Danger: Diabolik (Mario Bava, 1968)

Hands up who likes Austin Powers? Well, I know I do! Not the wretched sequels of course, but the first film in the series, which was an incredibly smart and rather heartfelt parody of a period of filmmaking stretching from the mid to late 60s. With the Cold War approaching its 20th year, international espionage and patriotic derring-do were still popular motifs in the movies. As the aesthetic influence of the psychedelic era began to seep into the mainstream, however, many spy films and television series’ were given a brand new zany and surreal coat of paint. James Bond led the way in Cold War fiction, and references to that franchise are easy to spot in Austin Powers, but there are many nods to other, less well-known big and small screen staples of the 60s which belong to a rather more kinky and flamboyant stable; Modesty Blaise, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, The Avengers, Adam Adamant Lives! etc. What makes the cinematic debut of Mike Myers most enduring creation so enjoyable is its blatant, goofy joy at recreating everything that made these films and TV shows so memorable. It is a parody dripping with love and nostalgia, as opposed to mere ridicule, and just as well, as those very films it sets out to parody were already more than aware of their own ridiculousness; witness Our Man Flint or Dean Martin’s Matt Helm series. It truly was a cheeky, crazy and unique age in cinema’s recent history.

My favourite film of that era (one that admittedly doesn’t get a direct reference in Austin Powers, at least not one that I can spot) is also directed by one of my all-time favourite directors, Mario Bava; it is the downright dazzling Danger: Diabolik. Appropriately enough many of these visually rich and cartoonish creations of the late 60s were themselves based on comic books (including the aforementioned Modesty Blaise, while the successful Batman TV series ran from 1966 to 1968), and Danger: Diabolik was already a long-running and phenomenonly popular comic book serial in Italy before someone decided to turn it into a film. That someone was legendary uber-producer Dino De Laurentiis, who had recently captured the zeitgeist perfectly with the highly influential Barbarella, which was also adapted from a comic title. The Italian enlisted his compatriot Bava (who had just overseen a Dr. Goldfoot sequel) to take care of the directing duties, and he really couldn’t have found a better man for the job.

Mario Bava brings Diabolik to the screen brilliantly in an episodic film essentially comprising of three tall-tales torn directly from the pages of the original comic books themselves. Unusually for the central protagonist from a colourful adventure romp of it’s era, Diabolik himself is neither superhero nor super-spy; rather he is a dastardly master villain. Despite this he does contain definite elements of both Batman and Bond, being a suave, hi-tech cave-dwelling, master of disguise and gadgetry. Unlike messrs Wayne and James, however, Diabolik employs his physical skills and fancy contraptions for pure unadulterated naughtiness, possessing a particular predilection for nicking stuff of extraordinarily high value. In the film’s first third he steals $10 million, in the second act he nabs a priceless emerald necklace, and for his grand finale he single-handedly capsizes the Italian economy and pinches 10 tonnes of gold! It has often been noted that, in stark contrast to the righteous and noble stars of the American comic universe, the Italian equivalents were often shady and, well, frankly diabolical types. The theory is that, post-World War II, the Americans saw themselves as champions of justice and upholders of peace, traits reflected in the likes of Superman and, most notably, Captain America. The Italians on the other hand, defeated in the war under the guidance of an evil, fascist government, were finding themselves attracted to the antics of anti-heroes; characters who could shake up the establishment and challenge government goons, two things that Diabolik accomplishes with dark panache in his film debut.

There is an oft-told anecdote concerning the working relationship between Mario Bava and Dino De Laurentiis at the start of the making of this film. De Laurentiis had spent the then still lavish amount of $4 million on the same year’s Barbarella and offered Bava, who was more used to the frugal world of low-budget filmmaking, the same amount to bring in the Diabolik film. Super Mario declined this offer and ended up completing Danger: Diabolik for the bargain price of $500,000; an even bigger bargain when you take into account that Diabolik is actually considerably more than just eight times more visually stunning a film than Barbarella is, and vastly superior all round, to boot. I can’t really decide if Danger: Diabolik is my favourite Bava film or not, but it would definitely make my top three. In terms of direction, it’s definitely one of the most quintessentially ”Bava” films he ever made; an entrancing tableaux of jagged framing, fish-eye lenses, foggy filters, and ravishing lighting. It is astounding that it cost so little to make as Diabolik’s subterranean lair alone knocks anything in the modern Batman franchise into a cocked hat. A true master with early special effects, Bava realised many of his elaborate and impressive sets using matte painting techniques. The entire film is a daring and inventive dream, with memorable sequences coming thick and fast; a futuristic identikit machine renders perfect pop art pictures during a groovy musical interlude, Diabolik beats a mid-air confession out of an opponent after falling from a plane, and the brilliantly orchestrated climactic scene which out-Goldfingers even Bond himself in terms of grotesque and grandiose comeuppance. Bava is often congratulated by hardcore comic book fans for Danger: Diabolik being the one adaptation that is truest to the nuances of the art form. It should be no surprise, then, that the great man himself was a talented and respected comic book artist in his life outside of film (similarly the great Federico Fellini began by illustrating comics, a passion which remained with him throughout his life. What is it with these Italians?), although disappointingly he would turn down the offer to helm a Diabolik sequel, citing annoyance with the imposing De Laurentiis as his reason.

Danger: Diabolik is a perfectly cast film as well, with the seriously sharp and instantly recognisable features of the late John Philip Law glaring out from behind the title character’s trademark fetish mask. Law also made an appearance in Barbarella, and starred in a handful of other cult favourites, including Roger Corman’s Von Richtofen and Brown, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Another of Diabolik’s notable dissimilarities to James Bond is that, unlike the misogynistic state-funded murderer, the Italian super-thief is not a dirty shagger, in fact he is a surprisingly settled one-woman man. That woman is sidekick Eva Kant, whose all-too easy catchability proves to be a rare chink in the Diabolik armour. Mega-star Catherine Deneuve was originally cast in this role until Bava surprisingly sacked her, paving the way for Austria-born Italian genre veteran Marisa Mell to make Eva her own, and the chemistry between her and Law is undeniable. Deneuve’s erstwhile Belle de Jour co-star Michel Piccoli fared better under Bava, however, and his performance as Diabolik’s police nemesis is a deadpan joy. Piccoli is one of my favourite actors of all-time and his filmography boasts several iconic high points, including Godard’s seductive satire on filmmaking, Le Mepris, and mental modern day caveman caper Themroc (check it out, it’s fucking insane!). King of the cads Terry-Thomas (Oh, yes! One of everyone’s favourite actors of all-time, surely) also appears as a bungling politician, and Bond’s Thunderball villain, Adolfo Celi, tries his luck here against Diabolik as a rival crook. It is worth noting that every actor in Danger: Diabolik plays their part admirably straight, and the sensuous, surreal vibe of the film is enhanced by the fact that it never slips into lazy camp, unlike many of it’s close contemporaries (hello, Barbarella!).

It’s not just Austin Powers that successfully channels the kaleidoscopic kookiness of the late 60s, and I would recommend Roman Coppola’s overlooked and underseen 2001 film CQ to any Danger: Diabolik fan. Francis Ford’s son’s only film so far, it covers the making of a fictional, Danger: Diabolik-style romp, entitled Codename: Dragonfly, and contains many clever homages to Mario Bava’s film. Another notable recent appearance of Diabolik in the mainstream media came with The Beastie Boys’ video for their 1998 single ‘Body Movin”, which features actual footage from the film with their track laid over the top. They needn’t have bothered, frankly, as the only musical accompaniment Danger: Diabolik needs is it’s own superb Ennio Morricone soundtrack, perhaps surprisingly the only time Il Maestro ever collaborated with Bava. Here comes Aneet to tell us all about it…

(Cue Alfred Hitchcock Presents music: Good evening. I’m trying something different this time round. In my continuing effort to cement a reputation for myself as the Nigel Slater of film blogs, I present for you today another semi-autobiographical investigation of a chosen cinematic subject, this time British film censorship. As I have no shortage of things to say on this topic, I’m going to be comin’ at ya in three parts. Below is part one, concerning the BBFC in the late 60s and early 70s and my quest for A Clockwork Orange. Stay tuned next week to find out why mad and abundant rumours concerning The Exorcist caused Northern Irish children no end of sleepless nights, and why some films about power tools made the BBFC a bigger deal than it already was. Part three will then appear the week after, natch. Love ya)   

Do you remember when films used to be banned? It’s becoming increasingly hard to imagine a time when literally hundreds of titles were forbidden from being seen on both our big and small screens by the UK’s once ultra-stringent and omnipotent censorship laws, but if we cast our minds back a mere ten years, we find an executive class American studio film as famous as The Exorcist (Best Picture Nominee, 1973 Academy Awards) only just being deemed suitable for British cinema audiences following some 14 years in illicit limbo.

