Let's discuss films in the "giallo" subgenre

The "blood" is always so shiny, thick, and "fire engine red". Splattered all over the place.

The genre is cheesy AF and the dubbing is usually laughably bad.

That clip was so upsetting, my word. Thank you for the nightmares, OP!

Suspiria (even though it’s not a true giallo) and Tenebrae are my favorites. I would a little let down by Opera after all the hype.

Some of my favorite giallos are all Argento:

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

Tenebre -the scene with the dog attack goes on so long it starts to get funny. And those poor lesbians.

Deep Red -one of the best. So stylish.

Should we not be surprised that John Saxon pops up in some of these?

[quote] In the Italian language, giallo is a genre of novel including any literary genre involving crime and mystery, with all its sub-genres such as crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, or thriller-horror.

[quote] The term giallo ("yellow") derives from a series of crime-mystery pulp novels taking its name from the trademark yellow cover background.

[quote] The Italian film genre began as literal adaptations of the original giallo mystery novels. Directors soon began taking advantage of modern cinematic techniques to create a unique genre that retained the mystery and crime fiction elements of giallo novels but veered more closely into the psychological thriller or psychological horror genres

I love these movies! I've probably seen just about all of them. Seek out the ones with Susan Scott, she was a real spitfire of a woman, not the usual passive damsel in distress. A list of films that stick out in my mind: Blade of the Ripper (with the most epic twist ending), Don't Torture a Duckling, Lizard in a Woman's Skin, Amuck, One on Top of the Other, The Fourth Victim, All the Colors of the Dark, The Crimes of the Black Cat (featuring a cat with poisoned claws!), Autopsy, Puzzle, My Dear Killer, The Pyjama Girl Case, Eyeball, The Fifth Cord, 4 Flies on Grey Velvet (the only movie I've seen with a gay detective on the case). A Dragonfly for each Corpse with sexy bear Paul Naschy, another one showing sympathy for a gay character. I downloaded all of the movies on a site called Rarelust.

Mario Bava was a pioneer of the genre. The Girl Who Knew Too Much is considered to be the first giallo. Features a bit involving marijuana cigarettes, unusual for 1963. Blood and Black Lace is perhaps the first slasher movie in glorious technicolor. Bay of Blood seems like one of the first to feature teens getting killed off one by one. Friday the 13th totally plagiarized the death scenes from that one.

Quentin Tarantino lives that scene in “Tenebre” when the woman gets her arm chopped out and she paints the wall with her blood.

Some of the fun of these movies is the bad dubbing. Little boys are obviously dubbed by women and are given silly high voices. Daria Nicolodi sounds different in every movie. The emotions sound off.

I love Lucio Fulci's "The Psychic" with Jennifer O'Neill. Very atmospheric and eerie.

[quote]Some of the fun of these movies is the bad dubbing.

That's why I'd rather watch the Italian language versions of these movies instead of the English language versions.

I love how I can recognize the same voices in all the movies. The woman who did the voice of Olga in Suspiria is the most noticeable one, she must have done hundreds of movies. The screams of agony were always expertly done, very operatic.

Many Italian films for decades were filmed without sound and all was dubbed in later.

The dubbing often sounds like it was recorded in a closet.

That wasn’t a clip. That was the entire movie, R2.

No one’s mentioned Eyes of Laura Mars yet?

R17 "Eyes of Laura Mars" has been described as an American take on the giallo, you're right. "Alice, Sweet Alice" is another example.

I love that George Lucas saw “Laura Mars” and was like, “That’s the guy I need to direct ‘The Empire Strikes Back’!” But man, that was a very wise decision.

[quote]The woman who did the voice of Olga in Suspiria is the most noticeable one, she must have done hundreds of movies.

A poster on one of the Suspiria threads stated that "Olga dubber" is none other than DL fave Theresa Russell.

R20 I think that poster was mistaken—Theresa Russell did do a dub for Daria Nicolodi in Argento's "Tenebre", but not in "Suspiria" (at least to my knowledge).

