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There's a long history behind the origins of giallo films.
The name derives from the yellow cover of
the crime novels published by Mondadori.
Back in 1929, Mondadori, who was and still is
a pretty important publishing company,
started releasing a series of crime novels
and detective stories.
These books had very recognizable covers,
they were colored in yellow
with a circle in the middle that featured a drawing
related to the plot or the tone of the story
that people were about to read.
This is to explain that the usage of the term "giallo"
originates from literature.
It's not like it was used all of a sudden.
The Italian public started using it in the late 1920s,
when the country was still under the Fascist regime,
and since then they've gotten used to
calling every crime story a "giallo",
every mystery, or detective tale.
A giallo is like a puzzle or a gamble.
Its plot has to intrigue the reader,
and make him busy trying to figure out
the identity of the culprit before the writer
tells him at the end of the book or film.
Of course, the writer isn't allowed to cheat.
Otherwise, the story won't be a giallo anymore,
but instead a tale of suspense.
To call it a giallo, the story must be logical.
No cheap solutions.
It's got to be made in a certain way,
so anyone who goes through it a second time
can notice all the clues they missed the first time.
To solve the case or find the culprit.
My artistic education began with American films of the 50s.
I was a college student back then,
before I attended the National Film School.
I must have seen all the masterpieces made by Fox,
Warner Brothers, and RKO.
Even now, I still buy those films on DVD.
Back then, I saw all of Elia Kazan's early pictures
and Don Siegel's early ones.
Or, let me think, there were so many.
Raoul Walsh's and William Dieterle's films too.
All those directors
who started out in the 30s,
and made their best films in the 40s.
They used black and white in such a wonderful way.
The cinematographers back then were people
like Harry Stradling or Nicholas Musuraca.
Their use of black and white cinematography was amazing.
I was really impressed by those giallos set in big cities
that were made between 1945 and 1950.
Robert Siodmak was the best at making those.
He directed THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE.
And the one with the twins
that was called THE DARK MIRROR.
It's the one where Olivia de Havilland plays two characters.
A giallo must have a precise mechanism.
The worst mistake a writer or a director can make
is to cheat with the plot.
Maybe I'm exaggerating a little,
but my favorite example of this is
in THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE,
when the lead can't remember a detail.
That detail then becomes the key to revealing
the identity of the killer.
It creates suspense, you see.
And to create it you don't need logic.
Suspense can start from anything.
Sometimes even Agatha Christie wasn't logical.
Take TEN LITTLE INDIANS. It's a classic, but at some point
there's a character who fakes his death, and that's illogical.
No one could have been totally sure
the others wouldn't find out.
This means that the writer is cheating,
deciding what's logical and what's not.
I don't have a problem with that,
but then it's just not a true giallo.
A true giallo shouldn't use this kind of trick.
In reality, it would be hard to fake your death like that
without being found out by any of the other characters.
That's some suspension of disbelief right there.
Even a classic like TEN LITTLE INDIANS has it,
and we're talking about a book
that's considered a masterpiece of the genre.
One of the biggest influences on Italian giallos
was the German krimi films.
Most krimis were adaptations of Edgar Wallace stories.
Germany began producing them in the early 60s.
These even predate Mario Bava's early thrillers.
When Mario Bava made his first contemporary thriller in 1963,
and I'm referring to THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH.
Krimis had already been around for a few years,
predating Italian thrillers.
Like their early Italian counterparts, krimis balanced
very dramatic sequences, and bursts of graphic violence,
with lighter comedic scenes. For instance, think about
the parts Eddi Arent played,
and their function within the plot.
He provided comic relief that allowed the audience
to relax a little
until the next explosion of violence.
German krimis play a huge role
in the history of Italian giallo.
Firstly, because those films were distributed in Italy.
We could say that they were preparing the public
for our own crime films and thrillers.
When it comes to the narrative structure,
krimis influenced basic characteristics of giallos.
Krimis too had killers whose faces we don't see.
The focus is mostly on their hands and other details.
Krimis too had black-gloved killers,
another essential element of giallos.
The same goes for the peculiar weapons used for the killings.
Unconventional ones, at least compared
to those used in classic crime films.
Krimis featured weapons such as knives,
or even arrows, like in a film titled THE GREEN ARCHER.
And so killers were depicted in a new, unique way,
which was another important element of Italian thrillers.
Murder was being shown in a new way,
starting with the weapons used to commit it.
This is one of the things that giallos borrowed from krimis.
And, as I said, krimis were born from crime literature,
since most of them were Edgar Wallace adaptations.
Edgar Wallace was also the man who created King Kong.
Curiously, the early Italian giallo writers were authors
like Francesco Mastriani or Carolina Invernizio,
who were well known for their serial fiction,
or stories published in installments.
These works were sold at newsstands,
or their equivalent at the time.
This kind of literature was extremely popular,
even amongst the lower classes.
This shows how popular Italian giallos were back then.
Of course, we also had some authors who
specialized in writing giallos.
One of those was Augusto De Angelis, in the 30s.
His stories were set in Italy and were often tales of murder.
This defied convention, of the squeaky clean image
the regime imposed on every story set in Italy.
Augusto De Angelis himself was a victim
of the regime's violence.
He was beaten to death by a Fascist activist.
De Angelis was the first to write murder tales set in Italy,
and he did it under that regime.
His stories were never adapted for the screen
because he was an inconvenience to the regime.
After the war, another writer continued De Angelis' legacy.
His name was Giorgio Scerbanenco,
another great crime and giallo author.
Some of his novels have been adapted for the screen.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Scerbanenco
was the greatest Italian writer of mystery stories,
or giallos, if you prefer.
Genres aside, I must add that he was quite a good writer.
I read some of his non-crime stuff,
he did a lot of different things.
Personally, I don't care much about his romance novels.
That's because I don't like the genre.
I love his five novels with the character of Duca Lamberti.
I also like his short stories, some of them are great.
In particular, IL CENTODELITTI,
Italy only discovered, or rediscovered him,
after he became famous in France.
Mario Bava is considered the first Italian giallo director.
Bava used different approaches to his giallos.
A film like THE WHIP AND THE BODY can be considered a giallo.
An atypical one, perhaps, for its setting
and also because it is full of the same gothic elements
that were present in Bava's previous film, BLACK SUNDAY.
THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH is the first Italian giallo
in the "classic" sense.
The film was an inspiration for Dario Argento when making
THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE.
