There's Always Room For Giallo

A well-known, but little-understood, sub-genre of horror is the giallo cinema of Italy. The giallo is defined by heavy atmosphere, harsh scenes of bloodletting, nudity, stylized camera movements and, of course, a killer lurking in the shadows waiting to be discovered by both the characters and the viewer. These movies are easy to point out if you know what characterizes them. Gialli, plural of giallo, offer great story telling and fun horror elements within a sharply defined, Italian genre.

The word giallo means "yellow" in Italian. The literary genre originated in Italian mystery/thriller pulp novels in much the same way as Mickey Spillane and Ian Fleming's novels defined their own genre(s) in the U.S. The giallo novels were easy to spot on the book rack because of their bright yellow covers with graphics suggestive of the violence and sex that awaited the reader within. As you may have guessed, the pictures usually had little to do with the actual content, but effective advertising is effective advertising.

Gialli were influenced by the French Grand Guignol theatre. The Grand Guignol only produced shows with a naturalistic horror feel. Think about it as a sex show, but with murder instead. None of it was real, but the effects were very convincing for the day, and many people lined up to see the simulated killings and stylized murder set-pieces. (See, it's not just us Americans and our Hostel and Saw movies.)

Gialli films came about in the 60's and continued to be an entertaining draw throughout the 70's and 80's. The most famous giallo directors are Dario Argento, Sergio Martino, Mario Bava, Pupi Avati and Mario Lenzi. Lucio Fulci can be included in that list as well, but he is more firmly in the horror vein than in the subset of giallo. Gialli stories tend to be set in the present and are grounded in reality. Fantastical elements like evil spirits, witches and the supernatural prevent a film from being classified as giallo. For instance, The Beyond is a horror movie, but The Bird With the Crystal Plumage is a giallo.

For people who like horror, but find that fantasy elements tend to tame a story, gialli offer tangible terrors based in real life. The killer is not a demon or monster but a homicidal maniac with a knife. He/she can be overcome and arrested or killed, but not too quickly because the hunt is half the fun in this genre. Along the way from opening credits to discovery of the murderer there will be numerous killings, each one trying to top the previous in terms of staging and ferocity. There will also be lots of sex and nudity, often perpetrated by the next victim.

"This sounds familiar!", you might be saying to yourself. It is because of the horror rules made prevalent in the 80's here in the States, but there is a fundamental difference which must be pointed out: The sex in an Italian giallo is natural and simply a device to add nudity and excitement to the movie. Sex isn't shown as a negative character trait. In America, the sex and nudity was added to the horror movies to analogize the killings into punishments for transgressors. (It also entertains...the boobs serve multiple purposes.)

Some giallo are based on others' stories/movies. Mario Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much is directly influenced by Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. Sergio Martino's Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key is based on Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat. Both of them are great, although I don't think I have to tell you that the Martino film has shit-tons more nudity and violence, (along with a barely-clothed Edwige Fenech, who was a fixture of 70's Italian exploitation cinema.)

The giallo is a stylish mystery/thriller imbued with sex and violence. I like them because of the fun plots, the hot women and the 70's period clothing. If you can deal with subtitles, I suggest checking one out!

Interested? Here's the short list:
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
All the Colors of the Dark
Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key
Tenebre
Deep Red
Five Dolls for an August Moon
Four Flies on Grey Velvet
The House with Laughing Windows
Seven Blood-Stained Orchids