Giallo movies: named for yellow paperbacks, they helped shape the slasher

Giallo (JAH-lo) is the Italian word for yellow. It comes from Il Giallo Mondadori, a series of crime paperbacks with yellow covers that the Italian publisher Mondadori began in 1929, mostly translations of British and American mysteries. Outside Italy the word came to mean something more specific: a stylish Italian thriller, usually about a hidden killer, that peaked in the 1970s. The plural is gialli.

The genre matters because of what came after it. Mario Bava, the Italian director behind the first true giallo, The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), followed it with Blood and Black Lace (1964), which introduced the black-gloved killer and the bold, stylised look the genre is known for. Dario Argento, the Italian director most associated with the genre, then had a box office smash with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), and imitators followed in large numbers. Wikipedia counts over 100 gialli made between 1971 and 1975 alone.

Critics have traced a line from there to the American slasher. The BFI says Blood and Black Lace helped shape the American slashers of the 1970s, and Halloween (1978) is usually listed among the films giallo influenced. The Italian cycle faded in the 1990s, and filmmakers have been paying tribute to it ever since.

Relay has 19 films tagged giallo. Four were made between 1963 and 1971, and the rest date from 2004 to 2026. That mix is why this list has two originals from 1971 and newer films that borrow the style. The tributes are described the way their own makers describe them, and one of them is disputed.

What makes a giallo

• A killer who is hidden. The face stays off screen, often behind black gloves, until the end.
• Murder staged as spectacle. The killings are designed to look striking, with colour, music and camera work doing as much as the plot.
• An outsider who investigates. An amateur sleuth, not a detective, tries to piece together what happened.
• A plot built on secrets. Buried trauma and family secrets drive the killings, and the BFI notes that these themes recur across the genre.

5 giallo movies to watch

The Night Evelyn Came Out of Her Grave (1971)

Emilio Miraglia directed this Italian giallo, which mixes the genre with a ghost story. Anthony Steffen plays Lord Alan Cunningham, a man haunted by his dead wife Evelyn. After he marries Gladys, played by Marina Malfatti, the ghost seems to return. Film historian Roberto Curti describes it as a blend of Gothic horror and the giallo style Argento made popular, with a crypt, a séance and a vengeful ghost tied to a portrait.

The story is set in England but was not shot there, and one review notes that only talk of British currency and number plates gives the setting away. Erika Blanc plays Susie, a nightclub dancer whose routine involves rising from a coffin, a scene reviewers single out. In the United States it opened on 26 July 1972 and was promoted with "bloodcorn", popcorn dyed red.

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The Devil with Seven Faces (1971)

Osvaldo Civirani directed and produced this Italian giallo and co-wrote it with Tito Carpi. Carroll Baker, the Hollywood actress nominated for an Academy Award for Baby Doll (1956), plays identical twins, Julie and Mary. Julie is threatened in Holland by men who mistake her for Mary, who is accused of stealing a diamond from a Maharaja in London. Stephen Boyd and George Hilton co-star, Hilton as a racing driver who protects her.

Baker is the reason it belongs on a list about Italian cinema's reach. She moved to Italy in the 1960s and made a run of giallo thrillers there. The film opened in Italy on 9 December 1971 and later reached video in the United States as Bloody Mary and in the United Kingdom as Nights of Terror.

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A Count of Ten (2024)

This Hindi film was written, directed, produced, shot, edited and scored by Sareesh Sudhakaran, an Indian filmmaker, and opened in Indian theaters on 15 March 2024. It is set in 1991. A killer hunts ten people over 24 hours, starting at a remote farmhouse, and the missing twin sister of a woman named Attika ties the victims together.

Sudhakaran calls it an homage to Italian giallo and says Argento's Deep Red inspired its heavy focus on style and music. He also names Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as slasher influences, both with surprisingly little gore. The trailer describes it as a fusion of Italian giallo and Bollywood melodrama, with a synthesizer score that includes a passage in an unusual 10/8 time signature. That is the filmmakers' description, not an outside review.

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A Knife In The Dark (2024)

Joe Sherlock, an Oregon filmmaker who has spent about 30 years making independent features, mostly horror, directed this from a script by Keith Parker. Sherlock says he was hired to rewrite and direct an existing script, and calls the result a mystery thriller with a "giallo" feel. It was shot mostly at a house in Silverton, Oregon, with other scenes in Corvallis and Salem, and it premiered at the Darkside Cinema in Corvallis.

Reviewers do not agree on the label. Musique Machine says it is not a giallo and calls it a dialogue-heavy mystery set mostly in one suburban house. Cinedump says it aims to be a classy gothic murder mystery wrapped in a low-budget slasher. Both reviews describe a masked killer and a household with something to hide, which is the part of the genre that travels.

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An Horror Anthology (2018)

Chris Rakotomamonjy directed this French anthology, which runs about 55 minutes. Relay's listing describes it as a tribute to gialli, with a mix of monsters, demons, gunfights and psycho killers. In one story a couple shelter in a seedy bar, and in another a man hears strange sounds in his house.

Little has been written about it, so this entry rests on the description Relay holds. The Nevermore Horror site calls Rakotomamonjy's earlier work giallo and sci-fi. For a reader new to the genre, an anthology is a short way to see several of its habits at once.

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Where to go next

Every film above is on Relay. For more horror that grew out of these ideas, try these.

• Slasher movies
• Folk horror movies