Mario Bava's inspiration was to set the story in Italy.
THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH is still a black and white film.
The colors that characterized the genre were yet to come.
That's why one of Bava's next films is considered to be
an even better example of giallo cinema.
The film is BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, and it features a killer
whose methodology set a standard for every
Italian giallo that followed.
The killer emerges from the shadows, dressed in black.
His gloves are black, too, and he mostly uses blades.
These elements were copied by many giallos.
My father, and myself too, even after all these years
have a deep love for BLOOD AND BLACK LACE.
I believe it is a genuine classic.
Only a few moments aren't as strong as the rest, I must say.
It took me twenty or thirty years to rewatch A BAY OF BLOOD.
I stumbled upon it a few years ago, I don't remember where.
You know how it is, sometimes you stumble upon
a good copy being screened.
This cinema was showing the film to a young audience.
When the film ended, we all agreed it felt so fresh,
like it just came out.
Compared to some other films of the time,
it's still incredibly modern.
And we also noticed what a ruthless film it still is.
It even inspired a subgenre of the American horror film.
While FRIDAY THE 13th became a worldwide phenomenon
A BAY OF BLOOD remained a cult film.
My father had never been that successful with films.
With A BAY OF BLOOD, also known as ECOLOGY OF CRIME,
Bava approached the genre in a totally different way.
The film could be considered the beginning of slasher cinema.
It's a giallo, where the violence is graphic, excessive.
There's an overabundance of it, especially compared to the plot.
That's how Bava reinvigorated the genre yet again.
He did it in the 70s after doing it in the 60s.
Then, towards the end of his career, he did a noir,
RABID DOGS.
The film had issues with censorship.
As it often is with great innovators,
Bava challenged the convention of his time.
You cannot think of Italian giallos
without considering censorship.
It had an influence on the genre,
at least until the early 60s.
The situation improved during the early 70s.
All thanks to Pasolini.
After the censors dealt with the films
he made in the 70s they were more lenient towards giallos.
He challenged the relentless censorship of the time.
As so his efforts helped other directors work more freely,
especially when it came to showing violence or sex,
unlike what had been the norm before then.
Therefore, we can say that Bava is one of the originators
of Italian giallo films.
Bava had the aesthetic understanding of a painter.
He started out as a cinematographer.
That's why he was so invested in visual structure.
Before Argento, Bava was perhaps the first director
to favor visuals over plot.
Bava's main goal was to find the best visual way
to show the murders.
He found an aesthetic for murder.
That was more important to him than having a tight plot
like in a British giallo novel.
Naturally, Bava's films were crafted with
a foreign audience in mind.
His films were made for an international audience.
Right from the start, Italian giallo directors
hired well-known foreign actors.
Think about John Saxon in THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH.
Saxon acted in several giallos, including
a late entry in the genre.
I'm referring to Dario Argento's TENEBRAE, made in 1983.
Giallos were past their prime, but Argento kept making them
well into the 80s and 90s.
2000s, too. He kept making them well after the genre
stopped being popular.
The genre was past its prime, after reaching
its peak of popularity in the early 70s, thanks to Mario Bava.
Bava was, without a doubt, the originator
of the Italian giallo genre.
Chronologically speaking, after Bava,
Dario Argento is the most important giallo director.
With THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE,
Argento introduced the golden age of giallos.
Bava can be considered Argento's precursor,
but his films, mainly THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
and BLOOD AND BLACK LACE,
didn't generate momentum within the genre.
That happened with THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE,
Argento followed in Bava's footsteps,
setting the film in Italy.
He also staged unique murders, with the body count
growing throughout the film.
He orchestrated the murders in a dreamlike way.
That broke with convention, with the established
rules of the genre,
both narrative and visual rules.
It initiated a change within the genre,
and that's the reason so many giallos were produced in Italy
after Argento's first film.
We screened the movie at Titanus after wrapping it.
Lombardo, the boss, was there with his staff.
My father was there, too.
I didn't go, I was afraid it would end badly.
And that's just what happened.
They watched the film and really disliked it,
especially Lombardo.
He just didn't like it.
He declared the film was neither giallo nor thriller.
He said he didn't know what genre it was.
Lombardo kept saying that.
I think he wasn't ready to watch something as modern as my film.
Especially given that it was a giallo,
my film had a new approach,
both in terms of the visual style. and in the storytelling.
How it presented the characters and the twists,
and how it depicted violence, too.
It was a new approach.
That's why Lombardo didn't like it.
He was even upset with my father.
They all stepped out of the screening room,
and Lombardo locked himself and his staff in an office.
My father waited outside the room with Cesarina,
Lombardo's longtime secretary.
It was around breakfast, and she was eating a sandwich.
She had watched the film, and her hands were shaking
as she held the sandwich.
My father asked her if something was wrong.
She replied that the film really scared her.
She said she was still shocked.
My father told Lombardo to ask Cesarina,
because she was part of the audience.
So he talked to her and,
for a moment, it seemed he might change his opinion.
That didn't last long, because he later said
that he didn't believe her.
He said he didn't know what could be done,
as the film had been already completed.
He hoped that it would at least appeal to a small audience.
I must say that, at least initially,
the public didn't like the film that much.
I mean, it was my first film, nobody knew my name.
Musante was barely more famous.
It wasn't seen as a film that could be successful.
We had the first showings in Milan and Turin,
big and important Italian cities.
It went horribly.
They started to pull it out of theaters.
My father stamped his feet and asked
to keep trying in different cities.
Cities such as Florence or Naples.
Those new cinemas started showing it.
Meanwhile, Lombardo wasn't in Italy,
he was on a business trip.
So, the film was being shown in Florence and Naples.
We went to Florence. It was my last hope.
Otherwise, I'd have gone back to being a screenwriter.
As we got closer to the theater,
we saw a lot of people walking in the same direction.
We asked ourselves what was going on.
They were all going to see the film.
Apparently, people liked it
and started spreading the news around.
Florence isn't that big of a city.
That last showing was packed full of people.
They even applauded at the end.
That filled our hearts with joy.
It didn't happen by chance.
They didn't like the film in the other cities
because they didn't understand it.
The next day we went to Naples and we learned that
the same thing happened there. The cinema was packed.
The audience loved the film and clapped.
That's how the film found its own way.
It started to be a hit everywhere, even in Rome.
That's when I got a call from Lombardo.
He complimented me, said that we hung in there, and in the end
we had made a hit, and I was getting the success I deserved.
