Giallos - More suspense à italiana
With Profondo Rosso (1975) the director Dario Argento started a new period in Italian suspense. With its technical excellence and narrative, Profondo Rosso reached a new aesthetic level that surpassed the previous production and closed the most creative cycle of euro-thrillers. But the change that this film represented meant more to Argento's career than to the films in general. The musical score of Profondo Rosso (by Giorgio Gaslini and the group Goblin) would include rock in an unusual way. If earlier in movies, rock and pop music were present as mere contemporary reference or source music heard in bars and clubs, in Profondo Rosso the rhythms and the power of electrified instruments are inserted to discomfort in the film structure accentuating his hallucinatory and disorienting effect.
While other directors continued trying the traditional format of thrillers, Argento moved to supernatural in Suspiria (1976, Goblin music) and Inferno (1980, Keith Emerson music).
The success of LP sales with the soundtrack of Profondo Rosso drove the Goblin career in an unusual way. Starting in the progressive rock, in high demand in the mid-70s, the group had more success writing for films than in own albums. Goblin followed with a remarkable work in subsequent years. His own albums as Il Fantastico Viaggio Del Bagarozo Mark and the instrumental Roller are great albums on the progressive school. Their soundtracks assumed basic rock in occasions as La Via Della Droga (1977) or adopted the emerging techno instrumental in Contamination (1980) or Tenebre (1981). In Buio Omega (1979) the group directed the sound to the jazz-rock in one of his best works.
The model developed by Goblin, using rock motifs, jazz and electronics to create suspense music proved to be very efficient and was followed in other productions as in the music of Shock (1977) by group Libra, Watch Me When I Kill (1978) by Trans Europe Express and in Solamente Nero (1978) by Stelvio Cipriani. Not always well suited to the film, but great alternatives as soundtracks.
But the giallo cinema started to lose its way, oscillating between great productions and dubious films. L´Ultimo Treno Della Notte (1975) was a good and violent drama/giallo/horror with music by Ennio Morricone. Curiously, his main theme is taken from an animation of 1973 (Il Giro Del Mondo Dei Inamoratti di Peynet) for which Morricone had made the beautiful main theme Forse Basta. In L´Ultimo Treno, the theme, sung by Demis Roussos, gives a strangely lyrical tone to the film. Works as an early lament for the future victims of the maniacs. The film is a variation on the famous slasher Last House on the Left (1972) by Wes Craven. Which in turn, was an exploitation version of Bergman´s Virgin Spring (1960).
The remarkable La Casa Della Finestre Che Ridono (1976) is an isolated case. Directed by Pupi Avati, the film has little relation to giallo clichés (the Amedeo Tommasi's music is very discreet), but the movie takes its place as one of the great thrillers of history with its careful narrative and atmospheric excellence.
If Profondo Rosso gave new direction to Argento, the same did not happen with giallos that were progressively losing strength in repetitions and dubious production values. As a killer of predictable modus operandi, the giallo would decline in the following years. Some would only be reviewed in the modern market because for the releasing of its soundtracks (exaggeration?). Then check out: Omicidio Perfetto a Termini Di Legge (1975), an average crime thriller, but included here only because of a great soundtrack of Giorgio Gaslini. Medaglione Insanguinato (1975) by Massimo Dallamano is very atmospheric and appealing to the supernatural. It has beautiful reminiscent music by Stelvio Cipriani, but is a curious case of alternative that escaped the genre.
In Vacanza Per one Massacro (1980) director Fernando Di Leo tries the old formula of a runaway marginal that hold a group of people in a country house. The villain is the cult-actor Joe Dalessandro and the music by Luis Bacalov is taken from Milano Calibre 9 (classic polizioteschi directed by Di Leo).
The fantasy/thriller Stridulum (1979) is a bizarre pastiche of references with interesting music by Franco Micalizzi.
And new generations did not have the cinematic talent to lead the genre forward. The Killer Must Kill Again (1975) by Luigi Cozzi and Macabre (1980) by Lamberto Bava are both of nice technical content (especially cinematography), but fail in the use of film technique, just one of the principles of giallos.
And the genre would disappear in the new wave of splatter movies, zombies and cannibals who would take the European production at the birth of the 80s. Lucio Fulci's New York Ripper (1982) is perhaps the greatest example of the changing moment. NY Ripper is great in appellative proposal but is unclassifiable either as police drama, giallo or terror. Anyway it's a classic exploitation film, and had a great jazz soundtrack by Francesco De Masi.
Dario Argento returned to the genre in Tenebre (1981) and Phenomena (1983), styling exercises over his known styling. With these two films, Argento would recycle his own creations in thrillers in a way increasingly self-referential. In Tenebre his cinematic skills reaches the limits of surrealism. Including POVs foreign to the movie and a killer hiding somewhere outside the camera frame, the film proposes a technical puzzle beyond the plot. More than Profondo Rosso, Tenebre concludes a cycle in Argento's career. The techno soundtrack consists of the basic Goblin trio, Fabio Pignatelli (bass), Massimo Morante (guitar) and Claudio Simonetti (keyboards).
Lamberto Bava, son of director Mario Bava, had a nice job in the chronology of suspense. Started with regular Macabre (1980) and had success with Demons (1985) and Demons 2 (1986). However, his insistence and dedication to the genre are more respectable than the results. Morirai the Mezzanote (1986), La Foto Di Gioia (1987) and Body Puzzle (1992) are pale consequences of force that giallos had in its golden years.
Michele Soavi with the violent Deliria (1987, music by Simon Boswell) and Pupi Avati with reputable Zeder (1983, music by Riz Ortolani) were good thriller/horror lost in the flood of production consumed in the golden age of VHS.
In 2000, group Goblin would be rehabilitated in a new partnership with Dario Argento in Non Ho Sonno. The result was predictable and of obvious nostalgic appeal, but worthy of their fame. A great giallo unfortunately out of its time. Also interesting are recent revisiting to the genre as in Th3 Pit (2013), Amer (2010) and Giallo (2010) of Dario Argento again. And the French L'étrange couleur des Larmes ton Corps (2013) revisiting the enigmatic titles of the genre´s early years. The great interest in the giallos does seem to be the wave of releases of soundtracks as has been happening in recent years especially in the European market.
