Alexandra Heller-Nicholas is an award-winning Australian film critic, author and academic who has written eight books on cult, horror and exploitation cinema with an emphasis on gender politics. She is a research fellow at RMIT University and an adjunct professor at Deakin University, both in Melbourne, Australia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

One-Art, Cinema, Horror, Excess

Two-Giallo: Italy and Beyond

Famous Paintings

Three-Girls Asleep, Girls Afraid: Vermeer in The Forbidden Room (Anima Persa, 1977) and The Psychic (Sette Note in Nero, 1977)

Four-Swan Guts and Screaming Popes: Salvador Dalí, Francis Bacon and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (Una lucertola con la pelle di donna, Lucio Fulci, 1971)

Five-The Medusa's Warning: The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal, Dario Argento, 1996)

Clues, Presence and Painting

Six-Misreading Clues: Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo, 1970) and Deep Red (Profondo rosso, 1975)

Seven-Haunted Portraits: The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (La dama rossa uccide sette volte, Emilio Miraglia, 1972) and Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (Il tuo vizio è una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave, Sergio Martino, 1972)

Eight-Paint Death Clearly: Saint Sebastian and The House with Laughing Windows (La casa dalle finestre che ridono, Pupi Avati, 1976)

Painters

Nine-A Portrait of an Artist as a Mad Drunk: The Red Headed Corpse (La rossa dalla pelle che scotta, Renzo Russo, 1972)

Ten-The Myth of the "Mad" Genius: Vincent Van Gogh and Blood Delirium (Delirio di sangue, Sergio Bergonzelli, 1988)

Eleven-The Ghosts of Capitalism: Art, Labor and Exploitation in A Quiet Place in the Country (Un tranquillo posto di campagna, Elio Petri, 1968)

Other Art Forms

Twelve-Fashion and Photography

Thirteen-Filmmaking

Fourteen-Theater and Performance

Fifteen-Hybridity

Conclusion: Style Is the Substance

Chapter Notes

Bibliography

Index