Atrocious Tales of Love and Death

Four tales unfold in the Eternal City: While vacationing in Rome, architect John encounters a young man whose romantic woes remind him of a painful incident from his own youth; retired opera director Jerry discovers a mortician with an amazing voice, and he seizes the opportunity to rejuvenate his own flagging career; a young couple have separate romantic interludes; a spotlight shines on an ordinary man.

The trademark of The Phantom, a renowned jewel thief, is a glove left at the scene of the crime. Inspector Clouseau, an expert on The Phantom's exploits, feels sure that he knows where The Phantom will strike next and leaves Paris for the Tyrolean Alps, where the famous Lugashi jewel 'The Pink Panther' is going to be. However, he does not know who The Phantom really is, or for that matter who anyone else really is...

A self-conscious and self-referential adventure into the (pretend) lives of legendary actors in Paris.

In this sketch comedy compared to the American film Hellzapoppin, a spectacle is put on to celebrate the wedding of a nobleman, but the results are disastrous.

Copenhagen, Denmark, 1962. When a high-ranking Soviet official decides to change sides, a French intelligence agent is caught up in a cold, silent and bloody spy war in which his own family will play a decisive role.

A rich farmer is well known for being very unkind. He's misanthropic, misogynous and cantankerous. Until he meets by chance a gorgeous girl...

Ferdinando Cefalù is desperate to marry his cousin, Angela, but he is married to Rosalia and divorce is illegal in Italy. To get around the law, he tries to trick his wife into having an affair so he can catch her and murder her, as he knows he would be given a light sentence for killing an adulterous woman. He persuades a painter to lure his wife into an affair, but Rosalia proves to be more faithful than he expected.

Episodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.

Three partisans bound by a strong friendship return home after the war, but the clash with everyday reality puts a strain on their bond.

Michel and Juliette have just broken up over Michel's affair with the much younger Romance. Alice and Nicolas are still together, but maybe this is because Nicolas does not know of Alice's affair with handsome sports photographer Gaspard. This sly sex comedy, the sophomore effort of Belgian filmmaker Lucas Belvaux, follows the covert sexual misadventures of the troubled foursome.

Four friends gather at a villa with the intention of eating themselves to death.

An upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.

In the seaside town of Rochefort, twin sisters Delphine and Solange dream of love and artistic fulfillment beyond their quiet lives. As sailors, artists, musicians, and chance visitors pass through town during a weekend fair, a web of near-misses and romantic longing brings ideal partners tantalizingly close—without their realizing it.

Darien, a left-wing police informant, is forced to lure his old friend Sadiel to Paris, allegedly to film a television special about the Third World. Sadiel, the exiled leader of a North African state, is being hunted by the ruthless Colonel Kassar, who will stop at nothing to capture his political rival. Once Sadiel arrives in Paris, Darien realizes he has been manipulated. He tries to turn back the clock, not realizing what or who he’s truly dealing with.

The Pink Panther diamond is stolen once again from Lugash and the authorities call in Chief Inspector Clouseau from France. His plane disappears en-route. This time, famous French TV reporter Marie Jouvet sets out to solve the mystery and starts to interview everybody connected to Clouseau.

Inspector Clouseau disappears, and the Surete wants the world's second best detective to look for him. However, Clouseau's enemy, Dreyfus, rigs the Surete's computer to select, instead, the world's WORST detective, NYPD Sgt. Clifton Sleigh. Sleigh obtusely bungles his way past assassins and corrupt officials as though he were Clouseau's American cousin.

Angelo "Snaps" Provolone made his dying father a promise on his deathbed: he would leave the world of crime and become an honest businessman. Despite having no experience in making money in a legal fashion, Snaps sets about to keep his promise.

The life story of an 18th century womanizer who's arrested, not so much for his crimes, but because he's viewed as an undesirable by the husbands and families of the women he seduces.

Après quinze ans passés derrière les barreaux, Bruno, qui prône la révolution prolétarienne, s'évade. Ce dernier veut continuer la lutte, faire sortir ses camarades de prison, libérer les masses du joug capitaliste. Tous ses anciens alliés n'y croient plus, même Jeanne qui s'est mariée et a maintenant des enfants.

A shipwreck strands a modern Italian businessman on a desert island. Like Robinson Crusoe he must find a way to return to civilization; unlike him--he's a 20th-century man, a totally different case.

Playwright irreparable failure is betrayed by a concubine with the lawyer that finances the charade. But one day arrives at his house Honey, Eastern African domestic workers to first service, to boot, is a billionaire and of royal blood.

A beautiful woman who lives on an island with her abusive husband, entices a young man into a murder-for-money plot.

An experiment of psychological effects under stressful conditions in a shelter. When fifteen strangers are put into a nuclear shelter to see how long they can survive without interaction with the outside, things work out fine.

