The Fifth Cord (1971)

The Fifth Cord (1971) is a visually striking giallo thriller from Italy. While there’s plenty of fashionable outfits and stylish interior decorating, there’s an emphasis on figures placed against colossal pieces of architecture, or the use of shadows against lit windows and lamplight reflected by glass. During one sequence where petals drift through the frame […]

The Great Silence (1968)

Spaghetti westerns were a genre that would be programmed on SBS Saturday Cult Movie Night and I remember seeing the end of The Great Silence (1968; Il Grande Silenzio) when I was younger. Recently, the film is referenced as an influence on Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, name dropped as one of the filmmaker’s favourite […]

Spasmo (1974)

Another movie I tracked down to watch basically because of the Ennio Morricone score, particularly the mellow, haunting title piece, Spasmo (1974) is a giallo mystery that was quite unusual. Starting off with a man (Robert Hoffmann) finding a woman knocked out on the beach (Suzy Kendall), the film’s tone is very over the top […]

Four Flies On Grey Velvet (1971)

Before 2018 ended, I finished Dario Argento’s ‘animal’ trilogy with Four Flies On Grey Velvet (1971). This is a giallo thriller about a drummer in a rock band (Michael Brandon) who is blackmailed by a masked stranger for an inadvertent murder he may or may not have committed against someone following him. The hero here […]

The Cat ‘O Nine Tails (1971)

Acquainting myself slowly with Dario Argento’s ‘animal’ giallo trilogy (because of the animals named in the title) and I had heard The Cat ‘O Nine Tails (1971; Il gatto a nove code) wasn’t as good as the first of the trilogy, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage. This may be true, and apparently it is […]