Best Giallo Movies, and why they are important to the genre.

#Plot: Isabella (Francesca Ungaro), one of the many beautiful models employed at a fashion house is violently killed by an assailant wearing a featureless white mask. Police starts investigating the murder, when Isabella’s diary is found, everyone in the gallery become nervous, they all have forbidding secrets.

#What is so important about the movie: Blood and Black Lace (Italian: Sei donne per l’assassino; also known as Six Women for the Murderer) is simply the best giallo movie ever. Made in 1964 by Mario Bava, the movie was so influential that you can trace its impact on filmmakers like Dario Argento, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Wes Craven. Bava’s excessive use of color (which gives you the feeling of looking at paintings), contrast between light and shadow, beautiful and semi-naked girls as victims, ominous music and different plot twists helped to make Blood and Black Lace the touchstone of giallo movies.

Mario Bava made the movie after Black Sunday (1960) and Black Sabbath (1963) in the most fruitful period of his filmmaking career, the time when not only his movies were visually breathtaking, their plotlines were well thought and developed. Blood and Black Lace is famous for its stalk-and-kill sequences which are abundant with violence and blood and of course sex (for its time), many filmmakers repeated his style in near future in slasher movies like “Friday The 13th” series.

#Plot: Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) is an American writer living in Rome with his model girlfriend Giulia (Suzy Kendall). He is suffering from writer’s block, and wants to go back to the U.S., but he witnesses an attempted murder. The Murder is a serial killer hunting young girls and Sam is determined to find out who the killer is.

#What is so important about the movie: As the plot line shows, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Italian: L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo) tells a simple and familiar story of a giallo movie. Made in 1970 and directed by Dario Argento, as his directorial debut, the film is without a doubt one of the best giallo movies ever made. Argento wrote the script with Fredric Brown’s novel The Screaming Mimi in mind. Not only the movie was a commercial success, it was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe award for best motion picture in 1971.

Though it is Argento’s first movie (he was a well-known screenwriter and co-wrote the story of Once Upon a Time in The West with Bernardo Bertolucci and Sergio Leone); he manged to thrill audience and critics with his debut. His elegant use of camerawork, light and shadows, colors and editing combining complicated and unpredictable plot line made The Bird with the Crystal Plumage one of the best examples of giallo and a reference for filmmakers to come. It was deservedly placed 272nd in Empire magazine’s “500 Greatest Movies of All Time” list.

#Plot: A bored housewife Minou (Dagmar Lassander) is beguiled by a stranger who lures her into his chamber, makes love to her, takes nude photos of her and then starts blackmailing her.

#What is so important about the movie: Le foto proibite di una signora per bene made in 1970 by Luciano Ercoli is not one of the best examples of giallo movies. However, the film has been cited as “defining Ercoli’s style”, featuring the recurring theme of “the nightmare of being threatened by one’s own sexual partner” and thus it is one of the early examples of “Sexually Charged Giallo” movies.

DVD Talk reviewer Glenn Erickson rated the film three-and-a-half stars out of five, writing that it “looks and sounds great, with attractive settings and cinematography. But its unconvincing sexual blackmail story isn’t engaging, and we keep watching mainly to find out if there are going to be any surprise”. Erikson is right, the blackmail plot does not make sense, but it is not important because you are dealing with a movie in which its female characters have time to change their clothes in each scene, no matter how frantic their situations are!

#Plot: Countess Federica (Isa Miranda) is attacked and strangled to death by her husband, Filippo Donati (Giovanni Nuvoletti) and then he is murdered himself. It is believed to be a suicide, the heirs show up as well as a group of young people on vacation and the killer is ready to kill all of them!

#What is so important about the movie: Twitch of the Death Nerve (Italian: Ecologia del delitto, mostly known as Blood Bath, A Bay of Blood and Reazione a catena), is a 1971 Italian horror film directed by Mario Bava, it is one of his most violent, bloody and unfortunately nonsensical film. The film is full of killings and it is suitable only for hardcore giallo fans and historians who want to know about the roots of American slasher movies in the 1980s; movies like “Friday the 13th”, “Nightmare at Elm Streets”, the subsequent “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer”. The film sets model for future slasher movies: lots of nudity and topless girls plus machetes and blood flood.

