ITALIAN GIALLO

Two directors form the backbone of this new examination of terror. The first, Mario Bava, had made a name for himself working as a cinematographer on projects such as Riccardo Freda's 1957 I Vampiri and Pietro Francisci's Hercules in 1958, with the latter proving thankfully not to be too inspirational on his future work. With his directorial turn, he shocked audiences in 1960 with his debut film, the notorious cult religious horror Black Sunday (known in the UK as The Mask of Satan). Indeed, the film was so shocking, the BBFC banned the film's UK release over its visceral content. Nonetheless, Bava's career as a horror pioneer had been launched.

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Bava's third feature, and the opening film of this series, Blood and Black Lace (1963) would kickstart the Giallo film genre with its oversaturated presentation and challengingly violent content, twisting the incredibly popular American Noir genre past recognition. Following the success of his “body count” Gialli (a popular reference to the expendable nature of Bava’s characters), a series of imitators would take inspiration and form the Slasher genre that excelled in popularity in late 20th century America. But Bava’s influence would be felt more immediately by a figure whose name is synonymous with Giallo...

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Dario Argento. The man who would twist the genre into new territory, pushing conceptions of what Giallo cinema can include. Argento began his obsession with cinema as a film critic, before scoring his first big break working as a screenwriter on Sergio Leone’s masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), for which he received only $800. Undeterred by his measly reward, and now with his father on production duties, Argento would create a classic run of post-war horror that would begin with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage in 1970, and end with Opera in 1987. Across this seventeen-year period his films would shift from lavish murder mysteries, to surrealistic supernaturality, before finally moving towards the grimier aesthetics of the slasher films that were inspired by the movement. His works would also lean heavily towards replicating influences and adaptation, with his most famous picture Suspiria (1977) being indebted to the German Expressionist movement of the 1920s and a brutalised retelling of Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland. Where Bava was more focused upon the mechanics that made Giallo’s typically convoluted mysteries unfold, and the number of fatalities rise, Argento’s imagination is the main draw to his strand. Ensuring each new picture found increasingly surprising and bewildering new ways to shock his audiences.

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Argento and Bava may be the most iconic names within the movement, but the entries by Lucio Fulci and Sergio Martino examined the possibilities of adapting prestigious literature and examining hefty themes like religious commentary, and social changes within 20th century Italy. Giallo became a field of experimentation. Fulci’s example in this series Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972) drawing on rampant nihilism and anger at the Catholic Church. Meanwhile Martino’s Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972) showing Giallo at its most literary, by updating Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 tale The Black Cat with a revenge plot that draws heavily off social issues. These films show an isolated example of the contrast available in Giallo, which would drive its two decade run.