However, since the village only had a small video library, I found myself borrowing the same handful of Italian horror films over and over. But, while I was drawn to the gore, I’ll admit that I found the films, themselves, a bit strange. They were hypnotic, for sure, but they were very different from the more familiar Universal Monsters of the BBC Horror Double Bill. Indeed, those early encounters with Italian horror left me feeling unmoored and adrift—the experience not unlike that disengaged, dream-like state between wakefulness and sleep—waiting to be jolted, occasionally, by moments of Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, Italian style. First, the calm, then—bam! The storm! An eyeball skewered!
Of all the directors, I especially loved Lucio Fulci's predilection for cinematic excess. However, I definitely felt there was something a little off-kilter about his films. There was something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. What it was exactly? Could it, maybe, have been the exposure to an unfamiliar and deliberate pacing? Possibly, yes—to an extent. But, with hindsight, there was something else that baked my noodle. It was that dubbing!
My very first exposure to voice dubbing and post-synchronized sound in Italian genre cinema came, coincidentally, with my very first VHS rental—Zombie Flesh Eaters. And I suspect the actual moment I became truly aware that something was askew was when yacht skipper Brian Hull, played by Al Cliver, delivered his first line. Because even though the voice was striking—and distinct—it was clearly not his own. That voice, I would later discover, belonged to prolific English-born voice actor and dubbing supervisor Nick Alexander. And the disconnect bugged me. Still, at the time, there were far more important things to worry about than Al Cliver's voice. And so, with exams approaching, my first dalliances with Eurohorror had drawn to a close.
Years passed. I started shaving, failed exams, left school, had a go at driving, didn't get it, gave up, got a job and a girlfriend, lost both, got burgled, started over, got engaged—and then, on a whim, found myself wanting to revisit the films of my youth. Now, in my late twenties, with the millennium fast approaching, and, possibly out of nostalgia, I secured a copy of Dario Argento's Tenebrae—to watch—for the first time in years.
You know what? It’s funny how the passage of time can alter one’s perceptions. Because, this time, when it came to Italian horror and thrillers, everything just felt right.
This experience led me to seek out more titles. Zombie films. Horror films—The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, Zombie Creeping Flesh, Nightmare City, The Beyond, Anthropophagus. Then House by the Cemetery. I got into giallo, and then, ultimately, poliziotteschi. I was on a roll! Discovering Franco. Rollin. Borowczyk. My journey into Eurocult had begun.
And from there I segued—surprisingly—into the French and Czech New Wave: from Truffaut, to Godard, to Rohmer and Varda. To Věra Chytilová. To Murnau and Dreyer. And, of course, brilliant Bergman.
With that journey came a realisation—that voice actors are something vital to the distinct nature of the Italian filone. A dubber does not simply read lines—they give a character an identity. When I watched Barbara Magnolfi speak of sssnakes in Suspiria, I knew it was the voice of Carolyn De Fonseca, who also dubbed Daria Nicolodi’s Gianna Brezzi in Deep Red, Corinne Cléry in Lucio Fulci’s The Devil’s Honey, and was the voice of Lara Wendel in The Red Monks. She had been the voice of all these. But still, in that one moment, it just worked—character, actress, voice—all one! Olga!