In 2005, Total Film named Twitch of the Death Nerve one of the 50 greatest horror films of all time; but don’t take it seriously, just watch the movie for its profound nudity and blood.

#Plot: Carol Hammond (Florinda Bolkan) is the daughter of a wealthy lawyer and politician. She dreams of killing her neighbor Julia and when Julia’s corpse is found, Carol becomes nervous, is she the killer?

#What is so important about the movie: A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (Italian: Una lucertola con la pelle di donna; released as Schizoid in the US) made in 1971 by Lucio Fulci is notorious for its sex scenes and orgies, maybe the most memorable one is the lesbian scene between Bolkan and Strindberg, two of the hottest actresses of the time. The movie is important as a giallo for its great use of a theme in giallo movies: driving a woman to madness.

Bolkan did her job greatly as Mrs. Hammond and there is another thing worth mentioning about the movie: fashion. Clothes and accessories were an essential part of giallo movies and in A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, it is rich with a la mode women. The movie is also important for its emphasis on psycho therapy and power of dreams, yes, the director knows two or three things about Freud!

#Plot: A widow inherits a small fortune after her husband’s death in a jet crash. She wants to run away with her lover, but she is murdered and the money is stolen. An insurance investigator gets involved in this mystery and tries to find the murderer who does not leave behind any traces.

#What is so important about the movie: The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (Italian: La coda dello scorpione) made in 1971 by Sergio Martino, is a giallo movie in which a great sum of money plays a vital role. There are many giallo movies with a suitcase of money goes from one hand to another, only to make the pile of corpses higher. However, Martino’s film is memorable because it is beautifully directed and the suspense amplifies as the movie goes on. The movie is a timeless classic for its well developed mystery scenario by legendary Ernesto Gastaldi, unforgettable music by Ennio Morricone and Anita Strinberg in the leading role.

#Plot: The corpse of reporter Gregory Moore (Jean Sorel) is found in a Prague plaza and brought to the local morgue. Gregory is however alive but no one notices it. He tries to remember how he is murdered and he has very limited time.

#What is so important about the movie: Everything! Not only Short Night of the Glass Dolls is one of the best and most innovative giallo movies of 1970s, it is one of the best directorial debut giallo movies. Made by Aldo Lado in 1971, it features Ingmar Bergman’s muse, Ingrid Thulin as the mischievous female and Barbara Bach as the beautiful innocent girl. There is almost no gore in the movie and if the movie was made two decade earlier or later it would instantly be branded as a mystery classic with satanic undertones.

The movie is told from the memories of a dead man who is not dead and his memories are going to lead us to the forbidding truth. The Short Night of the Glass Dolls is Rosemary’s Baby without the devil’s child and its ending scene (the innocent girl being molested by nude Satanists) is a direct homage to Polanski’s masterpiece.

One will never forget Short Night of the Glass Dolls, because it deals with one of the most horrifying fears of man: to be considered dead while you are still alive and awake. The brutal ending shows Aldo is not a filmmaker who betrays his audience by cheap happy endings.

#Plot: Inspector Tellini is to find out the killer who only kills women that are blackmailed for infidelity.The murderer opens up his victims’ bellies after paralyzing them with a needle.

#What is so important about the movie: The Black Belly of the Tarantula made in 1971 by Paolo Cavara, is one of the funniest yet most accomplished police procedural giallo movies. Though it is inspired by Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, it is memorable for its complicated plot line and fine acting by Giancarlo Giannini.

Black Belly of the Tarantula is also dealing with one of the familiar stories of giallo films: a sex maniac who loathes women because his wife has betrayed him. The chasing scenes on the roofs are well done and the funny scene in the police department where officers watch a hidden cam cord of Tellini having sex with his wife makes this film one of the rarest cases of commedia dell’arte in giallo movies.

