The sub-genre Giallo started it’s life in the early 1920’s as an unassuming yellow colored book cover. Il Mondadori publishing in Italy decided to use yellow as the color for the covers of their crime thriller novels. This color would become the calling card and descriptive term for Italian crime thrillers and horror stories in decades to come.
Giallo is the Italian word for yellow. It describes the covers of early pulp novels about crime and murder. Italian translations of novels by Agatha Christie, Edgar Allen, Sir Authur Conan Doyle and others. Over time they became known as the Mondadori yellow books or ‘Il Gialli Mondadori’. The color yellow became so synonymous with the crime thriller genre that other publishing houses would adopt the yellow covers as well.
During the 1940’s the Italian film industry began to flourish. Many early Italian films were adaptations of popular novels. The term Giallo also became used to refer to the sub-genre of film with the same subject matter. As film grew and expanded and directors started seeking more original subject matter the sub-genre expanded to include other subject matter including horror, slasher, supernatural and occult themes. Their stories were full of intrigue and mystery. Their characters were bold and exciting.
It was during this flourishing time in Italian film that directors such as Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento and others would push this genre into cult status. Films like Black Sabbath, Suspiria, Zombie Flesh Eaters and The Beyond would push the boundaries of film making and story telling to new extremes. Musical scores from innovative composers like Ennio Morricone and Fabio Frizzi energized and emphasized these extremes with textural sounds and music that transcended and even defied traditional musical arrangement.
Now Giallo is a term used around the world to describe Italian Horror films. These Spaghetti Horror films are a part of modern film culture, as is their descriptor…Giallo.
