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.