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Sex and swastikas! — that combo shows up in both trash cinema and high art. Luchino Visconti’s searing look at Nazi corruption sees an industrialist family torn apart by murderous greed and ambition worthy of the Borgias. The fiendish Countess Ingrid Thulin has raised a twisted son (Helmut Berger) to serve her deadly schemes; her path to power involves framing one heir for a killing while another rival is sacrificed in an SS massacre for the good of the Reich. The chilling treachery plays out at family dinner tables, in the offices of a steel mill, and in various bedrooms; Nazi fervor is equated with sex perversion. The uncut original version, remastered, also stars Dirk Bogarde, Helmut Griem, Renaud Verley, Umberto Orsini, René Koldehoff, Charlotte Rampling and Florinda Bolkan.

The Damned

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1098

1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 157 min. / La caduta degli dei, Götterdämmerung / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 28, 2021 / 39.95

Starring: Dirk Bogarde,...

I am forever trying to play catch up with foreign horror; France and Spain are two particular regions that give me foggy peepers, so I was delighted to come across the co-produced Bell from Hell (1973) - arthouse meets grindhouse in this fascinating pantsing of the bourgeois through the eyes of a madman.

Aka The Bells and La Campana Del Infierno, Bell from Hell opened in early October in Spain, and saw a U.S. TV premiere long after in ’75; while not a film that many saw (or had the opportunity to see) at the time, it’s an intriguing take on revenge that posits a touch of insanity lies in all of us.

We open with a young and handsome man, John (Renaud Verley – Snails in the Head) applying a plaster mold on his own face before being released on probation from an insane asylum. Placed there by his aunt...