Trhauma (Trauma)

Directed by Gianni Martucci (who also directed Milano…difedersi o morire and wrote the scripts for Gianfranco Piccoli's Il Fiore dai petali d'acciaio and Alfonso Brescia's Ragazza tutta nuda assassinata nel parco) Trhauma doesn't reach the same sleazy heights as Giallo Venezia and Play Motel, two of the other infamous gialli made in 1979.  

This is more of a slasher where a group of friends heads out to a country villa and get pick off one by one. There's is little doubt as to identity of the killer and the twist is bascially revealed by the prologue. It's a low budget affair with a poor actors and mediocre direction. There really is very little to recommend about the film, but it's mercifully short at 78 minutes.

Giallo Napoletano (Atrocious Tales of Love and Death)

The three posters for Sergio Corbucci's Giallo Napoletano. The top poster and the title are a bit misleading since the film is more a comedy with thriller elements rather than a giallo. The last and third one even includes a picture of Hitchcock to push the the thriller aspect of the film.

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by it the first time I saw it though. Marcello Mastroianni is great as the hapless mandonlin player Raffaele drawn in to a murder mystery. No info on the poster artists.

Play Motel

By 1979 the giallo cycle was effectively over and in order to have any kind of success, you either had to resort to extreme sex or violence. The locandina for Play Motel gives pretty good idea indication of what angle director Mario Gariazzo went for. The film is almost completely devoid of suspense and mystery elements in favour of numerous (and very explicit) sex scenes. Probably not Ray Lovelock's proudest moment. No info on the poster design.

Giallo a Venezia

It might be one of the more infamous films of the genre, but in terms of quality, Giallo a Venezia is one of the worst gialli I've come across. There are no likable characters (I’m not sure if Landi thought having Detective De Paul eating a boiled egg in every scene was a great substitute for characterization) and the film lacks any sort of tension or suspense. Instead Landi resorts to bombarding us with liberal amounts of violence and sex scenes. I guess some might think that’s a positive thing, but the special effects are risible and the film more or less grinds to a complete halt every time one of the flashbacks sex scenes are shown. This really is bottom of the barrel stuff.