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.”
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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.
Read moreThe 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.
Read moreA European Vampire in Japan
Whatever shortcomings Nobuo Nakagawa’s Lady Vampire Has are not enough to counter its chaotic appeal. It may be less gory than his next film, and it may make no sense, but it has an enthusiastic willingness to be weird.
Read moreAll 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.
Read moreWho Saw Her Die?
Who Saw Her Die? is the rare giallo that attempts this, and the rare one that succeeds, and it is thanks primarily to a committed performance from former James Bond George Lazenby in a role that puts him through an emotional ringer.
Read moreDeath 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.
Read moreThe 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.
Read moreI, The Jury
When people imitate hardboiled fiction, they’re imitating Mickey Spillane. Every sentence is boiling over with hate and disgust. Every thought is of violence.
Read moreSlaughter 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.
Read moreDeadly Sweet
Before Salon Kitty redirected his career and before Caligula became the most infamous movie in the world, Tinto Brass was just a young director looking to capture the zeitgeist of the 1960s.
Read moreThe 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.
Read moreDark 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.
Read moreThe Red Queen Kills Seven Times
Part of the fun of watching gialli is getting lost in the needlessly convoluted twists, becoming so disoriented that one simply has to throw up one’s hands and surrender to the lurid displays of sex, violence, and style.
Read moreThe Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Girl Who Knew Too Much is a bit like Roman Holiday if Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn got caught up in a murder mystery. It isn’t grim, and it does have a certain spirit to it, but it also dabbles in tense Gothic atmosphere.
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