Where would we be without the Italian giallo, I ask you? The genre has a bright and varied history, mixing pulp thriller with outright horror, extensive gore and outlandish scenarios that would be ridiculous if they weren’t so amazing at the same time. The “classic” American slashers of the 80s hold a huge debt to these films and you can see in the best of them shades of the crazed psychological underpinnings and obsession with violence gallo built its bones on.

For this month’s edition of Blood Red I wanted to take a little space to talk about a pair of classics that have influenced generations of horror films. So if you’re new to giallo there’s no better place to start than Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood and Dario Argento’s Deep Red.   Continue reading →