[Editorial] Black Gloves, Blood and Style: The History of the Giallo Part 2

Despite the golden age of the giallo lasting a relatively short time period in the context of horror subgenres, with its heyday occurring between the years 1970 and 1975, the cinematic movement proved to have a lasting effect on the history of horror on film. Giallo would also be the artform that produced three infamous maestros of the macabre which cemented their names as big movers within the history of the horror genre. Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento are three masters of horror, infamous for the terror that they have brought to the silver screen and also for pushing the giallo movement to become as popular and influential as it would come to be. 

Mario Bava: Master of Italian Horror

Born on 31st July in 1914, Mario Bava had cinema in his blood. His father Eugenio Bava was a special effects photographer and cameraman in the Italian silent movie era. Despite initially wanting to be an artist, Mario moved into the film industry after coming to the realization that he would never be able to capitalize on his love of painting. He began to work as an assistant to Italian cinematographers like Massimo Terzano and also helped out at his father’s special effects department at Benito Mussolini’s film factory Istituto Luce.

In 1939, Mario Bava became a cinematographer, producing his first two short films, following with his debut feature film in the early 1940s. In the 1950s, Bava became tasked with completing projects that his acquaintance Ricardo Freda had walked out on, such as the first Italian horror film in the sound era of cinema I Vampiri (1956) as well as the first Italian science fiction film The Day The Sky Exploded (1958) credited to Paolo Heusch. In 1960, Bava directed the infamous black and white gothic horror movie Black Sunday (1960) starring Barbara Steele, that tells the story of a witch who is executed and then returns two centuries later to exact revenge on the descendants of her executioners. Bava’s use of dark and light in the film became widely acclaimed and these cinematography tools of light and colour would become closely associated with Bava in his future projects. 

In the early half of the 1960s, Mario Bava began to pioneer the blossoming giallo genre with his film La Ragazza Che Sapeva Troppo/ The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) which is widely considered to be the very first giallo film. The film follows Nora, a crime thriller fanatic who witnesses a real life crime, thus becoming entangled in a murder mystery whilst those around her pass off her experience as fantasy and folly. The male lead, Dr Marcelli, is played by horror royalty John Saxon (Black Christmas 1974, Nightmare on Elm Street 1984). The film combines sexploitation, thriller traditions as well as horror elements creating the blueprint of gialli to come. 

In 1963, Bava filmed Black Sabbath , an anthology of three individual stories introduced by Boris Karloff. In the unedited Italian version of the segment ‘The Telephone’ Bava continued his experimentation into the horror genre, creating a highly stylized thriller in vivid colours which would become Bava’s calling card. The Telephone contained the backbones of the tropes that giallo would become infamous for. A beautiful woman embroiled in a scandalous affair is stalked by a mysterious murderer, with the ending providing a twist in the plot. This segment was filmed without the use of filters giving it a vivid and realistic feel which Bava would carry on into his next giallo feature.

After filming the gothic horror The Whip And The Body (1963) Mario Bava directed his giallo masterpiece Blood And Black Lace in 1964. Based in a fashion house where the glamorous models are picked off one by one by a disguised assailant, Blood And Black Lace is a technicoloured gore fest, that eroticised the murder scenes, creating a powerful focus on the bloody act itself, something that had not been seen before on film. The colours are vivid and bold, with an emphasis on blood red, giving an atmosphere of psychedelia, paired with a frantic jazzy soundtrack, which caused the film to push the boundaries on what was found to be acceptable in Italian cinema at the time. The murders are elaborate and imaginative and the body count is perceived to be an important component to the movie’s narration. Throughout the 1970s Bava alternated between  gothic horror and the giallo genre. In 1970 he directed Five Dolls For An August Moon and Hatchet For A Honeymoon. Yet it was in 1971 when Mario Bava directed what is considered his most infamous violent giallo A Bay Of Blood. A Bay Of Blood details a series of mysterious murders that occur in a bay. Bava upped the gore in this giallo, and thus created a highly influential set piece that would go on to inspire future subgenres of horror. It’s safe to say that without Mario Bava, the subgenre of giallo would not have had such the impact on the horror movie genre as it did and continues to have today. 

Lucio Fulci: The Poet of the Macabre

Born in 1927 and raised by a politically charged anti-fascist single mother, Lucio Fulci started out in life as a medial student, a fact that may have gone on to influence Fulci’s penchant for extreme gore. After dropping out of medical school, Fulci pursued a career in film, initially working as a film critic for publications such as Gazzetta delle Arti and Il Messaggero. After applying for film school in Rome and working as a director of documentaries, Fulci went on to become an assistant director and screenwriter for Italian comedy features in the early 1950s. He then moved onto directing and making comedy films under the watchful eye of famed Italian director Steno before moving into the horror genre with the giallo debut Una Sull’altra in 1969.

