I love Giallo movies. They’re really fun. They show lots of silly, twisted crime and murder, but they’re still fun and crazy, and they have wonderfully ridiculous plots too. I’m not crazy about slasher movies, and I actually detest the glorification of serial killers in our society, but I still love Giallo movies. How is this possible? Well…
For one thing, Giallo movies almost always show everybody involved in some sordid affair or another, and as they’re killed one-by-one, is seems much more like they were getting their comeuppance. Even where this is not true, they’re usually such unlikable characters that you love watching them being killed in a torrent of obvious acrylic red paint and wax mannequin parts. And even if they’re not “asking for it”, it’s so stylishly accomplished that it’s so entertaining and artistic and fake that it’s hard to take it seriously. (I know, I know: Umberto Lenzi will kill me for saying this! But at least he’ll do it with style!)
But seriously, ask Roger Ebert what he thinks about The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, or Deep Red, and he’ll probably say stuff about how wonderfully it’s all accomplished, and how stylistically beautiful it is, and what a wonderful homage to Hitchcock it is, etc., and how it’s so hyper-real, it’s hard to take it seriously anyway, so it’s just great entertainment. (I’m not trying to put words in his mouth, however. Maybe he hates them. But I doubt it.)
But ask him what he thinks of Friday the 13th! He’d probably say it’s a disgusting display of wanton murder and gore that’s worse than a human slaughterhouse (and he’d be partially right). The fact is, the Giallo movies have some type of plot mechanism that makes everything happen, whereas slasher movies rarely do. In Halloween 2, we “find out” that Jamie Lee Curtis is (Gasp!) Michael Myers’s secret long-lost sister, and that’s why he’s trying to kill her (!!!!!!!). But the original movie worked so well because she only earned the wrath of our apparently-deathless serial-killing loony because she just so happened to accidentally be there at his old house to drop off a realtor brochure (or whatever it was) when he happened to be there too, and so he followed her. So she, just by accident, managed to find herself in the crosshairs of a maniac (!): It could happened to any of us! See? It’s scary because it’s like real life: That guy you accidentally rear-end with your car could shoot you! There are crazy killers out there: Get it? And some chance meeting could cost you (or anyone) your life! That’s why it’s so creepy! (But once she’s his long-lost sister, and only he knows it, on some psychic level, and that’s the only reason he’s chasing her, it sucks.)
Oh, but I got lost in other slasher fare for a second, just like when Jamie Lee Curtis gets temporarily snared by her secret brother! Sorry. So what I meant to say was this: If you ask Roger Ebert about Friday the 13th, he probably won’t say this: “I love that movie because it’s about time somebody spoke up for all the kids who’ve drowned at summer camp! And what I like best is how Jason’s mother lets everyone who really did it get away with it, and then waits years and years, until everyone but her has completely forgotten about her son’s death, and then she slaughters the innocent, just to be sure no-one will ever senselessly die again like her son did! It’s perfect!” (Maybe he would say that now, but I doubt it!)
But the fact is, most of (um, maybe even, all of?) the deaths in Friday the 13th (and also in Friday the 13th, Part 2!) are copied directly out of a Mario Bava movie called: Reazone a Catena (which means: “Chain Reaction” in English), otherwise known as A Bay of Blood, or Twitch of the Death Nerve (or any number of alternate titles). Ask Roger Ebert what he thinks of that movie, and you’d probably get a very different response! And to some people, it might seem hypocritical; but the fact is, they’re very different movies even though they’ve got lots of killings of people depicted, and in almost the same manner. Because, for one thing, the Bava movie was groundbreaking: even if you hate a new style, you’ve got to tip your hat to the one that “started it all”! And for another thing, the plot makes perfect sense and is great in the Bava movie! We’re all used to Friday the 13th now, so we rarely question it (and I like it too, because it’s the first “gore” movie I ever saw!), but the fact is (no disrespect intended), it was formulated as an exploitation movie simply to use gore to make some easy money off teenagers (which it did, and still does), and it was never intended as an “artistic statement” of any kind! So of course Roger Ebert would hate it: he’s got “class”, and “culture” and “an appreciation for art”. (The quotation marks are not intended as an insult, by the way!) It doesn’t! And it never meant to, either! Everyone was surprised when it became a smash hit, and maybe it was even Roger Ebert’s hating on it that made it launch through the stratosphere! (Kids love whatever adult “squares” hate, right? My father told me about Walter Cronkite reporting about how the hot & hip thing for young people to do was to “go streaking”, and overnight, it immediately ceased to be cool, simply because Walter Cronkite said it was.) But it is what it is, and art it ain’t!
