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Cinema Scope with Andy Nelson takes you on a captivating journey through the ever-evolving landscape of film. Moreover, it offers a unique and engaging perspective on the art of cinema.
Welcome to CinemaScope where we dissect the suspense and unravel the mysteries of cinema's genre landscapes. I'm Andy Nelson, your guide on this journey to bridge film genres, subgenres, and movements, ultimately deepening our understanding of them all. Today, we are slicing into the stylish and bloody world of Italian giallo films. Emerging in the 19 sixties seventies, giallo films combine elements of mystery, horror, and psychological thriller, creating a unique and influential style style that would leave an indelible mark on the world of cinema. Join us as we explore the key characteristics, themes, and iconic films that define this provocative and visually stunning subgenre and examine its lasting impact on modern filmmaking.
Andy:Joining me today is our first returning guest, doctor Leon Hunt. Welcome, Leon. How are you?
Leon:I'm very good. Thank you. So, I think last time I was here, I was sharpening my sword for wuxia films. That's right. And I've got my I've got my black gloves on tonight.
Leon:So Excellent. Yes. Ready for the challenge.
Andy:Everyone's got their black leather gloves. Perfect. Yeah. That was, our first episode talking about Wuxia films, which is fantastic. And, listeners, you might recall that, doctor Hunt is also quite an expert in Xialo films and has a book out about Mario Bava, who we will be discussing some today.
Andy:First off, let's just take a quick look at giallo and why we're talking about it, why this is important, and I we'll get into some more depth. But real quick, like, why is this subgenre, significant in the history of horror and thriller cinema?
Leon:I think there are a number of reasons. One is it's always interesting, I think, when there's a huge cycle of films that are popular over a period of time. And Italy, after the war, particularly from the late fifties into the sixties seventies, was producing lots of films in in genre cycles. And the most famous of those obviously is the western, the Italian western, which becomes globally recognized. But the cello is around at around the same time.
Leon:It it it peaks in the in the seventies. But there is a there is a definitely sort of productive cycle, of these films. Secondly, considering they are often made on relatively modest budgets, I would say somewhere between low and medium budgets. Although a lot of them have pretty good production values, the best of them are very, very stylish films. And they're films that are they're admired not only by their fans, but, you know, notable filmmakers have talked about being influenced by or impressed by these films.
Leon:You know, their admirers include people like Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, Joe Dante, and so on who've who've all spoken, in admiration of these films. And it also, over time, proved to be an influential set of films. And I think we can sort of trace 2 influences particularly out of the Jallos cinema of the sixties seventies. One of them, and I guess it's the most it's the one that people most frequently see, is that some of these films are can very clearly be seen as precursors to the slasher film. Yeah.
Leon:Sure. So they're they're they're body count films, they're films where, you know, unlike the traditional whodunit where, you know, they find the body later, we are left in no doubt whatsoever about what was done to that body. You know, we we see it in enormous detail and we see a series of killings, not in all of them, but but in certainly in a a a subset of them. And the other genre I think which we can trace back to the Jalo is what later people refer to as the erotic thriller. You know, often they are films where people are, you know, they're they're motivated by desire or their desires get them into a dangerous situation in some way, so you can sort of see a line from them later to sort of films like Basic Instinct and, and those movies from sort of eighties nineties.
Andy:Yeah. And I think that also ties into the slasher films too, but the the idea that when you have your clothes off, that you're more vulnerable. Right? And I think that fits in both the the erotic thrillers and the slasher films.
Leon:Yeah. I can think of at least 2 Jaller films that have the word vice in the title. One of which we're gonna be looking at, your your your vice is a locked room, and only I have the key. There's another one called The Strange Vice of Missus Ward. And so they sense that your kinks are going to get you into trouble, you know, your your desires will lead you into danger.
Andy:Yeah. And, you know, going back to your your point about body count, I mean, the first film we're gonna be discussing, Blood and Black Lace, the Italian title is 6 women for the assassin. And it's like right there in the title, you know. That's
Leon:not just a title, pretty much a plot summary as well.
Andy:Yep. Exactly. Right. Right. Yeah.
Andy:It's it's such an interesting and stylish genre or subgenre to look at, and I think that's what makes it exciting to talk about because there's, you can really see those threads of where it would lead. Let's just start talking about where it came from. And I mean, I guess it starts, you know, literary origins of kind of this giallo subgenre, and it really giallo itself. And I was talking to somebody else, and I mentioned that I'm gonna be talking about giallo films, and they're like, yellow films? Because giallo means yellow in Italian, and they're like, what are those?
Andy:And so then you have to kinda go into this whole story about the the books. Right? And that's kind of like the how it all, came to be. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about, the literary origins?
Leon:Really, the giallo originates as an exercise in marketing and branding. Right. Because in essence, before we get to these films, really as a generic term, Cello really just became an Italian word for a murder mystery, a detective story. Any I mean, it's also used in news reporting around mysteries, as well. And I think sometimes people who are fans of these films go to Italy, and they encounter the word giallo in an Italian context.
Leon:They don't always see quite what they expect to see. There's a giallo TV channel, but if you turn it on, you're not going to see Dario Argento or Mario Bava. You're you're more likely to see a repeat of CSI or or something like that, you know, any kind of crime show.
Andy:Well, and I suppose that makes sense because the novels, the the Italian, reprints, the like, Italian versions of stories like Agatha Christie and, sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and all of these sorts of novels had been getting Italian translations, and they just had yellow covers. And that was really kind of the whole thing, and it just kind of turned into a thing where everybody started ripping it off. And, hey, if you're gonna write a book or something that was a crime thriller, essentially, put a yellow cover on it, and that's how you would mark it, that this is what it was. And so I guess it makes sense. Go to Italy, turn on the Giallo channel.
Andy:It's it's like turning on investigation discovery here in the US or something.
Leon:Yeah. The TV series Murder She Wrote in Italy, it's called La Signora in Giallo. The lady in yellow. Or or another way of saying the lady of mystery.
Andy:Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
Leon:So, yeah. We go back we go back to 1929, a Milan based publishing house, Mondadori. Basically, they were color coding their genres.
Andy:Oh, okay. So it wasn't just these ones?
Leon:It originally, it wasn't. No. But Jaller was the one that stuck.
Andy:Oh, interesting. Okay.
Leon:The original Jaller novels, they were hardback books with yellow dust covers on. And as you say, they were they were pretty much all translations. Partly because there was a popular taste for them, but also because, you know, this is fascist Italy. And and there was there was strong there was a strong sense of censorship about the idea that, you know, how could crimes possibly be committed in Italy? You know, it it it was all law abiding and full of respectable people.
Leon:So there were there was a real problem about writing an actual Italian giallo novel. If they were written, they often had to be kind of set somewhere else. So, yes, they're translations. A lot of them are translations. Agatha Christie, very popular.
Leon:Edgar Wallace, was very popular. And then over time, they produce more affordable formats for the Cello books. Other publishers, as you say, start to copy this format. The Mondadori Galli, you can still see them on newsstands in in Italy. So as a brand Wow.
Leon:The d'origalli still exists. But it took off as a broader term for any kind of mystery, you know, so detective story. Most bookshops, I mean, any bookshop in Italy that that has fiction in there, there will be a giallo section. And the cello basically, it's the crime section. And and not just Italian crime, you know, American crime writers, a lot of the Scandinavian stuff will be in the jalo section, as well.
Leon:So when we talk about these films that we're talking about today, we're really talking about a very particular type of jalo. It's a particular approach to the genre, I would say. And we could almost draw some parallels with film noir that, you know, when we look at film noir, when we look at the jalo as a cinematic form, there's a sort of question, you know, is this a genre? Is it a style? Is it a trend?
Leon:Is it a cycle? There are all sorts of interesting questions about what kind of object the Jell O actually is.
Andy:Yeah. I was I was curious about that because I was I was I I ended up as I was doing some research, I found that there's, even just deciding, do you call it a subgenre? Do you call it a genre in and of itself? You know, what is it? And there's arguments for both sides, and I thought that was actually really interesting.
Andy:Like, it it, you know, if you're looking at it as a genre, okay, it it it does have some common elements with horror and thriller, but it's very specific. Right? It is one of these things where it has such iconography within it that you could say, I can see it kind of being its own genre because it is so specific. But then that's kind of also what a subgenre is. It's like, well, it is kind of a horror thriller sort of film that just happens to have these elements in it.
Andy:So
Leon:Yeah.
Andy:Where where where do you fit with that?
Leon:I think it's it's it's difficult to disentangle it. I mean, one distinction people sometimes make is to refer to these films as, giallo a'letliana to suggest that this is a particular stylish stylistic approach to the Jallo. Because one thing about them is that although we now tend to call them Jallie, the Jallo element isn't necessarily the strongest element in them. Because, strictly speaking, the jalo in the traditional sense is a logical genre. Sure.
Leon:So, you know, you're meant to be able to go back and think, okay, I know who the killer is. And I go back, oh, yeah. Of course. I missed that clue, and I can figure out from this. Whereas 9 times out of 10, you get to the end of these films.
Leon:It's, oh, right. It's that guy. There's there's not particularly a a logical structure that he's just someone has to be the killer. It doesn't always hugely matter who it actually is, it has to be someone. So I often tend to think that, first and foremost, the thing that all of these films have in common is that they are suspense thrillers.
Leon:Yeah. And if I was defining them, I would say they are suspense thrillers that place a particular emphasis on the violent and erotic aspects of the story. I think there are a lot of connections during this period, and this doesn't just apply to the Jalo. I think it also applies to to horror, to the western, to science fiction, and lots of other things. There was a close relationship, I think, between the kind of, for want of a better word, the Italian b movie cinema.
Leon:Although I often think of the giallo as a kind of a a b plus cinema. It's slightly a plus Right. It's not quite in the a category.
Andy:Well and you had mentioned, like, its connections, like, there's this feel that you can see where this could have come from film noir, and noir films were kind of a b category in the states. Like, that's kind of, like, those that same sort of crime, story that had been told over there. What other traditions or or cinematic traditions, things that were going on like German expressionism, were there other sorts of things that also were influencing some of these filmmakers who would go on to make jalo films?