Una Sull’altra follows the story of a doctor who is suspected of murdering his wife in a potential insurance scam. The film was a commercial success internationally despite being heavily edited in other countries due to its explicit sexual content. A theme that would carry through his future gialli, Lucio Fulci would develop the erotic tropes of the giallo genre and Una Sull’altra would specifically go on to influence the erotic thriller movies such as Basic Instinct (1992).

It was Fulci’s next venture into the giallo genre A Lizard in A Woman’s Skin (1971) that would cement him as the ‘Grandfather of Gore’. The film tells the story of a politician’s daughter who experiences vivid psychedelic nightmares that depict debauchery and murder. Upon awakening, she discovers her neighbour has been murdered. This film was so graphic and violent, that Fulci was taken to court and threatened with imprisonment for the depiction of animal cruelty with the scene of dissected dogs. The special fx artist had to prove in court the director's innocence with the help of the realistic dog props actually used on the film. A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin integrated Fulci’s recurring themes of dream logic using psychedelia as a plot point rather than as a stylistic technique.

As the giallo films in the 1970s became more and more imaginatively violent, as did Lucio Fulci’s giallo movies. Don’t Torture A Duckling (1972) was one of the first films in which Fulci began his significant use of violent gore special effects. With strong anti Catholic undertones, the film surrounds a detective as he must investigate a string of child murders. This feature preceded Fulci’s Sette Note In Nero (1977) which was one of the few giallo to combine paranormal and supernatural aspects, narrating the story of a psychic who foresees murders and must clear her husband’s name. This film developed Fulci’s use of dream scapes and psychedelic logic. With his graphic and expressive visual techniques and non- traditional storytelling, Lucio Fulci has earned the moniker of ‘Poet of the Macabre’.

Dario Argento: Master of the Thrill

Perhaps considered as the ultimate giallo director, Dario Argento was born in 1940 to a Sicillian film producer and a Brazilian photographer. Just like Fulci, Argento began his film career as a critic, writing mainly for the newspaper Paes Sera before working as a screenwriter. Contributing to the work of Segio Leone and Bernardo Bertolucci, Argento also collaborated on the spaghetti western Once Upon A Time In The West (1968).

Dario Argento’s directorial debut was also his first foray into giallo just as the horror sub-genre was beginning to grow in popularity. In 1970, Argento burst onto the murder mystery scene with The Bird With The Crystal Plumage catapulting himself and the genre into mainstream Italian and international cinema. In the first of his ‘animal trilogy’ The Bird With The Crystal Plumage is the story of an American in Italy who witnesses a murder in an art gallery and becomes the object of the murderer’s psychopathic intentions. Smart and extremely stylish, Argento’s debut set the standards for giallo. He continued his trilogy with the release of The Cat O’ Nine Tails (1971) and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971). These titles continued the giallo tradition of using animals, numbers and colours in the titles of features. 

On the tail end of the golden age of the giallo in the mid seventies, Argento released what is considered the greatest giallo of all time Deep Red (1975). Known in its native Italy as Profundo Rosso, Argento’s giallo masterpiece tells the story of a musician investigating murders carried out by a clandestine black gloved killer. This was also the first film in which Argento would begin a continued collaboration with alt-rockers Goblin for the film’s soundtrack. Argento himself took on the role as the gloved murderous hand as he would continue to do so in most of his giallo films. It's this attention to detail as well as the explicit choreographed violence that would make Deep Red a critical success. The film would also go on to become a pivotal point in horror movie history, eventually influencing John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) as well as having a profound effect on director Quentin Tarantino. 

Dario Argento began to move towards supernatural horror with his release of Suspiria in 1977. Despite the thematic change, Suspiria still contained giallo elements, with a heavy emphasis on style, colour and the element of murder mystery at it’s core. As the popularity of giallo began to wane once the 1970s came to a close, Dario Argento was still championing the sub-genre into the eighties with his release of Tenebrae (1982). A paint-by-numbers giallo, with strong influences of Hitchcock and the classic detective stories by Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. Again, the director combined the supernatural with giallo sentimentalities with Phenomena (1985) and in the nineties released Trauma (1992) and The Stendhal Syndrome (1996), bringing the giallo into the modern day using technology as plot development techniques. 

Dario Argento continued to produce giallo into the early 2000s with The Card Player (2004) and of course, 2009’s critically panned Giallo that seemed to deviate from giallo tradition and follow more onto the path of torture porn. Despite this, Dario Argento will always be referred to as the maestro of the giallo genre and its true directorial champion.

Even though the giallo sub-genre of horror was generally short lived in terms of popularity, it produced directors and features that would have a tremendous influence on the horror genre in decades to follow and would lay the foundations of a legacy that continues to flourish.

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