Then he asked me to start working on the next film
immediately.
I guess there was some hypocrisy on his part.
"I'm starting to fear that Italian."
That's what Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense,
said after watching Dario Argento's debut.
And that masterpiece was...
THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE.
A film made by Dario Argento, the director
who opened a new and shocking dimension of fear.
What new elements did Argento add to the Italian giallo genre?
Why do we say that his first film was the model
for every Italian giallo that followed?
In my opinion, we can say so because Argento
basically created a list of elements
and tropes that would define the genre from that point on.
As well as recreating the giallo, he created
a code for the others to follow.
Naturally, he also kept using some of the elements
established by Bava.
There's a series of elements that Argento
started using in his first film.
First of all, the look of the killer.
The killer is dressed in all black:
hat, trenchcoat and gloves.
He mostly uses blades to kill his victims.
Having a mysterious, black-clad killer
that moves in the shadows would become one of the most
recognizable traits of Italian giallos.
That can also be said for another element,
which is the attention to the staging of the murders.
From that point on, all Italian giallo murders
would be choreographed. Literally.
Great care was devoted to staging them.
These murder scenes have become pure visual elements.
Beautiful artistic displays detached from a realistic plot.
Each one is an expressionistic display of its own.
Not only was the visual aesthetic
of the murders changed,
but they increased in number as well.
From that point on, Italian giallos would always feature
a substantial number of killings committed
by the culprits.
That's a departure from what happens
in more traditional films or books.
The guilty parties are often revealed to be the ones
that the audience doesn't expect.
In THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, for instance,
the killer is a woman.
This is one of the elements that made the film so original
in comparison to more traditional genre pictures.
Another element that was introduced in the genre
by Dario Argento's film is showing the killer's P.O.V.
It forces the viewer to see what the killer sees.
Before that, the technique wasn't widely used in giallos.
Argento introduced it in order to show
the story from more angles.
He also "fakes" some points of view,
in order to keep viewers on their toes,
and make them fear that the killer
will pop out from anywhere.
It's one of the hallmarks of Argento's and other giallos.
The killer jumps out when you least expect it.
You could say for this reason Argento's and other giallos
aren't as rational in terms of plot.
But we're less interested in plot holes than strong visuals
when we watch Italian giallos,
especially in regards to violence.
This aesthetic of violence can be seen in the murder scenes.
Another important element found in Italian giallos,
one that was introduced in Dario Argento's
THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, is the soundtrack.
The soundtrack is no longer just traditional film music,
it becomes more than just incidental,
more than just accompaniment.
It somehow makes silence expressive.
This new musical style also makes innovative use of noise.
Master composers like Morricone, or Bruno Nicolai,
exploited noises to intensify the effect
of their music to create suspense.
The music builds to a crescendo of terror,
which is essential to any Italian giallo
regardless of whom the director is.
And, in his first film, Dario Argento managed
to make the soundtrack yet another expressive element,
where even silence speaks volumes.
It was a radical break from traditional scores.
Another element introduced in
THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE,
this is something Argento adopted
from German krimis, is a bit of comic relief.
The presence of comedic or light-hearted moments appear
to make the violence seem even more explosive.
In THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE we have characters
like Addio, the pimp, played by Gildo Di Marco,
or Berto Consalvi, the painter, played by Mario Adorf,
who add comedic elements to the giallo.
These elements lighten the plot a bit,
and are typical of Italian cinema.
It has been said that all our films have comedy in them,
even neorealist ones.
Even a very dramatic film like ROME, OPEN CITY
has some lighter bits.
As when Aldo Fabrizi hits a bedridden old man
on the head with a pan
because the fascists are about to storm
into the room they're in.
So, the comedic moments introduced in Argento's debut
reappeared in many later Italian thrillers.
The other important element introduced by Dario Argento
is a nonlinear narrative plot.
Cause-and-effect relationships aren't essential in giallos,
at least compared to traditional ones.
Even the murders happen in a nonlinear way.
Ever since Argento's debut, when we watch an Italian giallo
we see a film where the killer could come from anywhere.
Even when we think that all is safe and locked up tight.
Even then, the killer could appear from anywhere!
There's a constant feeling of unease,
a constant feeling of helplessness.
That is very typical of Italian giallos.
In an Italian giallo, you don't feel safe even in your own home.
The viewer knows that, and that the killer
might appear anytime.
In the two films that followed, Argento remained faithful to
the conventions he introduced in his debut.
THE CAT O' NINE TAILS and FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET.
We could say that the former has a more "classic" feel
than Argento's debut.
Whereas the latter is the start of Argento's
visionary horror phase.
DEEP RED partially inaugurated this new phase,
which came to fruition with SUSPIRIA.
FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET has an element of precognition
which is typical of the cinema of the fantastic.
I'm talking about foresight, or even
the metamorphosis of reality.
After this first trilogy of giallos,
and we can call it a trilogy
due to the use of animals in the titles:
the bird, the cat, and the flies,
after this trilogy. I was saying,
Argento transitioned to horror films
to films with more fantastical elements,
starting with DEEP RED.
DEEP RED is an important film
in the history of Italian cinema.
It seems to encompass our whole film tradition.
It's no coincidence that it was written by Bernardino Zapponi,
who worked on some Fellini films.
Zapponi added his own layer of the fantastic
to Argento's films.
DEEP RED, of course, is still a thriller.
And so the murders must have a logical explanation,
despite the plot being nonlinear compared
to standard crime films.
It was the perfect screenplay.
It had no downtime, and the characters were fleshed out.
That's not something you find in every giallo.
Giallo characters can often be two-dimensional.
In DEEP RED, they were all developed.
David Hemmings' character had his own temperament,
mine had another, and so on.
At the time, when I played a character,
I took inspiration from the director.
I took inspiration from Elio Petri
when I made PROPERTY IS NO LONGER A THEFT.
Dario had me playing a journalist,
so he drew upon a time when he was one himself.
He kept waving his hands frantically, like an elf,
an inspiration for my character from
.an existing woman journalist,
and also from Dario, who moved like a neurotic.
I created something like complicity with my audience.
I basically told them, right from the start
that they were about to witness a series of
scenes and situations that are highly unlikely.
Unlikely, because I was channeling my nightmares
and my imagination.
The viewer was required to enter my nightmares.
That's what I told my audience.
And I also assured them that they would like it.
Everyone hated the idea of the puppet.
