Giallo

Giallo is simply the Italian word for yellow, the colour of the cheap paperback thrillers the movement took its name from.

Mario Bava drew the blueprint in the early sixties: a masked killer, black gloves, a city of mannequins and mirrors, murders staged like fashion photography. Argento sharpened it into delirium, and the black-gloved hands of the killers on his screens were usually his own. The plots rarely survive scrutiny and were rarely meant to; the pictures run on colour, music, and dread, with logic optional. Hollywood took the body count, left the style, and called its version the slasher.