Before Salon Kitty redirected his career toward sex films, Tinto Brass was just another idealistic young director looking to capture the zeitgeist of the 1960s. Deadly Sweet was inspired and influenced by Antonioni’s Blow-Up but also markedly different.
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Exhumed: A Child’s Treasury of Jimmy Wang Yu Movies
Back in the day, Jimmy Wang Yu was one of my favorite punching bags, and I’m glad I was never a punching bag for him. Because I hear he was actually pretty tough.
Strip Nude for Your Killer
Strip Nude for Your Killer is a sleazy, offensive bit of giallo trash, but at least it wastes no time letting you know exactly where you stand.
The Sister of Ursula
Sex, the Italian coast, outlandish murders — everything in The Sister of Ursula operates under the directive of “This should be good, but we’re going to mess it up.”
The Case of the Bloody Iris
When it comes to truly loathsome characters in giallo, few can match The Case of the Bloody Iris, a film in which everyone is hateful or stupid; or more often, hateful and stupid.
The Bloodstained Butterfly
The Bloodstained Butterfly has the elaborate murders and red herrings one expects, but it also spends time on police procedure, forensic science, and courtroom maneuvering.
All the Colors of the Dark
All the Colors of the Dark is a a film that delivers all the requisite elements of a giallo and then some, with the peak popularity of giallo being combined with the trend in devil worship and witchcraft movies.
Death Walks on High Heels
Beneath Ercoli’s tweaks of the nose is a typically giallo approach to storytelling, which is to take a relatively straight-forward story and relay it in the most convoluted, difficult to follow fashion.
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage remains to this day a highly regarded classic, and rightfully so. Decades after it’s release, and decades after legions of imitators, it still feels fresh, inventive, and shocking.
Slaughter Hotel
Despite coming out in 1971 — a banner year for giallo — Slaughter Hotel plays like one of Jess Franco’s lesser efforts, or something from bottom-of-the-bucket production house Eurocine.
The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave
Giallo often treat logic as a secondary consideration at best. That said, Emilio P. Miraglia’s The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave is nonsensical even within the forgiving confines of giallo logic.
Dark Purpose
Had Dark Purpose been an hour long episode of a TV show, he would have delivered. But forced to come up with, roughly, three half-hour acts, the movie isn’t dynamic enough to make us forget nothing much is going on.
