Stage Fright (Michele Soavi, 1987) Blu-Ray Review

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“What a disaster, and just a week from opening night.” By 1987 the slasher movie was in rapid decline, having dominated the popular cinema of the 1980s with masked murderers slaying their way through camp grounds and holidays alike with gore-drenched abandon. However, if there's still some juice left in the squeeze, you could be sure the Italians will find it, and in this case Michele Soavi (Dellamorte Dellamore) made a name for himself by injecting a fairly standard slasher flick with an invigorating sense of energy and a love for the horror genre...

 

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Death Smiles On A Murderer (Aristide Massaccesi, 1973) Blu-Ray Review

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“So many corpses, and every death a mystery.” Most commonly known as Joe D'Amato, the prolific director Aristide Massaccesi (Emmanuelle and The Last Cannibals) only attached his real name to just one of his cinematic endeavours, the turn-of-the-century ghoulishly Gothic supernatural giallo Death Smiles On A Murderer. The Italian giallo movement wasn't best known for rock solid plotting logic, but Massaccessi's film dives head first into a zone of storytelling that can only be described as utterly baffling. Prepare for copious plot holes, taboo subject matter, an ethereal sense of time, and Klaus Kinski 'doing science'...

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The Pyjama Girl Case (Flavio Mogherini, 1978) Blu-Ray Review

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“Just because it's written down it's true, huh?” By 1978 the heyday of the Italian murder mystery – or 'giallo' – had been and gone, but that didn't mean there was nothing of interest still to rinse out of the well-strained genre. Writer/Director Flavio Mogherini's murder mystery casts aside much of the classic tropes and visual styling of the typical giallo film (black gloved killers, gleaming knives, an escalating series of grisly deaths, European glamour) in favour of – egads! - just one murder in, of all places, Australia's Sydney with its sun, sea, and sand. Do not go into this movie expecting killer thrills by any means and, whatever you do, don't read the spoilerific blurb on the back of the box!...

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The Suspicious Death of a Minor (Sergio Martino, 1975) Blu-Ray Review

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“There's one death too many in this story.” The top two names associated with giallo cinema are that of its creator Mario Bava (Blood and Black Lace) and that of its master Dario Argento (Deep Red), but another director whose name should be closely associated with those two is Sergio Martino (The Mountain of the Cannibal God). In the first half of the 1970s, Martino, along with frequent collaborating screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (Almost Human), produced a slew of all-time greats in the feverish onslaught of Italian murder mysteries: The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1971), The Case of the Scorpion's Tail (1971), All The Colours of the Dark (1972), Your Vice Is A Locked Room and Only I Have The Key (1972), and Torso (1973).

That's quite an impressive resume in itself, in careers that spanned 66 directorial efforts from Martino and 123 writing credits for Gastaldi. However, there is another gialli that was produced during their time working together, but one which has flown somewhat under the radar while the aforementioned titles have taken the lion's share of viewers' attention: 1975's The Suspicious Death of a Minor. Crafted with Martino's eye for style and Gastaldi's acerbic storytelling, it arrived at a time when the giallo (lurid tales of sex and death) was beginning to cool off and the poliziotteschi (gritty urban crime thrillers) were attracting audiences with rough 'n' tumble rogue cops tackling the sort of criminal conspiracies that were happening everyday beyond the cinema's doorstep...

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Formula For A Murder (Alberto De Martino 1985) DVD Review

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“I must kill a man.” The 1980s were a bit of a lean time for gialli (the heyday of which was the early 1970s) what with splatterific American slasher movies dominating the horror genre at that time, but there was still room for Italian murder mysteries amidst the Jasons and Freddys and Michaels. Alberto De Martino's slow-burn killer thriller combines the priesthood, repressed memories, and that old motivator money in a story about a wealthy paraplegic sportswoman who spirals into a whirlwind of love and murder...

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Delirium (Lamberto Bava, 1987) Blu-Ray Review

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“Sounds like you enjoy playing the victim.” The 1970s saw an explosion of 'giallo' films produced by Italian filmmakers after the success of Dario Argento's début film The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, a murder mystery that twisted sex and violence together in a bravura package of style and warped psychology. As the decade wore on the flood turned into a trickle, but the American slasher movie craze that came in the wake of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13^th (1980) saw somewhat of a revival of blood-soaked mysteries in Italy with the likes of Tenebrae (1982) and A Blade In The Dark (1983). However, once again, the craze waned, but spurts of brilliance still emerged with Argento's Terror at the Opera (1987) – in which a bullet penetrates a peep hole to brain-splattering effect – or, in this case, Lamberto Bava's psycho-sexual mystery slasher Delirium (aka La Foto Di Gioia) – in which a woman with a big, veiny eyeball for a face gets skewered with a pitchfork … now that got you intrigued, didn't it?

