Page 26 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

sexual content that is central to Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc's analysis of the French filmmaker
Jean Rollin. In their chapter, 'Jean Rollin: Le Sang D ' U n Poete du Cinema', they argue that while
Rollins erotic vampire and supernatural horror films have often been shunned by mainstream critics,
they represent a 'crucial blurring of art and artifice' occurring within the so-called 'Eurotrash' domain.
While Odell and Le Blanc outline the way in which Rollin draws on certain mass cultural traditions
(including pulp novels of the 1930s, pop art and the 'primitive' traditions of silent cinema), they
see the director's film style is far more 'painterly' than populist. Here, the authors point to Rollins
repeated use of stylistic features such as long takes and static shots, both of which allow the viewer to
contemplate and scrutinise certain features represented within the film frame. Alongside the use of
these stylistic features, Odell and Le Blanc also identify aspects of Rollins mise-en-scene (such as his use
of props) as another way in which his films balance 'the pulp aesthetic and art aesthetic with striking
results'. Here, decorations, objects and interiors come to occupy as much on-screen significance as
actors themselves, while the placement of both people and props in created or positioned stages
points towards a self-reflexive policy of filmmaking traditionally associated with art cinema. While
the authors go on to explore other aspects of Jean Rollins experimental film style, they also address
issues of sexual representation in the latter part of the chapter. For a director often associated with
both erotic horror (and also some examples of hardcore pornography), it comes as little surprise that
Rollins films have frequently been dismissed on grounds of sexism. However, for Odell and Le Blanc,
the director's work remains 'no more pornography than a painting by Delvaux'. For them, Rollins
female creations achieve ultimate power precisely because of their unashamed sexuality, while their
male counterparts remain nothing more than two-dimensional characters.
Whereas certain cycles of Italian 'sex and death' cinema have been successfully documented and
'rescued' by 'trash' cinema theorists, Leon Hunt reassesses a marginal genre anomaly in his chapter
'Burning Oil and Baby Oil: Bloody Pit of Horror. For Hunt, Massimo Puppillo's 1965 film has been
relegated to the irredeemable end of Italian exploitation cinema for a number of reasons. Not only
is Bloody Pit of Horror seen as a film that lacks a well-known auteur (like Dario Argento or Mario
Bava), but its definable 'horror' elements are complicated by masculine depictions more commonly
found in other Italian genres such as the Peplum (or the sword and sandal/muscleman movie). Rather
than dismissing Pupillo's film as irrelevant, Hunt argues that its hybrid features can be traced to the
complex patterns of film production and (regionally distinct) modes of audience reception that govern
Italian genre cinema. Employing Christopher Wagstaff's influential work on the 'electrocardiogram'
principle at play in Italian popular cinema, Hunt argues that this brand of popular European film
works in opposition to the standards of classical Hollywood by emphasising elements of excitement,
tension or titillation, rather than the narrative trajectory as a whole. As a result, strict generic boundaries
are never observed in a system of cinema that frequently offered differing thrills from disparate film
formulas to the distinct spectator groups that consumed these variants of popular culture. Having
established the reasons behind the Bloody Pit of Horror's incongruous formal features, Hunt goes on
to explote some of the issues of male sexuality that the Peplum's elements evoke in the film. Pointing
to the inclusion of the former Mr Universe (and frequent Peplum star) Mickey Hargitay in the
movie's leading role, Hunt argues that Pupillo's film offers an atypical horror characterisation of male
narcissism and suffering that warrants the serious consideration offered by this lively account.

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