8. Breaking Taboos
Our Italian friends are not shy to venture into taboo territory and this makes their films quite the viewing experience. Lucio Fulci's Donald Duck voiced killer has no compunction in stabbing young girls and women in the groin. Ruggero Deodato burned many sacred cows in Cannibal Holocaust besides flesh eating, there was forced abortion where the foetus is buried in mud, and also a woman being killed with a stone dildo attack. Joe D'Amato positively wallowed in breaking taboos. First of, there was his Buio Omega (Beyond the Darkness) where he is not just content to have his protagonist kill young women in a brutal and sadistic manner, he also has to introduce a seedy atmosphere of necrophilia. Later on, D'Amato would go the whole taboo breaking way with a real life shot of a woman masturbating a horse cropping up in Emanuelle in America. He would go the whole hog in Porno Holocaust and Erotic Nights of the Living Dead - mixing horror with hardcore sex. In the case of Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, the first hardcore sequence features two ladies and a well hung gentleman with terrible genital warts!