The films

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Devil Hunter

Franco at his most indifferent. Ninety minutes of jungle and a monster with bulging eyes.

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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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Bloody Moon

Jess Franco doing a slasher for German money. Contains the stone-saw scene and little else.

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Trouble Every Day

Claire Denis made a vampire film with no vampires, and it was booed at Cannes.

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Daughters of Darkness

Elizabeth Báthory in an empty Ostend hotel out of season, and it is the most elegant vampire film ever made.

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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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The Devil's Bath

Austrian, based on real 18th-century court records, and about a form of despair almost nobody has filmed.

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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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Cuckoo

A German alpine resort, Hunter Schafer, and Dan Stevens doing an accent. Deeply strange.

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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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The Ruins

Tourists, a Mayan pyramid and a plant with intent. Nastier than its reputation.

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Blood and Black Lace

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

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Bug

William Friedkin directing a two-hander in a motel room about shared delusion, and it is not what the trailer sold.

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The Devil's Rejects

Rob Zombie's second film, and it turns the killers from his first into the protagonists, which should not work.

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Vampyr

Dreyer shooting through gauze at a plot that barely exists. Closer to a bad dream than a film.

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Wrong Turn

Competent, well shot, and exactly what it says. Stan Winston did the mutants.

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Nosferatu

An illegal Dracula that survived a court order to burn it. Still the best-looking vampire film.