GIALLO: Dario Argento, Deep Red, Mario Bava & Blood and Black Lace

Is giallo the horror subgenre you need to explore, or is it time to bury it?

Content note: discussion of sexual assault and misogyny in 1960s and 1970s Italian films (about 8:09 to 8:41), nudity and BDSM on screen, and a film’s killings during sex scenes (about 26:28 to 27:05).

Giallo means yellow, after the cheap yellow-covered paperback thrillers the genre grew out of, and nobody outside Italy pronounces it right, including us. We dig into the black-gloved killers, the killer’s-eye camera, the vivid color and the deliberately jarring music, and trace how giallo became the blueprint for the American slasher. We talk Dario Argento’s Deep Red (with a nod to Joe Bob Briggs’ presentation of it on Shudder), Mario Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace, The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave, and whether Suspiria counts. Then we take on two articles that disagree completely, and decide whether context can redeem a genre that hasn’t aged well.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy talk about gaslighting and the woman who’s told she imagined it, male sexual aggression and objectification on screen, the fetishistic camera, why a score that’s incongruent with what’s on screen agitates you, what it means to put the audience in the killer’s position, and why context matters when you judge art from another era.

Covered in this episode:

• What giallo means and how to say it
• The tropes: black gloves, knives, the killer’s point of view, voyeurism and grisly set pieces
• Mario Bava, Sergio Martino, Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento
• Deep Red (1975) and Joe Bob Briggs’ Last Drive-In presentation
• The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), the “Rosetta Stone” of giallo
• The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), also called The Evil Eye, and gaslighting
• Blood and Black Lace (1964), the quintessential giallo
• Black Sunday, Kill, Baby, Kill and Suspiria: gothic, supernatural or giallo?
• Deep Red’s music: affect that doesn’t match the screen, on purpose
• “Giallo Is the Horror Subgenre You Need to Explore” vs “It’s Time to Bury Giallos”
• The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (1971) and Anthony Steffen
• From giallo to the slasher: the killer, the final girl and the body count
• The women of giallo: fragile minds, controlling men and the worldly older woman
• Context, culture and giving a whole genre a fair shake

Clinical themes: gaslighting, misogyny and objectification, sexual aggression, voyeurism, affect and incongruence, fetishism, cycles of control and abuse, cultural and historical context.

Corrections and updates: Dario Argento made more than four gialli. Alongside the Animal Trilogy (1970 to 1971) and Deep Red (1975), he went on to make Tenebrae (1982), Opera (1987) and Sleepless (2001), among others. He started out as a film critic and screenwriter rather than a composer; Deep Red’s score is by Goblin. In Deep Red, the woman who stays ahead of the hero is a journalist, not a police officer. The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave was directed by Emilio Miraglia. The articles we read are Nerdist’s “Giallo Is the Horror Subgenre You Need to Explore” and “It’s Time To Bury Giallos.”

Related episodes:

• SHRINK CHAT: Cari Farver, Frozen, The Exorcist & A Clockwork Orange
• SHRINK CHAT: The House of the Devil, Ginger Snaps & Stingy Jack
• SHRINK CHAT: Host, In Search of Darkness, Tom Savini & Lucio Fulci

If you enjoyed this episode, follow Terror Talk and leave us a 5-star rating. It’s the single biggest thing that helps new listeners find us.

Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

Until then... sleep safe. 😴🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to our private discord: patreon.com/terrortalk📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girl🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising