Giallo to Slasher

The Last two entries have revolved around the Horror films that I grew up with or read about as a child. The films that laid the groundwork for what I must admit is now something of a love of the genre. This time I’d like to talk about The next area of horror which my increasing appetite led me too. Reading magazine articles and internet searches on horror films led me to the films of Mario Bava, particularly Black Sunday (1960). Black Sunday led me to the Italian Giallo style horror films. These foreign films led me back again to the American slasher films of the late 70’s and 80’s through basically today.

BLACK SUNDAY Bava’s Black Sunday is a very stylized and visually captivating film. Black Sunday is inundated with shots and sequences that stick with you. It’s a black and white tale of Vampires and witchcraft. The story takes second place to the visual style and atmosphere of the film, much like the Hammer films. I was really surprised when I first saw Black Sunday that there was this Masterwork of Horror visuals, which I was completely unaware of. I began to explore Bava’s other works. He has made several very good horror films dealing with supernatural elements such as Black Sabbath and Kill Baby Kill. He is also credited with beginning the Italian style of horror film called Giallo. The Giallo tradition of horror films (background of which I owe my education to various internet searches and Wikipedia) actually began as a tradition of cheap book editions of murder mysteries with yellow covers. In the early 60’s Italian filmmakers began making murder films in a very stylized manner, with masked killers and very extreme and dramatic deaths. There are many components to the Giallo style which I will not go into, I recommend the Wikipedia entry to anyone interested in learning more about the Giallo tradition in depth. Reported to be the first Giallo film is Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963). Bava later established more of the genre’s conventions with Blood and Black Lace (1964). This is the film where the masked killer with a sharp knife and black gloves becomes a staple of the Giallo. This then in turns leads us to The masked Slasher films of the US in the 70’s and 80’s. Halloween being the most iconic and brilliant example.

BLOOD AND BLACK LACE Here is where I must take a step back and explain how all of these things come together for me personally. I’ve written of my love for the old Universal Monster movies and the progression to Hammer/Poe Pictures. Things might have stopped there but in May of 1998 my son Alex was born, I didn’t know it then, but Monsters would play a huge part in his early years, and resurrect my then dormant love of horror. Alex became fascinated with the Universal Movie Monsters just as I had only at an even earlier age. We had many of the films on laserdisc but his obsession with them led to purchasing as many of the films on DVD as we could find for one of our many long road trips when he was younger. His fascination with the films and toys all led me to a renewed interest as well. As he got older we started to check out the Hammer films, they had color and blood but it was OK because it was “Hammer blood”. The other thing we had to watch out for in those days as we explored horror films was "poppy outies!"  Those are the moments when something pops out and startles you, Alex didn’t like those then, he does now and teases me for screaming when they happen. As he got older we started watching the films that I had always been too afraid to watch. He, like me, seems to enjoy watching things in order and so we watched the Scream films, and the Nightmare on Elm Street films and the Friday the 13th films, and the mother of all Horror Series for me, The Halloween series.

As I look over the progression it seems to me that Halloween is the evolution of the Italian Giallo films and the Monster series films combined. In Halloween, We have the masked killer with the knife going around and killing people in very dramatic and theatrical staging. We also have the Series element where from film to film we pick up where the last film left off, like the Old Universal Monster cycle of films. On top of that Michael Myers, is the scariest movie monster of them all. I don’t know why it is , but just thinking about that mask scares the hell out of me. What I like about those films is that he is not supernatural. He has an almost supernatural ability to take a licking and keep on ticking, but technically he’s human, his prey have a chance. This is not the case with the Jason films of the Freddy Krueger films, and thus they get less scary and more ridiculous as they go on. I don’t really care for watching some maniac kill a bunch of teenagers (Friday the 13th Part Whatever), I am interested in good battling evil (Halloween). I’m not interested in seeing more and more blood and gross out special effects (A Nightmare on Elmstreet 3) I am interested in Horror Visuals, that draw upon shadows and darkness frightening imagery and suspense (Halloween). I like there to be a mystery at the heart of the horror, some motive, no matter how far fetched and that is what Halloween also took from the giallo films. That’s also why I enjoy the Scream series so much. There is a real life flesh and blood human being behind it all, the heroes have a chance, we care for the heroes, they survive and continue throughout the series and we are thus invested in them as actual characters not just fodder for the killer. Anytime I plan to rewatch the Halloween series, just thinking about it is scares me. Michael Myers really is horror personified for me.