Leon:I think there are other things going on at around the same time. I think in some ways, the jalo is part of a larger trend around thrillers that are sort of pulling in more, I say, more violent and erotic aspects. So Psycho is an obvious thing to look back to that that, you know, Psycho, for its time, pushed the violent angle further than thrillers had previously. And also, although Psycho from the kind of the erotic point of view maybe, you know, seems tame to a modern sensibility, I think no small part of Psycho's appeal when it first came out was that in the opening scene, you've got Janet Leigh in her underwear, and she's just had sex with this guy in a hotel room. I think that was sure that got talked about an awful lot.
Leon:That was not something that you saw very much up to that point. And the film that comes before that, which is a huge influence on the Jallo, particularly what I would call the Jallo erotica, the more sort of the erotic thriller type, is Les Diabolique, the Henri Short Clouseau film, where you have a relatively small number of characters. Probably 2 of them will be a husband and wife, or a woman and her lover. And there's plotting and double crossing, and maybe someone appears to die but they haven't really died. And it looks like they've all of this kind of stuff.
Leon:And there are frightening scenes in it, and there are twists and turns, and we figure it all out at the end. Something else that's going on at the same time as the Jarlow is a series of West German films adapted from Edgar Wallace. And these are often referred to as the the creamy films. They're in black and white. They also have often quite sort of scary scenes in them.
Leon:They're not as violent as the jalo. They don't seem to go in for the sexual titillation in quite the same way. But some of the the jalli were co productions of West Germany, so they had elements of kind of those traditions in them. And I've other thing other films that come to mind from around the same time there were a few British films, there's Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, which is, in a way, a a body count film, and it's a body count film that is set in a world of pornography and nude models and sleaze. These are a lot of the things that the Jalo will kind of move into, as it goes on.
Leon:So although I think the Jallo maybe is one of the more productive incarnations of this, I think there is something going on more broadly, particularly in Europe.
Andy:Well and and across Europe, for sure. But what was going on in Italy at the time? Because this is right around the the years of lead period. You know, there's a a lot going on in Italy. We're kind of at in that post war period where, Italian, neorealism had been on the rise with, low budgets, realistic filming styles, quick productions.
Andy:Did all of that end up kind of influencing and pushing some of these filmmakers to want to do something a little different, more colorful, kind of I mean, something addressing kind of the disillusionment with society at the time?
Leon:I think you could maybe see some of the kind of those those political tensions in the films from the seventies. Maybe there are other cycles that show that a bit more, like some of the cop and gangster films, I think tap into some of the political unrest of the seventies. I think something that feeds into both the Cialow films of the sixties and also some of the horror films of the sixties is this is a period of huge cultural change in Italy, generated by the epic miracle of the late fifties into the early sixties. So there's this new kind of prosperity. There is a desire for a very sort of an Americanized lifestyle in Italy.
Leon:And a real challenge to some of the kind of moral values that have been so strong in Italy for such a long time, the kind of Catholic values around the family, around sex or lack of sex, and so on. But what often happens is that if you for an economy to thrive, that often requires the kind of loosening up of morals. It's it it it that often requires an encouragement for people to sort of cut loose and enjoy themselves a little more. So there's this kind of tension, I think, between not losing sight of these values, but all allowing for some changes to take place. So you start to see a new popular culture emerging.
Leon:And I think something that is very much in synergy with these films are a new wave of comic books that start to appear in Italy in the early sixties. They became the the Metin Airy, the black comics, starting with a comic called Diabolic, which Mario Baga made a film of later on, doted Diabolic, about a masked criminal. Then there were various copies of that, and each one seemed to be more violent. So there's a comic called criminale, spelled with a k, and, you know, just sort of sleeping with women and then strangling them. There's there's an issue where a woman is kind of impaled on the gates and, like, her her dress is kind of piped up, so we get this kind of sizzolating view of her body.
Leon:And we're we're really in kind of blood and black lace territory for these kinds of comics, this kind of almost sort of eroticized sadism, in in in some of them. And and I think that is starting to feed into cinema. Maybe audiences aren't quite ready for it in films yet in the sixties, because, you know, Barber's films were they didn't set the box office for life in the sixties. And it's not really until first of all, I think the jolly that Carol Baker made in Italy towards the end of the sixties, and then with Dario Argento, that these films started to really kind of take off. But I think some of the seeds of them were there already.
Leon:I think there were a lot of connections. I I think that the the jalo was like a genre of what in Italy they call the adicola, the the news stand up, the news kiosk, where you would see you'd see these comics, diabolic, and, you know, there he is with his black mask on, and he's often holding a dagger. And, you know, science fiction and horror comics, and there were pulp horror, paperbacks. And then, you know, by the time you go into the seventies, you've got pornography on the newsstand as well. So I think there was a real kind of connection, between this kind of pulp imagination that really sort of explodes in the seventies.
Andy:With all of these sorts of elements, the different stories and the different, people the different things that people are reading and watching everything, there were a lot of different things that potentially perhaps changed how Zalo would be hitting the screens. And I think, certainly, you know, we'll be talking about one of the early Mario Bava films that that some people consider kind of the first Zalo seems to be, in in many maybe overt ways, directly influenced by, Hitchcock. I mean, the title of it is the girl who knew too much and which so it seems like there's definitely kind of that Hitchcock thing that Bava was, was pulling from. But, like, going from that film to what he would do later, it's it it also seems like there's quite a jump. And I think that's what's interesting is, like, the things that people were looking at, reading, seeing, experiencing in their own lives that kind of led to these stories and that shift from that film to Blood and Black Lives.
Andy:It just it's interesting to see how there is this evolution even within Zhali, right, and how you can start seeing with all of these other things out there, these comics, the stories about, Diabolic and everything. Everything is kind of pushing all these Italian stories in a certain direction. Now how I mean, how would you say that the early giallo films from the sixties differ from those later ones that I you know, certainly more iconic as you get into the mid seventies.
Leon:Those first two jolly that Bava makes are in themselves, considering there's only about a year or so between them, between, The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace. They're 2 very, very different films. And people sometimes refer to The Girl Who Knew Too Much as, I've heard I've seen it called a proto jello. I'm not quite sure what that is, but the sense that it's sort it's not quite got all the things yet. I mean, obviously, it is a giallo because it's a it's a murder mystery and so on.
Leon:But, I mean, I think one of the reasons for the difference is that Italian censorship is still, it's still stricter than you might expect it to be, in the sort of early to mid sixties. I think we sort of have a view, probably based more on the films that come along later, that it's kind of anything goes. But I think still there are, you know, that some caution is required with working around the censure. I always, I always think of the priest in cinema Paradiso who rings his little bell, when there's something on screen that he doesn't like. And I suspect there was a lot of that going on, with some of these films.
Andy:What would be left?
Leon:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm frankly amazed that Barbara got away with Blood and Black Lace. It's so much more violent and erotically violent
Andy:Yeah.
Leon:Than almost any other film I can think of from that period. I mean, no nudity. They certainly wouldn't have got away with that. And actually, in spite of the English title, not actually very much blood either, but there is a really disturbing, visceral quality to the violence. It's a sort of tactile violence.
Leon:It's brutal. Yeah. Of people having their faces shoved into things and, being sort of slapped around. So it's a it's a violence that is, I think still, you know, for a film made in 1964, really quite startling. I mean, I have to say, in the UK, it was cut to pieces by the censors in in the UK.
Leon:I've, I've seen the version that eventually, eventually got passed by the British border film censors, as they were called then. And you literally, you can't work out how anyone died. There's, there's not enough detail left. It's like something happens, and then you cut to the next scene, and there are the and you think, what happened to them in between that bit and and and now?
Andy:Oh my gosh.
Leon:And I guess the other thing that was starting I mean, we'd we'd already seen in Barber's gothic films, but now we see for the first time in his thrillers, in Blood and Black Lace, is his use of color, and his use of color filters, and these sort of very bold, the reds and greens, and a variety of sort of, some of the colors, I'm never even quite sure what to call them. You know, these sort of purply pinky colors that he's quite fond of, used in a very sort of non naturalistic way. Blood and black lace, I, you know, I get completely why a lot of people think of it as the first giallo, or the first giallo alitaliana, because most of the things that people associate with those films are in that film. We've got the black gloves. We've got the masked killer with the, with the featureless sort of black stocking pulled over his head.
Leon:We've got the body count. We've got the kind of that thing which I think disturbs censors so much, the fact that there is a there is an erotic component to the violence, that even though, as I say, there's no actual nudity, most of the victims are they're kind of in states of semi undress when they're being killed. Clothes have been sort of torn off. There's a there's a lot of underwear on, on display in the film. Now we've not got any of that yet in his first thriller, The Girl Who Knew Too Much.
Leon:But even that is sort of it's that's not going in for the violence yet. But some of the kind of, you know, the eroticism, it's very mild. But there's a scene with a heroine. She's in a baby doll nightie. There's a kind of emphasis on her bare legs when she's sort of found on the Spanish Steps after she's fainted.
Leon:Very mild compared to what the genre will do later. I've just called it a genre. Some of it is there already. And also, of course, Girl Who Knew Too Much. There's a lot of comedy in it as well Yeah.
Leon:Which I think also, I think, links it a little bit to the West German films being made. Because they they nearly all have some comic relief in them.
Andy:These are the creamy?
Leon:Yeah. And and here, there's a a kind of romantic comedy between John Saxon and, LaTitia Roman.
Andy:Well and it's interesting because, you know, we're we're seeing this kind of thing starting here, and we're certainly seeing some of those elements in, the girl who knew too much. By the time we get to blood and black lace the next year, we're really seeing it. And then that really lingers for a long time, the black gloves, the the bright colors, the the violent, murders, all of this. And you end up with this period, from what I was reading, like, 68 to 78 is kinda considered the heyday of giallo films, but, really, it's like that 71 to 75, that 5 year period that was incredibly prolific. Over a 100 of them were produced in just that 5 year period alone.
Andy:And I have to imagine that as this this genre, subgenre, evolves that you're starting to see that popularity impacting where it ends up going by the time we start getting into the later seventies and into the eighties even.