Sometimes I think that the spark that leapt onto my burgeoning interest in films and caused it to explode into a full-blown obsession was the fact that there were apparently some films which just couldn’t be seen. What horrors could these films possibly contain, I queried to myself, because, of course, when you’re very young, there’s nowt much safer than a film, is there? Films were what you were taken to see in the cinema when you were good. They were what you were put down in front of when you were bored at your granny’s house. They weren’t supposed to be threatening or unsettling; they were supposed to be for the whole family. Weren’t they? I really had to find out.

I grew up in the 80s, an age in which the horror film became a bona fide mainstream cultural phenomenon once more, in a way not seen since it had helped to haunt the national psyche of a paranoid Cold War America in the late 1950s. The icons of this revival were the lead bogeymen in a series of successful slasher franchises, chiefly the ubiquitous Freddy Krueger, whose burnt visage leered out from all manner of memorabilia, ranging from t-shirts to mugs (my pal Richard had a Freddy mask as a child. He complains to this day that the interior reeked overwhelmingly of a fishlike stench). Films like A Nightmare on Elm Street were discussed in hushed tones at the back of the school bus, and sounded genuinely terrifying when recounted by classmates who had almost always been slipped a copy to watch by an unprincipled elder sibling (many of these classmates were barefaced liars, I later discovered, who hadn’t seen these films at all. Most notably the one who told me that chief among Freddy’s fiendish powers was his ability to communicate with domestic animals, commanding them to carry out his evil bidding, although that is an idea Wes Craven may want to consider for his proposed Krueger revival). And although these films did have the power to frighten when channelled through the over-active imagination of a gibbering, dim-witted child, when you actually got to see one it was often a different story. The horrors conjured up by your imagination just couldn’t be matched by the mores of what was still essentially mainstream 80s cinema, not to mention the fact that Freddy Krueger always reminded me of an unusually sadistic Kenny Everett, which isn’t a massively frightening thing. Or is it? Most disappointingly of all, of course, was the knowledge that these films were all perfectly legal.

So, where were the forbidden films, the films containing such unspeakable horrors that the powers that be had to keep them under lock and key? That is, of course, a somewhat paradoxical question, but for the fact that apparently there were channels ready to be opened and sources waiting to be tapped in order to procure some of this cinematic contraband. The most notorious banned films of the age were the 75 titles that made up the infamous Video Nasty list, compiled by the Director of Public Prosecutions as a moral defensive against what they perceived as an outrageous offensive on Thatcher’s Britain, launched by an unruly band of unscrupulous, and supposedly immoral, small-time video distributors (it’s such a typical Thatcher-era phrase, “Video Nasty”. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Charles Saatchi himself had coined it. See also, “Friendly Fire”). A potted history of the Video Nasty shows us that the majority of these films were borne of Hollywood’s refusal to acknowledge the potential of nascent home video technology just as it began to boom in popularity in the late 70s (much as the major studios had neglected television for years, fearing that their profits would be severely undercut). Stuck for something to watch, and starved of mainstream product, hungry and eager VCR owners found themselves being catered to by the aforementioned, and equally eager, independent distributors, who were either buying up the rights to quick ‘n’ sleazy Eurosploitation (mainly from our old friends Italy), picking up seedy and unlicensed 60s and 70s curios from Britain and America, or conjuring up their own creations of varying taste and quality on minuscule budgets. This kind of output eventually oversaturated the market, and 99% of early video releases are strikingly base, as without the promotional budget of a major studio behind it, a film can be a very hard thing to sell. Add a dash of sex or violence (very often both), however, depicted with daring depravity on the box sleeve and an audience begins to emerge.

The Video Nasties cast a dark, and to many, compelling shadow over the early years of home video. Following the outrage they created, the UK’s chief censorship body, the British Board of Film Censorship (later Classification), turned its attention to home video for the first time in 1984 and systematically tried and banned every film on the DPP’s list. The newly savvy Hollywood studios stepped in to fill the void, and very shortly mainstream fodder was finally finding its way into the home, taking the place of the newly outlawed Nasty. However, although the police could legally seize copies of these prohibited video cassettes, it was impossible to round up every last tape, and many of them would spend the remainder of the decade and beyond circulating between the callous and the curious, growing a little more worn out after each screening. It was one such battered copy that was presented to me by my elder cousin one night in the late 80s. The film was Mario Bava’s Bloodbath (as discussed in Yellow Peril, see below), and I was both excited and repulsed by the appropriately lurid cover. “What’s that?” I asked my cousin, dry-mouthed from horrified intrigue. “It’s banned”, he grunted. “Where did you get it?” queried I. “Off some lad in the chip shop”, he illuminatingly conceded, before barring me from watching it with him in case I told the police and got him “done”. But at least I could say I had been in the presence of an actual banned film, and had seen first-hand evidence that they did still exist and could be relatively easily acquired, it only being a mere matter of striking up an acquaintance with some mysterious and well-connected fellow in a chip shop. Appetite whetted, I spent much of the 1990s defying the all-powerful BBFC by tracking down as many Video Nasties, and other censored shockers besides, as I could find.

(John Trevelyan, centre, with Paul Morrissey and Andy Warhol)

I also developed a learned interest in British censorship history in general, and it’s an engrossing and colourful tale. With thick clouds of class conflict, sexual repression, xenophobia, religious fervour, moral sanctimony, and commercial callousness forever threatening to rain down trouble and turmoil on these isles, it’s no surprise that the BBFC became the largest and most scissor-happy censorship board in Western Europe. It struck early, claiming its first victim in 1903 after banning a short science feature called The Cheese Mites at the behest of the British cheese industry. Later, in and around the time of the Second World War, it would find itself at the elbow of an altogether more powerful agency, when the Government entrusted it with the task of keeping political propaganda under control. Informed by several sources, including Tom Dewe Mathews excellent book Censored and BBC2’s outstanding 1995 documentary Empire of the Censors, I found myself able to list off all the BBFC chiefs in order of ascension, and discuss the key events of their reign, much in the way one might with the Prime Ministers of Britain. With that in mind, then, we’ll journey right up to the modern era and meet the BBFC’s equivalent to Harold Wilson, John Trevelyan, who decided what the Great British Public could and couldn’t see between 1958 and 1971. Like Wilson, Trevelyan presented the exterior of a dapper and genial gent, but underneath could be a shrewd and ruthless networker. Presiding over a successful boom-time in newly liberalised British cinema, Trevelyan cheerily got on with his work, pausing only to trim the odd twenty seconds off a sweaty sex scene in a kitchen sink drama here, or to ward off some unwanted and unwittingly ahead-of-schedule gorefest from America or the continent there (Blood Feast and Bloodbath, respectively, both of which would appear on the Video Nasty list years later). Trevelyan, again like Wilson, had a healthy relationship with industry (or, in Trevelyan’s case, the industry) and garnered much praise for being brave enough to pass a succession of celebrated taboo-busting classics, including Victim (homosexuality), Room at the Top (class inequality) and Yield to the Night (capital punishment). He bowed out happily enough at the end of his reign having caused relatively few grumbles, and history would show that he also possessed impeccable timing among his attributes as the 1970s would bring an awful lot for an awful lot of people to grumble about in terms of film censorship…

A Clockwork Orange (1971) – Alright, alright, alright… I know it was never actually banned, per se. It was instead withdrawn by its legendary director, Stanley Kubrick, for one of several potential reasons that will continue to be debated over for years and years to come (fear of copycat violence, death threats to his family by rabid moral zealots, unwillingness to have it shorn by even a single second by the BBFC, all three). What is clear, however, is that you couldn’t watch the bloody thing in Britain (at least, not legally) for some 27 years, and that’s almost half a lifetime.