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Francesca (Luciano Onetti, 2015) DVD Review

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“Through me you pass into the city of woe, through me you pass into eternal pain.” In recent years the 'neo-giallo' movement has grown, moving hand-in-hand with the re-evaluation of gialli from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, as well as the few that were released in the 1990s. Through DVD and now Blu-Ray – distributed by high quality and dedicated labels such as Arrow Video, 88 Films, Shameless Screen Entertainment (plus many more in various markets around the globe) – the genre has gained a whole new audience, with the films afforded lavish restoration and supplemental packages for unparallelled home viewing experiences. With the love spreading for these movies – made by filmmakers such as Dario Argento, Mario Bava, and Sergio Martino (among many others) – it was only natural that new examples of the genre would begin to appear. Masks, Amer, The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, and Yellow are all examples of this 'new old school' of highly stylised murder mystery – and the Argentinian Francesca (from the director of Sonno Profondo) is perhaps the one which nails the classic style closest of all...

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Cold Blooded Beast (Fernando Di Leo, 1971) Blu-Ray Review

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“How nice to be sent to a famous loony bin!” Straddling the lines between the gialli thrillers and softcore romps that were so popular with mainstream audiences in Italy during the 1970s, Fernando (Milano Calibro 9) Di Leo's skin 'n' kills movie Cold Blooded Beast (otherwise known as Slaughter Hotel) features a bevy of beautiful women inflagranti and in peril, as well as Werner Herzog's notorious performer Klaus Kinski…

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The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave (Emilio P Miraglia, 1971) Blu-Ray Review

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“It's not uncommon for a man to do strange things to get his kicks.” The opening companion piece to Miraglia's 1972 gothic-tinged giallo The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave treads similar ground to its successor. Miraglia juxtaposes the old and new worlds whereby the cutting edge design of the 1970s sits amidst a crumbling ancestral home built from stone and sordid family secrets. Riddled with nihilism, this forever-twisting tale of a sadomasochistic fetishist and his not-quite-so-dead wife is soaked-through with moral decay...

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The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (Emilio P Miraglia, 1972) Blu-Ray Review

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“The Corpse That Didn't Want To Die!” Following on from The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave (1971), writer/director Emilio P. Miraglia once again dived into the glamorous pool of the lurid European murder mystery with The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (otherwise known as The Lady In Red Kills Seven Times), a violent clash of morals set against a fractured backdrop where two worlds collide: that of a Gothic castle and that of a modernist fashion house. This is a film consumed with ideas of wealth and the inevitability of hereditary sin...

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Four Flies On Grey Velvet (Dario Argento, 1971) DVD Review

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“Seeing all these worms make a living out of death, kind of knocks the fear out of you, right?” Dario Argento's third giallo film and, at the time, intended to be his last, Four Flies On Grey Velvet is a curious mix of murder mystery and offbeat comedy in which a drummer in a prog rock band finds himself framed for murder – but his blackmailer has no intention of calling the cops on him, so what is it they're after?

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The Editor (Astron-6, 2014) DVD Review

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“Don't worry, we'll catch the killer that killed her.” Canadian film-making collective Astron-6 (Father's Day) return with their own curious take on the Italian genre films of the 1970s and 1980s, particularly the giallo film, with The Editor. Harnessing the bold colour splashes of Mario Bava, the shock gore geysers of Lucio Fulci, and the twisted narrative mystery of gialli icons Dario Argento and Ernesto Gastaldi, Astron-6 have donned black leather gloves and some impressively luxuriant moustaches for their own eroticised killer thriller...

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The Bloodstained Butterfly (Duccio Tessari, 1971) Blu-Ray/DVD Review

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“I'm a smart killer, Inspector – a little smarter than all of you.” Consider the giallo genre – what springs to mind? Black-clad killers with razor knives, blood-splattering violence, and scintillating sexuality? Chances are that forensic examination of a crime scene and perspective-altering scenes of court room drama didn't crop up – but that's exactly what sets Duccio Tessari's The Bloodstained Butterfly apart from the crowd. Side-stepping many of gialli's visual clichés, nestling into a pace akin to the more thoughtful examples of the genre such as Aldo Lado's Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971), Tessari's film nonetheless paints a bleak and savage picture of inter-generational betrayal, lust, abuse, and shattered illusions...

 

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Flavours of the Month: April 2016...

Giallo gems, cliffhangers, alcoholic spies, horror rock, assassination, and - of course - a fair bit of writing (including a word or two on O.C.D. and Intrusive Thoughts), are just some of the things that have been setting the tone for my April 2016...

