Spring Break, wet t-shirts contests and biker gangs is not something you'd normally associate with a giallo. Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare Beach really has far more in common with your average American 80's slasher than any giallo. But John Saxon is always worth watching though and you do have to admire the ingenuity of a killer builds an electric chair at the back of his bike. Poster art is by the always dependable Renato Casaro.
I know there are lots of people that love Al Festa's Fatal Frames and consider it something a "cheese classic", but I find it mindnumbingly boring and really hard to sit through. Considering it's a quite recent film, I'm bit surprised how difficult it's been to track down the locandina. No info on the poster artist.
More or less all of La Morte scende leggera is set an empty hotel where Giorgio Darica (Stelio Candelli) is hiding out with his girlfriend since finding his wife murdered and himself without an alibi. Soon the isolation starts to take its toll and Giorgio's mind slowly start to unravel. Or does it?
Even with almost all the action taking place in this one location and an obviously limited by a low budget, Leopoldo Savona manages to deliver a quite good thriller. Not a classic by any means, but I have to say I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would. Poster art by Renato Casaro
Manuel Mur Oti's Perversione or La Encadenada from 1975 is a fairly uninspired affair. Marisa Mell plays Gina who is hired by Alexander (Richard Conte) to look after his mute and disturbed son Mark. Unsurprisingly both men fall for her. Add the Holy Grail (!) and Anthony Steffen as Gina's ex-husband to the mixand you just know it's gonna end in tears.
It's only recently that I've managed to come across a fansubbed copy of Alfonso Balcázar's Una Tomba aperta... una bara vuota and I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, so I can't really comment on the film. Great posters by Renato Casaro though.
As far as I know Gli Occhi freddi della paura was Enzo G. Castellari's only foray in the giallo genre. I say giallo, but the film really seems to have been more inspired by films like William Wyler's The Desperate Hours than any of the other Italian thrillers on release at the time. 
Any seasoned giallo fan will have seen their fair share of convoluted plots, but the one in Il Vuoto Intorno where Denise (Teresa Gimpera) is planning to drive her husband John (Larry Ward) crazy by making him think that he's commited a murder with the help of his twin brother and her lover Peter must be one of the more improbable ones. That doesn't stop it from being a fairly entertaining film though. Don't know much about the release history of the film, but I'd guess the film didn't do too brilliantly at the boxoffice the first time around and that it was re-released under the L'Assassino fantasma title as seen below. Artwork by Renato Casaro.
I'm sure that Barbara Bouchet and Rosalba Neri's naked frolicking has ensured that Amuck will forever remain Silvio Amadio's most well known giallo. But to me, Il Sorriso della iena is the better film of the two. It's an underrated early giallo, full of twists and turns and featuring a great cast (Silvano Tranquilli, Rosalba Neri, Hiram Keller and last but certainly not least, Jenny Tamburi). It remains high up on my list of films I hope will surface on DVD one day. Great artwork by Renato Casaro.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that Romolo Guerrieri's Il Dolce corpo di Deborah (which stars Carroll Baker and Jean Sorel) was inspired by Umberto Lenzi's early thrillers, but it is in fact made in 1968, before both Così dolce... così perversa and Orgasmo.
Umberto Lenzi directed some truly great gialli in the early 70's. In terms of style, 1974's Spasmo was quite a departure from his earlier films and Gatti rossi in un labirionto di vetro deviates even further from the earlier "jet-set" formula. And not in a good way, one might add. To me, this is Lenzi's least successful 1970's giallo and it's difficult to imagine that the man behind the great Paranoia and Il Coltello di ghiaccio is responsible for this mediocre thriller.
I think I've mentioned that I've got a soft spot for gialli set in London before, but Sette cadaveri per Scotland Yard isn't really one of them. José Luis Madrid's 1971 thriller is a less than stellar effort. The film is poorly paced, very predictable and the less said about Paul Naschy's limping trapeze artist protagonist, the better. Great poster art by Renato Casaro though.
I was well and truly surprised when I first saw L'Uomo più velenoso del cobra as the film starts out in my hometown Stockholm, but apart from the opening montage, we don't really get to see anymore of Stockholm in this bottom of the barrel giallo. The script is quite poor to begin with (in spite of co-writing credits from Ernesto Gastaldi and Luciano Martino) and it certainly doesn't help that Albertini manages to botch the few sequences that should have been suspenseful due to poor direction and poor choice of music. The score doesn't really fit the film, but I would suspect that Cipriani recycled quite a few cues here (certainly the Femina Ridens theme anyway). I didn't find much worthwhile about it, but at least is was mercifully short at 82 minutes.
Tonino Valerii is most well-known for his work in the Western genre. Unfortunately Mio caro Assassino is the only giallo he directed, but it's a very good one. The film features a great Morricone soundtrack reminiscent of the work he did for Argento's animal trilogy. At the moment there are only seven tracks available on a double feature CD from CAM, but hopefully Digitmovies will rectify this sometime in the future. Locandina features art-work by the great Renato Casaro.
The poster art for Le Foto probite di una signora per bene makes you think the film is a lot more lurid than it really is. Luciano Ercoli's 1970 debut is sure to leave some people disappointed since it's virtually bloodless affair, but with a script by Ernesto Gastaldi, beautiful leading ladies in Dagmar Lassander and Susan Scott, a wonderful array of 70’s fashion and a brilliant score by Morricone what more could you possibly ask for?
On paper I Due volti della Paura looks quite interesting. Directed by Tulio Demicheli in the heyday of the genre and featuring a cast of George Hilton, Anita Strindberg, Luciana Paluzzi and Fernando Ray. Unfortunately Demicheli never really manages to create any suspense or real tension. In fact, the film is probably best known for the footage of open heart surgery. But not even the inclusion of that potentially eye-catching footage can stop the film from feeling like a decidedly average viewing experience. Poster art by Renato Casaro
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