Even if John Trevelyan had managed to duck out of the BBFC top job with scarcely a blot on his copybook, he was clearly wise to the fact that the position was about to get a lot tougher. Towards the end of his captaincy the waters had begun to get choppy with a small handful of high-profile and difficult releases threatening to upset the boat, including Arthur Penn’s sublime but occasionally brutal Bonnie and Clyde, and the somewhat muddled, climatically horrific hippie-tinged western Soldier Blue (once notorious, but pretty obscure these days. It’s not very good). But these films were mere trifles compared to what landed on the in-tray of his immediate successor, Stephen Murphy. 1971 alone heralded the release of at least a dozen major releases containing unprecedented levels of screen violence, several of which would remain major bugbears for the BBFC for years to come, including; Straw Dogs, Dirty Harry, The French Connection, The Devils and, of course, A Clockwork Orange.

To continue in earnest with our British Prime Minister analogy, if John Trevelyan is Harold Wilson, then we can view Stephen Murphy as a sort of Ted Heath/Jim Callaghan hybrid character. The 1960s had been a tremendous decade for the film industry all over the world. Sure, the major American studios took a bit of a beating with no shortage of expensive flops throughout the decade (for every successful Mary Poppins there was a flop Hello Dolly to sap precious profits), but who cares when the likes of Italy, France, Britain, and the US indies were churning out era-defining, epoch-making masterpieces under newly relaxed censorship laws. At the turn of the decade the major studios caught up and as the hopeful and permissive 60s bled into the bleak and uncertain 70s, Stephen Murphy, much like his Prime Ministerial counterparts, was found wanting in his ability to quell the outraged cries of the so-called moral majority whilst simultenously establish himself in the ever-changing brave new world. Copycat violence was nothing new by the early 70s, and the BBFC had previously banned Marlon Brando’s moody biker vehicle The Wild One for similar reasons in the 1950s. However, by the time of A Clockwork Orange, with the British press primed for stories of disaffected teens mimicking the anarchic antics of Alex and his Droogs, the debate on screen violence had reached such fever pitch that none other than Reginald Maudling, Home Secretary in the Heath cabinet, demanded a private screening of Kubrick’s film, expressing concern that the seemingly weak-minded Murphy and the BBFC had just passed it uncut. Film censorship was now a front page issue, and its causes and potential effects were troubling even those at the very top.

(I couldn’t find a picture of Stephen Murphy, so here is a nice one of Reginald Maudling instead)

A Clockwork Orange needs no introduction, and I’m sure every one of you has seen this immaculate and incendiary meisterwerk, so I’ll spare you a synopsis. I have seen A Clockwork Orange too, of course, and many times now. But for a very long time I had cause to speculate whether I’d ever actually get to see it or not. I can’t quite remember exactly at what point during my search for information on banned films I stumbled upon A Clockwork Orange, but the moment I did I was immediately intrigued. It was the title that did it. “A Clockwork Orange”, what did that mean? Every forbidden film I had ever heard of came with a salacious and often somewhat predictable title, such as the aforementioned Blood Feast or Bloodbath, but what on earth did “A Clockwork Orange” mean? I had no idea, but I liked the sound of it (I experienced similar bamboozlement over the title of the similarly banned Straw Dogs. What the hell was a “straw dog”?). Further investigation revealed that this was also a very different beast from its banned brethren in that it had enjoyed a major and successful mainstream release in the early 70s. Thus I interrogated my mother on the subject. Had she seen it? No, but she remembered it coming out and being subsequently pulled following the whole copycat hoopla. I was crestfallen she hadn’t seen it (mind you, she would have only been 15 at the time) and felt somehow unfairly deprived of a direct hotline to firsthand information regarding this mysterious film. She attempted to make this up to me by pointing me in the direction of the novel on which it was based (it was based on a novel?!) and the public library was my next port of call. I couldn’t believe the ease with which I found a copy of this apparently inflammatory material (and one with an enticing screenshot of Malcolm McDowell on the cover, to boot) and promptly read it from cover to cover, absolutely gob-smacked. How could they make a film out of that?! And if they could, I would dearly love to see it (and yes, Anthony Burgess fans it was the proper 21 chapter version of the novel, which ends with the older Alex being mocked by his new Droogs after they uncover his burgeoning paternal instincts. Kubrick obviously didn’t film this and the majority of subsequent prints of the book removed the chapter accordingly).

But, of course, I couldn’t see it, and in that dark, pre-internet age it was struggle enough to even get my hands on a screenshot or an old, enlightening magazine article or two. To my eternal shame, an old 70s film journal I also loaned from my library had several colour photographs of scenes from the film (each bizarre image adding a new layer to the mystery) and an A4 print of the famous “A” poster (designed by Kubrick himself, see above), all of which I unscrupulously cut out and stuck to my bedroom wall, before sneakily returning the journal without confessing to its being vandalised (my guilt was later relieved when I heard that no less than Martin Scorsese committed similar crimes in his youth. Great minds, eh?). I was also given a cutting of a newspaper article by my dear old mother, continuing to feed my unhealthy interest, detailing an illegal screening of the film in a London cinema in 1993. That cinema was none other than the Scala in King’s Cross, and before you say “but, that’s a nightclub!” I will say that, yes, it is now. But it was a cinema before an enraged Stanley Kubrick chose to smite it, bankrupting the owners with a heavy lawsuit for daring to show his film. Old Stanley was taking this self-imposed ban very seriously, indeed. I found this article both stimulating and depressing. On the one hand, the fact that A Clockwork Orange HAD been screened somewhere in Britain in the recent past was an exciting proposition. However, not only did I curse my luck for not being in London in 1993 (although, I would only have been 12), but the fact that Kubrick had reacted so aggressively to his ban being broken (even by an esteemed art house cinema) was proof positive that A Clockwork Orange would not be getting a general release any time soon.

On through the years I trudged with my prospects for viewing A Clockwork Orange growing no brighter. My yearning to do so had inadvertently turned me onto some very fine films, however, and I became a committed Kubrick fan, enraptured by his freely available efforts, films so incredibly brilliant that they further fired my imagination as to just how fantastic his rendering of A Clockwork Orange might be (Lolita and Barry Lyndon are my other two favourites). I even watched anything I could find with Malcolm McDowell in it, but the general quality of that particular oeuvre is less high, obviously (I mean, If… is very good, but have you seen Buy & Cell?). I always got a kick from watching anything with anyone from or involved in A Clockwork Orange in or behind it, so you can imagine my surprise when I learnt that Dalziel from Dalziel & Pascoe played one of the Droogs!

Then, in 1995, BBC2 screened its fantastic Empire of the Censors documentary series, part two of which showed entire sequences completely uncut from A Clockwork Orange, I believe for the very first time on British television (I recall an earlier Kubrick documentary on Channel 4, narrated by Jonathan Pryce, showed only grainy black and white stills). This was an incredible development in my quest, and I sat wide-eyed watching Alex in action for the very first time, recording every second on VHS for posterity. I even called a couple of my friends off the street to come and have a look at Alex bludgeoning a victim to death with a giant phallus (that wasn’t in the novel!) which earned me a reputation as being “sick” among my ignorant peers (they did however enjoy the Emmanuelle segment in the same documentary).