My father, my brother, and my production designer
all hated it.
They all begged me to not shoot the puppet scene.
They said that the film was good,
that it was powerful stuff,
but kept begging and begging me to forget the puppet.
But I persisted, and asked the great Carlo Rambaldi.
He won two Oscars later on, working in the US.
We're talking about the man who created E.T.
I asked him to create a puppet capable of walking
and moving its head.
A sort of automaton.
Rambaldi was a very talented engineer and
quite a cultured man. He said "yes", and succeeded
in building this walking puppet
that could move its head.
I always found great pleasure in cinematic violence.
It's a cathartic feeling.
Compared to the horrible things that happen in real life,
or what you see on the news,
the aesthetic of murder can give you great pleasure.
Look at the fake blood.
Everyone knows it's fake, although not as obvious
as tomato sauce.
But it's a very expensive nail polish
made by Max Factor, that you have to use according to
the lights in order to grade the tones of red.
It creates a great, interesting feeling.
There must be something special in my films.
I guess my films have nine lives, like cats.
There must be something that makes them unforgettable.
And something too that attracts new viewers.
There have been some recent screenings around the world.
I went to Pisa, Italy, and the theater was packed with people.
So many people...
And in America as well.
And also some screenings in other countries.
The audience is very young.
Some have watched my films on DVD.
For others it's the first time, but they've heard of them.
This new, younger audience is an interesting lot.
Very interesting...
I don't know why my films are still liked,
like SUSPIRIA or OPERA.
The audience continues to like my films
and find interest in them.
I mean, tastes change, so I wonder what it is.
Maybe because I tell stories that come from deep inside me.
I don't tell stories that come from other sources,
except for the occasional homage to certain directors,
or to certain old films that I like, but
I take inspiration from within,
from my subconscious,
which guides me in what to say and what story to tell.
When it happens, I don't know if there's a meaning or symbolism.
I don't immediately understand, but
it comes to me gradually, in time.
With SUSPIRIA and INFERNO, Argento focused
on fantastical themes.
In 1983, with TENEBRAE, he returned to the thriller genre.
More recently, he directed another thriller, GIALLO.
Given that title, GIALLO, it clearly follows in the steps
of classic giallos and thrillers.
Naturally, over the years, both Italian
and international cinema
have undergone profound changes,
as has Dario Argento himself.
Therefore, the new, revolutionary driving force
behind his first films has been inevitably lost.
The Argento of today is a very different director
than the one he once was.
He's still a great director, and one still able to draw on
with an extraordinary visionary gift, and an ability
to make a film in which aesthetics prevail over
traditional narrative structure.
He remains among the greats of international cinema.
Well, Argento doesn't like me, though I don't understand why.
It's an odd thing.
Why doesn't he like me? I mean, if he thinks I'm nothing
then he shouldn't even be talking about me.
Instead, he hates my guts.
Okay, he doesn't really hate me.
Argento doesn't hate anyone, he just loves himself.
I think that Argento is a great craftsman,
who believes he's an artist.
Hitchcock, on the other hand, was an artist who believed
he was a craftsman.
That's why I think Argento will do the same things forever.
He's very good with public relations.
The young people like him.
He also uses a certain kind of music in his films
that other horror directors,
including American ones, would never use.
I like modern music, I have young kids,
Argento's children are younger than mine,
but I believe that his use of music is fake.
He's the same with other things.
I think that he is a good director and a terrible writer.
People often say the opposite, but I think
he's a terrible writer.
Among the most important Italian directors that made giallo,
we must remember Lucio Fulci.
He approached the genre before Argento, with a film called
ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER.
Fulci realized his original vision without
being influenced by Argento.
Argento's success with his first film aided
Fulci's subsequent films, because
after Argento's debut was a hit,
the genre became very lucrative.
The public demanded more giallos, and wanted them
to be set in our country.
My first giallo was ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER.
The Producer chose the title.
Edmondo Amati was a good producer,
though he didn't know what a giallo was.
I consider mine to be the second Italian giallo. The first was
THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH, directed by Romolo Guerrieri
and produced by my friend, Luciano Martino.
He's always said we need to do more giallos in Italy.
He stopped making them, at some point, but now he's back.
ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER, also known as PERVERSION STORY,
is perhaps the first Italian giallo with a studied mechanism.
When the film came out, everyone was scared
of what would happen, Amati included.
They were scared because of the way the film was constructed.
Personally, I love the script,
which took eight months to write.
Originally, we had a deal to do a comedy for this producer,
but when our actor, Ugo Tognazzi, backed out,
we decided to do a giallo instead.
A lighter giallo, something similar to
THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH.
I never would have imagined it would become
an example of screenwriting technique.
We worked as hard as we could, and we often made mistakes.
I believe you could remake the movie now,
and avoid the mistakes we made.
The narrative mechanism is still solid.
For the first time, the police aren't involved in the plot.
Cops aren't that capable in my films, they never
manage to catch anyone.
They always make bad mistakes, like the Carabinieri policemen
in DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING.
In EROS PERVERSION, the real enigma is within
the protagonists and we see it by what they do,
by their attitudes and their psychological gestures.
Some of Argento's films follow these rules, too.
After ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER, Lucio Fulci made
a series of films that were very different from each other.
His giallos were, indeed, quite different from each other.
For instance, A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN was very dreamlike.
Whereas, DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING was very realistic.
Starting with the setting, deep in southern Italy.
These two films couldn't be more different.
In A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN we have a female lead,
played by Florinda Bolkan.
We often have a number of important female characters
in Fulci's giallo films.
Naturally, female characters in giallos are often
even more "exposed" than their male counterparts
to the violence inflicted by the killers.
The success of my previous giallo allowed me
to do A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN.
Amati trusted me to do the film.
Argento had already done what were perhaps his best giallos
THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE
and THE CAT O' NINE TAILS.
LIZARD and CAT were released around the same time.
People loved animal titles.
LIZARD wasn't a hit. If I made eight million in a theater,
he made 12 in another.
It was still good and, back then the industry
was a happier place.
His film made more because it was gorier.
My film had only a couple of strong scenes.
Again, I preferred to focus on the mechanism.
It's one of my fixations.
DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING is more of a psychoanalytic film.
There's a theme of repression.
After all, the murderer repressing his guilt
is one of the pivotal elements of Italian giallos.
DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING was a huge hit.
It even won an important award.
It was an attempt to create a giallo in a rural setting.
