April 6, 2008
Look out! He's got a knife!
I thought it was about time that this blog lived up to its title for a while. Hence, I've started killing people I'm going to write about the Italian movie filone known as giallo for a while.
I first got into gialli through Dario Argento's movie Suspiria, which changed my life forever at the tender age of 17. I already loved horror movies, but this may have been the one that pushed me over the edge (it was either that or Dawn of the Dead). I am by no means an expert, but I've seen a number of these movies now.
Giallo is of course the Italian word for yellow, and gets its name from a series of thriller books published from the 1930s with yellow covers (a similar situation to film noir). The movie genre did not get going until the 1960s, spearheaded by Mario Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much (which introduced elements like the amateur detective misinterpreting what she sees) and Blood and Black Lace (which introduced elements like the black-gloved & raincoated killer and aesthetically creative death scenes).
The filone draws inspiration from things like the German Edgwar Wallace adaptations of the '50s, Psycho and Peeping Tom but quickly developed its own path. It subsequently was the prime influence on the '80s slasher movie, particularly via Halloween (which John Carpenter acknowledges was inspired bySuspiria) and Friday the 13th (which producer/director Sean S. Cunningham has said wouldn't exist without Mario Bava's influence, particularly Bay of Blood).
The genre has all but died out in the last 25 years or so, although Argento still directs genres (though sadly they are very lacklustre compared to his prime) and the advent of dvd has reinvigorated interest in many of the old movies.
Sexually ambiguous, confused and/or complex killers, often psychedelic imagery and tricky camera work, nonsensical or even irrelevant plots, and extremely beautiful women. This is some of the stuff of giallo, and so it'll be the stuff of this blog for anywhere between the next 23 minutes and 23 years, depending on stuff.
Posted by pearce at April 6, 2008 1:13 PM