Suite for Turntable and Piano — Expression

I’ve been.. a week? into the final movement.

The title is stolen from the giallo film by Sergio Martino, starring the classic giallo actress Edwiga Fenech, called Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key. Like all giallo it’s expressionist thriller, and this title comes from a previous film of his (same year, also Ms. Fenech) where a hapless victim receives a written message saying, without context and never explained: “your vice is a locked room.” We all have our creative byways.

Edwige Fenech from Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)
Continue reading Suite for Turntable and Piano — Expression

Antonio Margheriti’s “Gamma One” quadrilogy

In 1966 and 1967, Margheriti made these four sci-fi films loosely connected by the same space station (Gamma One), the same sets, and the same characters. (Margheriti also directed, among many other films, Devil of the Desert Against the Son of Hercules (1964) which was part of my sword and sandal obsession over the past couple of months). Ivan Reiner wrote the screenplay for all four movies.

Continue reading Antonio Margheriti’s “Gamma One” quadrilogy

Giallo film festival

I immersed myself with Dario Argento/Mario Bava/Lucio Fulci flicks a few years back (so probably 10 years back) having approached them most likely from my immersion in Italian zombie films of the 70s, which was actually a thing. Relatively recently (so probably a few years back) I watched Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, a stylish thriller and a departure from his standard psychological horror. It hooked me.

And so I became obsessed with Italian giallo films. Their characteristics, generally, include: murder (natch), suggestive supernatural elements, the absolute grooviest clothing and interior design that you could ever imagine from 70s Italy–even if the setting was ostensibly the US or Germany or wherever–and a high breasts-per-scene ratio. The mood will range from thrilling cat and mouse tension to a Gothic molasses of lingering ennui. A more keen eye than mine could enumerate more fully on the shared cinematic tropes. The quality, as with anything of course, is greater-or-lesser but they are never a waste of time if you’re looking for that impossible combination of gritty murder and stylish, iconic 70s.

Continue reading Giallo film festival