I told a similar theme in my best film,
THE CONSPIRACY OF TORTURE.
Nobody remembers it, it's not even on VHS.
I'd pay you if you could find me a copy.
Anyway, in THE CONSPIRACY OF TORTURE, I showed
how papal power condemned a man to both death and eternal damnation.
In DUCKLING, the priest kills the kids because
he wants them to go to heaven.
That's the theme that got me the award I mentioned.
I really love the film.
There are many subtleties.
At some point, I even reveal the identity of the killer.
It's when the priest walks with Milian,
I might not remember the exact scene.
Anyway, the priest tells him that he doesn't allow
the sale of porn magazines, and that he doesn't want
the children to grow up.
He wants them to remain pure and innocent forever.
That's why the film begins with the bells ringing,
the children at confession,
and the modern highway that divides this unreal land in two.
Concerning the character of the local witch, believe it or not,
I wanted to set the film in Turin,
where these southern superstitions still exist.
They still exist as a matter of fact,
in the big cities of the north, among southern immigrants,
I personally saw little ceremonies of Italian voodoo
taking place.
They did them in grungy courtyards and buildings,
where the southern laborers
that work for FIAT lived.
It was the first film produced by Medusa Film. They did well.
It was my first thriller.
I wanted to make something new after so many comedies.
I remember they made me change the color of my hair.
As you can see they dyed it almost red,
styled long and straight.
So, this was my first thriller and, thankfully,
it became a big hit.
Of course, DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING was
very different from a comedy.
I was really trying to diversify my range of roles,
but it wasn't always possible.
DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING was different,
I also liked the cast.
And I played the role.
I liked the idea of working with Tomas Milian,
and with Irene Papas, who I greatly admired.
Also Florinda Bolkan, who was at the top of her game then.
I must say I didn't know who Fulci was at first,
I never knew who the directors were.
I was a foreigner working in Italy.
The only way I had to determine if a project
would be good was to look at the script,
or watch the directors' previous films.
Or trust my agent's word.
Fulci was a little nutty.
He was a bit grouchy.
He had his moments of anger.
I never had any problems with him.
He never got angry with me.
I do remember my first few days on the set.
I got sick.
I had to stay in bed. I'm about to repeat some old gossip.
A little film within the film.
There was, I don't remember well, I think
it was the costume designer who
came into my room and told me I had to
to see something outside.
I was so weak, I said I would see it the next day.
She insisted that I had to get up and go see.
So I did, I got up out of bed. Outside, by the pool,
I saw this big, muscular man.
So handsome and tall.
"Nice view," I said.
"He came with Irene Papas," she told me.
"Not bad," I said, and that was it.
A short time later, however, I found out that Irene
had developed a crush on Tomas.
Yes, Tomas...
He had his wife with him.
Irene had such a big crush on him, that
she dumped the beefcake.
So I stepped in and took him for myself.
He was free, she was busy with Tomas. Finders keepers.
I won that battle.
Eventually, there were these huge fights between
Irene, Tomas, and his wife.
So many fights, at the hotel, at night...
We kept ourselves busy.
You said you've seen one of my best, and.
Least successful films, SETTE NOTE IN NERO.
Its American title is THE PSYCHIC.
The French title is L'EMMURE'E VIVANTE.
It was such a painful production for all of us.
I even had some personal troubles.
It happened because I made a film about challenging fate.
You should never do that.
Polanski once told me that, while I challenged fate,
he made a film that challenged the Devil,
another thing you should never do.
I'd shoot it again tomorrow. I love a solid structure.
The film came out, but nobody cared.
It was a great disappointment for us all because,
let's be honest... THE PSYCHIC is a little gem of a giallo.
I'm always thinking remake potential,
and I think you could build some incredible films on
that narrative framework.
Because, really, the film is essentially a modern take
on Edgar Allan Poe's THE TELL-TALE HEART.
It uses a music box instead of a heart,
but the spirit of Poe remains
in the use of something unusual to help uncover a crime.
It's a classic device.
It works because that device is both simple,
yet loaded with meaning.
I love this film, it's probably the best one I did with Lucio.
That's what I think. Others might beg to differ.
I did 8 films with him, and I think this is the only
"round" one. It works perfectly.
The only one where it all makes sense.
The others aren't as perfect.
They might have been more successful or more exciting,
but they're not as "round".
This film has also something I really love,
and it's a trace of the supernatural.
The movie starts off as a traditional giallo,
with a murder.
There's nothing unusual, it's a story just like any other.
If anything, like many stories, it might seem a bit prosaic,
because, ultimately, it's a meditation on human misery.
Yet, the film has this supernatural vibe, and it
revolves around fate, destiny, and so on.
Different stuff than usual.
This allows the plot to transcend the limitations
of common criminality.
It also evokes a different set of feelings about the murders.
You know you're looking at something different.
I just loved that, and Lucio knew it.
THE PSYCHIC, which can genuinely be defined as
a truly great film.
It marks an important transition in Fulci's career.
Sort of a rite of passage, separating the realism
of the giallos, from a cinema that is more overtly horrific.
As you know, after shooting THE PSYCHIC in 1977,
Fulci shifted to films like ZOMBIE,
CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, and THE BEYOND.
THE PSYCHIC, despite the giallo elements
in the script written by Gianviti and Sacchetti,
was a sort of bridge to more fantastical films.
There's a female protagonist in THE PSYCHIC,
played by Jennifer O'Neill.
She experiences visions of a future that might
actually be the past, or both at the same time.
Therefore, this intentionally confusing narrative timeframe
could be defined as one of the key elements of the film.
The film explores more fantastical territory,
but it's still a giallo, even if it's not as realistic
as Fulci's previous work, such as ONE ON TOP OF ANOTHER,
A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN, and DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING.
Those films are examples of Fulci's incredible
visionary talent.
As well as his willingness to show the cruelty of
the murders, which was another key element
of the whole Italian giallo genre.
Moreover, he retained certain elements from previous films.
Let's not forget that Fulci worked in almost every genre,
very much like Sergio Martino
and many Italian genre directors,
with the exception of Dario Argento.
Fulci started doing thrillers after directing many comedies
starring Italian comedians Franco and Ciccio.
We can say that he was a mainstream director who,
thanks to his unique vision, created giallos
that captivated audiences by merging
elements of genre with those of mainstream cinema.
Following these films, Fulci refined his vision
to create his horror masterpieces,
made in the late 70s and 80s.