The movie is also unforgettable for its murderer’s Modus operandi: the long sharp needle dipped in deadly venom that make the victims paralyzed – so they must lie awake and watch themselves killed by a big knife in their bellies! Yes, it is bizarre and terrifying.

#Plot: In a small Southern Italian village, a series of children are killed. A reporter and a young girl are determined to find the killer in this superstitious village abundant with black magic.

#What is so important about the movie: Don’t Torture a Duckling (Italian: Non si sevizia un paperino) is a 1972 film by Lucio Fulci. And again full of Freudian sexually charged plot lines. Fulci here for the first time combines sex with gore and the result is one of the most disturbing and pervert movies in giallo history.

But the movie with its enigmatic title is not just about sex and gore, according to giallo expert Danny Shipka, the film provides a thought-provoking depiction of life and politics in a small town of Italy. The main themes are “repression, sin and guilt”. The motive of the murder turns out to be a desire to rescue the boys from the effects of their own sexuality. In other words, the killer attempts to preserve the innocence of the victims. Being fresh and disquieting after 40 years, it seems Shipka was right about the movie.

#Plot: Oliviero Rouvigny (Luigi Pistilli), a failed writer and an alcoholic, lives in a crumbling mansion with his wife Irina (Anita Strindberg). The shadow of Oliviero’s mother has cast upon their lives and Irina can’t accept this. A series of murders are committed and everyone thinks the killer is Oliviero. Irina’s life becomes a living hell and only when one of Olivieros relatives (in the shape of a sexy girl) comes to visit them, everything starts to change for her.

#What is so important about the movie: Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (Italian: Il tuo vizio è una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave) is another movie about driving a woman to madness. It was made in 1972 by Sergio Martino (one of the best giallo directors of all time). The film uses many elements from Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat”, and acknowledges this influence in the film’s opening credits and finishes it with ominous mews of a cat.

There is not so much gore in this movie (apart from the scene in which Irinia stick a scissor into the cat’s eye); but its use of music and emphasis on mystery makes it an entertaining giallo. The movie also features two of the goddesses of giallo cinema; Strindberg and Edwige Fench and yes, to satisfy your curiosity you see both of them naked, but it is not really important. What is so significant is how by employing a big frightening house and mad characters, Martino managed to make a decent horror movie in which you sense death lurking behind the door.

#Plot: A woman is a survivor of a failed attempted murder and it is up to her husband who must find the connecting thread between her wife and the other six women.

#What is so important about the movie: Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (Italian: Sette orchidee macchiate di rosso) made in 1972 by Umberto Lenzi, is a typical giallo movie good for anyone who wants to watch a movie to pass time and be entertained. It has murder, sex, nudity, gore, violence, women strangled and beaten to death and many more. Lenzi was a cult director who started his career as a journalist and that’s why his movies are like a series of news articles about murders.

The movie was not successful because it was costly and at the same time the script was full of cliché. However this is recommended to anyone who likes to watch a giallo. Don’t forget it was Lenzi’s own favorite giallo film.

#Plot: Sylvia’s life is a living hell, she constantly dreams of her mother being murdered by a stranger who seems to be her mother’s lover. Soon reality and dream mix and Sylvia can’t bear this nightmare anymore.

#What is so important about the movie: The Perfume of the Lady in Black (Italian: Il profumo della signora in nero) made in 1974 by Francesco Barilli is another examples of how disturbing experiences in the past haunt men and women in the present. The movie deals with the typical theme of driving a woman crazy, however this time the woman is driven crazy by black magic.

The movie is a good example of mystery movie done with all giallo instruments available. Barilli has only made two giallo movies (the other one is Pensione paura), but he showed how well he knew giallo cinema and how good he was at making a horror film in the manner of Polanski and Hitchcock.

#Plot: Music teacher Marcus Daly witnesses the murder of psychic medium Helga Ulmann, which leads him to a series of macabre events and a doomed house where the secret of murder is hidden.