Leon:Yeah. I mean, the curious thing about Blood and Black Lace is that when it first comes out, it has no influence whatsoever. It it does it does not immediately lead to anything. It's not until Dario Argento starts making thrillers that you that some of those things are being picked up on from his films.
Andy:So what was it from because that was I mean, the the bird with the crystal plumage was, what, 1970? Is that right? Yeah. And so from from Blood and Black Lace in 64 to that, was it, I mean, there were some others, but nothing as popular until bird with a crystal plumage?
Leon:The first jalo that is sufficiently popular to generate a cycle is the sweet body of Deborah.
Andy:Okay. Which we'll be talking about as well. Yeah.
Leon:Yeah. So, I mean, we we could maybe talk more about that when we come on to it. But but
Andy:Yeah. Yeah.
Leon:That is, I would say, the first influential Jall O at the time. Okay. Obviously, Blood and Black Lace becomes more influential in the long term because we can see a line from that to Argento. But Argento doesn't come along for another 6 years. And and it takes a lot longer for that, for Argento to admit that he was influenced by Mario Bata.
Leon:But he was also influenced by The Girl Who Knew Too Much. Because I think the other interesting difference between The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace is they're both set in Rome, But it's a very different Rome that we get in the 2 films. In The Girl Who Knew Too Much, a lot of it is it's a tourist Rome. You know, we're on the Spanish Steps. We're a Right.
Andy:She's a tourist. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Leon:And she arrived yeah. She arrived at Fumachino Airport, which was still relatively new when the film, was made. And and planes feature a lot in the airports, feature a lot, in these films. In the American version of the film, which is quite different in some ways, it was released in the US, The Evil Eye.
Andy:Yeah, that's what I ended up watching. It was
Leon:Oh, right. Yes. So that's, that's, that has got scenes in it that are not in The Girl Who Knew Too Much. And The Girl Who Knew Too Much has some scenes that are not in that. Although, Barber seems to have shot all of those scenes, but they just seem to have made different decisions about which ones to use.
Leon:So in The Evil Eye, we begin with the camera sort of tracking down the aisle on the plane. And we hear the thoughts of the different passengers who are
Andy:Right.
Leon:Flying to Rome. In The Girl Who Knew Too Much, the Italian version, the narration is introducing us to the character of Nora, and telling us that she is a fan of giallo novels, and she, she reads them avidly, and she's promised her mother she won't read anymore, but then the camera ends up on her. And she's reading one called The Knife, which will sort of lead her into, getting caught up in the, in this story. Whereas, so we've got this kind of tourist Rome. And it's kind of also, I think, the Rome of La Dolce Vita.
Leon:We see some models being photographed on the Spanish steppes, at one point. And then this scary Rome at night, which I think was what struck a chord with Argento, the idea that beautiful Rome, you could make it sinister and scary at night. That's that's the thing that Bava did that maybe I'm always wary of saying no one had done this before, because then usually a film pops up, you know, 10 years earlier that has done it. But certainly one of the first, if not the first film, certainly one of the first films, to use Italy. Because there was a very strong belief that one of the reasons why horror as a genre could not land in Italy was that everything about Italy was wrong.
Leon:It was too sunny. It was too warm. The people were too laid back. Horror needed somewhere where it was cold, and and and a bit kind of unfriendly to flourish. But here is Bava sort of, you know, giving us a kind of sinister, nocturnal Rome.
Leon:Then in Blood and Black Lace, he gives us a Rome where if we weren't told it was Rome, I don't know we would necessarily know that it was.
Andy:Yeah. Right. I I I have no context where this fashion house is.
Leon:Yeah. I mean, it is. The the the fashion house, it's a villa up in the hills in Rome where where which they used for the exterior, villa sciara. It's up in the Gianicolo Hills. But, you know, unless you recognize that, and let's face it, most people won't.
Andy:Right.
Leon:Yeah. Certainly certainly most people who don't, you know, certainly non Italians won't recognize it. It could be anywhere. So it seems to be blood and black lace seems to be playing down its Italianness in some ways, and that might be because it was a coproduction with West Germany and France. And maybe it's trying to look more European generally than Italian specifically.
Andy:Yeah. I wanna take a step back real quick away from the films themselves and talk a little bit about kind of some of the controversies around Jolly. Because, you know, we've been talking a lot about censorship and how even just at the time, getting the films shown as they are was difficult. Like, you couldn't get these films to play in other countries without a lot of edits because of, some of the stuff that those countries just felt weren't appropriate. But then you you look at all the way up through today's eyes and how some of these films are kind of viewed as, misogynistic and everything.
Andy:So there's there's a lot of controversy that kind of can surround these films. What are some of the other, like, the main criticisms leveled against this subgenre?
Leon:I think the one around gender is is the is the big one. The the, you know, when they're made during this period where suddenly a lot more is allowed, you know, you have a much more permissive cinematic culture. You know, one might make the assumption of, Oh, surely it's a positive, when, you know, things aren't repressed and they're let out anymore. But, of course, a lot of bad things get let out, you know, as well as liberating things. And, you know, misogyny is, is, is one of those.
Leon:You know, we see this in, in the comics, as well. I don't think the films can be reduced to that. And I don't think all of the films are like that. I mean, one of the films that we're going to be talking about, but I think we're talking about it in the bonus bit, I think does go against that quite a lot. And even, of course, Argento has been a controversial figure throughout his career for this.
Leon:He's been criticized many, many times for the fact that, you know, the majority of his victims tend to be women. I don't think Argento sexualizes the violence as much as some of the other directors did, certainly not in his, in his earlier films. But at the same time, and I'm not saying one cancels out the other, but Argento has given us a lot of very sort of memorable, strong female protagonists, as well.
Andy:Yeah, right, right.
Leon:So I think there are, you know, I think also of the debates around Hitchcock. And they aren't exactly the same because, you know, Hitchcock maybe developed his characters a bit more than most of these films do. But, you know, for a long time, Hitchcock was sort of viewed as an archmisogynist. And then there were other critics who said, Well, actually, okay, let's look at it from another angle. You know, his female protagonists are kind of sympathetic, and often the focus is on them.
Leon:The male characters, yeah, okay, they're played by Cary Grant, but they are always the nicest guys in the world. And they, you know, they're presented as quite sort of dark and obsessive, you know. So I don't think you can approach Argento and others in exactly the same way. But I do think, yeah, the misogyny is there. It is part of some of those films.
Leon:But I don't think they can be reduced to that. I think there are, you know, there are interesting female characters. You know, somehow the films almost managed to be kind of about misogyny and not just simply misogynistic.
Andy:Yeah. Interesting point. Sure. When these films were getting released, I mean, there was censorship. Like, you talked about how the British version of Blood and Black Lace was hacked up quite a bit.
Andy:We've already talked about kind of the American version that that I ended up watching of, The Girl Who Knew Too Much and, like, these different versions and how they change things. You know, I'm curious, like, with with those sorts of things, how did that end up affecting how other people around the world were kind of receiving giallo films? Were was were giallo films popular, or did they look at these films as kind of, like, these these hacked up things that that didn't represent what people wanted to watch?
Leon:Well, I think one thing to say is that I think for a long time, I don't think the term jello travels particularly alongside the films. I don't think the word jello was taken up widely, certainly in English, until probably about the early eighties. You know, I think often these films, they were being seen, understandably, as horror films, and often were marketed as horror films. And the other thing to say about, I think particularly Mario Bava's films, is that censorship wasn't the only thing they faced when, when they, when they were sort of traveling to different countries. And then we've mentioned the two versions of, of, you know, The Girl Who Knew Too Much and The Evil Eye.
Leon:There are a lot a number of Bhabha films that that happened to, where there are quite different versions for different markets, to do with, you know, with different tastes, and what the thought different people might want to see. And that is, you know, one can sort of be, you know, a purist about that, and think, Oh, I want to see the original version. But there are cases where you have to ask, Well, what is the original version?
Andy:Right. Right.
Leon:Right. Often, these films, certainly in the sixties, were not that popular in Italy, but were doing much better in in the American market, in in other markets. The fact that a huge number of them, probably the majority of them, were actually shot in English. And when I say shot in English, I don't mean with live sounds. But the lip No, right,
Andy:right, right.
Leon:Would be, in English.
Andy:It still is Italian productions where they're not recording the sound on set, right?
Leon:Yes, Yeah. But the yeah. The lip movements are nearly always in English. So, again, oh, I want to watch the original version. Well, which is the original version?
Leon:Because in most cases, all of them are dubbed.
Andy:Yeah. And that's interesting because, like, even today, I mean, when you were talking about that, it made me think about, like, what we're doing what like, what Disney is doing as they release the Marvel films, for example. Like, they're shooting entire segments of the films with different actors and stuff just to play in China, right, that we'll never see. Like, we might have that character in, like, a a small scene or something in the we'll just say the American version, perhaps the the real version. But who knows?
Andy:Because, like, for a huge chunk of the population, that's the version they're watching. And so it still is happening today, really.
Leon:Yeah. And it's interesting for it now to happen with sort of big budget blockbuster movies. Because in the past, it was, it was probably something that largely happened to relatively low budget genre movies, exploitation movies, b movies. I say it happened a lot to Barbour to such an extent that some of his films, you know, they became virtually completely different films. Wow.
Leon:I mean, the, I mean, the extreme example is a film he made in the early seventies called Lisa and the Devil, which was considered unreleasable, because it was just out of step with trends in horror. And so they looked around and thought, well, what's popular in horror at the moment? Well, The Exorcist, that's doing well. And they added scenes of devil's death to it, and it became
Andy:Is it house of house of exorcism? That's it. Yes. House of Exorcism. Wow.
Andy:But now and I I think this is what's interesting is because now we're at a point where fans are really interested in looking at all of these different versions and stuff. So, like, I'm is it can you watch the different versions of Lisa and the Devil now?
Leon:Yeah. I mean, that that's almost become, you know, aficionados. They want to see every version. Yeah. You know, and and that sort of gets around the idea.
