Movies
Five Giallo Movies to Watch to Get a Crash Course in the Subgenre
What I’d like to share with you here is a quick, five-film crash course in getting to know the ins and outs of the giallo genre. Astound your friends and amaze your peers with your in-depth knowledge once you’ve completed this simple course from the comfort of your own couch!
It’s giallo month here at Horror Press. If you saw that and asked yourself, “What the hell is giallo anyway?” then this is the article for you. In brief, giallo is a subgenre of Italian horror that had its heyday from the late 1960s through the late 1970s and is named after the yellow covers (“giallo” is Italian for “yellow”) of a series of popular pulp crime novels. Giallo movies (referred to in the plural as gialli) are typically murder mysteries that blend whodunits with a proto-slasher vibe, usually following professional or amateur detectives on the trail of a murderer (who is almost invariably wearing black gloves) who stalks and kills an interconnected group of victims (who are almost always beautiful women).
What I’d like to share with you here is a quick, five-film crash course in getting to know the ins and outs of the giallo genre. Astound your friends and amaze your peers with your in-depth knowledge once you’ve completed this simple course from the comfort of your own couch!
A tip: Go ahead and watch these movies in English. You won’t be breaking any cinema snob rules. Italian movies in the 1960s and 1970s were largely co-productions with other nations and featured actors on set speaking whatever language they were most comfortable with, with the intention that every character would later be dubbed into whatever language the audience spoke. So if you speak English, good news! The director intended for you to watch the movie in English. Do you speak Italian? Go ahead and throw on that Italian track and bask in your authenticity. But it’s absolutely unnecessary to seek out subtitled versions of any of these movies, several of which feature English-speaking actors in major roles.
Five Giallo Movies to Watch
Blood and Black Lace (1964)
Mario Bava set the template for the 1970s giallo film with his 1963 movie The Girl Who Knew Too Much. He was very obliging apparently, because after that he set the template for the 1980s teenage slasher film with an extended sequence in his 1971 movie A Bay of Blood. However, as good as those movies are, the Bava movie you need to watch to understand what the giallo was doing in its early years is Blood and Black Lace.
The movie follows a masked killer stalking the models working at a fashion house in Rome to keep a dangerous secret hidden. At least, it’s about that on paper. Frankly, the whodunit doesn’t really make all that much sense. But it doesn’t matter, because the movie is most concerned with presenting the viewer with gorgeous, stylish, color-drenched frames as the murders occur, and at this it succeeds beautifully. Style has not only trumped substance, it has devoured it whole. This approach would come to dominate the giallo genre, for better or worse, but mostly for better.
Deep Red (1975)
You can’t just jump into talking about giallo movies without a Dario Argento title in your quiver. While his debut film, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage would also give you a great idea of what Argento was all about before he started dabbling in more supernatural fare like Suspiria, Deep Red is the quintessence of the director’s signature filmmaking style.
This features so many Argento hallmarks it’s difficult to keep track, including a memorable score by the band Goblin, the protagonist digging into every detail of an important memory to attempt to solve a murder, and oodles of style, style, style. Does it make sense that a porcelain doll has just skittered into the frame? Of course not! But were you freaked out by it? Exactly.
Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)
For one thing, this movie is important because it features a trifecta of giallo stalwarts in director Sergio Martino (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, All the Colors of the Dark, Torso) and stars Anita Strindberg (A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Murder Syndrome, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail) and Edwige Fenech (Five Dolls for an August Moon, The Case of the Bloody Iris, Strip Nude for Your Killer).
For another, it’s an exploration into how giallo can quite easily tip into softcore without sacrificing the genre’s effervescent murder mystery twists and turns. An adaptation of Poe’s “The Black Cat” with a heaping dollop of lesbian erotica on top, Your Vice is a thrilling, jangling, feast for the senses.
Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)
You also can’t make an essential giallo list without bumping up against Lucio Fulci. While the director is probably best known for his supernatural gore-fests like The Beyond and Zombie, he made quite a few contributions to the giallo genre, usually tawdrier fare like The New York Ripper and Murder-Rock: Dancing Death. While Don’t Torture a Duckling is one of his classier titles, it’s nevertheless got a no-holds-barred approach to its storytelling that is darker and more brutal than quite a few other 1970s gialli.
Viewing the genre through the lens of such a distinctive filmmaker – who generally has such a gleeful disdain for the notion of “good taste” – is an important way to glimpse the wider breadth of the genre. The gialli were never here to class up the joint, but sometimes when you’re watching a Bava or Argento movie, you can be forgiven for mistakenly thinking so.
StageFright: Aquarius (1987)
StageFright: Aquarius comes from director Michele Soavi, who came to prominence too late to direct many proper gialli, though he was an assistant director on several Argento movies and made appearances in early ’80s Italian offerings including Argento’s Tenebrae (also excellent), A Blade in the Dark, and the aforementioned The New York Ripper. However, that’s the thing that makes StageFright special. It’s a movie that’s deeply in conversation with the American slasher boom of the 1980s (which had pretty much crowded out the by-then venerable giallo genre), yet doesn’t sacrifice any of its innate Italian-ness.
Following an owl-masked killer murdering the cast members of a theater production, it’s a terrific, weird, compelling movie that blends top-shelf gore with eye-rattling imagery that is sometimes chaotic and sometimes elegant, but always absolutely gorgeous to behold.
I’m not too proud to admit it: Horror Press is severely lacking in anime coverage. Among the hundreds of articles I’ve written, I have one singular editorial talking about an anime, and that’s my highlight on The Summer Hikaru Died. I stand by that article, but it’s ridiculous that it’s the only one. Not a single Wicked City, Akira, or Perfect Blue review to be found for miles. And of all the oversights, how have we not talked about the best vampire anime?
Among horror anime, there’s a long and storied history with vampires. From The Vampyre and Carmilla to Egger’s Nosferatu today, we can’t get enough of the bloodsucking freaks (all due respect to bloodsucking freaks). It’s a morbid fixation that carries between cultures seamlessly and especially has a home in Japanese animated media.
10 Best Vampire Anime You Need to Watch
So, is it at all surprising that some of the best anime out there are films and TV shows about vampires? This article is a watch guide for the very best you can find. Not all of them are horror, but all of them are banger shows and movies with vampires at the center of them, and definitely worth the watch.
Some of them might be harder to find than others, especially our older offerings on the list. They’re scattered across the dark continent of the internet thanks to a lack of streaming releases and even worse physical media opportunities to enjoy them. But I have the utmost confidence in the beautiful fans of Horror Press and their meaty brains when I say you’ll find them with a little digging (and maybe a lot of piracy).
Honorable Mention: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
Now, the vast majority of Hirohiko Araki’s iconic manga and anime Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is, in fact, not about vampires. It’s about Stand Users, serial killers with hand fetishes, becoming a Gang-star, plankton women, and having crazy custom cowboy grills. And I don’t have time to explain any of that, so hopefully you got those references.
But it’s fundamental first three series (Phantom Blood, Battle Tendency, and Stardust Crusaders) have vampiric menaces very much front and center for the famous Shonen anime. It all begins with a mysterious stone mask, the artifact that finalizes the fall of the hateful Dio Brando, turning him from a sociopathic human into an absolute, literal monster that haunts the entire series and the Joestar bloodline going forward. He’s one of the most iconic anime villains of all time; three non-consecutive wins for the Player Hater of the Year award is no easy feat. He might even be the most iconic villain on this list, and that’s saying something.
That’s not even touching on the Pillar Men of Battle Tendency, the souped-up primordial vampiric humanoids who invented the Stone Masks and put Joseph Joestar through his paces in Part 2. It would feel wrong to talk about anime vampires and not give them a namedrop, so consider this the unofficial 11th entry on the list.