No giallo discussion is complete without a tribute to the magnificent Edwidge Fenech

Jennifer O'Neill's costumes in The Psychic are FABULOUS. She looks so elegant and effortlessly beautiful in that film.

r20 no, the real dubber is Carolyn De Fonseca. According to IMDB she was born in 1929, it's strange to realize she was in her 40s when she dubbed all these hot young actresses in the 70s.

Great list r7 - I’ve seen a lot but not everything there, happy to dive in to more!

Franco Nero is SO HOT in The Fifth Cord

[quote]R23 Jennifer O'Neill's costumes in The Psychic are FABULOUS. She looks so elegant and effortlessly beautiful in that film.

Ever since I watched SUMMER OF 42 when I was little I’ve always considered her to be the most beautiful lady I’ve ever seen.

Deep Red is the best giallo ever. Four Flies on Grey Velvet is also visually amazing.

Dario Argento was the master of Giallo, bar none. His films for the past 20 years have not been good but the early ones are spectacular. I strongly recommend watching them in their original Italian with subtitles even if an English language track is available. It'll make a world of difference.

R20 Incorrect. Theresa Russell dubbed Daria Nicolodi in Tenebre. She did not have anything to do with Suspiria.

R27 problem is the actors mouths are often moving in English. I wonder if Italians find the Italian dubs as campy as we do with the English dubs.

I’ve never seen one of these films all the way through.

I started to watch BABA YAGA because I admire Carroll Baker, but was unprepared for the cheapjack dubbing. As soon as the actors started “talking” I thought, “Oh, no. No no no no no. This is a dramatic bridge too far.”

R24, that's her! What a great voice.

The dubbing in old Italian films is problematic. That's why I said watch it in Italian if you can, at least the cadences feel more natural than the forced English spoken by the voice over actors who often were not native English speakers and used very theatrical intonations.

R29 Italians were used to watching every movie dubbed into Italian therefore the mouths moving different from the words didn't matter much to them.

I watched “A Blade in the Dark” but didn’t like it so much. Rather boring in parts with a very predictable twist that’s been done several times before. Ugly photography. Terrible expository dialogue: “I’m me, Julia-your girl” a character says-not on the phone-but right in front of the guy.

The only bonus was handsome Andrea Occhipinti best k own to Americans if any bothered to see “Bolero”.

[quote]r33 The only bonus was handsome Andrea Occhipinti best known to Americans if any bothered to see “Bolero”.

I'm a reluctant fan of Bo Derek, if only because she has such eerily symetrical bone structure.

I wonder what she should have done with her career. I guess starring in her husband's tacky soft core porn made sense, because she seemed amatuerish in everything besides "10." And at least they could make decent money producing that trash even if it went straight to video.

Four Flies on Grey Velvet is an underrated giallo with some haunting imagery

[quote]ps: Ms. Derek is NOT Martha material

Ooos. I forgot I wasn't in the MAME thread, where we were discussing the pros and cons of a drunk Judy Garland playing Martha in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF (!)

Four Flies is my second favorite Argento after Deep Red. Cat O'Nine Tails is third.

Argento's Inferno is more like Suspiria, not a giallo but worth watching for the imagery, especially that underwater sequence among corpses that was actually directed by the great Mario Bava.

I like Inferno more every time I watch it. I love how logic has no place in so many of these movies - they operate on some wacko wavelength all their own. I've seen all the big ones mentioned here more than once and I swear to you two months after re-watching Deep Red or Blade in the Dark or Hatchet For the Honeymoon I couldn't come close to telling what happened in any of them. I went through a big binge of dozens of them ten years or so ago and they all just turned into this miasma of color and music and vibe. They're nonsense, but pure cinema

I love how the characters in these movies make the dumbest decisions.

In “Inferno”, a woman is walking down a city street and hears a noise like a trash can clanging. So she goes to investigate- down a dark alley. Why would you investigate such a mundane noise? Later on, somebody is in an apartment building and hears a noise up the stairs and starts saying, “Hello?” It’s a fucking apartment building. You’re going to hear stuff.

And of course all the women who, instead of running, just stand against a wall and scream as the killer comes at them.