There's something my daughter says about MURDER-ROCK...
I mean my older one, not the one who works with me,
and will probably become a director soon.
Anyway, she says that it feels like a good American TV series.
She's right.
Yes, it feels like the end of an era, and I knew I had
to reinvent myself and the things I was doing.
I mean, times were changing.
Like my daughter said, with MURDER-ROCK I did something
that looked like it was an episode out of a
good American crime series.
She felt it was no more than that,
but I was trying to do something different.
There are some directors who only made a few giallos.
One of the most important was Duccio Tessari.
He made a film based on a novel by Giorgio Scerbanenco,
DEATH OCCURED LAST NIGHT.
The novel was very well-known.
Its Italian title is I MILANESI AMMAZZANO AL SABATO.
Lombardo, who distributed the film, feared that mentioning
the Milanese people might put off potential viewers
from other regions.
That's why the title was changed to DEATH OCCURRED LAST NIGHT.
Tessari and I suggested it, because it's
a quote from the film.
Given that we had to change the title,
it was the best possible choice.
I'm happy that, in recent years, most film critics and viewers
have started to consider it the best film adaptation
from Scerbanenco's novels with Duca Lamberti.
Out of all the Italian giallo directors,
Luciano Ercoli was one of the first.
He was also a producer, and when he started
directing he had already produced some interesting
Italian Westerns directed by Duccio Tessari.
The films Ercoli directed are elegant,
and quite Hitchcockian in style.
His style was refined and his choice of music
was equally sophisticated.
We could say that his films are "deluxe packages."
Spanish actress Nieves Navarro was the mainstay of these films.
She usually adopted an anglicized pseudonym,
Susan Scott.
Ercoli's films, DEATH WALKS AT MIDNIGHT,
DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS, and
FORBIDDEN PHOTOS OF A LADY ABOVE SUSPICION,
are very sophisticated works.
We could say that, as a director,
Ercoli marries Argento's innovations
with his own elegant and stylized mise-en-scene.
These films were also quite successful.
I always liked doing thrillers.
Crime films too, but I did those after the thrillers.
Thrillers were the trend in those years.
Especially after Dario Argento's ascension.
Many of us directors tried to follow in his footsteps.
That's how I started doing thrillers, in my own little way.
I found it a bit difficult. It was my directorial debut.
The script wasn't much help, and the dialogue was very spare.
I had to turn that into an hour and forty minute film,
so I wound up with a lot of slow parts.
I didn't have that problem in my next film.
I always liked noir films. I really love them.
From the old ones with Richard Widmark and Orson Welles,
to the new ones.
Luciano gave me the script, I read it, and loved my character.
I found it funny, and really interesting.
I had already acted in some of the films Luciano produced,
but it was the first time I worked in a film he directed.
He was a very demanding director, you know.
Maybe he thought I was Ingrid Bergman or someone like that.
Even if I wasn't Ingrid Bergman, he was still very demanding
with me and Dagmar Lassander.
We didn't pay too much attention to him,
and just did the best that we could.
I had a good relationship with Ernesto Gastaldi,
the screenwriter.
We had already worked together, and I felt I could trust him.
He wasn't a great writer, but he had some good,
even very good ideas when it came to giallos or thrillers.
The development wasn't always as good.
Yet, you could still see they were proper giallos
or thrillers.
In addition to Ercoli, we could mention Aldo Lado.
Among other giallo directors,
Lado directed an atypical giallo,
SHORT NIGHT OF GLASS DOLLS.
The film is set in Prague, a great location
with an eerie, magical feeling.
The lead character is played by Jean Sorel.
The film feels like a waking nightmare.
Its twist ending is somewhat similar to
the ending of Wilder's Sunset Boulevard.
And, maybe its beginning too, an homage to Sunset Boulevard.
Another giallo directed by Lado is WHO SAW HER DIE?
That film is set in Venice, which is an ideal location
for that kind of thriller, a city on water, one that feels
almost apart from the rest of the world.
That film has such rich atmosphere.
Its protagonist, George Lazenby, had played 007 once,
although without great success.
It's a film that shows Lado's understanding
of the schematics of the genre.
Giuliano Carnimeo was among the one-time giallo directors.
He is best known for his enjoyable westerns,
mostly starring George Hilton.
Despite directing only one giallo, Carnimeo's film
is considered to be one of the best examples of
Italian giallo.
THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS stars Edwige Fenech,
and it's a film where the schematics of the
Italian giallo are well-calibrated.
The soundtrack is incredible, too.
The film unifies all the elements of Italian giallos.
Being a mainstream director, Carnimeo is particularly adept
at tying all of those elements together.
The orchestration of the murders within that mise-en-scene,
makes this among the most representative
examples of 70s Italian giallo.
Sergio Martino was among the first to attain success
by making giallos.
Martino's importance can be attributed to many factors.
First of all, he's one of Italian cinema's
most versatile craftsmen.
His first film was a western, and then between
the 70s and the 80s
he was one of the preeminent
Italian comedy directors at least in terms of box office.
He made films like SUGAR, HONEY, AND PEPPER,
and DON'T PLAY WITH TIGERS.
With his film, THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH,
Martino created a successful niche with giallos,
to which he brought originality.
It didn't hurt that the film was produced by his brother,
Luciano Martino, who only a few years earlier had produced
Romolo Guerrieri's THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH.
We could say that the Martino "family tradition"
of making giallos predates Argento's taking on the genre.
THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH was the first giallo
produced by Luciano Martino after LIBIDO.
LIBIDO was a gamble made by Mino Loy and Luciano Martino.
They each put five million lire into it.
A small investment to make the film.
One half of the film was mine and Vittorio Salerno's.
By that I mean that we worked for free.
My wife Mara acted for free, and we
only paid Giancarlo Giannini
Actually, I still owe him 20K.
If I remember correctly, Dominique Boschero
got one million. She was our lead actress.
Again, the film was a gamble.
There was no guarantee we would make a profit.
In Italy, we only earned 123 or 153 million.
The budget was 26 million.
So it wasn't bad, but it wasn't much.
Then, suddenly, on the foreign market,
and I don't know how, but the distributors managed
to sell LIBIDO everywhere.
They sold it for big money, too.
At that point, Loy and Martino made an English-dubbed version.
When they sold it to the US market for
35 or 40 thousand dollars,
it wasn't much at the time, but more than the film's budget,
the Americans didn't want the dubbed version.
