Giallo - An Appreciation

So most of you might be thinking, what the hell is a Giallo? In simple terms a Giallo is typically an Italian film which incorporates both elements from detective films as well as horror films. They're most noted for the cliches which normally involve an unseen killer wearing black gloves who kills beautiful women. Its also very well known for some truly unusual titles, some of my favorites of these include The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Don't Torture A Ducking and The Black Belly Of The Tarantula. Its also known for having some rather prolific directors such as Dario Argento. So with the remake of Giallo classic Suspira released today I thought why not take a look at the genre which has refused to die.

We'll start with where the word Giallo came from, it comes from the color of the paper which the original stories were printed on. The books themselves were very popular in post war Italy and naturally they started to gain a huge following, it was in 1970 when the first major Giallo film was released, this was The Bird With The Crystal Plumage not only being the first major Giallo production but also Dario Argento's big break as a director, since then he has gone on to be a major face in Italian cinema, a lot of people still consider this film to be one of Argento's best films which can really only be topped by the films he made in the 80's when the Giallo was at the end of its popularity. I'm not going to review Bird With The Crystal Plumage here now but I'll give you a brief summary, an American writer in Rome witness an attack on a woman in an art gallery, he becomes convinced that he saw the attackers face that night and he starts his own investigation even though it puts both him and his girlfriend in danger.

Now the film was very well received and for good reason, the film takes the tropes from the books and makes them feel new, of course with any film that does well a sequel was made, again it was directed by Argento but this time he was on a far higher budget, the resulting film was The Cat O Nine Tails, which put side by side with Bird, it wasn't as good. It was still a very well received and a third film was made, this one Four Flies On Grey Velvet, completed the Animal Trilogy of films, now I haven't seen Four Flies only because the original release was of poor quality and has since become quite rare.

Giallo was coming along fine until the tropes started to wear thin, the usual stories became very repetitive so directors had to find a way to change up the formula. Again Argento was on the front lines pioneering a whole new type of Giallo film, one that took the violence the films were known for and cranked it up to 11 by taking more elements from horror, this resulted in masterpieces like Deep Red and Suspira, films that are still considered some of the scariest films ever, they were often full of horrifying, grotesque imagery some of these images have been burned onto the minds of cinema goers forever.

Then we come to the 1980's were after the 70's influx of Giallo audience started to get bored again, suddenly the nightmarish imagery of Suspira or the creeping dread of Deep Red was ineffective. Once again Argento had an idea, he took the violence and turned it up again. This time even higher. This resulted in films like Tenebrae, an ultra violent Giallo film which both served as a final salute to the genre and a welcome to the slasher movie craze of the 80's.

But now the Giallo film is back, for the past few years a remake of the 70's classic Suspira has been in the works and today its been released, are there differences, who knows its a longer film that the original but as for nostalgia its looking fairly good.

So that was the Giallo, a genre that has had more reinventions than most genres before being beaten by another craze. Still at least this one came back.....(Just ignore Halloween 2018)