Giallo: Grindhouse films with Italian style

Giallo is the Italian word for yellow. As a film genre, it represents the Italian version of American grindhouse films. While American grindhouse mainly enjoys expression by means of exploitation films, the Italians managed to entwine a literary genre too, albeit inspired by American pulp fiction.

From the late 1920s, the Monadori publishing house specialised in horror and crime pulp fiction. This house published cheap suspense novels in response to the rising popularity of American whodunits (who done it? or who did it?). In fact, the first giallo novels were translations of their popular Anglophone counterparts.

These giallo novels appeared with – you guessed it – characteristically yellow covers. Since then, the term giallo became synonymous with intrigue and suspense in Italy.




Besides the popularity of their Anglophone counterpats, giallo novels were inspired by the legacy of the Grand Guignol theatre in Paris. This theatre could best be described as the theatre of the macabre. Since closing its doors in 1962, the term Grand Guignol is often used to describe amoral horror entertainment. Sweeny Todd is a shameless tribute to Grand Guignol theatre, and doubly amoral due to Johnny Depp's spooky singing.

Giallo in Film

Characteristics of Giallo in film include:

• buckets of blood


• stylish camera work


• eerie music


• gratuitous boob shots


• staged drama in the vein of Opera

Since these correlate closely with my 10 Commandments of Horror, I am hooked on giallo. In fact, I should probably include eerie music and operatic tragedy as the 11th and 12th commandments of horror.

Giallo sets itself apart from the American grindhouse formula of babes and badasses because it is mostly driven by a whodunit plot. While giallo is not prepared to be upstaged by means of boob shots or buckets of blood, it does have something more compelling than just mere lustful gore.



Some giallo directors include Dario Argento, Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci. Mario Bava's film The Girl Who Knew Too Much is regarded as the first popular giallo film. Note the obvious reference to Alfred Hitchcock. Lucio Fulci is more renowned for his inventive zombie films, but he has worked in the giallo genre with films like The House By The Cemetery. Last but not least, Dario Argento.

Dario Argento, the Goremeister of Giallo

The Italian Hitchcock, Dario Argento, is the most famous example of giallo cinema. As a film genre, giallo enjoys influence from:

• fantasy


• crime fiction


• horror fiction


• eroticism

With films like Suspiria, Argento manages to blend all of the above in a masterly way. Argento likes to reinvent himself, but he is at his best when he does crime fiction. Examples of his genius at work are Sleepless and Deep Red (also known as The Hatchet Murders).



For eerie music, Argento often teams up with Enno Moriccone and progressive rock band Goblin. Deep Red in particular stands along with Vampyros Lesbos as exploitation films which are often revered for their brilliant soundtracks.

Suggested links

• Grand Guignol tribute site, with sick posters.


• Kinoeye special report on giallo films - brilliant essay.


• Vault of Horror reports on Dario Argento's first English film in 15 years.

Unpleasant dreams, darling Vampira (1921 - 2008)

It is simply impossible to foster a love for B-Grades without developing a crush on Vampira at some point. Vampira (Maila Nurmi) was a Finnish-born actress who is best known for presenting The Vampira Show. She passed away on 10 January 2008, aged 86. I learned of the sad news from the Vault of Horror. Excellent blog, read it sometime.



The Vampira Show
Maila constructed the character Vampira from various sources, including the evil queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, several silent era actresses and Morticia Addams from the Addams Family. During the show, Vampira would drape herself over a double ended Victorian sofa, with skulls and a pet spider, Rolo, her only company. Skulls and sofa would bask in her aura while she presented a film for the night. The film would be suitable entertainment for the off screen ghosts, and similarly suitable to torment her advertisers. Sounds like a dream date!

Plan 9 from Outer Space
Directed by Ed Wood, he of the dubious title "worst director of all time", Vampira reputedly refused to utter a word of the script because she found it too terrible. Ed Wood merely took her lines out, allowing her to appear as a cameo zombie. Sort of. Since then, the film has earned the dubious title of "the worst film of all time". That is simply not true. I can think of at least 5 films worse than Plan 9: Jurassic Park III is worse; Gigli is worse; Napoleon Dynamite is worse; Spawn is worse; Catwoman is worse. Then there is The Rookie, which for all its recycled footage and leather faced Dennis Quaid can't possibly be better than any B-Grade. I wish I had seen the Disney logo before I watched that crap. I got free tickets and I still want to be paid damages for the hour and a half or so I can never have back.

Vampira's Attic
Vampira had several battles with the film industry. At some point, she wanted to sue series which took her likeness and capitalised on it. Sooner or later, film makers declined working with her, and she opened an antique shop called Vampira's Attic. Apparently she was adept at making jewellery and clothes. She made a few adornments for Grace Slick and Frank Zappa among others.

She came to star in a few documentaries about schlock. Eventually these culminated in a documentary all about her, entitled Vampira: The Movie. This documentary is said to contain the last recorded interview with Maila.



Unpleasant dreams, darlings
I offer my condolences to her family and friends. Her official site asks that those who wish to show their appreciation of her life forward donations to the Much Love Animal Rescue in her memory.

