Before I begin to blog specifically about The Three Sisters, I want to post one more about gialli. If anyone's interest has been piqued by my excellent first post, here are five of the most interesting gialli you can seek out. These aren't necessarily the best five, but they give a good representation of the wide variety of films the genre has to offer.
| Deadly Sweet (Tinto Brass, 1967) Most people who've heard of Tinto Brass associate him with Caligula, and weird soft porn movies with fake willies. He also, however, made this incredible film early in his career. Heavily inspired by the previous year's Blow Up, Jean-Louis Trintignant (the old guy from Amour) and Ewa Aulin literally frolic their way across London. The murder mystery aspect of the film is frequently pushed to the side, or forgotten about entirely as Brass experiments with black & white, split-screen and Benny Hill-style chase sequences. It kind of sounds like a really frustrating film from that description, but it's actually awesome. |
The House With Laughing Windows (Pupi Avati, 1976) Again not a typical giallo, in that there's no black-gloved serial killer tearing it up around a city, but this is still a phenomenal film. The pacing is extremely slow, which may unfortunately put off some viewers. If you're one of them, you'll miss out on an extremely atmospheric film which manages to make the Italian countryside seem like the most claustrophobic place on earth, and builds to one of the most shocking climaxes you'll ever see. If you've seen it already, two words: boobs. | |
| Torso (Sergio Martino, 1973) Watch the trailer on the left; it's a corker. Not at work though, unless you're your own boss. This, as you can probably gather, is more along traditional giallo lines, with a masked killer running around killing women. The first half of the film is indeed classic giallo fare, but things take a turn for the interesting at the halfway mark, when the lead characters take a trip to an isolated country house, only to find the killer hot on their heels. The final half hour is a masterclass in how to generate almost unbearable tension, and also provided a clear template which would be copied by copious American slasher films. |
Delirium (Lamberto Bava, 1987) The giallo, like many things, took a funny-peculiar turn in the 1980s. Just as Hollywood films from that era are immediately identifiable, so too are the gialli, which suffered/benefitted from the same dodgy soundtracks and general air of excess which seemed to characterize the decade. Delirium follows a fairly standard plot, but spices things up by soft-porning things up at every given opportunity. Director Bava, son of genre pioneer Mario, also spices things up with a unique approach to showing the killer's POV, with prospective victims shown as the deranged killer perceives them. Apparently the killer likes giant flies and massive eyeballs. Watch the film and you'll understand. | |
| The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (Riccardo Freda, 1971) This is a run-of-the mill giallo, with a ridiculous amount of red herrings, a fair bit of nudity, and some dodgy fx. The reason it's here is simple- it is, as of now, the only giallo ever released which was filmed in Ireland (mostly in Dublin, save one quick unexplained jaunt to the Cliffs of Moher on the opposite side of the country). Another film, The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance, was also set in Ireland but not filmed here, plus it's absolute muck, so I've gone for Iguana here. The title is meaningless and, in common with most gialli of the early 70s, was designed to capitalize on the success of Dario Argento's Bird with the Crystal Plumage. All in all an average film, but- currently- Ireland's #1 giallo. |