#What is so important about the movie: Deep Red (original title Profondo Rosso; also known as The Hatchet Murders) is a 1975 Italian giallo film by Dario Argento. It stars David Hemmings in a role that reminds us of his role in Antonioni’s Blow-Up, but certainly we are not dealing with modern crisis of humanity here. What we see in Deep Red is a mystery thriller that calls to mind Hitchcock’s Psycho with more blood and murders.

Argento said he made the movie in Turin because at the time there were more practicing Satanists in Turin than any other European cities excluding Lyon. It is important, maybe not, but the city, its empty streets and abandoned houses really have some satanic undertone.

The film’s special effects were made and executed by Carlo Rambaldi, best known for creating the extraterrestrial protagonist of Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, for which he won an Academy Award in 1983. There are many close-up shots of the killer’s hands, clad in black leather gloves (Dario Argento’s hand), this becomes a fashion in the future slasher movies.

#Plot: Stefano (Lino Capolicchio) arrives in a rural Italian village where he has been employed to restore a fresco depicting what appears to be the martyring of Saint Sebastian, but someone does not like the idea and soon Stefano’s life is in danger.

#What is so important about the movie: The House with Laughing Windows (Italian title: La casa dalle finestre che ridono) made in 1976 by the legendary Pupi Avati is a masterpiece. It has one of the best titles of giallo cinema, its ending twist gives you goosebumps, it is beautifully shot and its characters are well developed, it nicely walks on the line between reality and dream, it has less gore and more brain, its characters are not stupid and its music is disturbing.

Avati shows how well he knows giallo films and knows how to play with genre clichés to reach his desired result. Unlike many giallo movies that worth watching only once, you can watch Avati’s Laughing Windows many times and you will be surprised by its ending in each viewing. The House with Laughing Windows is like a Hitchcock movie made in Italy and it is open to all kinds of Freudian interpretations.

#Plot: Stefano returns to his childhood island to reunite with his brother, the local priest, only to fall in love and find horrible truths about a murder committed many years ago.

#What is so important about the movie: Undeservedly neglected, Solamente nero (internationally released as The Bloodstained Shadow, Bloodstained Shadow and Only Blackness) is a 1978 film by Antonio Bido. The movie with its complicated plot lines tends to develop its character rather than using “boos” and sudden appearance of characters from behind the walls to frighten the audience.

The movie will stick to one’s mind when in the end you see the priest was the murderer and his suicide never lessens the bitterness you feel; there is no hiding place in the giallo world, even the man of God may be a killer.

Mario Bava’s black-and-white thriller is called the first giallo movie, and as a nexus point between Hitchcock, paperback thrillers and emerging Italian sensibilities, it makes a perfect starting point. Letícia Román stars as Nora Davis, a young American woman obsessed with paperback giallo thrillers who heads to Italy for a relaxing stay with her aunt. But auntie is ill, and despite the ministrations of an attractive young doctor (John Saxon, in his male model era) dies shortly after Nora’s arrival. Panicking after the old woman’s expiration, Nora flees into a nearby plaza, is mugged, and passes out. Upon waking, she witnesses a murder — or is it a dream of one of a string of serial killings that took place years earlier?

The story is a daft yarn in which Nora puts her thriller knowledge to use as she assembles clues about multiple killings, and fields threats to her own life. Nora fights to provide proof of her experiences, expressing a theme that will be a giallo staple — the woman who knows what she’s seen, but is pressured to believe she might be losing her mind. Bava shoots all the action in gorgeous high-contrast black and white that provides such rich atmosphere and storytelling that “The Girl Who Knew Too Much” could almost work as a silent film. Nora’s personal terrors come to life in a grand old apartment, where she faces phantoms in deep shadow, glinting knives, and the real killer. As Nora finds herself in stark, broken-down buildings and public spaces, another major undercurrent of gialli is born — the alienation of urban spaces.