Castlevania & Castlevania: Nocturne
The show that put Netflix’s animated programming back on the map, Castlevania and its sequel series Nocturne are only this low on the list because of how immensely popular they are. If you’re reading this in search of new vein ripping, fang sinking television to watch, you’ve probably already seen one of these two outrageously entertaining video game adaptations on your own.
If you haven’t, the premise goes as follows: as a vengeful Dracula casts a demonic army across the lands of Wallachia for killing his human bride, chaos and darkness reign. The final member of the noble monster slaying Belmont family, Trevor, is forced to fight back with the help of a mage and the vampire’s own son. Nocturne then follows Richter, fighting to stop the ascendancy of a vampire messiah during the French Revolution. It gets bonus points for being a loose adaptation of my personal favorite Castlevania game, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.
As someone who watched Castlevania when it was released but was late to the party on Nocturne, I can now confidently say that both shows are fantastic thanks to some spot-on casting and solid story. And more importantly, you won’t regret finishing Castlevania, since it’s one of the rare Netflix offerings that doesn’t shoot itself in the foot repeatedly with awful writing and a terrible ending.
Hellsing Ultimate
Integra Hellsing sits at the head of a secret society called the Hellsing Organization, a monster hunting group founded by her ancestor Abraham Van Hellsing. When their compound is assaulted by a mysterious and well-funded enemy group called Millennium, Integra pulls her trump card as she sets out to destroy them: enlisting the oldest surviving vampire, Alucard, who has sworn fealty to the Hellsing bloodline after being staked by Abraham long ago.
If you were looking for edge sharper than this, you’re really not going to find it. As the regent of what I would call the vampsploitation sub-genre, Hellsing Ultimate is really nasty. And I mean nasty by horror standards. It’s through and through a splatterfest more interested in its sanguine and ultraviolent vibes than it is a great story. It gets those vibes, trust.
Hundreds of occult nazis getting blasted and torn apart, an immortal quantum cat boy who gets the Itchy and Scratchy treatment whenever he shows up, and the regular use of monofilament wires as weapons should tell you what this show is about. It’s absurd, and its writing is kind of bad. But damned if it isn’t fun to watch in a really sleazy, grindhouse sort of way.
Karin
This rare slice of life vampire anime also brings one of the most fun to watch vampires on the list. It’s a comedy of errors one would expect from the genre mashup; the classic foibles of a creature of the night doing damage control and trying to fit in among the mortals. The show follows Karin of the Maaka Family, a noble line of eccentric vampires living in a mansion in rural Japan.
While her eccentric, Addams Family-esque household sleeps by day, she walks among the living. Because Karin hasn’t fully transformed yet: she’s a reverse vampire who plays the role of “blood maker” rather than blood taker. She’s immune to sunlight and generates a high-pressure buildup of blood that causes profuse, geyser-like nosebleeds. As she tries to become the vampire her family wants her to be, she juggles love and life as a far from normal high schooler.
The show excels when it maximizes its sitcom potential and plays up the tropes of the genre (the arc where Karin’s evil twin grandmother appears and causes havoc is particularly enjoyable). It’s rough around the edges with all its fanservice and crude humor, like most early 2000s anime from smaller studios, but as a standalone season of television it’s hard not to find quick and charming.
Night Warriors: Darkstalker’s Revenge
This one is for all the fighting game fans out there whose niche series haven’t gotten an entry in a decade. The Darkstalkers OVA is, like Castlevania, based on a video game franchise of the same name. Also released under the name Vampire Hunter: The Animated Series, this four-parter is best consumed in marathon format, as its just under three-hour runtime is run at a brisk and breakneck pace filled with action.
The show drops us directly into a war between creatures of the night, known as “darkstalkers”, and their human victims. But as a vampire-led faction on a sunless earth comes into conflict with a succubus-led faction operating from the Demon World, another party enters the mix: a mysterious force of ancient alien robots that seek to destroy everyone, monster or human. The Darkstalkers are forced to band together as the approach of the robots’ maker, Pyron, spells doom for them all.
