THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY
An impressive exercise in erotic delirium by England’s Peter Strickland, who takes quite a few elements common to grade-B auteurs like Jess Franco and Walerian Borowczyk and creates a tightly controlled fever dream of a movie
REPULSION
One of the most influential horror movies of all time and a key film by Roman Polanski, REPULSION is a justified classic
THE DARK SIDE OF LOVE
The Italian sex film is an industry in itself. Here’s one of the genre’s more interesting entries, from Salvatore Sempari, one of its key directors
CRAZY LOVE
A whacked-out yet heartfelt Belgian import, this is a lush and romantic film about masturbation, physical deformity and necrophilia that plays like the most demented Frank Capra movie ever made
CRASH (1996)
What was the best film of 1996? That’s easy: David Cronenberg’s CRASH!
VISIONS FROM WITHIN THE MECHANISM: THE INDUSTRIAL SURREALISM OF JEFFREY SCOTT
Another weird art book, and another mind-tugging triumph
THE ISLE
A stunning horror film from Korea. Stylish, erotic, and often hellaciously grotesque, it plays like a deranged collaboration between Andrei Tarkovsky and Dario Argento
THE NIGHT PORTER
Upscale Nazi-sploitation that’s been denounced as sleazy and sensationalistic. Both criticisms are valid, yet the film works
NIGHT DREAMS
Although little known today, this was one of the most revolutionary porn films of the 1980s, and remains a high point in a format that contains very few
THE TEARS OF EROS
This heavily illustrated philosophical primer on the influence of death in the sacred and sexual was the final work of Georges Bataille, and a fitting testament to a man obsessed throughout his life with the link between ecstasy and horror