Between 1970 and 1974, numerous Japanese film companies - in particular Nikkatsu and Toei - produced dozens of films in a new sub-genre which combined action, sex, violence and crime, and was dominated by ruthless and deadly delinquent females. Learn More
UKIYO-E – “images from the floating world” – were the most popular art-form of 19th century Japan. Like modern-day manga, these prints could be mass-produced and were admired by people from all sectors of society; and as in manga, the art of ukiyo-e included significant sub-genres dealing in violence. erotica and horror. Learn More
The Marquis de Sade (1740-1804) is perhaps the most extreme example of a writer whose actual life history has been inextricably confused with the events and characters depicted in his fiction, resulting in the popular perception of de Sade as some mythic personnification of sexual depravity, cruelty and evil. Learn More
FREAK BABYLON is a sometimes startling, sometimes disturbing documentary of the history of one of mankind’s most fascinating sciences – teratology – and its shadowy cultural correlative, the Freakshow, from ancient times to the present day. Learn More
An illustrated appreciation of the films of Jean Rollin, the cult French film director best-known for his surrealistic depictions of vampires, sex, and horror. Learn More
The Grand Guignol Theatre in Paris, founded by Oscar Metenier in 1897, soon became world-renowned for staging wild and bizarre spectacles of madness, mutilation, horror and death. Learn More
In Edogawa Rampo's Moju: The Blind Beast, a deranged, scarred and sightless sculptor kidnaps a model and imprisons her in a psychedelic labyrinth of giant sculpted eyes and other outlandish body parts, before dismembering her in a fearful blood-orgy. Learn More