Evil Dead (1983)

Director
Sam Raimi

Cast
Betsy Baker
Bruce Campbell
Richard DeManincor
Ellen Sandweiss
Theresa Tilly

Plot
Five college students decide to make vacation in a cabin in the woods. The desolate forest leads them to do what college students are inclined to do, namely indulge in a little occult ritual in addition to making hanky panky sexy time.

They stumble upon an audio cassette player (it's like the iPod of the eighties that works with a steam engine) that summons evil spirits. If you remember audio cassettes, you can summon spirits with them by playing the tape backwards, or if you let the tape lie on your dashboard in the sun and then play it. Of course the only persons with enough mojo to play a tape backwards were Satanic musicians and evangelist preachers. Interesting connection they share.

This cassette contains passages from the Necronomicon, a mythical book invented by H.P. Lovecraft as part of his ploy to mock religion. The Necronomicon of Evil Dead is not so innocuous, and evil spirits start to haunt the cabin. The Bruce and his consorts have to battle the spirits with McGuyver-like ingenuity.

Review
In the year of our Bruce - well, Bruce can make it any year he likes, at any given time – Sam Raimi documented the pristine manner in which to deal with an undead attack. It is true that one Romano first brought us knowledge of the existence of zombies, casting his lots on their side. Alas, this had been before the coming of our Bruce. Generous helpings of whoopass and chainsaws put these metaphysical entities in their place. Evil Dead should be passed from generation to generation to ensure our children and our children's children - even the test tube ones - know how to prepare for an attack from the undead. The Bruce should be made a saint and honoured by having one hand of our firstborn replaced with a chainsaw in his homage.

Conclusion
The Bruce deserves to be further immortalised in the mind of the public with his own strand of poor attempts at humour, from the same genus as those of The Hoff, The Chuck and The Shat. Maybe not The Shat, but Evil Dead is superawesome!

Rating

The Ninth Gate (1999)

Director
Roman Polanski

Cast
Johnny Depp, Frank Langella, Lena Olin, James Russo, Emmanuelle Seigner.

Shop for Ninth Gate on DVD at Amazon.com!

Plot
Meet Dean Corso (Johnny Depp): book seller; raconteur; conman extraordinaire. He capitalises on his extensive knowledge of rare books, the ignorance of those in possession of these and his skills to manipulate people. Never too busy to pass by an opportunity to increase his fortunes, he decides to look for prints of a book called The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows on behalf of Boris Balkan (Frank Langella). There are three known prints of this book. Balkan already owns one, and Corso has to find the others to verify their authenticity. If he believes them to be real, he must acquire them at all costs. All expenses paid!

Corso manages to track down the remaining two, and finds discrepancies in the illustrations. At first, Corso is lead to believe that the discrepancies mean the books are counterfeit. A series of unfortunate events and a female consort known only as the girl (Emmanuelle Seigner) lead him to believe the discrepancies are deliberate. The girl and Balkan seem to be locked in a race to gather all the copies of the book in order to perform diabolical rites successfully, and Corso is not sure whose pawn he is. Who will be first to open the mystical ninth gate, and is it really that much better on the other side?

Review
Based on The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Polanski reportedly chose only one of the many sub-plots of the book for the film. In step with Pérez-Reverte's writing style, the film focuses in detail on the doings of one central character, namely that of Corso. The book is allegedly a bibliophile's dream, with references to classic literature throughout. As the title suggests, the book deals extensively with the methods of Alexander Dumas, while the film chooses to virtually ignore this link. Instead of offering a multi-faceted surreal world of endless possibilities, the Ninth Gate is the equivalent of the tunnel vision one has sliding down a water slide that runs out of water around the last bend.

While you can expect the same visual feast as in China Town, Polanski does not offer nearly the same complexity and suspense in the plot of the Ninth Gate. Upon further reading, it seems that his intention was to ridicule those who believe in the occult, while at the same time presenting a film riddled with occult references both obscure and bluntly obvious. It seems that Polanski considers his audience to consist of 15-year-olds who discovered the writings of La Vey. The film has a comic feel, and it does tend to drag at points. Some interesting concepts such as the nature of supernatural powers of the girl are treated with nonchalance, hovering somewhere between not quite explicit and not quite implicit enough, while other avenues not nearly as interesting enjoy fare too much attention. Still, with this fool's gold plot and strong performances by most actors, coupled with the fantastic score by Wojciech Kilar, the Ninth Gate is not devoid of entertainment value.

Conclusion
Compared with the recent outbreak of American creature features, it is refreshing to find a film nearly in the same who-dunnit tradition of Dario Argento. Polanski certainly has the experience and the flare to pull of a very stylish suspense thriller, yet somehow does not manage to do so here. It boils down to Johnny Depp to carry the film. The on-screen chemistry between him and the rest of the cast is worth watching, and the visual aspects of a Polanski film alone merits at least a second viewing. Not a bad film at all, just a poorly executed film for Polanski.

Rating