Two years on and I was better connected (although not necessarily to better people) and in 1997 I finally reached the end of my quest, returning home one evening with a Portuguese VHS tape of my adolescent Holy Grail, housed in a pale blue box with the “A” poster on the front. I was triumphant, and how I got hold of it was almost ridiculously simple. For some reason, some lads I knew were on friendly terms with a large skinhead metaller-type, who had a collection of knives, a pet snake, and a harebrained obsession with Nazism; you know the type. By complete chance I overheard him mention A Clockwork Orange to one of my friends (I was trying my best to ignore him), upon which cue I suddenly changed tact and bounded into the conversation. “Have you seen it?” I asked. “Yeah, I’ve got it. It’s supposed to be the most violent film ever made, but it’s boring”. And then the magic words… “You can have it, if you want”. I naturally didn’t hesitate to say yes, and hurried home not believing my luck, stopping only to rope in a friend to join in the screening party and share the magic (I remember almost resenting him, he was about to fucking watch A Clockwork Orange, and he just didn’t seem to appreciate the significance, or indeed, his luck).

My mind was completely blown by A Clockwork Orange (still my favourite opening shot of all time, ehanced all the more by Walter/Wendy Carlos’ evocative and sinister score), and to actually be able to sit and watch the thing unfold by itself after trying to imagine what it would really be like for so long was an almost transcendental experience. Unlike the philistine who had put me in possession of my long sought after prize, I had already worked it out that A Clockwork Orange was not even close to being “the most violent film of all time”. I still found watching it a rather strange and frightening experience, however, and Kubrick does weave such a dark and intoxicating spell (albeit with jolts of bawdy humour) with this one that it’s easy to see why it gave the BBFC such a headache.

The final say was always with the director, any road, and he kept A Clockwork Orange heavily under wraps right up until his death in 1999. He had barely departed when Warner Bros., the film’s original distributor, rather overzealously announced their plans to re-release it in the cinema forthwith. I’ve always questioned the tastefulness of their timing, but I had moved to London by the time of its comeback weekend, and was comfortably seated in the back row of the Holloway Road Odeon when the curtain drew back on A Clockwork Orange for the first time in a British cinema (barring the Scala scandal) in 27 years. On the big screen, and with a delicious new print, it obviously looked even better than it had done on a battered video cassette, and with the added bonus of not having Portuguese subtitles, too. When I first caught the Clockwork Orange bug I burnt up with a mad fever to see this illusive and malicious masterpiece, but sitting in the comfort of a mainstream cinema in the company of Alex and the Droogs, I realised that, at last… I was cured, all right!

As a bit of a bonus follow-up to our indepth giallo investigation (Yellow Peril, see below), I thought it might be nice to put up a few magic moments from everybody’s favourite Italian murder mystery/horror hybrid subgenre.

A late-night trawl through youtube surprisingly yielded some excellent clips, and if anyone is interested in getting hold of some of these films, it might be worth having a look on here before purchasing (and you will undoubtedly have to purchase for the most part as, the odd Argento aside, Blockbuster, and even above average indie video shops, don’t really stock this stuff).

Also, Aneet regularly spoils you guys with untold aural delights, so it’s about time you had something to have a “butcher’s” at, too…

Beginning with this terrific trailer for the inaugral giallo, Mario Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much, featuring Adriano Celentano at his smouldering best crooning the theme song

Observe here a typically bizarre portion of poultry-based puzzlement from Giulio Questi’s crazy Death Laid an Egg

Couldn’t find any Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh clips, so here instead is the trailer for Sergio Martino’s later The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail. No Edwige Fenech in this one, but plenty of George Hilton action. Also, check out that soundtrack!

A suitably atmospheric trailer for the sombre slasher Short Night of the Glass Dolls, directed by Aldo Lado

Hats off to the wag who lovingly compiled this clip containing each and every over-zealous zoom-in from the Giuliano Carimeo (or Anthony Ascott, if you prefer) helmed kitsch masterpiece The Case of the Bloody Iris (keep your eyes peeled for the Woody Allen looky-likey, and your, erm, ears peeled for snippets of Bruno Nicolai’s jazzy score)

SPOILER ALERT! Not only will watching the grisly end of Lucio Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling reveal the identity of the killer, but it may also spoil your dinner… When you vom it up. Very gory, this, (not to mention surreal) so don’t say I didn’t warn you. I wouldn’t want you to “lose face”. Ahem.

A complex tale of estranged, grieving parents in Venice, striving to get to the bottom of their daughter’s mysterious death? No, it’s not Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now… It’s Aldo Lado’s Who Saw Her Die?, which came out first. So there.

The trailer for Luigi Cozzi’s uneven and sleazy, but occasionally brilliant, The Killer Must Kill Again, here going under it’s not immensely catchy US name, The Dark is Death’s Friend. I wouldn’t watch this one if you’re at work. I REALLY wouldn’t watch this one if you’re at work.

STOP PRESS!!! This just in… The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh just found on YouTube. Why not have a peek? (Warning! It’s a bit ‘orrible)

Like just about every fellow aficionado I have encountered, I was introduced to the fiendish allure of the Italian giallo when I first saw Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso. A confirmed fan of the maestro already, this mesmerising, mind-bending murder mystery was like nothing I had ever seen before. Henceforth, I became committed to not only tracking down every Argento film I could lay my hands on (no easy feat in the mid-90s), but I was also determined to find at least a few other films as warped and darkly riveting as Profondo Rosso. I was in luck, for I soon discovered an entire genre of them.

For the uninitiated, giallos (or, gialli) are Italian horror films that follow the twisting, turning plot structures found in the classic whodunit murder mysteries of Agatha Christie, Edgar Wallace et al. Indeed, the genre takes its name from the fact that these stories were originally published in Italy between bright yellow covers (‘giallo’ being Italian for ‘yellow’) serving to both entice and to warn readers of the forbidden thrills contained within. These immensely popular tales would serve to inspire and inform their cinematic offspring, yet let loose on the silver-screen the giallo was to grow into something infinitely more shocking, salacious and psychedelic than Christie and co. could ever have imagined. With loose morals and enthusiastic zeal, writers and directors began to use the murder mystery blueprint as a framework from which to hang ever more violent set pieces and around which to weave ever less plausible plotlines. At its maturity, the giallo was a wonderfully unruly hybrid genre, mixing elements of thriller, horror, occult and exploitation (most often, and with frequently unsavoury results, of the sex variety) cinema. Gialli performed extraordinarily well at the Italian box office, amply satisfying that country’s traditional appetite for ghastly Grand Guignol, and would later influence the American slasher boom of the late 70s (Halloween creator John Carpenter is a dedicated Argento and giallo fan).

The giallo has many hallmarks, and getting acquainted with the genre can easily lead to an addiction as the viewer learns to first look out for and then love the gleeful trait and hackneyed tradition which are found in abundance. Firstly, there are the titles, and these can be mini-masterpieces in themselves. Most often perversely poetic (A Dragonfly for Each Corpse, Seven Bloodstained Orchids) they can also be alarmingly lewd (Strip Nude for Your Killer, The French Sex Murders), or unintentionally comical (The Killer Has Reserved Nine Seats, Spasmo). Once you’ve actually started to watch one, you’ll notice that the murder mystery that forms the film’s core is rather hard to keep up with. This is because often, it doesn’t make any sense at all, and is loaded with bamboozling developments that spring from nowhere at terrifying tangents. This is something I really enjoy about watching gialli, the fact that the films are so bent on mad invention and surreal surprise that you can’t really follow the plot as easily as you should be able to in a traditional whodunit. Just about the one guarantee you’ll have from the plot of any giallo is that the suspect who is seemingly the most innocent will turn out to be the killer. Either that or it will turn out to be the suspect who was the most likely after all, one or the other. Don’t worry, though, you’ll only be as confused as the main character, but then it’s not you being stalked by an apparently unstoppable killer. No one ever believes them, either (at least not until it’s too late), and the life of the giallo protagonist is one of overwhelming paranoia as well as dangerous peril. They also have to suffer the dual indignity of being not only really badly dubbed, but having to speak in astoundingly dated dialogue, too. For, although many gialli are genuinely brilliant, an awful lot really aren’t. But even at their shoddiest, there’s still much enjoyment to be had from at least a single screening, and the rankest giallo will always betray a smidgen of twisted charm.

