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Allan Bryce--English editor of the excellent horror magazine The Dark Side--edited and published this glossy, visually lavish reference book that covers 35 years worth of Italian giallo thrillers. (The title is therefore a bit misleading, since we don't see reviews of Italian sex and horror movies, although sex and horror are central elements of the giallo. A more appropriate, though obviously less enticing, title would be The Definitive Guide to the Italian Giallo Thriller.)

Giallo, for anyone reading this review who somehow isn't familiar with the term, is Italian for "yellow," which was the colour of the covers of the cheap pulp mystery-thriller novels published in Italy by the Mondadori company. When Italian directors began to film some of these novels in the 1960s, the term was transferred from the page to the screen, much like the term noir, which was originally used to describe the black-covered French mystery-thrillers that went on to inspire its own sub-genre.

The giallo films officially started to be made in the 1960s, came into full swing in the 1970s, faded somewhat in the 1980s and dwindled significantly in the 1990s, but Smith reviews them all, the earliest being Mario Bava's Evil Eye (1962) and Antonio Bonifacio's Il Delitto di Via Monti Parioli (The Crime on Via Monti Parioli), released in 1997, being the most recent entry. Over 200 films are reviewed alphabetically, with a special end section called Hidden Treasures, which reviews ultra-obscure gialli which would be familiar only to the most hardcore aficionado, like Giuliano Biagetti's Interrabang (1969), Gastone Grandi's 1965 outing 24 Ore di Terrore (24 Hours of Terror), and Francesco Degli Espinosa's Giochi Erotichi de una Famiglia Perbene (Erotic Games in a Respectable Family), made in 1975.

Smith follows a rigidly formal structure for his reviews, dividing each into two parts--the first consisting of a tantalizing description of the plot, the second being a clear, concise (if occasionally too brief) critique of the film as a whole. In the case of the notorious and classic gialli--such as The New York Ripper and just about everything by Dario Argento--he goes into greater depth and detail, assessing the controversies and influential effects that the films have produced. When describing the plots, Smith thankfully doesn't give away too much of the mystery, preferring to keep the murderer's identity a secret, and always concluding with a creepy open ending. His critique of Mario Landi's Giallo a Venezia (1979), for example, goes like this:

Venice. The bodies of a married couple, Flavia and Fabio, are discovered on the dockside. She has drowned and he has been stabbed to death with a large pair of scissors. Marzia, Flavia's best friend, is questioned by the police and a chain of slayings is set in motion. The victims include a prostitute who is stabbed in the crotch; Marzia's lover, who is shot in the kneecaps before being doused in petrol and set alight; and Marzia herself, tied to a kitchen table and dismembered before being stuffed in a fridge. Meanwhile, extended flashbacks reveal that Fabio gained perverse pleasure from forcing his young wife to take part in degrading sexual acts....(pg. 55)

You might experience a sense of deja-vu when watching the opening shots of this parodic giallo because the gory murder of a young woman by a ski-masked killer is from Death Walks in High Heels. The scene is revealed to be a cinema showing of that film attended by the protagonist and his young son (posters adorning the cinema foyer include Spasmo, Carrie and the cop thriller La Banda del Trucido). Ex-crooner Johnny Dorelli delivers a surprisingly good performance as a journalist who is keen to exploit the murders for their newsworthy value, yet compelled to catch the culprit because he is the main suspect. Paradoxically, although the killer is one of the least likely suspects in giallo cinema, his/her identity is not difficult to guess. Ennio Morricone's score is uncharacteristically awful and there is a cameo appearance by Salvatore Baccaro in a shot from The Beast in Heat! (pg. 70-71)