Leon:Because the fact is, often with someone like Bava, there isn't a definitive version. With with Argento, there there kind of is. I mean, with Argento, it's just a matter of English or Italian. The only Argento film where I think there's a significant difference is there was a a much shorter version of Profonderosa released in the US, where the sort of romantic sort of the the the kind of cerebral comedy between David Hemmings and Daria Nickelodey was sort of cut down a bit. I think there was a feeling that, you know, audiences might not want to see that.
Andy:Too much comedy. See the next murder. Yeah. That's funny. Well, okay.
Andy:So now this is an interesting thing. We've been talking a lot about some of these different types of of, jolly where, some have, more of a male focus and some have more of a female focus. And I was reading about it, and sure enough, somebody had had actually kind of classified these as m jolly or f jolly depending on if it's male focused or female focused. And the male one seemed to have, like, more of a a man who ends up your protagonist who sees a murder and goes on to try to solve it himself with or without the help from the cops, and that's kind of those stories. And then the female focused ones typically are more a woman who the kind of those who have more of the psychosexual sorts of stories, the psychological themes, and she's you know, somebody might be stalking her, and she's trying to kind of figure all these things out.
Andy:And she's, like, often seem seems to be defenseless and dealing with her own struggles. I mean, what is it about the the way that there's this differentiation between the protagonists that kind of allows for it to really kind of bifurcate like that?
Leon:I think it's because where the Jalo really takes off in popularity, it has 2 starting points, which sort of lead into, I think, these 2 distinct types. And obviously, argento was one of them. And the success of the bird with the crystal plumage. And that's where you get a real flood of all these things about the yes, the male character sees something and, is trying to sort of yay, becomes a kind of an investigator. And the other starting point is Carol Baker in The Sweet Body of Deborah Gotcha.
Leon:Which which sort of starts off, you know, she is this kind of wealthy woman with a a husband played by Jean Sorrell. And he seems to be haunted by his past. There's a former lover who's who died, or did she? There's someone else who dies, or did he? There's all this kind of stuff going on.
Leon:And she's getting threatening phone calls, and there are people who ought to be dead, who seem to be turning up in her bedroom. And she's taking a lot of showers. And, and, you know, we're seeing rather more of Carol Baker than we had in her Hollywood films. And that is a very, very successful film. And she made about 6 or 7 more of those films.
Leon:And the Italian press started to refer to her as La Regina del Giorno.
Andy:Oh, interesting. Okay.
Leon:And, really, she or she you could almost say that Carol Baker, more than anyone, really kick starts the popularity of of the giallo as a as a cinematic genre in Italy, because that's the first time it looks like a cycle. Bart makes what ought to be a seminal film, this astounding film, Blood and Black Lace, which years later, yeah, way more people remember Blood and Black Lace than they do Sweet Body of Deborah. At the time, Sweet Body of Deborah, because it's, oh, wow, it's Carol Baker. She's a Hollywood star. And she's doing nude scenes now.
Leon:And that keeps going for a while. And then she gets too expensive, and they start looking for other female stars. And then there is a very particular stable of female stars. Interestingly, hardly any of them Italian who start roles. Edwidge Benec, most famously.
Leon:Admiral Lisander, Barbara Boucher, Anita Stringsberg. These are nearly all people they were in the film we've been looking at.
Andy:And it's interesting because, like, as I was watching these, and one of the ones that we're not talking about but we had, discussed as a possibility was, The Sunday Woman, and Jacqueline Bissett was in that one. And so it is one of these things where I kind of felt like Hollywood agents, probably had seen the success of Clint Eastwood from the Spaghetti Westerns and said, you know, maybe you should try hopping into these as they were sometimes called the spaghetti thrillers and, you know, being one of those and, like, trying to get their stars in some of these to maybe get some more notoriety or at least more international notoriety because I it really was a surprise to see so many English speaking actors popping up in these.
Leon:Yeah. I mean, the the they are films that I think they often they seem to be aspiring to be international, at the very least European rather than specifically Italian. And then, if possible, international. I mean, Sunday Woman's a slightly I wanna I one of the reasons why I originally put that on the list was there's a bit of a wild card.
Andy:Yeah. Right.
Leon:It's very that is very much an a film. It's jello more in the original sense. It's not got the same exploitative elements, even though the murder weapon in it is a is a phallic statue. It's light of that.
Andy:Which which made the whole thing really I mean, it almost played more as a comedy because of some of those elements.
Leon:Yeah. I mean, it is that's the other thing. It's it's simply because it's based on a famous novel, which is a kind of so a social satire as well as a giallo. And it's got Marcello Mastroianni in it who, frankly, you know, none of the other films we've been looking at would have had the budget to
Andy:be able to afford Mastroianni, let alone Jacqueline Bissett. And, the French actor, was it Jean Louis, Tritignan?
Leon:Oh, Jean Louis Tritignan. Well, he he did a lot. He actually, he did do a few giallo films and a genre. He worked in Italy quite a lot. Gotcha.
Leon:Okay. Because there's a lot of traffic between, Italian and French cinema in terms of actors. So obviously, you know, Jean Sorrell in The Sweet Body of Deborah, and he's also in one on top of the other is French. I was thinking of John Sorrell as John Sorrell was the actor you got if you couldn't afford Alain de Laun. He's he's your sort of backup, de Laun.
Andy:Yeah. Yeah. He works well in in the role here. And he's he's, yeah, done some of these other ones like Short Night of Glass Dolls he was in. But he was also in, like, the Day of the Jackal.
Andy:So, yeah, he's one of those one
Leon:of those great films. Briefly. Yeah. And he's in Belle de he's in Belle de Jour as well.
Andy:He's in
Leon:Belle de Jour. He's, Genoeuf's husband.
Andy:Well, let's, so since we're talking about kinda like this m jolly, f jolly, let's kind of continue this conversation before we jump into the films. Just kind of wrapping up all of the other potential, like, the iconic tropes, the things that are whether it's thematic or just a kind of a stylistic trope or a plot element. What are some of the other key things that we haven't really mentioned?
Leon:I think one of the things is the worlds that they're set in. I think one of the things that, you know, we said they're an influence on the the slasher film, in terms of the body count, and the gore. But I think one thing that really sets them apart from the slasher film is that slasher films always seem to it seems to me that slasher films aim to be about the sort of people that they think they're aimed at. So there's a sense that the characters on screen are meant to be relatable to the people in the audience. They're young.
Leon:They're not fantastically well off, but they're not poor either. And they're kind of identification figures. The giallo predominantly is set in a very wealthy, luxurious world. They are people who are well off. They live in beautiful houses.
Leon:They wear fashionable and, of course, now enjoyably dated clothes.
Andy:But they really pop with the colors, man, I tell you.
Leon:Yes. Yeah. People often refer to them as jet set thrillers. Sweet Body of Deborah, we really, you know, see that, you know, we're in Nice, and Geneva, and Cote D'Azur, and places like that. You know, we're often in these sort of beautiful international cities.
Leon:And I do wonder if part of the pleasure of watching them at the time was just seeing rich people get it. You know? Well yeah. So
Andy:Right. Yeah. Well and I suppose some of that could potentially also go back to kind of what we were saying about the the politics at the time in Italy, and maybe some people enjoyed seeing some of these rich people get it, as you were saying.
Leon:Yeah. Also, because often attached to that is the idea they're rich and they're decadent.
Andy:Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know?
Leon:And they they they and they're, you know, and they have their strange vices as as
Andy:it were. Yep.
Leon:Yep. Airports, I've mentioned briefly, sort of figure quite a lot in this kind of sort of jet set world.
Andy:Is there an archetypal protagonist that you would say we're seeing in these? I mean, I suppose between the m and the f, jolly.
Leon:Yeah. I mean, certainly those 2. Yeah. Yes. Some kind of, you know, an investigative figure who can be female sometimes because she is in The Girl Who Knew Too Much
Andy:Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Leon:Isn't exclusively male. But, yes, the, the wife or the girlfriend who where stuff is going on around her. You know, she's being terrorized in some way. She's getting sinister phone calls. People who ought to be dead are materializing.
Leon:Someone's trying to drive her mad. I mean, there are there are several of those just in the films that we're looking at here. I think another thing is what what is motivating the killing? And I think broadly speaking, and often this maps onto the 2 types, but not always. There are 2 main motivations.
Leon:1, and I think this is true of nearly all of Argento's films, Argento's protagonists Argento's killers are always disturbed in some way. And that, again, I think makes them more like the slasher film. You know, the the killers in the slasher films are crazy.
Andy:Right. It's kind of like disturbed from some past trauma, seemed to be.
Leon:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it it often in Argento, it's the secret lies in what happened in the past. Yeah.
Leon:What happened to this person? And often that's linked to, you know, it could be linked to a painting, or a work of art, or some memory that they've got. And that sort of explains their madness. One of my favorite explanations in Argento is in a later one, sleepless, where which is beautifully simple, but the killer the killer was driven driven mad by a nursery rhyme. He he he said it went round and round in my head.
Leon:It drove me mad. I'm thinking, it's as good as any.
Andy:Yeah. Right. Right.
Leon:The other explanation is always to do with money. And this, again, I think, is very telling of the, you know, the fact that this is set in a world of wealth, that it's, you know, it's an insurance policy, or an inheritance of some sort, and so people need to be bumped off.
Andy:Well, then I suppose that does tie in maybe more perhaps the most directly to kind of the origin origins of jalo, like the term, because those those literary whodunits, like, that's kind of a lot of the plot ideas behind those sorts of stories.
Leon:Yeah. That's much more of a kind of classic, a classic traditional, shallow, idea. Barber draws from Agatha Christie in a couple of his films. Because The Girl Who Knew Too Much takes one of its ideas from the ABC Murders, which is that the killer in the end of Christie's ABC Murders I apologize for the spoiler they want to kill one specific person. They just kill that one person.
Leon:But to cover their tracks, they kill a series of people to make it look like it's a random killing by a serial killer, and they organize their victims alphabetically.
Andy:So complex. Just so complex. As the genre evolves, we start seeing things like Suspiria that definitely has a more supernatural element. Would you still call that jalo, or would you say by that point, it's shifting kind of out of it, or perhaps it's a crossover of several genres?
