Mother" set in Rome, but, once again, just as everything was ready, I gave up the idea because I simply didn't find it convincing.

   Argento indicates that he has to make films out of artistic passion, not out of any sort of obligation to his fans--a very interesting point that most directors don't make these days.
   Easily the most extensive and in-depth interview here is Tom Savini's.  Though he was born in Pittsburgh and has only worked on a few Italian films, his contribution to the horror genre as a whole is considerable, especially his work with George Romero and a couple of Argento movies.  He admits that there are few artists in his family ("My father was a steelworker and my mother was a housewife"), and he isn't even that knowledgeable about Italian horror films and makeup artists, but his words are inspiring: "Famous directors will tell people who are interested in making movies: 'Go out there and make movies! Get a Super 8 camera, or a video camera and make movies.  Then go knocking on doors, bothering people and show them your work.'"  But he also makes clear the possible results of attaining success in one's chosen field: "...It was the magic of movies that made me want to be involved in the business, but being involved in it destroys the magic forever.  I no longer watch a movie and have the same feeling I felt when I was a child....  The moral of this story must be--be careful what you wish!"
   Easily the most disappointing and redundant interview is the book is with British actor Terence Stamp. Although he has appeared in a wide variety of European and American films (from Richard Donner's Superman to Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema), he only discusses his work in Federico Fellini's Histoires Extraordinaires (Tre Passi Nel Delirio) in which he played Toby Dammit.  This one-page interview is a page longer than it needs to be.
      The Index sections that make up the final part of the book could have made an entire reference work, had the reviews been longer.  Although every single Italian horror fantasy film from 1957 to 1993 is cited, the critiques lack insight.  A brief description of the plot and a one- or two-sentence opinion of the film is all that Palmerini and Mistretta provide.  "To be avoided at all costs!" is all they say about Andrea Bianchi's Malabimba (a film I actually like). Even the immortal classics of the giallo genre don't get very in-depth reviews here: "A masterpiece" is all they have to say about Profondo Rosso (Deep Red).  It truly is, but could you tell us why?  Also, I do not agree with the statement that Tenebrae is "Perhaps Argento's worst film, the fault of a superficial screenplay."
   Yet for the sheer breadth of the films included, the indexes of Spaghetti Nightmares haven't been surpassed (at least in my reading experience).  How many other Italian movie reference guides review films like Dino Risi's Dagobert, Francesco Rossi's C'Era Una Volta, or Yellow, le Cugine, by Gianfranco Baldanello?  The contents of this reference guide could surprise even the most hardened completist of Italian cinema.
   Despite the uneven quality of some of the interviews and a disappointing lack of depth in the film critiques, Spaghetti Nightmares is still essential reading, providing more than enough fodder for the fans who won't ever get enough.  Apparently, the original Italian version is longer, with more interviews that were cut out of this English-language translation.  (And I thought that only happened to foreign movies, not books.)  Though occasionally flawed, Spaghetti Nightmares is a great reference work, well worth checking out.
 

3.5 BITCH SLAPS

 

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