Happily, it’s the wheat we’re going to be taking a look at today (although I would heartily recommend the odd bit of chaff for appreciation heightening purposes, as well as for a good laugh), and the eight films below represent the giallo at its very best. I have opted to omit Dario Argento from the list as it doesn’t feel quite right to pigeonhole such a mercurial talent as a genre director (albeit a genre he reinvented and popularised, and has never completely broken away from), and the ghoulish Roman visionary is of course worthy of a feature in his own right, if indeed I am worthy of writing it (watch this space!). Also, his best giallo (and best film, in my opinion), Profondo Rosso, is streets ahead of everything else, and appearing in 1975 towards the tail-end of the boom, is actually something of a revisionist take on the genre.

So, to borrow completely inappropriately from The Sound of Music, let’s start at the very beginning, and join me on a journey, if you dare, to a savage and sensationalised parallel Europe of the 60s and 70s, where the shades are garish, the carpet shag-pile, the fashions outrageous, the attitudes outmoded, the body-count high, and the gore gleefully generous; in short, it’s (Multiple) Murder Italian Style.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) – Just as I decided Dario Argento might be too much the proverbial big fish for inclusion in this article, I could easily have made the same call for Mario Bava. The creative force behind the most eclectic and colourful filmography ever assembled (making his directorial debut at the tender age of 44!), Bava made his name with a handful of Hammer-inspiring macabre masterpieces (most notably the majestic Black Sunday), and took in everything from comic crime caper (Danger: Diabolik) to genre-splicing sci-fi (Planet of the Vampires), along the way. He also turned in this, the first ever giallo, and would later bestow two further masterpieces on the genre.

As the title suggests, The Girl Who Knew Too Much takes its cue from Hitchcock, and the rotund master of suspense is as much a touchstone for the giallo as the whodunits. The story concerns Nora, who in a trademark giallo ploy is a foreigner (in this case an American, despite having a thick Italian accent. Oh, and being fluent in Italian), visiting her sick aunt in Rome. Roughly ten minutes after she gets there, her aunt dies (of natural causes, which is incredibly lucky, this being a giallo), and wracked with grief Nora wanders outside, only to witness a murder right in front of the house. Or does she? Luckily, a hunky young doctor (played by future horror veteran John Saxon, who would later appear in Argento’s uber-giallo, Tenebrae) is on hand to help her get to the bottom of the mystery, which appears to be somehow connected to an identical murder which took place in the same spot ten years previously.

Appearing as early as it did, it’s no surprise that The Girl Who Knew Too Much is rather low on both body-count and gory spills ‘n’ thrills. It more than makes up for it, however, by having a genuinely corking mystery at its heart, and boasting several masterful little set-pieces (we are startled by the sudden crack of a toy pistol as Nora revisits the scene of the crime, for example), the like of which would become Bava’s trademark. It’s also a pleasantly witty and wry film, recruiting a handful of colourful bit characters for comic relief (as most gialli subsequently would), and in a delicious nod to the novels that partly inspired it, Nora is revealed to be an avid Agatha Christie fan, something which severely undermines her credibility when trying to convince others that the mysterious murder actually took place. A scene in which our heroine sets up an elaborate, Home Alone-style trap to catch the killer is expertly played for laughs, and an audaciously silly drug smuggling subplot serves to bookend the action. As would become par-for-the-course with all great (and even some not so great) gialli, The Girl Who Knew Too Much has a cracking soundtrack to boot, including an ace title song by “Italian Elvis”, Adriano Celentano.

A year later Bava would further cultivate the giallo, before anyone else even had a chance to hand their work in, with Blood and Black Lace. Set in a surprisingly rural and remote fashion house teeming with manipulative models and duplicitous designers, it would mark the first appearance of the giallos identikit (at least until the denouement) villain, the black glove-clad and knife welding assassin of masked visage. While The Girl Who Knew Too Much was filmed in black and white, the release of Blood and Black Lace marked the giallos first outing in its trademark lurid Technicolor, and this complex and cut-throat concoction is now rightly heralded as a gruesome classic by a host of top film bods, including Martin Scorsese. In 1970 Bava returned to the genre for the thoroughly enjoyable 5 Dolls for an August Moon, based on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, and featuring a fucking amazing soundtrack (matching blistering prog rock with funky compositions by Pier Umiliani, he of Mah Na, Mah Na fame). Not satisfied with effortlessly reeling off above average examples of the genre, he decided once more to raise the bar for the giallo with the body-count busting, randy teens caught in crossfire of summer camp property dispute massacre magnum opus Bloodbath (or A Bay of Blood, or Twitch of The Death Nerve. Giallo’s often come strewn with several alternative titles) in 1971. Bloodbath, featuring a legendary, preconception popping, head-spinner of an opening sequence in which the apparent killer is unceremoniously killed, presented the clearest pointer yet towards the American slasher films that would borrow heavily from the gialli, and this bonkers original was liberally pilfered from for the turgid Friday the 13^th. It also comes complete with another outrageously great soundtrack, and as far as I’m aware, neither the music for it nor 5 Dolls has ever seen official release. I believe an investigation is in order, Aneet.

Death Laid an Egg (1968) – Approaching the end of the 60s the giallo would add another key element to the mix, acquiring a strangely seductive psychedelic sheen, although this barmy yarn concerning murder among (you guessed it) chicken farmers takes it further than most.

Despite the appearance of a pair of bona fide A-list stars (as opposed to the procession of faded and jaded has-beens and hammy character actors that the genre would normally make do with) in Jean-Louis Trintignant and Gina Lollobrigida, Death Laid an Egg is the strangest, most perplexing giallo I have ever seen. Like the later Bloodbath, the motive here is potential financial gain through the acquisition of a lucrative piece of property by murderous means, in this case a state-of-the-art chicken farm. Trintignant has married Lollobrigida to get his hands on the feather-festooned fortune, and if that weren’t bad enough he’s also having an affair with her cousin AND murdering high-class hookers in his spare time (confusingly, that doesn’t necessarily make him the killer, so don’t get ahead of yourself). Further complications arise when his lover’s lover (they’re all at it, of course, being Italians) decides it is high-time he got rid of Trintignant, and before you know it there is some serious foul play (pun intended) afoot. There’s also a weird eco subplot concerning the genetically engineered growth of headless, legless chickens, in order to reap only the desired meat, which may have seemed preposterous at the time, but sadly doesn’t seem so silly these days (Minger Tower Burger, anyone?).

All these bizarre happenings are shot through with some appropriately crazy camerawork, and mind-boggling non-linear editing, leading some to venture that Death Laid an Egg resembles what might have been the result had a true creative maverick such as, say, Nicolas Roeg or Jean-Luc Godard, ever turned their hand to a giallo. That might be a little generous, but Death Laid an Egg is still a real original and marvellous fun, directed by a minor scale genius in his own right, Giulio Questi, who also helmed a strange variation on that other bloodthirsty Italian subgenre, the spaghetti western, with the unforgettably surreal Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot! That cheekily unofficial sequel to the earlier Django is probably your best bet if you wish to see the fruits of Questi’s insane imagination splattered onscreen, as despite all its askew pluck (pun intended), Death Laid an Egg remains impossible to get hold of on any format.

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971) – If you were forced (at knifepoint, perhaps) to compile a list of the key giallo directors in order of importance, you’d be certain to give the top places to Argento and Bava. The trickier to call third spot, however, would probably have to go to Sergio Martino. While nowhere near as talented as either aforementioned master, or indeed some other directors who dabbled in the genre, Martino’s efforts in the field would certainly be as influential on later gialli, and this marks his saucily titled entry into the world of grisly murder and even grislier interior design.