The Darkstalkers games are best known for their very expressive and animated sprites, and the very iconic move sets of their characters. The show captures that high energy feeling, and many of the animations from the game, perfectly. It leans very much more on the “Saturday morning cartoons and cereal” side of the spectrum, but if you’re looking for a one-of-a-kind setting with some truly wild character designs, this is your show.
Nightwalker: The Midnight Detective
Not at all meant to be confused with the previous entry on this list; similar names, unfortunate, I know. This jazzy supernatural anime from 1997 follows the titular private detective, Shido Tatsuhiko. He’s a vampiric demon who hunts other demons with his human friends, hoping to find some redemption and piece together his muddled past life.
And if that sounds familiar, it’s because this is basically the anime version of the Buffy spin-off show Angel before Angel was even a thing; it predates the Whedon project by two years. Unlike Angel, however, Shido is pure 90’s anime silliness. It’s a distillation of popular tropes from the era with a classic, gritty animation style to match. Those who loved the cyberpunk miniseries Cyber City Oedo 808 will find this show a kindred spirit thanks to the pseudo sci-fi vibes and the monster of the week set up. Just a tad less dramatic, and a bit campier.
A smooth-talking but tortured anime protagonist making weapons out of his own blood fast-tracked this to being high on the list for me, because I love corny concepts played straight. Hopefully, once you see this gem, you’ll understand the appeal instantly.
Mars Red
Now if there’s a vampire anime on this list that never really found its audience, it’s the highly underrated Mars Red. It’s based on a stage play by Bun-o Fujisawa, and despite my initial skepticism about stretching the material into 13 twenty-minute episodes, it actually flows wonderfully barring one or two pacing hiccups.
The year is 1923, and amidst the modernization of the Taisho era in Japan, vampires prowl the streets and infect unwitting targets. The government converts a task force of spies called Code Zero into a supernatural peacekeeping group as a response to a sharp rise in the vampire population. The trick up their sleeve? Harnessing stable, sane vampires as military assets and having them track down their rogue counterparts.
Despite the premise sounding action forward, the story of Mars Red is more of a supernatural mystery and drama. There is action, including some great swordfights, but it primarily uses the premise to explore the struggle of the characters rediscovering themselves and their humanity as cogs in an imperial machine. It’s chockful of literary dialogue backed by strong voice acting performances that remind you of its theatre roots. All in all, the ambiance and atmosphere of Mars Red is top notch.
Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut
Another lesser-known anime from 2021, Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut is a hard sell for a lot of people. A science fantasy romantic drama is already kind of pushing it. Making it an alternate history version of the Space Race between a faux United States and faux Soviet Russia is even more difficult to get people on board with.
The show centers on Irina, the Russian’s ace in the hole in trying to get a manned flight to space before the Americans do. Because vampires aren’t considered human and are feared by the general public, the risk of the mission is made permissible. Though Irina is initially thorny with her training supervisor Lev, she becomes fond of him slowly, and love blossoms between the two as mounting pressures from government figures seemingly attempt to pry them apart.
It’s an utterly bizarre pitch to toss out, but Irina is a heater of a curveball. An effective and fun romance with hard sci-fi and historical elements, and a lot of heart. And with only 12 episodes, not a sliver of time is wasted. Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut is so incredibly unique that it feels like a must watch among the droves of romantic anime out there.
Vampire Princess Miyu (1988)
Cards on the table: I used to wake up obscenely early in the morning to catch old Adult Swim reruns of Inuyasha as a kid, and YuYu Hakusho still stands as my GOAT among all Shonen anime. So, I have a certain fondness for those shows that tints my opinion of Vampire Princess Miyu. You can say it’s biased, but you can’t say this show isn’t great.