Leon:Well, I'm glad you brought that up and not me because I said, if you if you want to start an argument with giallo aficionados, the best way to do it is
Andy:to you have Suspiria? Suspiria
Leon:as a Jallo. You might as well lead it to the room. Yeah. I have no strong feelings about it, and I've seen at least one Italian review of the time that referred to it as a Jallo. And I do think the jalo is in its DNA.
Leon:And, of course, it's interesting also that even though it's a supernatural horror film, when it's time for someone to be bumped off, with the exception of the blind man and his dog, they are killed by someone with a sharp object. So, you know, some of it is still there. And some people have pointed out that already in Provo de Rosso, we're starting to get not supernatural elements, but sort of we've got all the stuff with telepathy and, Yeah. The woman who reacts to the killing, just before, it happens.
Andy:I mean, we're buying into the world where psychic, sorts of phenomena is real.
Leon:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. I mean, I think it was a shift for Argento because, oh, you know, he builds this kind of supernatural mythology, which he also follows in his next film, Inferno.
Leon:But as I say, people do get upset when he calls Hesperia at Malo.
Andy:It's it's funny because I I think that that might tie into also how some of these directors became so connected themselves just to the giallo types of films that they had been making that when they would make something that was outside of what you'd call giallo, suddenly their people still wanna call it giallo because, well, oh, Argento is a giallo filmmaker. Well, no. JALL Argento's a filmmaker who made several different types of films. But and I think that's, I think, where some of that may come from.
Leon:Yeah. And I think Argento made a few he's made a few attempts to sort of get away from the JALLO. I don't think he wanted to solely make that kind of film. You know? So he makes his first three.
Leon:Then he makes a historical comedy, the 5 days, which was not hugely commercially successful. When he made Profonderoso, the trailer, the original Italian trailer, the words appear on the screen, Dario Argento, Torna al thrilling. Dario Argento returns to the thriller. And I think Tenebrae also was seen as a return to the jalo.
Andy:Oh, interesting. Okay.
Leon:Half hysteria, and Inferno. Yeah.
Andy:Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, it's so interesting to see. Let's take this opportunity to start switching and and dig deeper into each of these films. So we've talked about Blood and Black Lace a little bit, but, just to kind of, you know, reiterate, Mario Bava directed this in 1964.
Andy:It's the story of a masked killer who's clad in black leather leather gloves and stocks and brutally murders the beautiful models of a prestigious fashion house in Rome. As the body count rises and the police struggle to unravel the mystery, suspicion falls on various members of the fashion house, each with their own dark secrets and motives. With its lush cinematography, iconic set pieces, and shocking violence, this film set the standard for the giallo subgenre. But who is the mysterious figure behind the mask, and what is their connection to the fashion house? We've talked about how bold and and bright and this crisp and clear these colors.
Andy:I mean, the reds just explode off the screen, and it's not just blood. I mean, you've got in this fashion house red mannequins everywhere, and it's just kind of a fantastic, element that they've added. I mean, really, setting the stage, I think, for the visual and also the narrative template for futures olive films. I think that's really what we're getting here. Right?
Leon:And, I mean, the title sequence, which is you talk about the sort of The Red Mannequins, But this extraordinary title sequence, which sort of introduces the cast, each of them next to pose with one of the mannequins. And what I always find fascinating is that, I mean, Bartha was someone who, I mean, if you didn't know anything about Bava and you watch that title sequence, it looks like the calling card of a, you know, almost a sort of a Tarantino like auteur of, like, you know, here here is my bold approach.
Andy:Right. Yeah.
Leon:You know, I'm I'm doing this extraordinary title sequence, the likes of which you've never seen before. And yet, if you told Barber that he was an auteur or an artist, he would have laughed in your face. You know? He he very much saw himself, you know, a working filmmaker, a technician, but he liked to have fun with his effects. He was he was a a cameraman originally.
Leon:His father was a filmmaker as well and often helps out with effects and camera tricks. So, you know, he knew every visual trick in the book. He was a great lighting cameraman. He knew about special effects, and really sort of old school special effects. You know, special effects that have been around since silent cinema, but still worked still worked on screen.
Leon:So I think often he was kind of having fun with these movies, of they were an opportunity. There was a surprising amount of creative freedom in these films, as long as they hit certain commercial requirements, you know, there's the right amount of thrills and sex and violence. There was a lot of freedom stylistically, and I think this is often why they are such stylish films. There was that freedom to do visually interesting things.
Andy:Well and he was a filmmaker who I mean, he had been around for a while before making we've mentioned The Girl Who Knew Too Much, but then also this film, in the sixties. Like, he had been making films back in the fifties and and kind of started doing some different films and and started working in horror as well. And that was, I think I don't know. Is is he more known as a horror director, would you say?
Leon:He did do a lot of horror, Even films that you maybe wouldn't sort of classify solely as horror, I'd say more than half of his films lean towards horror in some way. And I think that is why Bava is often seen as the pioneer of jallo cinema, is because I think he is the first to bring those kind of horror elements into the jallo. Because that was something that he liked doing. Because, you know, say he was originally a cameraman. Cameramen are very good with atmosphere.
Leon:Obviously, horror thrives on atmosphere. He knew about special effects. So it was it was very much in his in his sort of visual toolbox that he could make these striking looking films.
Andy:Well, and even in the, like, in his early films, you know, Italy was making some sword and sandal films, and he had a number of those that he did. But then one of them also, like, Hercules in the haunted world, that seems to kind of, like, take Yeah. Okay. I'll do another sword and sandal, but let me throw some horror into it too. Yeah.
Andy:Well, this film, I mean, the the colors are are incredible. But, also, I think and I don't know if we've talked much about camera, but we're getting some nice subjective camera, and we're certainly kind of getting those POV POV shots here of the killer, which I think we're starting to kind of explore the voyeurism and the idea of the male gaze that has been talked about in film a lot. But I think that's a key thing that becomes part of these is is that POV cam. Right?
Leon:Yeah. The camera is sort of stalking the fashion house. And sometimes, we're not even sure whose viewpoint it actually is. You know, is it is it the killer? Is it actually anyone?
Leon:Or is it just the camera going for a walk? You know? Yeah. Right. Right.
Leon:With Arthur, you you don't always know. You get these little sort of visual flourishes, in the film. Yeah. I mean, it's it's a visually extraordinary film. The other thing that's interesting about it as a jalo is that at a certain point, the police just sort of give up.
Leon:At a certain point, the police just disappear out of the film. We've got this very stern police inspector who's played by a German actor, so that seems to link it to the the West German films being made at the same time.
Andy:Oh, yeah. Right. Right.
Leon:And he act in a scene where he accidentally gives, an alibi to the killer, he he keeps all the sort of male suspects overnight. But a murder takes place anyway, and he realizes he's blown it. And he just disappears from the film. And the last bit has to be sorted out by the characters.
Andy:Which is interesting because and and we've talked about it a little bit, but we'll be spoiling these to a certain extent. But, I mean, in this particular film, we're gonna find out that, oh, it's not just a killer, it's killers. Right? And that's kind of becomes an element of the story here. And I know I think I was reading somewhere how that kind of became influential even for, like, Wes Craven when he was, with Scream and everything.
Andy:Like Yeah. Yeah.
Leon:All the Scream films have 2 killers.
Andy:Yeah. Kind of that whole shift in in the idea of how you can can craft those stories, which was was pretty interesting. The next film on our list, Romulo, Guerriere's film, the sweet body of Deborah from 1968. We've talked about it a little bit as well. Deborah, a newlywed on her honeymoon, becomes entangled in a web of deception, adultery, and murder as secrets from her past come to light.
Andy:As her husband, Marcel, tries to uncover the truth, Deborah must navigate a dangerous game of cat and mouse confronting shocking revelations about those closest to her and her own hidden motives. With each twist and turn, her relationships are tested and her life
Leon:is put on the line. Is she a
Andy:victim of circumstance, or is relationships are tested, and her life is put on the line. Is she a victim of circumstance, or is there more to her sweet body than meets the eye? This is a was an interesting film, and I will just let people know. This this is a trickier one to find online. And, unfortunately, the version that I ended up watching before I found out that there were other versions had chunks of audio completely removed, and I'm assuming I don't know if it was, like, music copyright or what, but it was just scenes where it was just music playing, like the opening credits and then the dance sequence and things like that.
Andy:I did find another one, so I was able to rewatch those scenes, but it was weird. So you gotta watch carefully to find the right one. I'll have a link in the show notes to a version that is a clean version to watch. This one, I I it was an interesting one. I didn't love it initially.
Andy:I wasn't, like, completely with it until we start getting toward the end when you start getting all of those twists and and things that keep kinda shifting and changing, and suddenly I'm like, oh, woah. Okay. Things are happening here, and we're really doing something different that I wasn't expecting. And I ended up enjoying it a lot more after that kind of all those 3rd act twists started here. There's definitely kind of some sexual politics going on, changing role of women, I guess, you could say, in society.
Andy:Where does this one stand? And we talked about, like you you talked about this one already with how big this was at the time, and this really kind of created that shift in Zalo films and how they were being received. But how does this like, what it was saying and what it was representing, how did that kind of work for Zalo films?
Leon:I think often when we think about what these films are saying, sometimes I think that emerges out of simply having to freshen the story up and give us the right number of surprises. I don't know if we can sort of talk about the twist at the end. There there is a bit of a spoiler. But suffice to say that Carol Baker's character is not quite the put upon victim that she appears to be for quite a lot of of of this film. And I say I think some of that sort of emerges out of how many more twists can we get, into the film.
Leon:The writer of this film or one of the writer I think he's the main writer of the film, who who's actually the writer of 3 different films that we're looking at, is a man called Ernesto Castaldi. And I think it's fair to say that the film Les de Iabalique left quite an impact on him because he he was constantly finding different ways, sort of reworking it. You know, in in Les de Iabalique, we have, a husband and wife running a school. There's a there's a certain amount of domestic abuse going on. The husband also has a lover.
Leon:The 2 women team up to seemingly kill him off, and then it seems like he's he's haunting, his wife. But then, I won't give it away, but lots of twists and turns at the end. Sure. Yeah. That was hugely influential, not least on Hitchcock.