The film exists in two major versions. The actors primarily perform in English, but the Italian-dubbed “The Girl Who Knew Too Much” is the superior cut. It is shorter and more finely honed as a thriller, with voiceover that complements the paperback thriller plot device. The english-language version, called “The Evil Eye,” features more humor, little of which is particularly effective, a more indulgent voiceover, and a new score that poorly complements the intense chiaroscuro cinematography.

When therapy doesn’t work, try Satanism. That’s one lesson from director Sergio Martino (‘Your Vice Is a Locked Room’) who works once again with Edwige Fenech and George Hilton for a dive into full-on black magic. This time, the director thins the membrane between reality and hallucination to little more than a vague gauze. Fenech plays Jane, a woman whose young life was defined by her mother’s murder, and who is now struggling towards emotional recovery from a car accident that led to a miscarriage. Her traveling salesman husband and medical assistant sister are little help, as is a well-meaning therapist. But a stray encounter with a new neighbor leads to the ultimate in counterculture cures: a black mass that shreds Jane’s dignity but restores her sexual appetite and props up her sense of emotional independence. The benefits of the ritual are short-lived, however, and Jane finds no solace anywhere when she is followed by a man (Hilton) whose plastic-blue eyes look exactly like the eyes of a dream figure linked to dreams of her mother’s death. Martino works all the giallo tricks, using red herrings, suspect glances and an overwhelming aura of paranoia to dash realism and crush any sense that Jane might easily find refuge from either her bloody past or fraught present. Surprise twists surface late in the game, of course, but perhaps the most shocking elements are the stray wisps of optimism that prevent “All the Colors of the Dark” from being overwhelmingly bleak.

Argue the purity of this thriller within the genre — maybe it isn’t true giallo, as it is not an Italian film—but if nothing else Brian De Palma’s 1980 release is an elegant giallo art installation. The opening alone is like the genre in miniature: the camera tracks through a well-to-do home into a spacious bathroom where a beautiful woman (Angie Dickinson) showers seductively, watching a man standing at the mirror, shaving with a straight razor. Close ups of her near-masturbatory activities turn horrific when she’s grabbed by a black-gloved hand, and threatened with a razor. De Palma’s own tendencies were well-developed as fetishistic gazes long before he made “Dressed to Kill;” this movie just provides the ideal framework for his voyeuristic and lurid proclivities. Dickinson’s character, a bored housewife whose work with a therapist (Michael Caine) doesn’t ameliorate her marital dissatisfaction, enjoys an afternoon affair, but runs afoul of a killer. Her brainy son (Keith Gordon) teams with a plucky prostitute (Nancy Allen) who has seen the killer in action, employing the very tricks of cinema to learn the truth about the killer’s identity. The film is riddled with dualities, split-screen compositions, and mirror images — De Palma revels in pairing off themes and identities, to the degree that nearly any audience should be able to point out the killer right off the bat. But the mystery isn’t the point, as “Dressed to Kill” is far more interested in luxuriating in the pleasures of its own movement, and in mocking moralistic ideas about sex. Giallo took liberal inspiration from prior filmmakers, and this film, which comes five years after the movement began to wind down in Italy, shows how effective the genre’s ideas could be when traded back to an American filmmaker reaching the height of his game.