We follow 24 hours in the life of a being moving from life to life like a cold and solitary assassin moving from hit to hit. In each of these interwoven lives, the being possesses an entirely distinct identity: sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes youthful, sometimes old. By turns murderer, beggar, company chairman, monstrous creature, worker, family man.

Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.

Michel is a young technician in the fledgling TV industry and is due for military service in two months at the time of the Algerian War. Juliette and Liliane are inseparable best friends, and aspiring actresses, who hang around outside the TV studio. Michel invites them in to watch, flirts with them both, and dates them separately and together. When Michel goes on a holiday to Corsica, just before he is drafted, the girls follow.

Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.

An investment planner, bored with his job and his girlfriend, is given the opportunity to help open a new firm in South America. Once in the new country, he finds himself dealing with dictators and revolutionaries during a time of intense political upheaval, and to complicate his life further, he begins an affair with his new employer's wife.

A football player and his mates travel to the planet Mongo and find themselves fighting the tyranny of Ming the Merciless to save Earth.

In 1925, Gabriela, a poor, uneducated, yet charming woman becomes cook, mistress, and then wife of Nacib, a bar owner in Ilhéus, a small Brazilian coastal town run by the local colonels.

Art film producer Jeremy Prokosch, unhappy with the work of his director, hires Fritz Lang (as himself) to direct an adaptation of The Odyssey, but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb, he brings in a screenwriter to energise the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.

After World War II, a woman refuses to believe her husband, missing on the Russian front, is dead. Flashbacks reveal their brief courtship and marriage. Years later, she travels to Russia with his photo, determined to find him. What will she discover?

In Belle Époque Paris, a 19th-century Parisian aristocrat falls in love with a lower-class prostitute who seduces him but never loves him.

In 1870, Japanese ambassador Sakaguchi and his entourage travel by train to Washington to deliver a valuable sword to the President of the United States, a gift from the Emperor of Japan. On board the same train are two robbers, Link and Gauche, ready to make their move…

After achieving fame as a movie star, a woman finds her private life invaded by relentless fans, leading her mother’s ex-lover to intervene and offer protection.

Poet/lecturer Charles Serking awakens from his alcoholic haze long enough to take a bus back to L.A. and plunge into an orgy of drink and sexual depravity.

A seductive and ruthless spy in the service of Germany steals state secrets- including the formula for poison gas-from England and France during World War I. British intelligence, in turn, tries to hunt her down.

In 1937, the young French engineer Jo Dupuche landed a job in Ecuador, with the promise of a better life. While he stops on a Caribbean island, he discovers that the mine where he was hired has gone bankrupt and finds himself penniless. Trapped with his wife in the tropics, the couple must cope. While his wife finds work thanks to white settlers, Jo is housed in a ghetto where he forms a romantic relationship with a young prostitute. Shot on 35mm in Cuba at the end of the 1980s with all the constraints inherent to the country, this TV film paints an uncompromising picture of colonialism in line with the eponymous novel by Simenon (1934).

The life of the actress and model Capucine inspired this film by Michel Soutter, played by Capucine herself in the company of Heinz Béat, Antoinette Moya, Corinne Corderey and Jean-Pierre Malo.

After his young lover, Gitone, leaves him for another man, Encolpio decides to kill himself, but a sudden earthquake destroys his home before he has a chance to do so. Now wandering around Rome in the time of Nero, Encolpio encounters one bizarre and surreal scene after another.

At a 1930s New Orleans bordello, Hallie is the main attraction for both clients and the shrewd madam. The arrival of Dove Linkhorn, her lovesick sweetheart from three years ago, disrupts the normal and triggers a chain of events involving a number of people, including the young woman he travelled with, who is now the Doll House's newest employee.

A successful advertising journalist, embarks on a journey to Egypt where he encounters Maryam, a striking Eritrean woman whose beauty is matched only by her enigmatic presence. What begins as a chance meeting gradually evolves into a layered emotional connection that challenges Giorgio’s worldview and highlights cultural and racial divides.

A young recruit to the Italian army discovers and rejects the seedy world of soldiers who prostitute themselves to supplement their income. But before leaving this world he is raped by a highly-respected senior officer and must decide whether to risk bringing proceedings against him.

Love blossoms between crusader Bradamante—a woman knight wearing an invincible suit of armor—and Moorish prince Ruggero. But a sorceress predicts to Bradamante her beloved will die in battle at the hand of fellow Christian paladin Rolando, whom in turn is in love with Isabella, Ruggero's sister.

Also known as The Sinner on UK VHS, this one could almost be mistaken for a D'Amato Black Emanuelle film (as well as Jess Franco who also had a film with the same video title). The Italian title translates as The Moon-Skinned Girl, a reference to the amazingly attractive Zeudi Araya, who made two other films with the same director. As a film it really typifies the 'eurotika' of the 1970s - the story concerns a couple with marital problems who escape to the Seychelles and the husband meets - and has an affair with - the title character. The wife meanwhile meets an ex-pat living there (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart!) with whom she has a fling. The couple realise their love for each other and return home stronger for it.