Leon:It was one of the influences on on Psycho. And so that thing about, you know, people who someone who ought to be dead, but are they dead?
Andy:Yeah. Right. Right.
Leon:Is the person who seems to be on your side really on your side? And there's this kind of paranoia, and everyone is, you know, there's there's, like, desire on the one hand. And Carol Baker is often in these films playing someone whose desires lead her into trouble. So we get the beginning of that sort of, you know, that female centered Jaller. But there is always a kind of financial motive, as well.
Leon:It turns out there is more than one financial motive, in this film. And again, very much that thing which is true of some of the more slasher type jolly as well, that, you know, the world of the rich is it's full of shallow, rather you know, they're beautiful, but they're also rather awful, these people. You know, they they they they're disloyal. They're greedy. They're selfish.
Leon:Don't turn your back on them.
Andy:Yeah. And and they play that throughout this. Right? I mean, he finds out that his his ex had killed herself, and that kind of ends up being this weight that he seems to be carrying for a while. And and she's trying to like, it's that, you know, am I second fiddle to this this memory sort of thing?
Andy:And and so you're getting all of this as they're going out to dance clubs, and he's just kind of looking despondent and and everything. And then she's you know, he sees her dancing with somebody else. And so we're getting all of this stuff between these 2. And, yeah, there's this interesting element played throughout the film with both characters of the relationship and strain on the relationship because of outside figures. You know, there's another man who comes in who had known, you know, the woman who killed, herself, and and he is upset at him because he had been in love with her too.
Andy:And so you get all these different people, and and it really is this psychological game over the course of the film. And Deborah is kind of caught in the middle trying to figure out what's going on is what it seems. And I think that's what's fun and interesting about these sorts of films, especially when you get to all those twists and turns. Like, you wonder, how well will it play on rewatch knowing what I know about the end of the film now that I'm watching Deborah through the course of the film?
Leon:Yeah. And, of course, you know, when these films are originally made, I don't think there was ever any consideration of anyone watching them more than once. I think, you know, they they they were made to be watched once. And certainly, I don't think anyone ever imagined that, you know, 50 years later, we'd be we'd still be watching them, and we'd be dissecting them and analyzing them.
Andy:Yeah. Right. No kidding. No kidding. I like the sense of just these these figures.
Andy:There is this sense I don't necessarily fully understand character motivations, but I think one of the elements that works in jahlo is the characters just, they carry this enigmatic air, I guess, I would just say, where you're constantly trying to read them and figure out what's going on in their head. You know? And I think that's something I mean, blood and black lace, we certainly saw with some of these characters as they're all trying to figure out what was in this journal that affected you, you know, and we're trying to, like, play Yes. Mind games with each of the different people. I think that's that's one of the fun elements.
Andy:And, yeah, it may not end up by the time you get to the end, it may not work completely, but I think it's a lot of fun getting there. And I think that's the joy that I have.
Leon:Yeah. I mean, as I say, you know, often the the actual jello element is often the weakest element in them. Right. You know, it it it doesn't it doesn't add up at the end. And and, you know, that thing about, you know, trying to figure out who this person is, or, you know, are they a good person or a bad person?
Leon:I suspect in some cases, while the films were being made, they were still trying to decide themselves who those characters were. You know? Keep your options open about who the killer might be at the end.
Andy:Right. It almost you you wanna see, like, the clue version of it where it's like, how many different endings could we make with this? You know? Let's move on to our next film, which, you know, I I wanna have a sidebar, because this next one is Sergio Martino's 1972 film, your vice is a locked room and only I have the key. And I wanna have a sidebar before we keep going on just how great giallo titles are.
Andy:I mean, there are like, I have so much fun just looking through the list of the titles. I mean, do you have some favorites? Because, I mean, some of them are just wild.
Leon:Yeah. That is a really good one. The Iguana with the tongue of fire is 1, a a type I really like. It's a much better title than the film.
Andy:Oh, okay.
Leon:Yeah. I think that was very much a trend set by the Argento films. Bird of the crystal plumage, cata nine tails, 4 flies on gray velvets, and then you you they just they just run with that. And and actually, house with laughing windows is pretty difficult to improve on. I often wonder, in some cases and I'm sure this is the case with birds with crystal plumage that he just decided he wanted to call it the birds with crystal plumage.
Leon:And then That's the right bird there. You've got to come up with the pretext
Andy:Yeah.
Leon:For why it's called this. So late on in the film, they just introduce these birds that they hear, on the telephone. And I'm sure that's the same with House with Laughing Windows. Like, what a great title, House with Laughing Windows. Now how are we gonna get these laughing windows into the film?
Leon:Right. Right. Figure out some way of of doing it. These are I mean, I I think I think there's a larger trend in Italian cinema in the seventies for long titles, because the longest Sure. Yeah.
Leon:There's one that's got there's the Lina Wertmuller film, which is simply known in English as Swept Away, Giancarlo Giannini and, Mariangela Milato. But the Italian title, which I can't even remember, it's in it's it's swept away on the something something something of the something something something, and it just it just keeps going. It's it's it's more of a paragraph than a title.
Andy:Yeah. I'm looking it up right now. Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August.
Leon:That's the one. Jeez. I I I mean, the jello writers must have been kicking themselves for not coming up with that one.
Andy:Yeah. No kidding. No kidding. It's just so fun. I I love all of them.
Andy:They're just, it is just it's so fun reading these. And this one too. I mean, your vice is a locked room and only I have the key. Like, what a just a fantastic title. And I just I walked into this one saying, wow.
Andy:That is a great title. I I hope the film lives up to it. And I have to say, I had such a fun time with this one.
Leon:Yeah.
Andy:This one is is the wife of a troubled rider becomes embroiled in a series of murders at their crumbling villa. As the bodies pile up, she must confront her husband's dark past and the secrets that threaten to destroy their lives. With each new revelation, the line between reality and fiction blurs, and her sanity is pushed to the brink. The arrival of her niece, a seductive and mysterious figure, only adds to the confusion and danger. Is the wife the victim of a sinister plot, or is her husband's twisted psyche the key to unlocking the mystery?
Andy:And what role does her enigmatic niece play in this deadly game? How did this film use the formula, we'll just say, to kind of explore, deeper psychological themes?
Leon:I think one thing that's interesting about this film is that it's it's it's kind of the 2 types of jello mixed together Because it's got elements of the of the the jello erotico and the, the woman who is seemingly being driven mad by by various things that are happening, both by her abusive husband, by the, the black cats, which allows it to claim to be based on Edgar Allan Poe, which which bits of it sort of are.
Andy:Yeah, I suppose.
Leon:But we've got this series of of murders as well. Some of which, it has to be said, could probably have been taken out of the film without making a huge difference to to to the plot. It, to a certain extent, feels like by then, you know, maybe by then there was a feeling, we we need to have some killings as well. Yeah. We can have the psychological stuff.
Leon:But we need a sharp object and and and some some blood on screen as well.
Andy:Yeah. Right, right.
Leon:But, yes, this is a sort of psychological, jowlow, where so much of the film we experience through the Anita Strindberg character, which will, without sort of spoiling us, sort of mislead us a little bit. This is another one where, when you find things out at the end, you you watching it again, you might have some queries about whether it all adds up. But, you know, it's certainly it's certainly an interesting, ride along the way. And I think there's sort of there yeah. There were interesting bits and pieces in it.
Leon:Of course, we're out of the city in this film. We sort of we have more of a rural setting, whereas probably the majority of these films have a kind of urban, big city setting. We're out somewhere in the Veneto region, but in the house belonging to a very wealthy person. So there's sort of again, it's a world of wealth and and privilege. They invite all these hippies to the house for a party.
Leon:At the beginning, he's kind of racist towards the the maid. And there's some sort of stuff about racism and colonialism, but the film doesn't pursue that very far. Yeah. And then, and then again, because this is another Ernesto Gastaldi script. You know, who is plotting against who?
Leon:You know, who who are who are these people really, you know, what's really driving this plot? And, of course, it can it can never be exactly as it appears to be. There's yeah. The rug is gonna be pulled from underneath this setup, at some point. And then, you know, again, this flurry of twists and turns at the end.
Andy:Yeah. And, you know, I I wanna real quick just go back to Brenda. She was the, the maid, the the person who kind of like the housekeeper. That that was an interesting element because I think there's one other film that we'll be talking about where they actually had an African American in it, but it's definitely thin through these films. And I wasn't sure, is there an element there about kinda like the racist depiction that we end up, with these films, or is it just kind of something of the time?
Leon:And it's yes. It's it's different. They aren't always great on on those kinds of issues. And I think this film, it sort of uses it to you know, it establishes that the the Luigi Pastelli character is being racist. You know, he's being offensive towards her.
Leon:Although there are sort of casual comments being made about her, as well. There's the guy in the van who thinks it's funny to call her blondie, and things like that. So there's a kind of casual racism. But I don't I can't tell if the film thinks that that's casual racism, or thinks that that's kind of okay, that that's just, you know, sort of having, having a bit of fun. So it doesn't, it doesn't really develop it very much.
Leon:It is a predominantly sort of white genre. And there is a tendency to use non white characters, particularly women, as a kind of form of exoticism. And I think this film does do that a little bit, even at the same time as showing her as a as a victim of racism. It's it's kind of, you know, it's it there's an element of titillation, I think, around that as well.
Andy:Yeah. No. It's an interesting element that, you know, does play in a couple of these films. And so I just wanted to bring that up as as kind of another point. But going back to kind of some of the other elements here, I mean, I do think that this is interesting because there is this element of kind of, like, we have some trauma.
Andy:There was something that had gone on, between Irina and her husband and his mother. It seemed like that just seemed like some bad blood between, Irina and her husband's mom who ended up dying, and she seems like she's, broken. Right? I mean, she's, you know, abused. There's this trauma in her life and everything.
Andy:And so we are getting that psychological horror and just kinda like the damage that we see of her as she's trying to, like, keep herself from spiraling down this web. But it does build to that twist ending again, which is a surprise. And, you know, tying back to the black cat and things buried in the wall, it made for kind of an interesting shift in the the kind of the the way the film went. And I have to say, I I loved this film. I had such a fun time watching it.