Dario Argento all but defined the giallo subset in 1970, and he very nearly closed it out when he returned to thrillers after a detour into witchcraft with “Suspiria” and “Inferno.” While “Tenebrae” lacks the overblown style of Argento’s “Deep Red,” this film has something few gialli can boast: a point. “Tenebrae” is the first Argento film that seems to have real meaning for the director, rooted as it is in criticism of his films, with a plot inspired by death threats Argento himself received. An American thriller novelist — i.e., a giallo author — travels to Italy to promote his latest chart-topping novel, Tenebrae. There he faces criticism for the way his novels deal with women and morality, and is visited by police after a young woman is murdered, pages from his novel stuffed in her mouth to finish the job. The plot is meta, but not excessively so, and the story holds together in a way many other Argento films don’t bother to attempt. Murders multiply, with Argento and cameraman Luciano Tavoli going to extraordinary lengths to create a long-take exploration of the apartment in which a lesbian couple falls victim to the knife. It’s a sequence every bit as lurid as those that led to criticism of previous Argento films, and in the context of “Tenebrae” plays as a decisive “fuck you.” Early ’70s gialli featured social issues infringing on an old male-dominated order, and those issues are more formally integrated into “Tenebrae,” which treats gay rights as a foregone conclusion. (The film does feature a trans actress in one small role, and despite the fact that the character is both a tormentor and victim, those qualities are not linked to her gender.) For a genre inspired by Hitchcock, many gialli are not particularly suspenseful, trafficking in the horror of inevitable violence rather than the tense potential to escape unharmed. “Tenebrae,” however, is among the few to skillfully employ classic suspense, and a mid-film encounter, which begins as a young woman evades the most athletic doberman ever captured on film, is executed with wicked control to induce the sort of gut-level discomfort that is rare even in this genre of perverse pleasures.

Some Bava buffs will likely take exception to me choosing this one over the director’s more celebrated gialli, such as Blood and Black Lace and A Bay of Blood. But, I have a soft spot for the quirky, trippy Hatchet.

The movie wins me in its first minutes, when its lead male character, played by Stephen Forsyth, announces in a voiceover, “My name in John Harrington. I am 30 years old. I am a paranoiac.”

Yep, the icily handsome Harrington is bent. He and his wife, who are unhappily married, run a Paris fashion center that specializes in bridal gowns and accessories. Harrington has a major hang-up involving brides: he likes to hack ladies with his hatchet on their wedding nights.

When Harrington gets haunted by his wife after he slays her and then becomes involved with a new female employee who isn’t intimidated by him as are most women, his already screwed brain gets twisted that much more. The film, which manages to be both genuinely scary and funny in a campy way, has lots of brain-bending hallucination scenes to go along with all the hatchet play.

Hitchcock fans will likely recognize Farley Granger, the male lead of this one, from his roles in Rope and Strangers on a Train. Granger plays an ascot-wearing novelist in Venice, who dictates his stories to secretaries who type them up for him.

Giallo mainstay Barbara Bouchet plays a woman who gets the writer to hire her to be his new typist. What the author and his sultry wife (portrayed by Rosalba Neri) don’t know is that the new helping hand was a friend (of the romantic sort) of the last secretary, who has gone missing under suspicious circumstances, and the new girl is there to investigate what happened to the old one.

Granger is wooden in his acting in an enjoyably camp way, and Bouchet and Neri are both excellent and lovely. Another part of what gets this one on my list is the sublime soundtrack piece, “Piacere Sequence” by Teo Usuelli, which plays (on a slab of vinyl spinning on a groovy turntable, no less!) during a key, sexy and danger-filled scene.

A centuries-old legend states that a woman (the black queen) murdered her sister (the red queen) who’d been tormenting her all their lives, and that afterward, the red queen has risen from the dead every 100 years and gone on a killing rampage.

In the present, it’s 1972 and the red queen is due for a spree. The aforementioned Bouchet portrays a fashion photographer who recently accidentally killed her sister when the two were having a catfight. And now, people in Bouchet’s character’s vicinity are getting murdered and there are sightings of a woman in a red cape roaming around the area and freaking people out with her maniacal laugh.

Beautiful models flitting around in happening threads, a young Sybil Danning being sexy, a police detective who looks like Freddie Mercury, an ace score by composer Bruno Nicolai, and some outlandish gore…a giallo classic.

It’s summer session at a city university, and pretty female students are being strangled to death and then sliced up and gouged by a masked sicko. Suzy Kendall and Tina Aumont star as co-eds whose circle of friends and acquaintances make up the victims.

So, who’s the murderous sadist?

Is it the sullen creep who’s always hanging around the girls with his hangdog facial expression; the two motorcycle boys who got spurned by one of the victims when they tried to engage her in a three-way at a pot party; the freaky street vendor who likes to stoop down under his table and cop glances at girls’ legs? Could it even be the mild-mannered art professor on whom Kendall’s character has a crush, or Aumont’s character’s seemingly kindly uncle?

