ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the ripples caused by Hammer and Corman’s successful reinvigorations of Gothic cinema in continental Europe, where first the Italian and then the Spanish cinema industries underwent important periods of national production. It demonstrates how Gothic cinema’s repressed undercurrents were gradually rendered explicit in films that conflated horror with latent desire, violence, nudity and sex. Starting with Italy and its first sound horror film, I vampiri (The Vampires, 1957), and ending with Spain’s The Blind Dead films in the 1970s, it considers the main developments of this particular tradition, both their borrowings from already successful formulae and new creations. Above all, it argues that the continental response was industry- and distribution-led and must thus be understood within the context of wider exploitation cinema practices. Despite this, a case is made for the rich body of work, often auteuristic, that emerged from this period. The chapter shows how the rise of pornography in the late 1970s and specific cinematic legislations marked the end for exploitation Gothic.