Andy:I wasn't expecting it to go where it did, but the way that it played those those female characters and and building to that ending, I thought was, was a lot of fun.
Leon:Yeah. It's a it's a really I think it's a really good film. I mean, another thing, I guess, we haven't talked about yet is which I think is an important part of these films, but also of Italian cinema of the of the period more generally, is the music That they they nearly all just have fantastic music. I mean, not for nothing. Bruno Nicolai, who
Andy:did the score on this one, yeah.
Leon:Bruno Nicolai, yes. So you have this sort of stable of incredible Italian film composers who are just unbelievably prolific during this period. Obviously, Morricone at the top, Bruno Nicolai, Stelvio Cipriani, Rizzo Italiani, and and they just seem to be able to knock out a stone cold classic, you know, at a moment's notice for these films. But, yeah, this has got a beautiful Bruno Nicolai score. Yeah.
Leon:Yeah. And also, of course, one of the major icons of the genre, Edwiesz Fenech. Slightly passed against type as the niece, because often she is the one who's kind of being tormented in The Strange Advice of Mrs. Ward, or in All the Colors of the Dark. Yeah.
Leon:She's often the one who's kind of being driven mad or someone's trying to kill her for her money.
Andy:I enjoyed her a lot in this. She played the niece in an interesting way. And this also goes into kinda like those sexual explorations and everything because in this story about, this husband and wife, and then this niece comes in, and the husband has kind of, like, this obsessive draw to his like, sexual draw to his niece, but then the niece also seems to be drawn to the wife. And so you're getting some interesting sexual games that are going on here.
Leon:Yeah. She she gets both of them into bed in the course of the film. Right.
Andy:Yeah. It's very interesting. Let's move to Dario Argento. So we're we're skipping the bird with the crystal plumage, so we have talked about that quite a bit. But we're gonna talk about his film from 1975 deep red.
Andy:A musician witnesses the brutal murder of a psychic and becomes obsessed with solving the crime. As he delves deeper into the mystery alongside a tenacious journalist, they uncover a web of secrets, lies, and a shocking connection to a long forgotten tragedy. With each new lead, the danger intensifies and the killer grows more determined to silence them. As the body count rises and the truth becomes increasingly elusive, the musician must confront his own past to unlock the key to the killer's identity. But will he unravel the mystery before becoming the next victim?
Andy:So how does this film, which I mean, you you've mentioned how Argento had been kind of inspired by Blood and Black Lace. How does this kind of represent a culmination of so many of the key themes and techniques that we've been talking about in jalo?
Leon:It's hard to think of a film that is sort of higher up in the canon of the jalu, if I can put it like that, than, Profondo Rosso. This is this is a film, in many ways, that's sort of seen as the culmination of it. And maybe one of the reasons why it sort of, I think, production of them died down a little bit after 1975. I sometimes have a strong suspicion that they'd looked at Profounderossa and thought, We just can't follow that, really. You know, it it it's almost like the sort of the perfection of the genre.
Leon:It's it's far and away the best known Argento film in Italy. Maybe internationally, Suspiria is a bit, is a bit better known. But it has hugely iconic status in Italy, including, again, to mention the music, the first time he worked with the rock group, Goblin. It it was a it was a number it was a number one album in Italy. So it was a best selling record, as well as a film.
Leon:So Argento really steps things up in every way in this film. The violence is is more extreme. It's one of his strongest scripts. I think that might be partly due to the input of the writer, his cowriter Bernardino Zaponi, who'd also worked with Fellini, who brought some, ideas into the film. I think he was starting to command higher budgets.
Leon:He's got David Hemmings, of course. So there are it's all those inevitable nods to blow up.
Andy:Yeah. Yeah.
Leon:Although I think that Antonioni was always a kind of point of reference for, Argento. You know, the crystal plumage is also about trying to kind of replay a scene, you know, to kind of understand what you've witnessed, to understand what you've seen. And blow up is kind of the arthouse version of that, trying to, you know, go back and go over it, over and over again. Blow it up, blow it up, blow it up. Try and understand, what you've seen.
Leon:And sort of in blow up, in blow up, because he gets further and further. Yeah, the more he blows it up, the further and further away he gets from being able to understand it. Whereas, of course, in a jalo, you have to arrive at a conclusion, which is a stunning conclusion. Because although it's not and I'm not going to say who the killer is, obviously. But I don't think it's giving too much away to say that the film plays completely fair by although maybe there aren't too many clues pointing to who it might be, or at least not directly.
Andy:I didn't think so.
Leon:The film actually shows us who the killer is
Andy:Yes.
Leon:Very early on. But in a way that we're not looking for. Yeah. So it plays the ultimate game. It's about someone who is trying to get a sense of perception in order, but it's playing around with our perception as well.
Leon:It's like, we showed it to you, but you weren't looking.
Andy:Right.
Leon:You were looking, but you weren't really looking. And now we're gonna show you again what you saw. And it's it's one of Argento's greatest coups. It's that revelation of what you saw, but you also missed.
Andy:Yeah. It was a great surprise. And it's funny because I I feel like I caught it at the time, but I wasn't thinking about it. And I just said, I must have just seen something else. And then the kind of film went, and then I got I was like, wow.
Andy:I did actually I caught it, but I totally didn't even think about it. Didn't give it a second thought. So it it was interesting in how that it pulled that off so effectively. I had a great time with this one. And this one also kind of amps up the violence.
Andy:Like, we're really kind of kicking that up to another level in this film, which is another thing that I think Argento is bringing to it.
Leon:Yeah. I I mean, I think some of the other jalli had become more violent in the meantime. You know, I think he's sort of, okay. Here's how it's really done. And I don't think it's so much that they're gorier.
Leon:But and and Argento's always credited this to Zapony's input, is that they, again, a bit like in Blood and Black Lace, they came up with murders that somehow you can really feel them. They're things that you can identify with a milder version of what happens to those characters. Okay. Hopefully, most of us have never had our teeth smashed out, on the table or a windowsill. But we've all had some discomfort in our teeth at some point.
Leon:You know, we've all been to the dentist, and probably had a drill in there at some point. We know it doesn't feel good, stuff having to your happening to your teeth. We've hopefully never had our head shoved into a scalding hot bath. But we've all burnt our hand on something. Right.
Leon:So those very sort of identifiable tactile sensations. As I say, Argento has always acknowledged that, you know, that was one of Zapponi's ideas that he brought to the film. Okay, you cut someone's head off. No one knows what it's like to have your head cut off, really. You know, we know it's not gonna be good, but we we it's not something you can identify, really.
Leon:But having your head shoved into scalding hot water, somehow, you know what that's going to be like.
Andy:Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, they they really play with the gore effects with some of that too. And, like, the aftermath of that, that bathtub was, like, pretty horrifying. You know, you're seeing that, and you're like, oh, same thing with the teeth.
Andy:And just, like, you're watching some of these moments, and you can see where this would really influence some of those slasher films down the road.
Leon:Yeah. The other the the other thing I wanted you to say about Profon De Oroso, which, is something that fascinates me particularly about it, and about Argento. Certainly during this period is Argento's use of location. I mean, one thing that sets Argento apart from most of the other cello directors, certainly certainly prior to Suspiria, because Suspiria does kind of go abroad, is up to that point, all of Argento's films are set in Italy. And they're set in a recognizable Italy.
Leon:And I think that's one of the reasons why maybe he landed with Italian audiences in a way that some of the earlier films hadn't. But at the same time, he does do this very he does do a very unusual thing with locations in some of his films. And never more so than in this film. Because this film is, we're told several times, is set in Rome. Some of it was shot in Rome.
Leon:But a large part of this film was shot very recognizably in Turin. Recognizable Turin location. So it's it's, you know, it would be like, I don't know if you were watching. You're watching a film that's so it's meant to be set in New York, and you're seeing San Francisco locations or something like that. But not in a way that you think, oh, what's he what's he doing here?
Leon:It's, you know, audiences were clearly on board with that, but it's like a almost a kind of composite city that he's kind of building rather than you know, it's recognizably Italian, but it's not necessarily solely one Italian city. Mhmm. But one of the things that's sort of grown out of this film is that, you know, Turin has become a kind of pilgrimage site
Andy:Oh, really?
Leon:For Argento fans. And just to mention one of the locations, which is, the piazza where David Hemmings and, Gabriela Laveau hear the scream before the first murder.
Andy:Okay. And
Leon:they're in front of a fountain. That's a a piazza in Turin called Piazza CLN. Well, originally, it was called the piazza of 2 churches. Then they built 2 fountains representing and this is why it could be nowhere but Turin. The 2 fountains represent the 2 rivers in Chorin, the Po and the Dora.
Leon:They built these two fountains. It became Piazza delle Dua Fontane, the the 2 fountains. Uh-huh. Then during the war, because it was originally built by the fascists. During the war, it became the headquarters for the Gestapo.
Leon:Then after the liberation, it was renamed Comitato di Liberazione Nacionale. So it's got this tremendous history attached to it already. It's kind of loaded with Italian history. But then what does Argento do in addition to that? He adds a diner based on Edward Hopper's nighthawks.
Leon:So, I I mean, this is the most extraordinary location he ever uses. It's meant to be Rome, but it's Turin. It's a part of Turin that's got this incredible history of, like, fascism, liberation, the the this brief period of socialism after the war, and then the influence of America on post war Italy.
Andy:On top of all of that. Yeah. That's fantastic. Was that Villa? Was that in Turin as well, the one where
Leon:That's in Turin as well. Villas Villa Scotts in the in the the the Liberty style of Turin architecture. If you go on the the tourist bus in Italy, one of the routes on the tourist bus in Turin, they will take you past that house. Nice. And they will point it out to you.
Leon:That's how famous that film is.
Andy:Wow. One other thing that I I you we I didn't mention yet, but, I I just thought about this, but it's it was so eye catching when it happened. There is this scene where the killer, I guess, distracts somebody with this mechanical doll Yes. Like, coming into a room. And it was so creepy, and I had to think that the, the filmmakers, behind Saw
Leon:Yeah.