“Inferno” has one of the most bizarre moments I have ever seen that’s somewhat giallo like. It involves a man in what is supposed to be Central Park (it’s Italy) who randomly has a man in a hot dog cart whom we have not seen before come and stab him to death and then we don’t see him again. It makes no sense.

R39 Yes, Inferno is loco or rather pazzo. Not much of it makes sense but it's supposed to be a nightmare and nightmares are like that.

R38 How come you don't get Deep Red? It's Argento's most logical movie.

I just watched “Four Flies” because of this thread. It was more sedate and subdued than a lot of Argento but it did have his trademark camera work which is always so good and stylish. The tracking shot of the woman falling down the stairs and bumping her head on each step was fantastic.

Another thing I like about a lot of giallo is that they show a lot of contemporary 70s Italy and stays away from the antiquities. Not that it’s glorious, a lot of those homes and decor and post-war architecture are pretty awful like they were everywhere else but it’s good to see a different side of things.

Argentina deliberately did not show any of classical Rome in “”Tenebre” for that reason. It’s all in modern buildings and plazas.

Sorry, *Argento.

Damn auto correct.

[quote] The tracking shot of the woman falling down the stairs and bumping her head on each step was fantastic.

That woman was Mrs. Donald Sutherland, now the widow Sutherland.

THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH: BLADE OF THE RIPPER

Francine Racette is a rather horrible stage name.

I love their weird names like Mrs. Wardh or Dr. Hichcock from The Horrible Dr. Hichcock.

Oh please, r46, it's a perfectly good stage name. And it doesn't rhyme with Ratched.

In Argento’s movies, while they are dubbed, from the movements of the actors mouths, they all appear to be speaking English, even the Italian actors.

They all definitely were speaking English in “Suspiria” and Alida Valli, Jessica Harper, and Joan Bennett’s audio tracks don’t have that tinned dubbed sound. The others -ESPECIALLY Udo Kier- do.

R49 Very good. I must have seen Suspiria 20 times and i agree. In Deep Red they all speak English except for Clara Calamai. If you watch the italian version her voice matches her mouth movement perfectly.

Until relatively recently actors in Italian productions spoke their lines in their languages, then they all got dubbed into the different versions. Today that rarely happens because modern audiences don't have a lot of patience for the Tower of Babel soups.

They seem boring, amateurish, misogynistic messes to me. Plodding and unpleasant.

Giallo is one of my least favorite genres.

Lamberto Bava's "Delirium: A Photo of Gioia" from 1986 has just received a stellar 4K release from Vinegar Syndrome. This late giallo features Capucine in one of her final films, and Sabrina (Boys, Boys, Boys). Not as polished as Bava's Demons I and II, it's not particularly gory or scary, but it is unusual that it is influenced by the look of nighttime soap operas Dallas and Knots Landing.

[quote] r5 They seem boring, amateurish, misogynistic messes to me. Plodding and unpleasant. Giallo is one of my least favorite genres.

I would have agreed with you not too long ago. The movies do seem clumsy to me, and their being shot as silent films and later (indifferently) dubbed over makes them appear simply pathetic.

But during the pandemic I started listening to a lot of new podcasts - and one of them I found intriguing is called GIRLS, GUTS, AND GIALLO - which is kind of a kinky lesbian reaction to the genre. The host and her guests like the dark, fairytale world of some of the stories, their art direction, the bloodlust. Listening to their appreciation has made me take the movies a bit more seriously : ) If you're interested in at least what some other film people like about the genre, maybe it’s a show to try out.

The host’s name is Annie Rose Malamet (!) and this guest for the episode “Gothic Giallo 101” is someone named Kat Ellinger:

Which Giallo is the most misogynistic ever filmed? Delirium: Photo of Gioia and Tenebrae are both disturbingly objectifying towards women. Tenebrae actually tries to make some statements about misogyny in horror movies - before gruesomely dispatching two of the lesbians, one through a slit in her shirt with what sounds like porn music playing in the background.

R50 - I know in the case of Daria Nicolodi, she may have been mouthing English in Deep Red, but that's not who you hear speaking in the English language version.