Perhaps the most iconic impression Martino would make on the giallo would be to coin the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire combo of Italian stalk ‘n’ slash, Edwige Fenech (who had earlier appeared in 5 Dolls for an August Moon) and George Hilton, seen together here for the first time. She was a willowy, haunted looking French-Algerian, who when she wasn’t racking up the gialli, also appeared in sex comedies with names like Cream Horn. He was a debonair, rugged looking Uruguayan, who when he wasn’t racking up the gialli, also appeared in action romps with names like Macho Killers. When they got together, it was movie magic. Well, sort of… But they’re both watchable and likeable enough, and they ably contribute the required oomph to The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh.

Fenech plays the wife of an American diplomat in Austria, and when a crazed maniac begins slicing up the lovely young ladies of Vienna, she fears she might be next. This fear is further enhanced by the fact her ex-husband, coincidentally enough also a crazed maniac, has started sending her some rather threatening letters. You’d think her present husband might be sympathetic, but he merely chides her mardily for being so bloody melodramatic all the time. Luckily, George Hilton is on hand, as a mysterious Irish (Irish!) playboy more than eager to lend a sympathetic ear, but is there more to him than meets the eye?

Influential in its being the first giallo to inject some unbridled raunchiness into the genre, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh might not be for those uneasy with a mix of sex and violence in film, but it is still relatively tame and doesn’t go half as far as some later titles. It is also a very effective thriller, and although he doesn’t possess the creative verve of an Argento or Bava, Martino steers this brilliantly in places, with a pursuit in an underground car park being particularly memorable. It also has an unpredictable and excellent (not to mention rather amusing) twist ending, and a suitably eerie, seductive soundtrack by Nora Orlandi.

Martino would later direct six more gialli, including The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (starring Hilton), Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (what a title! starring Fenech), and All the Colors of the Dark (starring Hilton AND Fenech, but dismissed by some, including myself, as being a) not really a giallo and b) not really any good).

Short Night of the Glass Dolls (1971) – Some giallos are really rather good, most giallos are at least a bit bad. But, as we have already learned, even many of the very worst are still worth sitting through for any dedicated fan of the genre. A select few gialli, meanwhile, are authentic Grade A horror classics, and of the fewer still that are so, but which don’t bear the names of Argento or Bava, Short Night of the Glass Dolls is perhaps the most shining example of the genre at its very best.

Featuring Belle de Jour star turned giallo regular, Jean Sorel, part of what makes Short Night so special is that it is propelled along by an absolute humdinger of a premise. Sorel plays an American journalist in Cold War Prague (cue some breathtaking location filming), who awakens one morning with a bit of a problem… He’s dead. Except he’s not really dead, he’s actually been drugged to appear dead to everyone around him, and trapped inside his catatonic body he must rack his brain in order to figure out who put him in this state and why, all the while hoping that help arrives in time to stop the pathologist’s primed blade.

For fans of any genre, a film that can cleverly and creatively subvert the conventions of their favoured flicks is always more than welcome, and Short Night expertly stands the giallo on its head. Having the central protagonist essentially trying to solve his own murder is an invigorating twist, and although superficially similar to noir classic D.O.A., Short Night’s take on the idea makes for an engrossingly paranoid nightmare. The film is also beautifully shot and engagingly directed, playing its grim plot for every morbid note of fear and phobia it can wring out. It is also an example of the giallo at its most subtle, with a relatively low body-count, and murder scenes that are more often off-screen and eerie than in-your-face and gory. One memorably haunting kill takes place by moonlight on a steam enshrouded railway bridge.

The film was directed by debutant Aldo Lado, and we’ll hear some more from him a little bit later. In addition to the excellent Sorel (although he really only plays a corpse for the most part), the cast also features future Mrs Ringo Starr and Bond girl, Barbara Bach as a Czech dissident at the heart of the mystery, a strand which gifts the film some interesting political subtext. The atmospheric score, integral to the action, was composed by the giallo in-house composer, none other than the master of all film music himself, Ennio Morricone. Il Maestro Supremo would contribute the scores for at least a dozen gialli (including three sets for Dario Argento), and some of the best cuts are available on the superb Morricone Giallo compilation as lovingly collected by the fabulous Bella Casa label.

The Case of the Bloody Iris (1972) – If Short Night of the Glass Dolls is a showcase example of just how chillingly captivating a giallo can be, then The Case of the Bloody Iris is the genre at its most raucous, rude, and fun. There are so many woolly and wacky twists and turns in Bloody Iris that I can’t really remember what actually happens in the central mystery, and I can only vaguely recall the identity of the killer, but it’s still one of my favourites because it’s so defiantly cheesy and cheerful that it is impossible not to love it.

Giallo golden couple Fenech and Hilton step out together once again, as a rash of killings take place in a thoroughly modern 60s apartment building. Fenech is a chic fashion model (a dangerous occupation to have in a giallo) who becomes embroiled in the grisly mystery after one of her colleagues turns up dead in said apartment building. Despite this tragic occurrence, she decides it would be a good idea for her and a gal pal to rent the dead girls apartment off hunky landlord Hilton, who then proceeds to give Fenech’s friend a tasty slap for having the nerve to be frightened about the fact that there’s a killer on the loose! As for the identity of the killer, there are more suspects than you can shake a stick at, including almost every occupant of the apartment block, and what a shady bunch of assorted perverts and weirdoes they are. And if all that weren’t bad enough, Fenech has yet another crazed maniac of an ex-husband to contend with, a la Mrs Wardh, this time the leader of a sadistic sex cult, who leaves the titular Bloody Iris as his calling card. What’s a girl to do?

Ah, it’s great fun indeed, The Case of the Bloody Iris. I thoroughly recommend it as a starting point for anybody interested in exploring the genre, perhaps as double bill with the more sophisticated Short Night of the Glass Dolls. Director Giuliano Carnimeo (using an excessively English pseudonym, in this case Anthony Ascott, as was strangely popular among Italian directors of the time) appears to have been a prolific hack, and his credits count more than a handful of spaghetti westerns, some of which also star George Hilton. The sloppy, dated direction of Bloody Iris, not to mention its raft of wooden performances, actually lend it a not inconsiderable nostalgic glow, and by approaching every scene and set-up with shrill excitement, Carnimeo never once allows us to get bored. I’d also like to give props to my favourite giallo comedy bit character of all time, the unbelievably Woody Allen-esque fashion photographer who isn’t in the least bit bothered that most of his subjects are being slaughtered. The snazzy, jazzy soundtrack, incidentally, was composed by another genre stalwart, and regular Morricone accomplice, Bruno Nicolai.

The Case of the Bloody Iris is killer kitsch at its best, who cares if you can’t remember who done it?

Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972) – After our old friends Dario and Mario, the most renowned director to put his name to a giallo was Lucio Fulci, even if he never immersed himself in the genre as fully, or with as successful results, as his peers were to. Aptly enough, however, for the director of such gut-wrenching gore-fests as Zombie Flesh Eaters (a classic) and The Beyond (not so good, amazing soundtrack), Fulci would soak his gialli in blood and guts, making them easily the goriest entries in the canon. Indeed, such a wizard with the old tomato sauce and cold vegetable soup was he that he was made to present the special effects from his debut giallo, Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, to an Italian court of law in order to prove that he hadn’t actually mutilated a couple of dogs as depicted in the film.    