Andy:Saw this and wanted to include their own creepy doll because that that's exactly where my mind went. That was so fantastic, the way that that was integrated into the story.
Leon:Yeah. That doll that doll is fantastic. Yeah. I'm sure the Saw people were influenced by someone else who's always said he was influenced by the music was, John Carpenter when he wrote the music for Halloween.
Andy:Yeah. And I can I can see that too? Yeah. Even just the slasher elements, like, you can really see John Carpenter pulling a lot of the things that he would end up putting into Halloween, from this film into Halloween. Let's talk about our last film, another one that I hadn't heard of but completely loved.
Andy:This is The House with the Laughing Windows, Poopyavati's film, from 1976. In this one, we have a young painter hired to restore a fresco in a remote village who discovers the that the artwork he's, restoring is linked to some grisly murders. As he uncovers the village's dark past with the help of a local teacher, he becomes the target of a mysterious killer determined to keep the truth buried. Trapped in a web of madness and murder, the painter must confront the village's haunting legacy before becoming the next victim. You know, we're still in that peak period of giallo film.
Andy:So how is this film or what is it doing? Is it doing anything to kind of subvert any of the conventions or play with it, or is it kind of just fitting right in line?
Leon:I think this one does stand out. It it does a number of unusual things. And Avati, I think it's worth saying, is is a different kind of filmmaker from most of the others that we're looking at.
Andy:From the from the start of this one, it felt pretty, dark.
Leon:Yeah. I mean, he's, he's not solely a genre filmmaker. He's also done, you know, dramas and I mean, he's got one foot in art cinema. But he does come back to genres from time to time in horror films, and and and jolly. He's he's got a, I think, a rather different reputation from the other directors.
Leon:He's certainly a kind of a higher critical reputation than some of these other directors, you know, rightly or wrongly. It's a slower paced film. I think anyone going in expecting, you know, Argento thrills and spills might find it a bit slow. But if you love atmosphere, there there's there's tons of that shit.
Andy:Yeah. It's very atmospheric, and it's playing a little bit with some some sense of kind of folk horror almost, you know, and and kind of like this biblical horror, these elements that really just kind of tie into this story that I loved. And, yeah, that slow burn pace that we had with this, it just really built that tension for me exceptionally. Like, I had a great time watching this one. It's a creepy little film.
Leon:I think the other things that are unusual about it, I think the setting is unusual. We're in a very remote part of of of Italy, in, Emilia Romagna, in the in in the province, but not the city of Ferrara, in the Po Delta. So we we kind of cut off. There's a sense it's a slightly backwards community. And, also, very unusually, we're in periods.
Leon:We're not in the present. And although it doesn't spell out exactly when it's set, it there's a strong sense that the war is still a recent memory.
Andy:Yeah. It felt, yeah, it felt kind of that fifties period.
Leon:Yeah. Yeah. But because I think the the painter is supposed to have set himself on fire in 9 I think they say 1931. And it turns out that, you know, other people around that time are still alive. So we're Right.
Andy:Yeah. Yeah.
Leon:We're obviously not too many decades on, from there. Yes. Because because the fresco is, the, the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. And the Lino Carpalicchio character, the painter starts to notice that the person who painted it is maybe more interested in the violence of the scene than the religious connotations of the scene. And then, of course, starts to notice these, very significantly, these other two figures.
Leon:They will become enormously important to the film. And again, it's a film that, in some ways, is showing us certain things in plain sight that we don't, well, we can't possibly realize until we get Yeah.
Andy:No. They don't give you clues so you can piece it together and figure it out yourself. But when you get to the end, you're like, okay. I guess I can see that. Yeah.
Andy:Yeah. It is interesting with these these figures in the painting that he had been that the this artist had been painting. And then as you realize the the realities of those figures and perhaps, like, were they based on real people, and you start getting these sorts of this sense of the story. Also, this the and this goes to, like, sometimes the nonsense of these stories. Like, he's hired by this this, diminutive man to do this restoration.
Andy:And then that man later, as things start as he starts piecing things together, seems to not care that things are actually happening, like that the this this, painting has been destroyed. Like, he doesn't seem to care. I'm like, okay. I guess it's just part of the story. You know?
Andy:He just doesn't care that much.
Leon:But but then he also seems to be the person who calls the police at the end.
Andy:Yeah. Right. Right. He's a
Leon:he's an ambiguous figure throughout.
Andy:Yeah. What a surprise of a film. And, again, great title, The House with Laughing Windows. And as you pointed out, the revelation of the laughing windows, when we finally get to see that, it's like, oh, okay. Maybe they just liked the title and just needed to figure out how can we get this into
Leon:here. So I'm sure they came up with the title first.
Andy:Yeah. Right. Oh, so funny. I mean, fantastic group of films. We're gonna talk about 5 more films in our member bonus.
Andy:We'll talk about, the girl who knew too much a little bit more, one on top of the other, the forbidden photos of a lady above suspicion, who saw her die, and Tenebrae. Before we wrap up the main part of the show, let's talk a little bit about where this genre has, gone, as far as, like, its influences. It's obvious obviously, we've talked about this influencing the slasher genre. How else has it kind of influenced film?
Leon:It's also interestingly sort of fed into a kind of art cinema. You know, I think there are there are filmmakers the the British filmmaker Peter Strickland comes to mind, who certainly seems to see Jallow as a style more than anything else. He's not made films that are about killers or about newly married women being plotted against by their husbands. But he's made films that have drawn stylistically on the sort of the visual and the and the kind of the particularly the musical qualities of the films, particularly his film, The Berberian Sound Studio, I think, is sort of drawing on the influence. And also the 2 filmmakers, Bozzani and Kartett, who made Strange Color of Your Body's Tears.
Leon:There's a shallow title, if ever there was one.
Andy:Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right.
Leon:They've made several films. They made a film called Am Air as well. Yes. Which, again, they sort of I mean, Strange Colors does sort of have a shallow type plot, although it makes even less sense than the original shallow plot did. But I think that's a bit more deliberate.
Leon:You know, there are this an arthouse take on the overcomplicated mystery story. And they actually use soundtrack music. So you'll hear bits of Bruno Nicolai and Morricone and Alessandro Alessandrone and people like that, on on the soundtrack. So I think that kind of stylistic legacy, you know, I think it's interesting how it's gone into art cinema as well.
Andy:Is there a neo giallo movement, like, so many genres have where people have kind of returned to telling these stories?
Leon:Those are house films are the ones that often do get referred to as as as Neo Jiali. Yeah.
Andy:Gotcha. Gotcha.
Leon:Because I think it's difficult to do these films straight in exactly the same way. Because there's also something time bound about them. I think they are very much located in the fashions, the interior design, the music of of that of that era. Without all of that, you you just make you're making a slasher film in many ways.
Andy:Right. Right. Right. Well, I mean, to the point where, would you call, later in Argento's career, he would make a film called Giallo. Is that Giallo?
Andy:Or is is that his own neo Giallo? Or where does that fit in?
Leon:Well, that's an odd one because that was unusually for Argento, that was written for him, you know, because usually projects originate with him. But someone wrote that script and sent it to him. So in some ways, I think it originated as someone who was trying to produce a kind of tribute to Argento. I mean, of course, in an Italian because of the Italian meanings of the word, anything with mystery in it can be can be a jello, really. Right.
Andy:I suppose so. That's true. And
Leon:I and I guess anything that Argento makes is is you know, if it's a if it's a thriller, if it's a mystery thriller, it's likely to be seen as a Jalo. Stendhal syndrome can be see certainly can be seen, as a Jalo. You know, several of his later films can be sleepless, The Card Player. But they are stylistically different. Even Argento's films are stylistically different from the ones.
Leon:You know, I I I tend to think of, you know, this type of Jaller, its era is, you know, it's early sixties to late seventies, early eighties at the latest, really. You know, and they're still made after that. And there are films that you can call Jaller before that. But those ones that, you know, people collect, and they make lists of them on Letterboxd, they very much belong to that sort of, you know, almost a kind of a 20 year period. And again, I think that's because, you know, they're connected to things of their time.
Andy:As often happens with a lot of these, subgenres. Right? They just kind of like it it's it it is a piece of that part of history in that area, and that's why they are lumped into that. And and then you end up having the neo whatever it is because people are drawn to it, and they wanna kind of tell those stories again, but it can't quite fit the same way. Well, I mean, it has been such a fantastic conversation talking about Xalo Leon.
Andy:Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.
Leon:Oh, thank you.
Andy:Tell people real quick before we go about your book again. And, I mean, I know you've you've dug quite deep into Xalo and and Bava. Yeah.
Leon:I my book is called Mario Bava, the Artisan, as Italian Horror Otter. Obviously, it looks, you know, broadly, his career. But there is a chapter that is entirely about his giallo films. In that chapter, I also dig into some of the things we talked about today, which is, you know, how could, how do we understand that word? What's the history of that word?
Leon:What are the different ways we can understand that word? Why is Bava thought of as a pioneer of the Jallo? All of those kinds of questions. So if you're interested in Bava and you're interested in Italian horror and the Jallo, you might find my book interesting.
Andy:Well, we'll have a link to it in the show notes, and we'll also include a link for your Kung Fu, Cult Masters book, which, we talked about a little bit back when we were doing wuxia. Certainly worth checking those books out. Again, Leon, thank you so much for joining me here today. Really appreciate it.
Leon:Thank you.
Andy:Next month, we will venture into the chilling depths of Nordic Noir. We'll explore how this gritty atmospheric subgenre has captivated audiences with its bleak landscapes, complex characters, and haunting investigations. From the icy streets of Stockholm to the remote fjords of Norway, we'll delve into the dark underbelly of Scandinavian society and uncover the secrets that lurk beneath the surface. Join us as we unravel the intricate mysteries and confront the unsettling truths that define this compelling movement in crime fiction. Thank you for joining us on Cinoscope, part of the True Story FM Entertainment podcast network.
Andy:Music by Orcus and the Magnetic Buzz. Find us in the entire Next Real family of film podcast at true story dot f m. Follow us on social media at the next reel, and please rate and review us if your podcast app allows. As we part ways, remember, your cinematic journey never ends. Stay curious.