This is classic slasher film scare fare, with an unmistakable European flavor.

Robert Hoffman is Christian, a debonair fella who has an apparently chance, and definitely life-changing, encounter with an attractive and enigmatic blonde named Barbara, played by giallo hall-of-famer Suzy Kendall. Christian goes for Barbara and visits her in her motel room, despite the fact that he’s a got a girlfriend who is pregnant.

In the motel room, Christian is attacked by a gun-wielding man we’ve earlier seen walking around looking sinister while twirling metal balls in his hands. Christian nabs the dude’s gun and shoots him, apparently to death.

But later, when Christian returns to the scene of the battle, the weirdo’s body is gone. Christian and Barbara then go into a series of episodes during which, the more people who come into things, the more confusing it gets as to who the guy Christian shot is, why he attacked Christian, and whether he is alive or dead now.

There are so many plot twists and false leads that, after a while, the viewer might be inclined to give up on solving the mysteries involved and just enjoy the ride at face value. It’s a bizarre, hypnotic story that looks good and messes with your brain.

I rather prefer the film's original title: What Are These Strange Drops Of Blood On Jennifer's Body? But we can't have it all our own way. This film melds horror and Giallo in a beautiful way which is unsurprising seeing that its leading lady is the irresistible Giallo screen siren - Edwige Fenech. The plot basically concerns an apartment and women being slashed to death by a maniac, Jennifer (Fenech) is being stalked by the killer and there are many suspects... Given a release by Beyond Terror, this film is now available in the UK after many years of a drought. We can watch one of the most competent Giallos and appreciate the fantastic score by Bruno Nicolai. There is tons of naked flesh, brutal murders and red herrings for you to get your teeth into. An excellent piece of Giallo.

A tale of murder, sex, betrayal and perverse goings on at a modelling agency, Strip Nude for Your Killer is an entertainingly sleazy Giallo entry which is mild on the mind. Considering the calibre of its director - Andrea 'Nights of Terror' Bianchi - it is a pretty good film, but hardly Argento-esque. It boasts a bevy of Euro starlets - Edwige Fenech, Femi Benussi and Erna Schurer - in states of undress to ogle at. The identity of the murderer doesn't take a genius to work out but there is a cool funk score to groove on down to. It is pretty much the template set down by Bava and Argento set in stone. Some have suggested it had influence on the American Stalk and Slash genre. As for critical reception, critics either seem to love it or hate it. I will leave you, dear viewers to decide for yourselves.

Nasty Nun shenanigans with Anita Ekberg as the despicable sister who manages to carry on abominably with a full face of perfect make up on the entire time (is that within Vatican rules?). Sister Gertrude (Ekberg) is recovering from neurosurgery and despite her fears, she is rushed back into her job as a nurse in a geriatric hospital by Mother Superior (Alida Valli). Gertrude is raving mad and addicted to morphine. She starts a lesbian affair, gets rid of the doctor (Joe Dallesandro) and institutes her own tyrannical reign. This involves Inflicting calisthenics on the elderly inmates, stomping an old woman's dentures to bits in front of her, Having impersonal sex with city men. Eventually the Mother Superior decides Gertrude must be stopped, but is this possible? Killer Nun is pure kitsch. It is an example of the Nunsploitation genre which features anti-clerical shenanigans by religiously ordained women. However, unlike its sister films, Killer Nun has nothing political to say about the state of women in the clergy/Catholic Church. I view this film mostly as a highly funny, camp naughty nun romp. I just cannot take it seriously with Ekberg's make up! It is more laughable than anything else and the film criminally wastes Joe Dallesandro who just stands about, doing nothing. For real naughty nun kicks, check out Walerian Borowcyzk's Behind Convent Walls.