His second giallo, Don’t Torture a Duckling ups the gore to greater levels still, and features two unflinching set-pieces that are almost ludicrous in their sheer brutality, including a dizzyingly vicious whipping sequence, cruelly set to pappy muzak. It’s also a very compelling film, however, and one of only a small assortment of gialli which eschew the city for the countryside, with the picturesque rural setting lending it a shimmering, dreamlike quality that suits Fulci’s almost otherworldly touch very well. Some may find the storyline as troubling as the gore, with prepubescent boys being ruthlessly bumped off around the church playing fields in a small village. It’s a raw idea, to be sure, but it’s interestingly handled, as the fearful villagers emerge as a mistrustful, reactionary bunch following the village’s chief priest’s lead in pinning the murders on an ostracised gypsy witch. This leaves a reporter (spaghetti western regular and star of the aforementioned Django Kill, Tomas Milian) and a hedonistic socialite living in country retreat (Barbara Bouchet, second only to Edwige Fenech as the giallo queen and a former Bond girl) to approach the mystery without prejudice and lead the film to its gob-smashingly gruesome climax.   

Don’t Torture a Duckling (the meaning of the title is revealed towards the end, not that you necessarily expect these titles to mean anything) is a truly superb giallo, although it may be a little strong for some. And even if you’re not bothered by the gore or the storyline, the Bouchet character’s alarming penchant for seducing the terrorised young boys could still have the potential to cause offence. Both leads are very good, however, and the religious element to the storyline does give the film more depth than many of its contemporaries. Indeed, Duckling appears to have got the ball rolling for gialli that tackle church corruption, a rather taboo topic in staunchly catholic Italy. By the end of the 70s religious exploitation, or ‘nunsploitation’ films, close cousins of the giallo in form, would be briefly vogue in Italy, the most famous example being Killer Nun, starring faded Fellini muse, Anita Ekberg.

This was to be Tomas Milian’s sole appearance in a giallo, and he would later find wider fame as a supporting actor in several recent Hollywood films (Amistad, Traffic). Bouchet, too, would call time on her rather more considerable giallo career after filming wrapped, but can claim to have starred in three of the genre’s very best with this, The Red Queen Kills 7 Times and The Black Belly of the Tarantula (which stars no fewer than THREE Bond girls; Bouchet, of course, Short Night’s Barbara Bach, and Claudine Auger, who also appeared in Bava’s Bloodbath). The surprisingly versatile Fulci followed up Duckling with an adaptation of Jack London’s White Fang for Italian audiences, before striking gory gold with Zombie Flesh Eaters in 1979. He would not return to the giallo until the early 80s, when the genre was on its very last legs, with the sordid, ultra violent mess The New York Ripper, featuring a killer who incredibly disconcertingly has the voice of Donald Duck. As poor and unpleasant as that was, Fulci will always be highly regarded in giallo circles for chipping in with two high quality efforts, his best being Don’t Torture a Duckling.

Who Saw Her Die? (1972) – Aldo Lado’s third film as director, and his second giallo (I can’t find out a single thing about his second film, La Cossa Buffa, but it’s got a gorgeous Morricone soundtrack, available on Cinevox Records). After omitting Dario Argento from the list completely, and restricting Mario Bava to a single entry, how come I’m letting this Lado character in twice? Well, mainly because I feel he’s been unfairly overlooked in the past, and while not quite as inventive or taut, Who Saw Her Die? is as striking and distinct a giallo as his earlier Short Night of the Glass Dolls, and thus worthy of our attention.

We’ve already had a slew of Bond girls pass this way, but here comes the super-spy himself, as nobody’s favourite 007, George Lazenby, stars as one half of an estranged married couple, receiving a visit from his daughter in the haunting environs of Venice. As with Don’t Torture a Duckling, a child killer is on the loose, and a distracted Lazenby soon discovers his raincoat-clad daughter floating face down in one of the city’s famous canals. Wracked with guilt and grief, he sets out to find the culprit, aided by his spiritually troubled wife, and stumbles upon a fiercely guarded secret society of filthy Venetian bon vivants, who appear to be protecting the murderer’s identity for reasons he must uncover.

Following my first viewing of Who Saw Her Die? I immediately resolved to get in touch with Nicolas Roeg by any means necessary and inform him that I knew of his dirty little secret, and would only agree to keep quiet upon receipt of a generous bribe, or at least a signed Performance poster. Because, yes, the Venice setting, the estranged, grieving couple, the drowned girl in the mac; Who Saw Her Die? bears more than a passing resemblance in several places to Roeg’s legendary shocker Don’t Look Now, released a year later. Heck, Who Saw Her Die? even has it’s own touchy-feely, soft-focus sex scene between tearful spouses, as if further proof were needed. I eventually calmed down, however, after a friend pointed out to me that Don’t Look Now was in fact based on a 1971 short story by horror bard Daphne du Maurier (Hitchcock’s The Birds was also based on one of her tales), and it could simply be that Lado too had drawn inspiration from her writing and that the two directors had delivered occasionally similar interpretations.

Even so, I do still suspect that Roeg could well have seen Who Saw Her Die?, and while Lado’s film cannot really match the menacing majesty of Don’t Look Now, it is still an excellent film and an exemplary giallo. Beautifully filmed, and with a brain-jolting opening sequence, Lado shows us once more what a truly talented director he was, breathing the same air of atmospheric dread into this work as he did into Short Night. He displays another hand of superb set-pieces with a murder in an oversized birdcage and a beautifully photographed cat and mouse chase in a derelict warehouse, proving memorable this time round. This maudlin and mysterious atmosphere is further heightened by another peach of a Morricone score, and Lado uses his music as effectively here as he did in his earlier giallo. In fact, the intense, gothic sounds Morricone conjures up for this film (making excellent use of a creepy children’s choir) are, in my opinion, his best work for the genre, and sit comfortably with the best of his oeuvre in general.

For all that, though, Who Saw Her Die? is noticeably less assured than Short Night of the Glass Dolls, and does suffer from the odd lull while the mystery spools itself out. Also, those who squirmed uncomfortably through Don’t Torture a Duckling, might not enjoy sitting through scenes in which we see Lazenby’s young daughter stalked and murdered through the killer’s voyeuristic gaze. Lazenby (only onboard to help battle his post-Bond bankruptcy, according to Lado) himself further hamstrings the film by being atrociously dubbed in the English print, but that’s not his fault, and his bedraggled performance is fine (especially for such a commonly derided actor) and again seems very similar to the part played by Donald Sutherland in Don’t Look Now. Playing the spiritually troubled wife part that Julie Christie would later fill is another giallo queen, Anita Strindberg, who had previously featured in Fulci’s Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, and deputised for Edwige Fenech opposite George Hilton in Sergio Martino’s The Case of the Scorpion’s Tale. The doomed daughter should also be familiar to giallo fans as Nicoletta Elmi, who crops up as a precocious brat in both Bloodbath and Profondo Rosso.

Aldo Lado never returned to the giallo following this, and disappointingly his only subsequent film of note is the depressingly grim, astoundingly unpleasant, and ultimately unrewarding Last House on the Left variant, Night Train Murders (with music charitably donated this time by his old chum Morricone). Based on the ability he displays in Short Night of the Glass Dolls and Who Saw Her Die?, however, it is a shame for us that Lado either got lazy and lost his way or just never got the big break that his talent deserved.

(NB: Short Night of the Glass Dolls, The Case of the Bloody Iris, and Who Saw Her Die? are available for purchase together on Anchor Bay’s excellent Giallo Collection Boxset, which is an essential purchase for any prospective fan. The fourth film in the set, The Bloodstained Shadow lets the side down a little, being a much poorer effort than the others, but it still boasts an odd and enthralling low-speed boat chase, and a funky soundtrack by Argento faves Goblin. See, I told you even the bad ones have their good points)

The Killer Must Kill Again (1975) – And, rather unsurprisingly, he does kill again… What’s infinitely more surprising, however, is that we find out who he is in the first ten minutes, because, as with Short Night of the Glass Dolls, we are in the company of a giallo that isn’t afraid of messing about with the medium. Unlike Short Night, unfortunately, The Killer Must Kill Again isn’t strong enough to continue supplying convention defying curveballs all the way to the end, and it falls apart far sooner than it’s diabolically ingenuous premise deserves.

