There’s a lot to dig about this weirdo movie... An alcoholic protagonist trying to seduce his now married former lover by saying “Doesn't the idea of an Etruscan burial ground turn you on?" lol, a slew of skeezy sleazy suspects, a tense car chase through narrow heart attack inducing streets, and the walls of an Etruscan burial site slathered in blood after numerous victims get their faces brutally bludgeoned by a metal pipe. 

Armando Crispino’s The Dead are Alive aka The Etruscan Kills Again is a solid giallo from the director of Autopsy that gets off to a slow start... in fact, I was almost ready to throw in the towel this go around when all the sudden a great…

"There's No Place To Hide When ... THE DEAD ARE ALIVE!"

Based on a novel by Bryan Edgar Wallace, 'The Dead Are Alive' aka 'The Etruscan Kills Again' aka 'Mystery of the Yellow Grave' aka 'The Death God Kills Again' is a bit it of an oddball giallo, thriller where the action takes place in the original setting of an archeological dig, where a woman (Samantha Eggar) is juggling her time between a romance with her ex-husband, the professor in charge of the excavation played by Alex Cord (pretty buff for a professor - he's a bit of a fitness nut?), and a conductor working on the elaborate musical show the Festival dei Due Mondi (John Marley - most famous…

“Doesn’t the idea of an Etruscan burial ground turn you on? Hmmm? Making love in a tomb?”

Solid, sleepy little chiller. Alex Cord (“Chosen Survivors”) is cast as Professor Jason Porter, who is conducting an archeological dig at a remote tomb outside of Rome. After a teen couple are brutally murdered near the site, it becomes apparent there’s a killer on the premises. Although judging by the way the victim's bodies are positioned, could it be the corporeal manifestation of the specter of the tomb that’s being disturbed?

Armando Crispino's 1972 giallo is a wonderfully shot slow burn thriller that elevates above it's few sluggish moments into an interesting whodunit (with more than a few red herrings). The initial killings…

For one reason or another I've been a late comer to the giallo brace directed by Armando Crispino. Having only seen AUTOPSY (1975) last year and now as my first film viewing of 2017, his earlier horror-thriller THE ETRUSCAN KILLS AGAIN (1972) aka 'The Dead Are Alive'.

Whilst far from even the third tier of gialli, Crispino's efforts boast an off-kilter mood and a somewhat hodgepodge style which at least distinguish them from the more ubiquitous Argento-inspired entires in this once prolific filone. Moreover, even a desensitised veteran of these types of film will wince and likely laugh out loud at the problematic gender politics on display.

In AUTOPSY, it was Mimsy Farmer's beleaguered pathology student protagonist who was subjected…

A semi-exotic giallo set around an archaeological dig in Tuscany, where two young lovers are bludgeoned to death while exploring the tombs that have just been uncovered. The chief archaeologist, Jason (whose name seems to have led him to copy the hair, moustache and womanising nature of namesake fictional amateur spy Jason King), finds himself having to figure out who the killer is, though there remains the possibility that it could be the work of an old Etruscan zombie. Certainly the modus operandi appears to match the ancient paintings found on the walls....

Sadly, and in spite of an entertainingly shifty cast of supporting characters, this film isn't as exciting as it initially seems. The investigation is a bit staid,…

"There's No Place To Hide When ... THE DEAD ARE ALIVE!"

Based on a novel by Bryan Edgar Wallace, 'The Dead Are Alive' aka 'The Etruscan Kills Again' aka 'Mystery of the Yellow Grave' aka 'The Death God Kills Again' is a bit it of an oddball giallo, thriller where the action takes place in the original setting of an archeological dig, where a woman (Samantha Eggar) is juggling her time between a romance with her ex-husband, the professor in charge of the excavation played by Alex Cord (pretty buff for a professor - he's a bit of a fitness nut?), and a conductor working on the elaborate musical show the Festival dei Due Mondi (John Marley - most famous…

Extremely silly but oddly palatable, The Dead Are Alive is a spiraling whodunit murder mystery that throws suspicion towards every single individual (you know when the film is desperate when a suspect's 'quirk' is setting insects on fire), to the point it's simply wasted effort trying to analyze whether the film's revelation make sense or not.

(Spoiler: it doesn't.)

The violence and gore is surprisingly tame by giallo standard, implied by lots of fast cuts and bodies drenched in red paint.

The real showstopper here is Alex Cord, cast as an alcoholic archeologist suffering from amnesia, but also just so happened to be extremely hunky. Inversely, his character is written like a helpless damsel in distress, thereby begins the hilarity…

Watched “L’etrusco Uccide Ancora” under the deceptive and nonsensical title of “The Dead Are Alive!” rather than “The Etruscan Kills Again", the title under which it is possibly best known. The film is an odd but impressive giallo that somehow manages to embrace all the key hallmarks of the genre. The story by director Armando Crispino and his two co-writers (Lucio Battistrada and Lutz Eisholz) therefore manages to squeeze in an American out of his depth abroad; a string of mysterious hyper-violent murders; an insane killer; ineffectual cops; red herrings aplenty; multiple suspects; sexual fetishes; nubile young women and more bottles of J&B than any other film I have ever seen. The story has alcoholic American archaeologist Jason Porter (Alex…

There’s a lot to dig about this weirdo movie... An alcoholic protagonist trying to seduce his now married former lover by saying “Doesn't the idea of an Etruscan burial ground turn you on?" lol, a slew of skeezy sleazy suspects, a tense car chase through narrow heart attack inducing streets, and the walls of an Etruscan burial site slathered in blood after numerous victims get their faces brutally bludgeoned by a metal pipe. 

Armando Crispino’s The Dead are Alive aka The Etruscan Kills Again is a solid giallo from the director of Autopsy that gets off to a slow start... in fact, I was almost ready to throw in the towel this go around when all the sudden a great…

Der englische Titel (The Dead Are Alive) erinnert mehr an das italienische Zombie-Genre, als an einen Giallo, während der Film selbst ebenso einen Horrorfilm sowie einen Thriller darstellt, doch Das Geheimnis des gelben Grabes schafft es nie richtig Feuer zu fangen. Es sind zwar einige spürbar atmosphärische Momente vorhanden, wobei sich das Szenario erfrischend originell gestaltet und viele Klischees des „Genres“ vermieden werden. Das Endergebnis leidet jedoch unter schleppendem Tempo und allgemein unsympathischen Charakteren, die wenig Empathie beim Publikum hervorrufen. Laut Regisseur / Co-Autor Armando Crispino sollte sich der Film in seinen übernatürlichen Elementen ursprünglich mehrdeutiger präsentieren, wie er in einem Interview (auf der Blu-Ray als Bonusmaterial enthalten) verlauten lässt: „[der Film] sollte ein rätselhafter, magischer und anregender Film sein.…