Another OVA on the list, this four-episode banger is an obvious pick for its brevity and eerie horror vibes. Shinma, ancient beings that are both god and monster, trap and kill Japan’s citizens with hallucinations so they can feed on their dreams and souls. But an ancient “guardian”, the dhampir Miyu, is determined to destroy them. For a price, of course: Miyu’s wage is the blood of the victims’ loved ones, who will be mentally trapped in a vision of a happier life as Miyu feeds on them.
It’s a rare tale of an anti-hero vampire that actually feels sinister and alien to humanity. Miyu also has a longer anime series adaptation, but you won’t catch me watching it any time soon. It doesn’t have nearly as compelling characters, feels generic in its atmosphere and style, and the animation quality of the OVA just blows the extended series out of the water like a torpedo. If you’re going to watch Vampire Princess Miyu, you might as well watch the best version.
Blood: The Last Vampire
A short, pulp action OVA from the creative minds of director Hiroyuki Kitakubo and writer Kenji Kamiyama, 2000’s Blood: The Last Vampire became popular enough to spawn a manga and two reboot series, each telling their own spin on the story. But really, nothing beats the original.
Saya, a sullen katana-wielding vampire slayer finds herself in the employ of the Japanese government. She soon tracks down a “chiropteran” infestation (bat-like humanoids wearing human skin) to an American military base and its nearby high school. Disguised as a high schooler, she finds herself having to protect the school’s nurse as she tries to contain the rapidly evolving threat of the bestial undead among the living.
The fusion of styles utilizing traditional animation, rotoscoping, and CGI throughout this is so seamless that it makes Blood a masterpiece from a technical standpoint. Though the story is really simple, its grim atmosphere and its characterization of Saya make it easy to understand where the desire to learn more about her came from. Blood: The Last Vampire has long sat as an essential piece of animation in the 2000s anime catalog, and for good reason since it’s still a killer short animation today.
Vampire Hunter D & Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
Rounding us out, you knew they’d be on the list. The science fantasy horror films that started it all for a lot of anime fans. These technically count as two separate features, but chances are if you’re going to watch one, you need to watch the other.
Thousands of years after a nuclear war, a ravaged Earth lies slowly dying. Its inheritors are the few unfortunate humans left alive and the warped creatures that hunt them. A gothic hunter-for-hire named D travels through the wastes to protect his wards from mutants, monsters, hostile humans, and aristocratic vampires. The last is his specialty, since D himself is a half vampire (lot of those on this list today).
It’s impossible not to fall in love with the aesthetic of Vampire Hunter D. It’s a gonzo fusion between Solomon Kane, classic Westerns, contemporary sci-fi novels of the era, and old Hammer Horror movies that you’re not going to find anywhere else. Eleven years now since the announcement of Vampire Hunter D: Resurrection, the long-awaited animated series is still trapped in development hell to the chagrin of many fans. But with the eternal popularity of its two film adaptations, the franchise penned by Hideyuki Kikuchi seems just like a real vampire: boasting lots of devoted adherents, and impossible to put down.
What Is the Best Vampire Anime for Horror Fans?
For horror fans, Vampire Hunter D and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust are essential viewing, combining gothic vampires with post-apocalyptic science fiction, Westerns and classic Hammer Horror influences. Viewers looking for something considerably bloodier should try Hellsing Ultimate, while Vampire Princess Miyu offers eerie supernatural horror.
For Halloween season this year, Horror Press is taking you on a trip around the world of horror. No tour of international shockers would be complete without stopping by Spain for some tapas and found footage. The [REC] franchise had a short but robust run, spawning four Spanish movies and two American ones within seven years. It’s a unique cross-pollination of the zombie/rage virus and demonic possession subgenres, and it’s well worth a good, old-fashioned ranking.
