Edited by Ernest Mathijs & Xavier Mendik, May 2004
1903364493 £13.99 Think of post-war European Cinema and which directors and films spring to mind? Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol and the formalist antics of the French New Wave? Or perhaps the Italian Neo-Realism of De Sica, Visconti or Rosselini? Maybe even the artistic introspection of Sweden's Bergman or Poland 's Kieslowski? If, however, you immediately think of Black Emmanuelle, Italian Nunsploitation movies, Belgian Horror films or Nazi 'sexploitation' cycles, then this could well be the book for you. The second in the AlterImage series of publications exploring global cult cinema, Mendik and Mathijs have gathered together a collection of essays which aims to investigate and examine the kinds of popular European cinema often dismissed or ignored by the incumbent film criticism cognoscenti. With chapters titles such as 'Deep Inside Queen Kong: Anatomy of an Extremely Bad Film', and 'Nekromantiks: Things To Do In Germany With The Dead', the book attempts to explore how the underground and transgressive tropes of these Exploitation films fit in with the national traditions of european cinema, and the cultural, social and political contexts they emerged from. Often hilariously camp while being simultaneously deeply disturbing, the films covered in this volume could to some seem unworthy of such dense and serious critical deconstruction. However, as the authors go to great pains to explain, genre cinema populated by vampires, necrophiliacs and cannibals often says as much about the society that produced it as more conventional, mainstream fare. For example, it is argued that the violent Italian Cop films of the 70's reflects that country's churning political landscape (a time of widespread political corruption and terrorist groups such as The Red Brigade) while the alternative cinema that produced Guido Hendrickx's S. (1998), comments on the Marc Dutroux paedophile scandal that shook the Belgian national identity to its horrified core. Also including reports on the foremost Exploitation Cinema festivals around europe, and interviews with some of the icons of the field, the book ends with a letter to the late, great Luis Bunuel, surely the spiritual father of these and many other kinds of alternative cinema. This is a worthy and illuminating volume which dares to take so-called Trash cinema seriously - perhaps more so than the majority of it's audience. Gus Alvarez |
