We are officially in spooky season now, which means you should be piling your to-watch list with as much horror as you can manage. We’ve covered plenty of sub-genres for you to choose from here on No But Listen, but one we haven’t delved into yet is giallo – defined by masters like Fulci and Argento, the gory, sexy, slightly crazy genre has been a mainstay since it rose to the mainstream in the 1970s. Let’s talk about some of the modern greats you might not have seen (and please leave your favourites in the comments below!).
Amer
More a deconstruction of giallo than a totally faithful updating of the genre, 2009’s Amer is a surreal and deliberately unstructured psycho-sexual nightmare that follows leading woman Ana (an excellent Cassandra Foret) through childhood and into an adulthood plagued by dark and mysterious forces. With women in giallo regularly getting such a rough run of things, it’s interesting to see directors Bruno Forzani and Helene Cattet pick apart those victim-villain-vixen dichotomies in their three-act horror show.
Berberian Sound Studio
We have made our love for Peter Strickland’s bizarre, unsettling, and totally unique work on this blog clear, but Berberian Sound Studio might be his most impressive endeavour to date. Starring Toby Jones as sound engineer Gilderoy as he travels to Italy to create sound effects for an apparently-innocent movie, things take a dark turn as the reality of the movie starts to impinge on Gilderoy’s perception of the world. Strickland’s regular collaborator Fatma Mohamed is particularly excellent, and the giallo genre forms a backdrop to the increasing spiralling of Jones’ character, both a critique and a love letter to the genre’s excesses.
Red Nights
Oh, you wanted psycho-sexual? Red Nights has completed psycho-sexuality in film. This 2009 Hong Kong neo-giallo blends sex, death, fetish, and obsession through the lens of a, well, I’ll just say it, Potion of Die of Horny. Carrie Ng dominates – literally – as a compelling, sadistic domme, and the saturated colour and sound design give it a luscious throwback feel to giallo of the seventies, but with a more modern and explicit approach. Erotic and hypnotic, Red Nights is one of the most striking neo-giallo movies you’ll ever come across. Pun mostly intended.
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via Movies and Mania)
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