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.

Tags 5 dolls for an august moon aldo lado anita strindberg antoine saint-john barbara bach barbara bouchet blood and black lace bloodbath bruno nicolai dario argento death laid an egg don't torture a duckling edwige fenech ennio morricone george hilton george lazenby gialli giallo gina lollobrigida giuliano carnimeo giulio questi horror italian horror jean sorel jean-louis trintignant john saxon lucio fulci luigi cozzi mario bava nicoletta elmi profondo rosso sergio martino the case of the bloody iris the girl who knew too much the killer must kill again the strange vice of mrs wardh tomas milian who saw her die?