Possession

A high-water mark in the history of gialli and considered one of Italian filmmaker Dario Argento’s best, the visually ravishing Deep Red follows an intrepid female journalist and a jazz musician who witnesses the brutal murder of an alluring psychic along their path to discovering the identity of the killer. Shot in and around Rome and Turin, Deep Red marks Argento’s triumphant return to horror as well as the filmmaker’s first collaboration with Goblin, the Italian progressive rock outfit later responsible for scoring Suspiria (1977). Foregrounded by Goblin’s urgent, funky soundtrack, Argento’s creative camerawork is further punctuated by Carlo Rambaldi’s mechanical effects for significant set pieces. It was his impressive work on this film that drew the attention of Dino De Laurentiis, who first brought Rambaldi to Hollywood.

Kong, the fictitious eighth wonder of the world, makes his fifth feature film appearance in John Guillermin’s 1976 blockbuster. Carlo Rambaldi received a Special Achievement Award for Visual Effects for the mighty 42-foot-tall animatronic ape, giving the iconic titan a more expressive face than ever seen before. A dynamic monster movie at its surface, King Kong conceals the fraught yet tender romance between starry-eyed castaway Dwan (Jessica Lange) and the film’s namesake, cementing itself as a heart-pounding yet campy iteration of the classic story.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial follows Elliott, a 10-year-old boy, who develops a close bond with an alien being he shelters who was left behind on Earth. Inspired in part by an imaginary friend Steven Spielberg created during his childhood, the iconic titular character was designed by special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi and the team at Industrial Light & Magic. To realize Spielberg’s vision of E.T. as “something humanoid, strange, and not scary to children,” Rambaldi took inspiration for the creature’s face from his family’s Himalayan cat and created three robots with 86 different movements and two costumes with special gloves worn by actors to create E.T.’s elongated fingers. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning a Visual Effects Oscar for Rambaldi, Dennis Muren, and Kenneth F. Smith alongside wins for Original Score, Sound, and Sound Effects Editing.

A departure from the horror fare commonly associated with filmmaker Mario Bava, Planet of the Vampires is a visually striking contribution to the onslaught of science fiction media that took the 1960s by storm. Based on an Italian short story from 1963, the film follows the leather-clad crews of two massive spacecraft as they each set out to explore the unknown planet Aura. Considered a precursor to Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), for which Rambaldi would realize the iconic Xenomorph’s mechanical action, and an inspiration for Scott’s later film Prometheus (2012), this dreamy sci-fi sees Rambaldi’s massive alien skeletons contributing an otherworldly terror to the story’s eerie mise-en-scène.

Dario Argento’s third feature finds the Italian horror master already fully formed. Composer Ennio Morricone’s punctuating music provides both narrative drive and a forceful score for this story of accidental murder, surveillance, and blackmail that befalls an unassuming drummer. With a title as evocative as its stylish visuals, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, set in the filmmaker’s native Rome, marks effects artist Carlo Rambaldi’s first collaboration with Argento. Similar to many special effects artists in the 1960s and 1970s, Rambaldi was uncredited for his work on the film’s final, striking moment, which plays into the myth that a person’s retina retains the final image seen before death.

Influenced by Jungian dream theory throughout his six-decade career—during which he earned four Oscar nominations for directing and eight for writing—Federico Fellini tumbles headfirst into fantasy for his first color film. Realized with his longtime muse and wife, Giulietta Masina, Juliet of the Spirits offers a peek into the interior mindscape of a woman scorned by her aloof husband. Nominated for Art Direction (Color) and Costume Design (Color) at the 39th Oscars, Fellini’s gorgeous and sensitive portrait contributed to a newfound appetite for so-called art-house films in the US in the mid-1960s. Visual effects artist Carlo Rambaldi’s uncredited work to create three horses on a raft that appear during a dream sequence makes for some of the more surreal contributions of his long career.

Steven Spielberg followed Jaws (1975) with his own screenplay about a family man whose life is changed by an encounter with a UFO, and the result is a genuinely awe-inspiring moviegoing experience. Richard Dreyfuss plays the everyman hero, and Melinda Dillon became the first performer nominated for a Spielberg film for her supporting performance. John Williams’s nominated score ranges from the atonal to the symphonic, with his five-note theme becoming a key part of the storyline. Special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi is credited with realizing the benevolent extraterrestrials, whose look he designed and also fashioned into two types of puppets for specific shots. The film received eight Oscar nominations and won for Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography, with Frank E. Warner receiving a Special Achievement Award for his sound effects editing.

The final installment of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Trilogy of Life, which also includes The Decameron (1971) and The Canterbury Tales (1972), this triumphant adaptation of folktales from The Thousand and One Nights is framed by the story of a young man’s quest for his beloved. The film was shot amid the labyrinthine streets, mirrored palaces, bustling bazaars, and cloisters of Yemen, Nepal, Iran, and Ethiopia. In these ancient sites, Pasolini searched for an intoxicating sexuality he felt was no longer present in Europe. Visual effects artist Carlo Rambaldi contributed to the production by creating a mechanized mannequin with human features and bat wings.

Bearing the immortal tagline “In space no one can hear you scream,” Ridley Scott’s Alien redefined terror when it was first released to an unassuming public in the late 1970s. The seven-person crew of the Earth-bound cargo spaceship Nostromo answers a distress call on a remote moon. Finding a derelict ship, the crew soon discovers the signal they have been receiving is not a cry for help, but a warning. Alien’s iconic visual effects, including the biomechanical creature first designed by H. R. Giger and created by Carlo Rambaldi, won the team that also included Brian Johnson, Nick Allder, and Denys Ayling an Oscar for Visual Effects.

A quartet of blissed-out hippies finds an outdoor adventure cut short when their dune buggy breaks down in the English countryside. Seeking assistance and overnight shelter at a nearby villa, the friends accidentally wander into an occult ceremony that results in unexpected tragedy. Like Rosemary’s Baby (1968) by way of Jess Franco, this stylish, slow-burn thriller captures the fears and anxieties of a drifting generation and features visual effects from Carlo Rambaldi, including incredible facial casts and lifelike body parts used to chilling effect in key climactic scenes.

Filmmaker Luchino Visconti devotes this lavish historical epic to the public life of Ludwig II, the “Mad King” of Bavaria, whose reign lasted from 1864 to 1886. The infamous monarch, who was deposed shortly before his death and embraced aesthetics far more than politics, is brought to life by iconic Austrian actor Helmut Berger, whose off-screen exploits and cultural intrigue rivaled those of his character. Effects artist Carlo Rambaldi worked uncredited on this spectacular saga to create a mechanized universe within one of the rooms of Ludwig’s immense palace, a practical effect that simulates a sky moving through a lunar cycle.

“In a city set to explode, one man has just lit the fuse!” Italian filmmaker Sergio Sollima, who made his mark in the poliziotteschi subgenre of crime films in the country, directed and co-wrote this grimy revenge picture shot primarily on location in New Orleans and San Francisco, and at Cinecittà Studio in Rome. Inspired by Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï (1967), the film stars tough guy Charles Bronson as professional killer Jeff Heston, who is hoodwinked by mobster Al Weber (Telly Savalas) and his lover, Vanessa, played by Bronson’s longtime wife and frequent on-screen collaborator, Jill Ireland. Effects artist Carlo Rambaldi is uncredited for creating a black widow that crawls over Bronson’s hand.