This is a total cheeseball film. It is impossible to take anything in it seriously. The plot concerns Lord Alan Cunningham who is recovering from a nervous breakdown. He procures red haired prostitutes and tortures and kills them in his castle. The source of this instability? Grief for his dead wife Evelyn. More killings ensue and Lord Cunningham's family members are dispatched off after he marries a redhead who resembles Evelyn. Demented with grief he goes to Evelyn's tomb to find her a-rising... This movie is so funny. It is greatly enhanced by the incredible Erika Blanc giving a strip show out of a coffin for Lord Cunningham. There are foxes eating human entrails. A hammier than Spam performance by the guy who plays Lord Cunningham. It has strong gothic elements to mesh with the Giallo skeleton of the film. It contains cheesy SM torture scenes and a genius Bruno Nicolai score. One to watch with your mates after imbibing... Substances.

Blind ex reporter Franco Arno overhears a blackmail plot whilst out walking with his niece. A biochemical institute is broken into and one of its assistants killed. Arno enlists the help of Carlo, a fellow reporter. They come up with nine clues - including a photo of the accident. The killer is intent on destroying all evidence to do with the case and that means people too. Can Carlo and Franco outwit him? A flop in America, The Cat O' Nine Tails was a success in Europe. Argento is less than pleased with this film, it is not like his usual Giallos - more of a traditional whodunnit. It is well plotted and highly suspenseful. Red herrings are scattered liberally all over the place. However, Argento at his 'worst' is still streets ahead of 99% of his contemporaries and Cat O' Nine Tails is a highly watchable Giallo.

Directed by one of the best Giallo helmsmen - Sergio Martino and starring fan favourite scream queen - Edwige Fenech, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh was hugely successful because it exploited the genre's motifs with such glee abandon. Ambassador's wife Julie is worried that there is a homocidal sex maniac on the loose. She fears it may be an ex lover who is obsessed with her. Bored with hubby, she ignites a love affair with George, a friend of a friend. The murders continue and Julie herself is menaced and nearly killed. She flees to Portugal with George. Is she safe or not? Setting the standards for dozens of Giallos to follow: sexual duplicity, maniacs with razors etc., this film is a very high class affair which is expertly shot by Sergio Martino. It finally arrived on our shores a few years back thanks to Shameless Screen Entertainment.

Directed by the snappily titled Piero Shivazappa, The Frightened Woman (Femina Riddens) was a pretty obscure little title until that lover of all things great and Italian, Shameless Screen Entertainment, rescued it from floundering as a nonentity. And boy are we glad that they did! Gorgeous journalist Dagmar Lassander (another outstanding Giallo-starring beauty) is captured by Phillipe Leroy and subjected to all sorts of torture and degradation. She finds out that she is not the only one to have received this fate and that Leroy's intentions are ultimately murderous. However, as the trailer advertises - this little kitty has teeth.. Fabulously groovy in a late 1960s kind of way, The Frightened Woman shakes the whole film up with its strident feminist ending. It features some amazing set pieces like Phillipe Leroy striding out of a feature comprised of a pair of women's thighs. He does of course exit from the vagina which has teeth! Dagmar Lassander does a sexy dance whilst clad in nothing but skimpy bandages. The atmosphere is so surreal and kinky, I urge lovers of the bizarre to check this one out.

An absolute cracker of a Giallo. I adore this film and it sadly lacks a decent UK release at the moment (Shameless, please! I'm begging you!). This was my introduction to Giallo on the Bravo Channel on SKY in the late 1990s when it used to be a really good channel. Basically, a professor at an exclusive girl's school in London enjoys the sexual favours of his students until they start showing up dead... Ennio Morricone's score is truly beautiful and haunting. The film unfolds at a leisurely pace which caused some critics to accuse it of being too slow. They don't throw that accusation at Argento and his films are similarly paced. The director - Massimo Dallamano - is a very good one, having proved his skill with Venus in Furs, and after Solange he went on to more school girl chicanery with similarly titled What Have They Done To Your Daughters? Over the years, I am pleased to say, What Have You Done To Solange? has gained a reputation among Giallo fans as being one of the very best. So I am not alone in my odd tastes!