The Entire [REC] Franchise Ranked
#6 Quarantine (2008)
I truly don’t know how they did it. 2007’s [REC] is a superb, terrifying movie. And its American remake, Quarantine, is essentially a shot-for-shot remake. Yet it lacks any of the potency of the original movie. The acting and the screenplay are flat, and the added material seems put in just for the sake of being different. Of course, adding anything unbalances the precisely calibrated pacing of the original movie. It makes an embarrassing hash of the material, from top to bottom.
#5 [REC] 4: Apocalipsis (2014)
Don’t ask me why the franchise abandoned the found footage approach in 2011. It makes no sense, but it’s definitely a bummer. Maybe they were just being lazy. That would certainly explain this boring, uninspired final installment. It originally seemed like [REC] 4 was going to be both a return to form and a major step forward. After all, it returned the franchise to its horror roots after a brief sojourn into horror-comedy. It brought back lead character Ángela Vidal (played by the impeccable Manuela Velasco). The subtitle (Apocalypse, in English) promised that the virus would be breaching quarantine. However, all they could think to do with this movie was stick Ángela on a ship. They have her run around a bit, then call it a day.
#4 Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011)
Here’s where I admit my dark secret. I secretly quite like the cheap, direct-to-video Quarantine sequel. But don’t be fooled: It doesn’t deliver on the promise of its poster, which is “Quarantine on a plane.” The zombie movie does have some brief plane antics. However, the plane quickly makes an emergency landing so the movie can take place in a quarantined terminal. It’s a slightly less interesting setting, but it’s still unique for the franchise. By virtue of being an original story, it’s already more interesting than Quarantine itself. And it does find several genuinely frightening things to do with all those infected people running around in the dark.
#3 [REC] 3: Génesis (2012)
When it first came out, I hated [REC] 3. It’s hard to be a fan sometimes. Being super into a franchise means you come into a new installment loaded with baggage. And [REC] 3 really does everything in its power to piss you off if you loved the first two movies. It’s the first Spanish entry to abandon found footage. It’s also the first to abandon Ángela. Instead, it’s a prequel about a wedding being beset by the demonic rage virus. And yes, this is the fabled horror-comedy installment. How this happened, I’ll never know. You simply can’t look at those taut, terrifying original movies and say “yeah, injecting comedy won’t give people whiplash.”
However, if you approach [REC] 3 as an unrelated movie that’s very much doing its own thing, the pain eases. Taken on its own terms, it’s even quite fun. I mean, we all love a woman in a wedding dress destroying the hell out of horror villains. They made two Ready or Not movies, after all. If you think of it as the Spanish answer to Evil Dead II (complete with chainsaw), it goes down easier.
#2 [REC] 2 (2009)
This found footage sequel is very much doing the sequel thing of “the same, but more.” [REC] 2 takes the same setting and the same characters, adding in a SWAT team with way more cameras. Plus a group of teens messing around with their own camera. I personally wish they hadn’t leaned in so much on the Catholicism of it all. There’s a full on Exorcist sequence that doesn’t gel with the all-out zombie vibes of the original. It’s also so stuffed with characters that you don’t really have the chance to get to know any of them. However, it’s still a tense, visceral exploration of how terrifying a situation like this would really be.
#1 [REC] (2007)
Full disclosure: [REC] is going to top literally any list it’s eligible for, because it’s my favorite horror movie. But don’t worry, I have good taste. [REC] is a 78-minute sledgehammer of a movie. It races in, brutalizes your nerves, then gets the fuck out. It does this in so many different ways. First, it presents a group of believable and relatable characters, who are grounded in reality by the found footage approach. The Barcelona apartment building setting is also incredible, delivering instant claustrophobia with its narrow central stairway. The zombie mayhem’s also terrifying, delivering drawn-out tense moments interspersed with some of the best jump scares in the business.
[REC] cruelly forces unassuming late night TV presenter Ángela into tighter and tighter spaces until the impossibly terrifying finale. Once you see Javier Botet’s performance as La Niña Medeiros (who brought the virus to the building)… Let’s just say you’ll never get a full night’s sleep again.