They said that it sounded like a character was
dubbed in Sicilian.
And the character's child in Milanese.
We didn't understand that you can't have a guy from Alabama
dubbing a character whose child is dubbed
by someone from Boston.
The film had to be redubbed, but this time the Americans
did it themselves.
It was one of the few times they dubbed a foreign film.
They tend to use subtitles. The film did great and
they sold it worldwide.
The bottom line is, out of a 26 million lire budget,
this little film earned 400 million.
And then Luciano, who wasn't a stupid man at all,
had a bright idea.
"Giallo is the way", he said, "let's do more of them, pronto"...
So THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH was the first giallo
of the long-running series produced by Luciano.
Ernesto Gastaldi can be considered the top
screenwriter of giallo cinema.
He wrote several solid screenplays
for the giallos made in those years.
The various directors turned those stories into
more elaborate films.
Nevertheless, all those scripts written
by Gastaldi were strong.
Those films were often full of visual inventions,
and that's why they always needed good scripts,
like the ones Ernesto Gastaldi wrote.
"We're all descendants of an uninterrupted
chain of murderers, whose love to kill
was instilled in their blood, just as it could
be within us too." - Sigmund Freud
From its very start, THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH
differs from Argento's films in its emphasis on the sexual,
psychological, and dreamlike elements.
These elements recur throughout the films of Sergio Martino.
In those years, the director frequently worked with
Edwige Fenech, an actress whose strong physicality
defined the difference between Martino's
and Argento's films in those days.
I was the first to meet Edwige when she came into our office,
which was also used as a dubbing studio.
She was gorgeous, in black leather pants that were
unusual back then.
I told my brother about this gorgeous girl,
and he hired her to do a film called
THE SINS OF MADAME BOVARY, which was a collaboration
between Luciano and another producer, Alabiso.
After this film, I believe she felt grateful
to Luciano and eventually got to know him better,
in the biblical sense.
She became his partner, and she became more and more successful.
Edwige was a buxom,full-figured girl, and she was working
in Italy at a time when... Let me digress a little,
even seeing a girl showing her bosoms was almost an event.
I remember that every time we went to Paris for a film,
the first thing the crew did was buy a copy of Playboy.
You have to think in the context of the time.
In those days, censorship was finally slightly less
vicious than it had been.
Edwige became successful, and I think she was
a very good actress in my films, even if she didn't have
the physique du role, like the French say, to play
the part of a frail-looking, emaciated girl.
Maybe I need to escape from myself.
These thrillers were often very interesting films.
Made with not much money, but a lot of good will.
And what came out was our love for them.
In the end, they were very good films that had
great success, not just in Italy, but abroad too.
We were always greatly surprised by that, because
we didn't have the means of big budget films.
We knew we weren't actors with big names,
but our films were seen both in and outside of Italy.
I first met Edwige Fenech, when we were in Tirrenia.
She was doing a film with Rosalba Neri,
and we were staying at the same hotel.
I was doing IL BACO DA SETA, a film with Nadja Tiller.
We met in the hotel lobby.
She greeted me and introduced herself.
In talking, we learned that we lived near one another in Rome.
We became friends, and started to hang out together.
I met her family, she met mine.
Then, one day, Luciano Martino told me he was crazy about her.
He begged me to introduce him to her in exchange
for doing a film together.
He promised I'd have had carte blanche to do a film
with her in it.
And that promise became THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH.
I was in charge of hiring her, but I had to introduce them.
So I had them meet during a dinner and we all read
the script that he brought.
And that's how they started working together.
I think she was great in those films.
I made several films with Hilton.
And I became friends with him, his family.
His wife came with him, and then his children.
We were all a big family, all together.
I have fond memories of George.
He's a funny man.
Edwige Fenech was every man's dream.
I had people stopping me in the streets, telling me how lucky
I was to do all those love scenes with her.
She drove men crazy. Her beauty was in a class of its own.
She was fantastic, and so sexy.
I remember her as an amazing woman to which
I had this great friendship.
I think Edwige was able to not feel "naked" when she was
doing nude scenes.
I must add that, despite being a gorgeous woman,
and no matter how many people asked me
what she looked like naked,
I always saw her as a sister, perhaps because
she was my brother's partner.
Therefore, I never got a sexual charge from anything she did.
A few times, when we were making a film,
in order to give the censors something
they could cut, without hurting our picture,
we shot some more explicit erotic scenes.
But this is another matter.
I always asked to have as few nude scenes as possible.
But it seemed as though we couldn't sell my films
without a scene of me taking a shower.
Most of all, I wanted to avoid doing love scenes,
they were what worried me the most.
She never had that sort of problem,
at least in the films we made together.
Her body was so beautiful, and she showed it on film.
Everyone knew that people flocked to
the theaters to see her movies.
They always gave her a shower scene.
Love scenes, too. That's how it was.
She was and still is a gorgeous woman.
It's hard to do a love scene with a friend.
We were actually naked when we did our scenes.
We always covered our private parts, of course.
They put some tape on them.
Those were good scenes.
When you act, you think you're really making love.
But it was just acting, they weren't real love scenes.
Yet, we did our best to make it look as real as possible.
THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH was my first giallo.
The plot was, for the most part, similar to other giallos.
Perhaps, not many people realize it,
but with his film LES DIABOLIQUES,
Henri-Georges Clouzot became a great source of inspiration.
I foolishly didn't co-sign the screenplay of my film.
This happened a lot in my career and consequently, I lost money.
I tried to give it a unique introduction to make it feel
less like a TV film, and to infuse it with more energy.
To do so, I made up a parallel story about
a maniac on the loose in Vienna killing women.
Using this tactic to boost the tension by showing
murders more frequently allowed us to avoid
involving the police trying to find the killer.
Writing a book on giallos, I discovered that
at least 2000 articles, and books have been written about
how to commit a murder inside a locked room.
In THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH, I created
the perfect murder in a locked room
using an iced cube!
It melts, the door locks itself, and appears
to have been locked from the inside.
The water dries and that's that.
I've read quite a few murder scenarios dreamed up
by other writers.
Hidden snakes and other crazy ideas.
Anyway, that's what giallo is.
It's about creating a mystery that people can solve
if they pay attention.
Without cheating, of course.
Sergio Martino directed a series of very
successful and stylish giallos, such as
THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH, his first, and
ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK.
As well as YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM
AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY before 1973,
when he directed what he calls his giallo masterpiece.