I remember reading somewhere that as she was saying her lines, someone was standing nearby saying her lines in advance so she'd know what to say - and that basically Nicolodi was parroting this person because her English was so poor.

I also remember reading that Theresa Russell dubbed Nicolodi's voice in the English language version of Inferno for the same reason.

The giallo genre saved Carroll Baker’s career and family in the late 60s.

She’d been unfairly fired by Paramount and was blackballed in Hollywood while the lawsuit played out. In the midst of a deep depression she got an invite to the Venice Film Festival and somehow roused herself to get there.

There an Italian director offered her a cheap thriller and because she was broke - with two children to support - she grabbed it. Suddenly she was the toast of the Italian film industry and made giallo films for a decade.

It’s curious she just stuck with that one type of film over there, though. Since she was a skilled actress, it’s odd that Visconti, Bertolucci etc. didn’t want her for SOMETHING.

"It’s curious she just stuck with that one type of film over there, though. Since she was a skilled actress, it’s odd that Visconti, Bertolucci etc. didn’t want her for SOMETHING."

Giallos except perhaps those by Argento were considered cheap commercial ventures, quickies featuring a lot of gratuitous nudity and violence in those days, aimed mostly at young men. The great Italian directors were happy to socialize with Carrol in Rome but wouldn't hire her for their movies probably because she was associated with this lower form of entertainment. Also, I can't think of a single Visconti or Bertolucci movie that she could have fit in.

[quote]R57 The great Italian directors were happy to socialize with Carroll in Rome but wouldn't hire her for their movies probably because she was associated with this lower form of entertainment.

Well, though she’d been nominated for an Oscar, her 1960s Hollywood output HAD been on the tacky side, too [bold]: ([/bold]

I guess the high profile directors had bigger stars to pursue.

As much as I love her, Carroll's career opened with a smash with Baby Doll but quickly devolved to trash. One thing that sticks out to me is her strong nasal, very American accent.

R59 I love Carroll too and think she was very talented, but a lot of those Italian films she did are not good showcases of her abilities. She was wonderful in Baby Doll and Something Wild, among others. The gialli with her are hit-or-miss. I think the best one is probably Paranoia (aka Orgasmo) which was pretty well-made trash with a nice twist. Knife of Ice is pretty good, too.

[quote]r59 As much as I love her, Carroll's career opened with a smash with Baby Doll but quickly devolved to trash.

[quote]r60 I love Carroll too and think she was very talented

I love her, too, even though she sometimes seems out of her depth in her peroxided Joseph E. Levine period. She’s not really built like a blonde bombshell, up top, and she doesn’t have the free flowing sexuality of one, either.

I would have so loved to see her in THE THREE FACES OF EVE, which Warner Bros. wouldn’t loan her out for. She’s an example of how once the rhythm of a career’s broken, it can be very hard to establish it again.

On the subject of dubbing…

While it’s not giallo but horror, Bava’s “Demons” has the black Italian actor Bobby Rhodes playing a pimp and the person who dubbed him affected this very street American persona and it’s hilarious.

Part of what I love about giallo are those uncomplicated 70s fashions.

Nothing Underneath was that an example of the category?

R64 definitely a giallo. I love that movie. It's one of the weirder ones. The international setting (Yellowstone Park to Milan) makes it unique.

Fulci's "Don't Torture a Duckling" is a masterpiece. As much as I love the gory dreamlike zombie splatter of "The Beyond" (not a giallo), I think it's possibly his best movie. Arrow Video recently put it out on 4K and it looks stunning.

The original Suspiria and Phenomena are both great Argento classics along with Profondo Rosso (Deep Red). Suspiria and Phenomena were the inspirations behind the video game Clock Tower. Shame Dario's last greatest hit was Sleepless in 2001.

Malignant which came out a few years ago is considered a modern day American giallo film much like The Eyes of Laura Mars, Alice Sweet Alice and Last Night in Soho. Giallo can be a bit formulaic at times just like Nordic Noir but God do I love those genres.

My personal fave is NEW YORK RIPPER.

The Donald Duck killer cracks me up!

My favoritengiallo title: Strip Nude for your Killer.