Oh, but ask about the shower sequence from Psycho, and that’s an entirely different story! Why? Well, um, I think it was like Hitchcock, or something. But it was really groundbreaking, and it was really well-done, jolted people out of their seats, etc., and it started a new trend, etc. And it’s really great! But it also makes sense within the context of the story, because even without Norman Bates’s mother complex and insanity stuff yet, we all understand that Janet Leigh’s character has committed a crime, and even though it seems understandable, it’s still a crime, so when she decides to try to undo it, we all have sympathy for her, and then, just when we think it’s all settled: BAM! She gets stabbed to death by some crazy killer! Oh my God!! And we’re all riveted to our seats and devastated by this unexpected occurrence! (My sister had a feminist reading of this movie I didn’t initially understand {as a male teenager years ago} where she said Janet Leigh is just objectified for her body and trapped in this horrible life, and the only way she can find to get out of it is to steal some money, and then, once she tries to go back and make it right, she’s murdered by some psycho sex maniac! So women really have no escape! {And she’s right! That’s what it does say, kind-of! Yikes!}) So this is very effective, and artistically and stylistically, not to mention story-wise, really amazing for a horror movie, and it’s shocking and frightening and emotional all at the same time.
Oh, but what about a Giallo movie? Well, in a Giallo movie, some lady would murder for money some rich character-flaw-soaked pervert voyeur guy who loved and doted on her for her looks alone, which disgusted her but which she put up with for the promise of money, but then the guy makes a new will leaving everything to his dog and he tells her about it, so she has to act before his lawyer gets it (!); and then she’d kill her lover/co-conspirator, and poison anyone who might become suspicious, and all to try to escape from a suspicious-seeming prosecutor who wants to question her anyway; and then when she tries to flee, she has a fender-bender with some crazy psycho-killer who cuts off her head with a hacksaw (!!!), and it ends up being just one in a series of hacksaw murders the police were investigating all along, and they never thought she was guilty of anything anyway, but were just trying to protect her, since some neighbor of hers was killed by the manic, and they thought she might be next:* Oh my God!!!!!!! But it’s all so silly and unbelievable and hyper-stylized that it’s hard to take it seriously, and everyone is a jerk who is a joy to see killed. See? It really is different from an American slasher movie, even with all the killings. And with such silly and convoluted stuff going on, and with nothing ever being what it initially appears to be, it’s hard to even think it applies to real life on any level or in any way whatsoever. So it’s fun despite all the ultra-violence and “gore” (that is: red paint, ketchup, and mannequin parts!). So they’re kind of like Mad Magazine meets Film Noir, with everything ridiculously exaggerated, spoofed, and hyper-real. And that makes for a fun and exciting rollercoaster ride-type of experience (unless it’s not a good one).
* (BTW: This is not a real Giallo movie plot, but rather my off-the-cuff representation of what a Giallo movie plot is like. But I would gladly license this story to anyone who wants to make it into a movie, so long as they promise to call it: The Bloody Money with the Chocolate Bunny in the Dead Lady’s Tummy. (<This is a Giallo fan in-joke, as after the phenomenal success of Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, every Italian psycho-killer movie had to have an animal reference in its title for a few years, like A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, etc.)
Oh, and here’s Roger Ebert’s actual brief review of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (and I wasn’t far off, it seems {although I was dumb enough to guess what he would say ahead-of-time, when I could have just looked it up, so I’m an idiot}.):