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Death Walks At Midnight (Luciano Ercoli, 1972) Blu-Ray/DVD Review

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“I'm telling you the truth – believe it or not!” Utilising much of the same cast and crew as he had done with his previous two forays into the giallo genre, Director Luciano Ercoli's third – and final – giallo film is less interested in murder and mayhem at the hands of a black-clad killer and much more taken with its leading lady. Having been portrayed in The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (1970) as a free-love nympho, Nieves Navarro (who would go on to spend the rest of her life with Ercoli as husband and wife) advanced up the ladder of gialli's roster of ladies in peril. In Death Walks On High Heels (1971), Navarro is portrayed with love as a far more rounded, yet still sexual being, whose forthright attitude enthrals or confounds the men in her life. However, in what was to become one of her strongest roles, Navarro (aka Susan Scott) kept her clothes on and her fists at the ready for Death Walks At Midnight, which could arguably be considered the 'girl power beacon' of the entire genre...

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Death Walks On High Heels (Luciano Ercoli, 1971) Blu-Ray/DVD Review

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“With this razor you won't feel the pain right away, but it will leave your body covered with horrible scars.” Luciano Ercoli teamed up again with his Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (1970) stars Nieves Navarro (aka Susan Scott) and Simon Andreu, and giallo screenwriter extraordinaire Ernesto Gastaldi, for Death Walks On High Heels – a deeply fetishistic thriller. A strip tease artist flees Paris with a Doctor, but soon finds the quaint English countryside is nowhere near as safe as she had hoped...

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Five Dolls For An August Moon (Mario Bava, 1970) Blu-Ray/DVD Review

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“It looks like we'll all wind up in this damn freezer.” Heavily indebted to Agatha Christie's 'Ten Little Indians', Five Dolls For An August Moon – scripted by Mario di Nardo – is a project, with director Mario Bava's own confession, that he made 'under protest'. Denied extra time to rework the script, and never fully investing in its making as a result, the Black Sunday filmmaker nevertheless crafted a lush vision of privileged degenerates on an island retreat allowing their greed and blood lust get the better of them...

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The Girl Who Knew Too Much (Mario Bava, 1963) Blu-Ray/DVD Review

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“Don't you see it over there? Blood. Blood everywhere!” Originally intended to be a frothy romcom about tourists on an adventure in Rome, when horror maestro Mario Bava (Black Sunday) entered the project, it changed into something altogether darker. Not only did Bava transform the film, but he altered the face of murder mystery cinema. Tracing its roots through Agatha Christie, Edgar Wallace, the German 'Krimi' films, and Hitchcock, the giallo film – named after the yellow colour of pulp novels detailing lurid murders and twisted crimes – was birthed by Bava.

The genre, which he would finesse the following year with the technicolour terror of Blood and Black Lace, was turned – by Dario Argento (The Bird With The Crystal Plumage), Sergio Martino (All The Colours of the Dark), et al – into a hugely popular cinematic movement. So successful were the gialli, in-part through their sexuality and blood-splashing violence, that the American slasher film came to pass (Bava's own A Bay of Blood gave particular inspiration to Friday the 13^th Part 2). The importance of giallo films in the history of genre cinema cannot be overstated. The transition, from paperback to celluloid, happened here: The Girl Who Knew Too Much...

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Blood and Black Lace (Mario Bava, 1964) Blu-Ray/DVD Review

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“Guaranteed! The 8 greatest shocks ever filmed!” Mario Bava (A Bay Of Blood) established the basic thematic template of the Italian giallo film with the Hitchcock-influenced The Girl Who Knew Too Much in 1963 before laying out – in full-bodied colour – the visual essence of what would become an iconic movement in Italian cinema. Vibrant splashes of pink and blue, red and green, filled the off-kilter frame as the camera glided through shadowy corridors. Bava, a former lighting cameraman, also made full use of the frame in all dimensions, with action frequently taking place throughout the entirety of his meticulous compositions – side-to-side, top-to-bottom, front-to-back. Excess, violence, and sex are common visual and narrative themes in gialli, and here in Blood and Black Lace – essentially the second ever giallo film – Bava unleashed a beast...

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The Case of the Scorpion's Tail (Sergio Martino, 1971) DVD Review

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“You know I'm dying to see you.” Sergio Martino – one of Italy's finest journeymen filmmakers – helmed an impressive run of giallo films during the early 1970s. Following on from the sublime The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1970) came The Case of the Scorpion's Tail, a densely-plotted thriller/morality play packed with infidelity and greed – as well as a some particularly flashy murder sequences...

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