George Hilton (oh, yes) has a problem. He hates his wife, but he loves her money, and so is searching for a way to be rid of her so he can continue his philandering activities. One night whilst returning home from an illicit tryst, he happens to stumble upon the killer of the title in the act of disposing of his latest victim’s cadaver. Slyly pocketing a valuable piece of incriminating evidence to be used as a bartering tool, Hilton neglects to inform the police, and instead offers the murderer a proposition; bump off my wife for me, or I’ll turn you over to the authorities. The killer begrudgingly agrees, heads over to chez Hilton, and carries out his task with ruthless efficiency. He loads the body into his car, but turning his attention back to the house for a last-minute clear-up, he returns to discover his motor’s been pinched by a pair of teenage joyriders unaware of the dead body in the boot. The killer sets off in hot pursuit, but can he catch his folly before they discover their grim cargo?

That really is an opening salvo guaranteed to ensnare one’s attention, and while it could be argued that the removal of any mystery surrounding the identity of the killer undermines the film’s validity as a true giallo, the first half-hour is so loaded with great ideas that it more than compensates for it. The killer being forced to slay an unwanted wife at the behest of an immoral and opportunistic husband is one of the most original scenarios I have seen in a giallo, and the beginning of The Killer Must Kill Again resembles a pulpier take on one of the crafty, classy murder dramas of the great French New Wave auteur, Claude Chabrol (an amazing talent, unfairly filed behind Truffaut, Godard, and even boring old Eric Rohmer, most of the time), which is high praise, indeed. And almost as if one diamond idea wasn’t enough, The Killer follows it up almost instantly with another, with the car thieves unwittingly stealing the corpse from under the killer’s nose. This too bears traces of the Nouvelle Vague, with a similar development being employed by the magnificent Louis Malle for his smoky Gallic noir, Lift to the Scaffold (check it out, amazing Miles Davis soundtrack).

It’s such a shame, then, that The Killer Must Kill Again drops the ball so shortly after starting so well. When the killer finally catches up with the car thieves, a horny hoodlum and his innocent girlfriend, at a seaside retreat, rather than give his characters something better and more inventive to do, director Luigi Cozzi instead settles down for a seriously and uncomfortably overlong session of sexual violence. The rape scene in The Killer Must Kill Again isn’t just incredibly unpleasant to watch (although rape scenes are not often noted for their entertainment value) it is also completely unnecessary, and always feels to me like a massive cop-out. It is rendered all the more dubious by Cozzi’s decision to inter-cut it with an almost Confessions-like (consensual) softcore sex scene taking place elsewhere between another main character and a giddy young lady listed in the credits as ‘Dizzy Blonde’ (played by the notorious Femi Benussi, Eurosleaze fans). Some have suggested that this split sequence was an attempt by Cozzi to somehow comment on the responsibilities connected with sex and its consequences, or some such grandiose idea, but that’s never worked for me, because there’s just no place for such lofty, speculative notions in a giallo. I feel that, on one hand, the film is forced to descend into dumb depravity because Cozzi, having exerted himself in the opening third, had run out of ideas. On the other hand, I believe it might have been a carefully planned centrepiece to lure the new breed of horror fans seeking ever grimmer thrills because, by 1975 (The Last House on the Left was three years old by now), horror had begun merging with exploitation and was becoming ever more mercilessly brutal, leaving the generic and increasingly archaic giallo (all whodunit and Hitchcock) looking almost quaint by comparison. The end was nigh.

For all that, though, I still really like The Killer Must Kill Again, at least I really like the beginning of it, and I’m happy to say it picks itself up a bit at the end. It’s often said that a great beginning and/or end can make a film on its own, and I think that can be doubly true for genre films like gialli (I remember dozing my way through Pupi Avati’s seemingly tedious giallo The House With Laughing Windows, only to be rudely awakened by the profoundly unsettling climax, which served to redeem the entire film instantly). Cozzi’s direction is for the most part excellent, up until he lets the action unravel at any rate, and the cinematography looks ravishing in the recent print released on DVD by Mondo Macabro (the scene in which George Hilton propositions the killer at an ice rink, in particular, is quite breathtaking). The director is perhaps best known for being Dario Argento’s unofficial sidekick and, having co-wrote two Argento films (Four Flies on Grey Velvet, the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll giallo, and the western The Five Days of Milan, Argento’s only non-horror film. Both are sadly unavailable), he now runs the maestro’s souvenir shop and museum in Rome (I’ve been, it’s fucking wicked). Among the other films he directed, his two schlock-y sci-fi rip-offs are perhaps the most famous; Starcrash (rips off Star Wars) and Contamination (rips off Alien), both of which most people hate, but I really quite like. The performances in The Killer Must Kill Again also help lift it to another level, with the normally charmingly limited George Hilton giving a great turn as the sleazy, scheming wannabe widower. The film’s best performance, however, is easily that given by the killer himself, Antoine Saint-John, a truly extraordinary looking man, with a face that is both coldly evil and coolly intelligent, who many may recognise as the German tank commander in Sergio Leone’s underrated A Fistful of Dynamite. He would later play a Satanic painter who meets his sticky end after a ferocious whipping administered by Lucio Fulci, who obviously had a bit of a fetish, this time in The Beyond.

As we near the end I think we’ve cracked the case. The giallo is the guilty culprit, and has been unmasked as the weirdest, most wonderful, most vibrant and colourful horror subgenre there’s ever been. After its 60s and 70s heyday, it met a grisly demise and despite Dario Argento continuing to use it as a template for many of his recent films, attempts at revival have usually failed (although Michele Soavi’s 1987 effort Deliria and Cannibal Holocaust director Ruggero Deodato’s insane Washing Machine from 1993, might both be worth a look). Having said that, Argento is currently filming what looks set to be his most high-profile release for years (following his disappointingly received Suspiria sequel), a straight giallo which is very imaginitively titled Giallo, and which could prove to be the catalyst for a major revival. Remember where you read it first. You read it at Days are Numbers first. We take great pride in keeping you abreast of such things.

Actually, if any particularly pragmatic film producers are looking to cash in on this forthcoming revival, my best buddy, former flatmate, and fellow gialli traveller Richard and I once had a stab at penning a giallo of our own. It was set in a museum, a great and underused setting for a giallo, I think, and I’ve still got the first draft if anyone wants to option it. All we need is an appropriately outlandish and unorthodox title and we’re away. Three Rabbits on the Knife’s Edge? The Killer Is Late For Work? Killerio?

Whilst writing this giallo of ours we piled through as many as we could get our hands on (Richard has a terrific copy of Bloodbath, the blurb on the back of which insists the film cannot be watched without a face-to-face warning, whatever that means), at a time when most were being made available, mainly by tiny no-thrills DVD distributors, for home viewing for the first time since the pre-cert video boom of the late 70s/early 80s. At the height of our giallo fever we were getting through several per week and sometimes even a couple per day. I remember once taking a break from all this saucy slash to go and watch something reassuringly normal at the cinema, History Boys, of all things. As I sat there watching this bland, sentimental tripe, I had a deeply unpleasant feeling that something was missing, something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. This feeling kept troubling me until I released that I had been unconsciously sitting there watching History Boys and waiting for someone to get murdered! That’s how much I had immersed myself in the giallo, dear reader; I had accidentally re-programmed my mind to anticipate a violent murder in every film and television programme I watched. These were dark and dangerous times, indeed.

But that’s another thing I dearly love about gialli, there are so bloody many of them that you can’t believe you never noticed they existed before you did. Provided you get hooked, it’s a dream genre for anyone with an insatiable completeist streak. There is a seemingly limitless supply of curios to be unearthed (my strangest discovery: Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye, a Scottish castle-based giallo starring Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. I kid ye not), even if the rank and file giallo is often complete dross. But, of course, many are not, and that is my favourite thing of all about the giallo. For a niche subgenre operating with both narrative and stylistic constrictions, it has an incredibly high strike rate, and I’ll never stop coming back to it for more.

The giallo; truly a cut above.