Giacomo Rossi Stuart

Kill, Baby… Kill!

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Spooky Melissa stares through the window

Amazing really what you can achieve with coloured lights, smoke machines, cobwebs and a zoom lens. Exhibit A: Mario Bava’s classic Kill, Baby… Kill! which goes by a whole host of names – Operazione Paura (literally Operation Fear) in the original Italian, and Orgy of the Living Dead, Curse of the Dead and Curse of the Living Dead in different countries at different times. What makes this prime chunk of Italian horror a classic is not its horror content – there’s nothing really here for the hounds – but its looks. Bava followed his father, a camera operator in the silent era, into the movie business but he had originally trained as a … Read more

The Last Man on Earth

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Dr Robert fights the zombies

Four years before George Romero is supposed to have revived the genre, the zombies are already alive and kicking (well, shuffling) in 1964 in The Last Man on Earth, a lurid yet oddly static example of a genre movie with all the signs of something knocked out with little respect for its audience. Unsurprisingly it got little respect back in return. It does have a few things in its favour, though. Vincent Price as the titular last human, and a story by Richard Matheson which would be repurposed a number of times, most famously as The Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston, and I Am Legend, with Will Smith. There’s a legend surrounding the … Read more