Director Mario Bava pioneered the giallo genre with this Hitchcockian suspenser (aka THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH) about a young American chased across Rome by "the Alphabet Murderer." Tourist Leticia Roman visits her aunt, only to have the old woman die of a heart attack on her first night there – just as the electricity goes out! In quick succession, Roman runs out into the stormy night, gets knocked down by a purse snatcher and witnesses a brutal murder. But when she awakens in the hospital, no one believes her. She is befriended by a smitten young doctor (John Saxon), who begrudgingly helps her try to find the key to the mystery. Look for Italian-American actor Dante DiPaolo as the tormented reporter who may know the killer’s identity (DiPaolo later became George Clooney’s uncle by marriage to George’s aunt Rosemary).

Also known as TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE, this is the great-granddaddy of slasher movies, a movie that profoundly influenced late-1970s and 1980s horror, from all the Italian gialli that came after it to the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise. Thirteen oversexed Italians, most of them concerned with securing the land rights to the remote, rural bay of the title, slaughter one another in amazingly inventive ways. With Claudine Auger (THUNDERBALL), Luigi Pistilli (THE GREAT SILENCE), Laura Betti (LA DOLCE VITA; HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON). "Unreels like a macabre, ironic joke … an Elizabethan tragedy as Tex Avery might have written." – Tim Lucas.

Lovely Elke Sommer is menaced by Joseph Cotten, a 400-year-old sadistic nobleman bent on restoring his youth in Bava’s gruesome, Grand Guignol Gothic. With Massimo Girotti, Rada Rassimov. “… an almost Technicolor richness that encompasses a wide range of styles, from an enameled hardness that recalls the work of Douglas Sirk to a luminous, painterly vividness based on Bava’s fondness for color gels and his endlessly churning fog machine … ultimately a heady exercise in style, with several brilliantly mounted sequences; a convincing, insistent air of horror; and some unforgettable imagery.” – Gary Morris, Images Movie Journal.