My initial viewing of this seemingly silly film (with a bewildered audience in an insultingly small London cinema complex--actually Cannon, Panton Street, because the guilty should be named) left me slightly embarrassed and deeply disappointed. After the majesty of Inferno and Tenebrae, one of my favourite directors seemed to have lost control and all sense of balance. Everything about the film seemed ill-conceived, overblown and just plain ridiculous. Thankfully, repeated viewings have cast new perspectives on this insane, but surprisingly lyrical movie. Because once you have recovered from the shock of the kitchen-sink plot, with its sleepwalking, insect-friendly heroine, razor-brandishing chimpanzee, and deformed offspring, the possibilities of a cinematic experience which unfolds as illogically as a real nightmare begin to dawn. And there are some amazing images and truly revolting moments of horror to be found in this maggot-ridden dreamworld. This is a film which has to be seen more than once. Like the soundtrack's eclectic mixture of themes, typified by Claudio Simonetti's title piece (a frenetic melange of synth rock and operatic female vocals), what initially seems like an awful concept soon begins to exert a strange allure. Unfortunately no amount of re-viewing can convince me that using a typically driving Motorhead track as an aural background to Donald Pleasence's dead character being taken away is anything but a misconceived idea. Elsewhere, Jennifer Connelly's cutesy performance is as stomach-churning as the maggoty hellhole she finds herself trapped in, Daria Nicolodi's school-marm is a complete non-starter and Patrick Bauchau gives a truly comatose performance as the police inspector investigating the murders. But casting and directing actors has never been one of Argento's strong points. In purely conventional cinematic terms, Phenomena fails miserably but its (unintentionally absurd) combination of bizarre images and themes, plus the main score (try to ignore the two heavy metal intrusions) give this oddity an irrational appeal. (pg. 92)

Uneven reviewing qualities aside, Blood & Black Lace offers an immensely illuminatiung amount of information on each film's alternate titles as well as the various running times and the sound and image quality of each version available on video, laserdisc and DVD. For example, Andrea Bianchi's Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975) is known in Italy as Nude per L'assassino (Naked Women for the Killer), Der Geheimnis Volle Killer (The Full Mystery Killer) in Germany, and Desnuda ante el Asesino (Nude in the Presence of the Killer) in Spain. Smith informs us at the end of his review that the German version, released letterboxed on Exquisite Video, is missing the pre-credits abortion scene, while the Italian video version, released by New Pentax Film and running 93 minutes and 43 seconds, is letterboxed and is missing the murder of Franco Diogene's character due to a jump in the print. The most complete version seems to be the AVO Film cut, which is letterboxed at 2.05:1 and runs 93 minutes and 53 seconds. Smith also tells us about the availability of many films' soundtracks; Strip Nude for Your Killer's title music can be found on the Gatto Nero CD Murder for Pleasure: Giallo and Thriller Themes.

This extra information regarding the content of each film's various video versions is especially useful for such films as Sergio Bergonzelli's 1970 thriller In the Folds of the Flesh. The British release of this film--by Redemption video--shows an Ilsa-type female Nazi officer in full SS regalia, making one believe this is another Italian Nazi exploitationer, when in fact, as Smith tells us, the only overt Nazi imagery is seen in a flashback--much like Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter (1974). It goes to show that you can't judge a video by its cover.

Blood & Black Lace is an excellent study of the Italian thriller genre, a must-have for anyone with a passion for these films. Aside from the occasional shortcomings in some of the reviews, my only real quibble is the insultingly brief introduction "by top giallo scriptwriter Ernesto Gastaldi" as the book says on its cover. True, Gastaldi is responsible for making some of the earliest entries in this distinctive genre, like 1966's Libido, and co-wrote Sergio Martino's Torso in 1973. But his introduction--all 20 lines of it--doesn't really say anything about the giallo that wouldn't be common knowledge to anyone not already familiar with the sub-genre. And Gastaldi's recollections on the making of Libido are too brief to be illuminating. Such an excellent book on giallo thrillers should have had a foreword by an equally excellent giallo screenwriter--I would have much preferred to read an intro by Franco Ferrini, Dardano Sacchetti or Gianfranco Clerici--but I guess you can't have everything.