Italian horror films

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Madhouse

A deaf teacher, a disfigured twin and a rottweiler. Shot in Savannah and better made than most of the list.

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SS Experiment Camp

Notorious in Britain almost entirely for its poster. The film is inert.

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Cannibal Apocalypse

Vietnam veterans come home with a bite that spreads. A better idea than the film delivers.

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Deep River Savages

The first Italian cannibal film. A Man Called Horse relocated to Thailand with mondo bolted on.

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Late Night Trains

Last House on a train, scored by Ennio Morricone, which is a sentence that should not be true.

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Lisa and the Devil

Bava given complete freedom, and the film is a dream nobody can escape, including the producer.

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The Beast in Heat

Nazisploitation at its most worthless. On the list for good reason and worth nobody's evening.

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Absurd

D'Amato remaking his own Anthropophagous as a Halloween knock-off. Grim and dull in equal measure.

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Contamination

An Alien knock-off with exploding chests and a Goblin score doing heavy lifting throughout.

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Gestapo's Last Orgy

Nazisploitation, and the tag exists because the shelf gets documented, not because this is worth time.

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Kill, Baby... Kill!

A Carpathian village, a dead girl with a white ball, and Fellini borrowed the image wholesale.

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Killer Nun

Anita Ekberg as a morphine-addicted nun in a hospital. Nunsploitation with an actual performance in it.

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The House on the Edge of the Park

Deodato's Last House riff with David Hess again. Mean, cheap and effective at exactly one thing.

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Zombie Creeping Flesh

Bruno Mattei splicing stock documentary footage into a zombie film and hoping nobody notices.

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Hatchet for the Honeymoon

Bava's first-person portrait of a killer who murders brides to recover a childhood memory. Genuinely strange.

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Cemetery Man

The last great Italian horror film, and it is a romantic comedy about a man who shoots the dead for a living.

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Sleepless

Argento's late return to the giallo, with Max von Sydow as a retired detective and a genuine nursery-rhyme killer.

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Stage Fright

A killer in a giant owl mask trapped in a theatre with a dance troupe. Michele Soavi's debut and the best late giallo.

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The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue

Zombies caused by an agricultural radiation device, shot in the Lake District. Much better than it sounds.

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Anthropophagous: The Beast

Famous for two shots and unwatchable between them. George Eastman wrote himself the title role.

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A Lizard in a Woman's Skin

Fulci's best giallo, a fever of LSD dreams and a murder that may not have happened.

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Flesh for Frankenstein

Shot in 3D with Udo Kier and a spleen. Warhol's name on it, Paul Morrissey's film.

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The House by the Cemetery

Fulci's dream logic at its least coherent and most atmospheric. The dubbing of the child is a war crime.

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The New York Ripper

Fulci's most repellent film, and it is truly designed to make you feel bad for watching it.

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Torso

The giallo at its most slasher-like, and the last act is a genuine masterclass in silent suspense.

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The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Bava's proto-giallo, the film that invented the template, shot in gorgeous black and white in Rome.

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Don't Torture a Duckling

Fulci's best film, and it is about a village killing the wrong person.

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Prisoner of the Cannibal God

Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach in New Guinea. Real animal deaths, which is why it stays notorious.

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What Have You Done to Solange?

The most upsetting giallo, and the one with an actual moral centre.

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Black Sabbath

Three Bava stories introduced by Boris Karloff, and the middle one is the most frightening thing Bava shot.

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Demons

Lamberto Bava, produced by Argento, and it is a film about a cinema audience being turned into monsters inside the cinema.

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From Beyond

Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs reunite after Re-Animator for a Lovecraft story about a machine that reveals what is always there.

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Opera

Argento's last great film, and the needles taped under the eyes are the image of his career.

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Cannibal Ferox

Sold as the most violent film ever made. Lenzi chasing Deodato and killing more animals to do it.

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City of the Living Dead

A priest hangs himself and opens a gate. Fulci at his least coherent and most upsetting.

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Four Flies on Grey Velvet

The third of Argento's Animal Trilogy, and the least seen because it was legally locked away for decades.

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The Cat o' Nine Tails

The middle of Argento's Animal Trilogy, and the one he liked least. A blind man and a reporter chase a killer.

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Blood and Black Lace

The giallo template, and still the best-looking film in the category.

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Inferno

The Suspiria sequel. Less coherent, more beautiful, and has the best underwater sequence Argento shot.

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A Bay of Blood

The hinge between giallo and slasher. Friday the 13th Part 2 lifts two murders almost shot for shot.

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Black Sunday

Bava could not afford colour and made the best-looking gothic ever shot. Barbara Steele's face did the rest.

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Phenomena

Jennifer Connelly communicates with insects at a Swiss boarding school, and there is a chimpanzee with a razor.

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Tenebrae

Argento's last great giallo, and the one with the three-minute crane shot up the side of a house.

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The Beyond

Almost no coherent plot and that is the argument for it. One of the bleakest endings in the genre.

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Zombie Flesh Eaters

A zombie fights a shark. There is also an eye and a splinter. Fulci's most purely entertaining film.

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The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

Argento's debut, and the film that turned the giallo into an export industry.

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Deep Red

Argento's best. Goblin's score does half the work and is fully aware of it.

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Immaculate

Nunsploitation with a real budget. The last shot is a single unbroken take and it is the reason to watch.

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Eyes Without a Face

A surgeon steals faces for his disfigured daughter. Filmed with a tenderness that makes it far worse.

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Suspiria

Not a remake so much as an argument with the original. Colder, longer, and about postwar German guilt.

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Dawn of the Dead

The best zombie film ever made, set in a shopping mall, and much funnier than people remember.

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Suspiria

Barely a plot and possibly the most beautiful horror film ever shot.

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Don't Look Now

Grief, Venice, and an edit that keeps showing you the ending before you can read it.

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Cannibal Holocaust

Found footage nineteen years before Blair Witch, and six animals actually died to make its point.