Following the success of his debut feature, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, distributor Titanus tasked writer/director Dario Argento with delivering a follow-up in short order. The resulting film, granted a greatly enhanced budget and heralded in its US marketing campaign as “nine times more suspenseful” than its predecessor, was The Cat O’ Nine Tails
In the wake of the success of Dario Argento’s ground-breaking giallo The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, numerous other directors stepped forward to try their hand at these lurid murder-mysteries. At the forefront was Sergio Martino (The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, Torso), whose sensual 70s thrillers starring Edwige Fenech and George Hilton are widely celebrated as some of the best the genre has to offer.
This second entry in the so-called “Animal Trilogy” found Argento further refining his distinctive style and cementing his reputation as the master of the giallo thriller. Co-starring Catherine Spaak (Il Sorpasso) and Rada Rassimov (Baron Blood), and featuring another nerve-jangling score by the great Ennio Morricone (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly), The Cat O’ Nine Tails remains one of Argento’s most suspenseful and underrated films.
This second entry in the so-called “Animal Trilogy” found Argento further refining his distinctive style and cementing his reputation as the master of the giallo thriller. Co-starring Catherine Spaak (Il Sorpasso) and Rada Rassimov (Baron Blood), and featuring another nerve-jangling score by the great Ennio Morricone (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly), The Cat O’ Nine Tails remains one of Argento’s most suspenseful and underrated films.
Released in the shadows of Dario Argento’s wildly successful The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (and one of over 30 Italian giallo films produced in 1972), The Crimes of the Black Cat delivers the style of a classic giallo with sleazy, over the top violence that rivals Italian films from a decade later.
Before the influence of Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage permeated every corner of the giallo genre, another strain of these distinctive Italian thrillers enjoyed considerable success. These “melodrama gialli”, heavily inspired by Clouzot’s Les diaboliques, relied less on graphic violence and high body counts and more on psychological tension.
From Dario Argento, maestro of the macabre and the man behind some of the greatest excursions in Italian horror (Suspiria, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage), comes Deep Red – the ultimate giallo movie.
While the release of Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage gave rise to a glut of imitators, there was more to the giallo than just shameless copycats setting out to ape a rigid formula. This volume of Giallo Essentials celebrates the range and breadth of the genre with three lesser-seen films from its early 1970s heyday.
Double feature from Blue Underground featuring both Circus of Fear and Five Golden Dragons
From Dario Argento, maestro of the macabre and the man behind some of the greatest excursions in Italian horror (Suspiria, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage), comes Deep Red – the ultimate giallo movie.
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