Page 23 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

perspectives. She argues that, from a psychoanalytical point of view, the Kitezh myth invites issues of
death and decay, thus acting as a prime source of inspiration for all Russian horror (and of cinema in
general). The films under discussion in this chapter can therefore be viewed as attempts to represent
an impossible collective desire, one where implications of the Russian Idea are fixated into fantasies
or 'imaginary scenarios' of a national myth. While Stojanova's chapter is organised chronologically,
concentrating on recent works, her general perspective allows for a broader consideration of the
idiosyncrasies of the Russian and Soviet cinematic mysticism and horror. As such it urges a view of
the specificity of the Russian and Soviet perception of horror, and of its cinematic representation, in
terms of its cultural, political and aesthetic aspects in a larger philosophical framework.
Arguably, the application of psychoanalysis to European exploitation cinema has provided
many innovative interpretations of previously marginal texts. However, it is the search for a new
methodology to explain Europe's vocabulary of the flesh that informs Patricia MacCormack's chapter,
'Masochistic Cinesexuality: The Many Deaths of Giovanni Lombardo Radice'. Here, the author
provides a reading of the Italian cult exploitation actor, who appeared in a number of 'video nasties'
during the 1980s under the pseudonym of John Morghan. However, as MacCormack's analysis of
films such as House on the Edge of the Park, Cannibal Ferox and City of the Living Dead indicate,
what endeared Radice to Euro-gore fans was not so much his performances in these controversial
works, as his visceral and exaggerated deaths. These characteristically centred on his flesh being torn
apart, as well as literal castrations, cranial penetrations with drills and even having his brains eaten by
third-world cannibals. While such images are frequently dismissed as part and parcel of the 'excess'
associated with Italian exploitation cinema, Radices deaths offer an insight to the liberation of the
flesh that occurs in the most degraded forms of European popular culture. As with the infamous
image of Barbara Steele's violated face that dominated Mario Bava's film The Mask of Satan, Radices
savaged and incomplete body remains one of the most prominent symbols of suffering in European
exploitation cinema. The fact that Radices corporeal performances offer an image of the violated male
body detracts from the normal gender presumptions surrounding exploitation cinema. As a result,
MacCormack argues that these visions require a new method of theorising the illicit pleasures that
his degraded flesh offers. Rather than see the actors' performances in light of a castrated/feminised
psychoanalytic methodology, the author proposes a theory of 'cinesexuality' to explain these enticing
but repulsive European representations. Drawing on Lyotard's notion of the 'great ephemeral skin',
she considers the extent to which Radices body forms an un-binarised surface that allows both actor
and audience to revel in a masochistic excess that outstrips the gender presumptions governing socially
sanctioned behaviour. MacCormack's novel response to the psychoanalytically dominated approaches
to the study of Italian horror film provides an intriguing account of one of Europe's most iconic (and
frequently punished) cult actors.
In a companion piece to the above chapter, the Italian exploitation actor Giovanni Lombardo
Radice goes on to explain how his performance style and delivery contributes to a wider cultural
understanding of male suffering in alternative European cinema. His comments are captured in
Patricia MacCormack's chapter 'Male Masochism, Male Monsters: An Interview with Giovanni
Lombardo Radice'. Here, the star reveals that his acting talents extend far beyond anything that his
flamboyant on-screen deaths would indicate. As he admits in the course of the interview, his first love is
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