Blood in the Streets Histories of Violence in Italian Crime Cinema

Blood in the Streets investigates the various ways in which 1970s Italian crime films were embedded in their immediate cultural and political contexts. The book analyses the emergence, proliferation and distribution of a range of popular film cycles (or filoni) - from conspiracy thrillers and vigilante films, to mafia and serial killer narratives - and examines what these reveal about their time and place.

With industrial conditions geared around rapid production schedules and concentrated release patterns, the engagement in these films with both the contemporary political turmoil of 1970s Italy and the traumas of the nation's recent past offers a range of fascinating insights into the wider anxieties of this decade concerning the Second World War and its ongoing political aftermath.

Austin Fisher is Principal Academic in Media Production at Bournemouth University. He is the author of Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western, editor of Spaghetti Westerns at the Crossroads and Grindhouse: Cultural Exchange on 42nd Street, and Beyond, and founding co-editor of the 'Global Exploitation Cinemas' book series. His main area of expertise concerns popular Italian cinema's relationship with political movements of the 1960s and 1970s.