We're talking about an extremely violent film that even compared
to today's standards represents a watershed
for Italian cinema.
In 1973, never before had an Italian film been so violent,
and then came Sergio Martino's TORSO.
TORSO has all the elements of the Sergio Martino style.
His cinema speaks a universal language and appeals
to an international audience.
Martino's films have no borders, and his specialty
is to create a world in which it isn't important to
pinpoint the exact location.
His films are mostly set in Italy.
TORSO is set in the town of Perugia.
Which is an international environment,
the University for Foreigners,
which is perhaps the most important cultural
institution in town.
In this film, all the elements that define
Martino's filmmaking style are present and very explicit.
Explicit as the sexuality we see throughout the film,
and its emphasis on graphic violence.
These elements are filtered through Martino's
signature cinematic style.
As usual in his films, Martino makes use of a hand-held camera,
in order to simulate the frenzied movements
of the killer.
In addition to his hand-held camera,
we know it's a Martino film by the visuals, and
that specific mise-en scene that defines his style.
This framing allows his giallo audience
to feel a different physical sensation in every set piece.
Martino, like Dario Argento, doesn't offer his viewers
any guarantees.
In his films, as with Guerrieri's
THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH,
we experience several twists, and follow false trails,
the latter a recurring element common to giallos back then.
It's like saying that anyone could be the killer,
is the person you least expect.
A university professor or a woman are
another element that characterizes all
Italian giallos, not just Martino's films.
These elements tear at the fabric of social convention.
There's not an anthropological or sociological
explanation for murder.
These giallos are detached from reality, and detached
also because they never gave the viewer
any certainty over how the identity of the killer
will be revealed.
A killer who may be the least likely suspect.
One of the most important Italian giallo directors
is undoubtedly Umberto Lenzi.
His first films were aimed at an international audience,
and he was one of the few directors,
in the 60s, who made Italian films palatable, you could say
to a foreign audience.
Lenzi's actors were often real international stars
such as Carroll Baker, who made Elia Kazan's BABY DOLL,
or Jean-Louis Trintignant, one of the most important
French actors.
With SO SWEET... SO PERVERSE, Lenzi created
what he called his "uptown giallos".
These were giallos that were set in the milieu
of the upper class.
These films are often characterized by a certain
morbid quality that was more suggested than shown.
An obvious example is the way that Carroll Baker played
her characters.
After SO SWEET... SO PERVERSE, Lenzi made a series
of similar giallos, such as PARANOIA, A QUIET PLACE TO KILL,
SPASMO, and KNIFE OF ICE, which is
more Hitchcockian in style than those other films.
Then Lenzi made a more Argentian giallo with EYEBALL.
He was a great director, who was never afraid to experiment
with different kinds of giallos.
I've always been an avid reader of giallo literature.
Take a look at my library, and you'll see it's almost
all giallos.
I particularly love Georges Simenon,
and American hard boiled writers.
I mean Raymond Chandler, and the other famous one.
I took inspiration from this style, and used it to
write my own stuff.
Naturally, the giallos I made reflect my stylistic taste.
My giallos are set in the world of VIPs, very important persons.
The upper crust.
It's a world rife with feelings of hatred and perverted
sexual practices.
Therefore, my "trilogy of VIPs," consisting of PARANOIA
SO SWEET... SO PERVERSE,
and A QUIET PLACE TO KILL comes with a very potent
social message. One that I've emphasized.
I wrote the original story for PARANOIA and adapted
it as a script with help from Ugo Moretti,
a great screenwriter and novelist.
Being a co-production, I also worked with a French writer,
Marie Claire Solleville.
We wrote the script and I shot the film as PARANOIA,
which was my original title.
The leading lady was Carroll Baker,
a great Hollywood star who was a very good and professional
actress and a friend with whom I kept in touch
until a few years ago.
The male lead was a foreign actor working in Italy,
Lou Castel.
The two leads were excellent, but the supporting cast
was no less strong with names like Lilla Brignone
and Tino Carraro.
We also had a young French actress I discovered,
Colette Descombes.
She was the plot's pivotal character.
Pretending to be Castel's sister,
with the two staging these sexual encounters
in order to degrade Baker's character and eventually
drive her to suicide.
When the film was screened in New York and other
American cities in the summer of 1969,
it became a roaring success.
The American major who bought the rights was about to go bust,
but they made a handsome profit from my picture and
subsequentially produced my war film,
BATTLE OF THE COMMANDOS starring Jack Palance.
When the film was about to be released here,
the distributors, who are often dimwits, said that the title
"PARANOIA" made them think of "noia", Italian for "boredom",
and that a new title was necessary to attract
viewers to see the film.
Sexy films were all the rage back then, so
the producer said to rename it ORGASMO
as a reflection of the sexual tension in the film.
I didn't like it, but they did it anyway.
Basically, this act mutilated the film.
When it was revived at the Fiamma Cinema in Rome,
I think in February...
It was a huge success. The people gave us
a standing ovation during the last scene.
A standing ovation. I'm telling the truth.
All due to a final twist, no one saw coming.
The same happened when it was shown at the
Venice Film Festival.
This was 27 years after the film was made and nobody
in the audience guessed the unthinkable twist that happened.
The film's success in Italy drove Paramount
to buy the rights.
Not Paramount, sorry, I meant Commonwealth United.
Anyway, the film became very successful in America, too.
But the Americans released it under its original title,
PARANOIA, because when it comes to cinema they're more
cunning than we are.
PARANOIA, they just loved that film.
That's when Italian producers decided to make a film
with the same title.
They asked me to write a new film, starring Carroll Baker,
to be called PARANOIA.
That's why I made a film titled ORGASMO that's also known as
PARANOIA, and a film titled PARANOIA that was released
as A QUIET PLACE TO KILL in the US
because they couldn't call it PARANOIA like the other one.
Carroll Baker gets so confused about this every time
they interviewed her about the films that we made together.
She can't remember which is which.
After directing some of the most important Italian giallos,
Umberto Lenzi started to write more and more.
Especially in the last few years,
with the crisis of Italian genre cinema, and
fewer and fewer valid examples of it.
Lenzi decided to become a writer.
He wrote successful giallos such as DELITTI A CINECITTÁ,
and TERRORE AD HARLEM,
even if these stories are not meant to be watched
onscreen, but to be read on paper, they still have
Lenzi's uncanny ability as a storyteller.
Subtitled by Francesco Massaccesi