Original subtitles

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

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 detalil.

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 Aren't 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 rewaich 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 I, 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, trench coat 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 Nicolali,

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 8 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 time frame

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.

| 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 flmmaking 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 Lilia 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 TOKILL 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 DELITTIA CINECITTA,

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