Thrill Me! The Best and Worst of the Giallo Films - Page 3

The Fifth Cord is a slow start, but has more awesome playing in the dark from Storaro, and the killer menacing the, what three year old? Jeez.

Are any actor's eyes better at conveying that drunken, "hero who lost his way" thing than Franco Nero? I think maybe not. His relationship with the blonde was kinda fucked. He slaps the shit out of her, and then she pretends her throat is cut IMMEDIATELY after, just for laughs?

The killer's reveal is a little troubling in the sexual politics sense, moreso than the usual "the killer was a woman!" giallo twist.

There's a nice twist on that type of standard Giallo twist with Lamberto Bava's A Blade In The Dark. Andrea Occhipinti stars as a guy composing a music score for a horror movie directed by a woman, about a boy who loses a tennis ball, and is egged on by his friends to go fetch it in the dark corridor that it went into (the hilarious dubbing has them chanting YOU ARE A FEMALE several times). Needless to say it's a page from the Psycho/Dressed To Kill handbook, but it's handled quite nicely. Plus someone literally gets strangled by celluloid. Michele Soavi has a supporting role in the movie.

It's worth a look.