I get it. This movie isn’t a giallo. But what is it, really? It was sold under so many titles, from the more horror-centric Cauldron of Death (complete with completely insane poster) to the more crime-oriented Gangland, the great Italian title Un Tipo Con una Faccia Strana ti Cerca per Ucciderti (A Guy With a Strange Face Is Looking for You to Kill You), The Dirty Mob, Mean Machine and even O Exolothreftis (The Terminator) in Greece.

It was written by Jose Gutierrez Maesso, who wrote Django and was an uncredited writer for the magical Pensione Paura. He’s joined by Santiago Moncada, who wrote A Bell from Hell, Hatchet for the Honeymoon and The Corruption of Chris Miller, along with Mario di Nardo (The Fifth Cord, Five Dolls for an August Moon). Directing all of this mayhem is Tulio Demichelli, who made the utterly insane Assignment Terror, as well as The Two Faces of Fear,  Espionage in Lisbon and the well-named There Is Someone Behind the Door.

Make no mistake — this is a movie awash with exploitation, gore, aberrant behavior and no real heroes. In short, it’s exactly the kind of movie you come to this site to read about.

Rico Aversi (Chris Mitchum) has just got out of jail, two years after Don Vito (Arthur Kennedy, the inspector from The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) killed his father. Everyone wants Rico — notice that his named is spelled completely unlike the title of the movie — to kill the boss off, but Rico just wants to enjoy life outside of prison.

Malisa Longo (Cat in the Brain) plays his girlfriend — and who used to love Rico’s woman — and she enjoys sleeping with the hired help, which gets one unlucky member of the workstaff castrated in shocking detail. Then, his John Thomas gets shoved in his mouth and he’s dipped into acid and turned into soap. This movie is not interested in being unoffensive. Plus, you get Paola Senatore (Eaten Alive!) as Rico’s sister, whose death sets him finally on the path to revenge.

Robert Mitchum is one of my favorite actors ever, so it kind of pains me to admit this his son kind of slumbers through this leading role. But then again, everyone else in this movie is going to seem boring next to Barbara Bouchet, who pretty much sets the screen on fire, dances on the flames and sets it ablaze all over again in this movie. Anyone could show some leg to get the attention of some criminals. Bouchet goes all in, dancing nude on the roof of a car, covered in fog, giving her all no matter how grimy this scumfest gets. Without her, this movie would be passable. With her, it’s transcendent.

So yeah. It’s not a giallo. But man, if you’re coming in looking for bad behavior, gorgeous women and great clothes, it has all of that covered.

Francois Gaillard and Christophe Robin must be big Danzig fans, as their arty French neo-giallo films often reference his albums, whether it be the solo instrumental album this one is named for, the Samhain song that inspired All Murder, All Guts, All Fun, The Misfits song Last Caress or Die Die My Darling, which in turn was named for the 1965 Hammer movie.

Angela fantasizes about the gorgeous fortune teller who lives next to her. She dreams of what it would be like to touch her, but soon finds her decimated body. She accidentally breaks a crystal ball, which gives her the ability to see the future. But will it protect her from being the next victim?

This movie may have been made in the style of the giallo, but it doesn’t have the story to back it up. Let’s back up — yes, most giallo movies actually do have plots and are not formless exercises in style. This looks gorgeous, but it is inevitably empty inside.

Also, much like all giallo, my wife walked in at the exact moment that two nude women were making love. How am I still married?

Also known as Blonde Bait for the Murderer and The Blonde Connection, I have to come clean and tell you that I only watched this movie because of Anita Ekberg. Here, she plays a rich man’s wife who falls for Francisco (Fabio Testi), who decides to strangle her while they make love because this is a giallo and these things occur.

Of course, as also happens in these movies, two criminals saw that happen and start blackmailing his wife (Nadja Tiller, The Dead Are Alive). As if that wasn’t enough, two cops are trying to prove that Francisco is the killer and use one of their daughters as bait.

Giallo is different before Argento gets involved, closer to noir, but this is still worth checking out. You can watch this on Amazon Prime or on the YouTube link below.

Not a lot of nudity and little blood, this giallo is closer to Agatha Christie than Edward Wallace. That said, it does have Paul Naschy in it and it’s directed by Javier Aguirre, who made Count Dracula’s Great Love.

Patty Shepherd (Edge of the Axe) stars as Lisa, who has gathered twelve of her husband’s closest friends and informs them that she believes that one of them is the killer. That said, there are really seventeen suspects when you add in the butler, chauffeur, maid and gardener.

All the phone lines get cut, people start getting killed off and secrets are revealed. There aren’t many Spanish giallo that I can think of, other than Clockwork Terror, The House That Screamed, Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll, The Corruption of Chris Miller and A Dragonfly for Each Corpse. Come to think of it, I know way more of these movies than I thought I did.

You can get this on the new Vinegar Syndrome Forgotten Gialli box set.

I’ve seen giallo from all over the world, but this would be the first Hong Kong version I’ve ever seen. It was created by Julien Carbon and Laurent Courtiaud, whose Black Mask 2: City of Masks I had seen, but had not prepared me for this delicious offering.

It features Hong Kong starlet Carrie Ng (Naked Killer, Sex and Zen), who practically smolders the screen as Carrie Chan, a woman devoted to the sexual release of death and using her jade talons to render flesh into works of art.

During the reign of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, a torturer invented a special drug that paralyzed muscles yet increased the sensitivity of nerve endings. Sometimes he used this for erotic pleasures, but mostly it was used to extract pain from his victims. Yet he always wondered what the drug would be like for his own use, so he killed himself under its influence.

Now, the jade skull that contains this rare substance has been found by Catherine Trinquier (Frederique Bel, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec) and she sees it as a way to gain a fortune after murdering a lover to acquire this treasure.

Meanwhile, the demonic Carrie is staging a play all about the famed executioner while conducting her own psycho-sexual experimentations of pain and pleasure.

Known as Red Nights in the Western world, this movie has no slavish devotion to the 1970’s giallo style while somehow feeling that it could rightly take its place within it, uniting the world of the exploitation anti-heroines like Olga and Ilsa while at the same time dipping a green clawed digit into the respective private parts of the best parts of the works of Martino and Franco, pausing for a moment to be bathed in the lights of Argento and basking in the sounds of a Morricone.

There are moments when I was worried that this film would descend into the depths of torture porn, but it righted itself many times. This is why I watch films, to discover new and delirious highs. Consider this a must-watch.

Look for this as Red Nights on Tubi.

Thanks to Mondo Macabro, I’ve been getting into Greek exploitation a bit lately, which brings me to this Erricos Andreou-directed film that I would have passed up if it weren’t for that most radiant of all giallo queens, Barbara Bouchet. She plays Iro Maras, a rich woman who is sleeping around on her sailboat obsessed husband (Gunther Stoll, What Have You Done to Solange?) with a young playboy named Nikos (Robert Behling, Island of Death).

There’s the old man to kill him during a yacht regatta, but just like the plot of a Carol Baker giallo you may have already seen, the wrong person goes in the drink. Yet that’s not the end, as always, and nobody gets out unscarred.

Jessica Dublin, who as also in Island of Death, makes an appearance. She also shows up in a bunch of Troma fare, like Troma’s War and the second and third Toxic Avenger movies.

So yeah. Greek giallo. I guess you can consider Blind Date, Medusa, Death Kiss and Tango 2001 on that list. Man, just read this description of that last one: “Joachim is an impotent man who who secretly films his friend Stathis having sex with girls from the Tango Club. When Stathis kills the lesbian that he catches with his girlfriend, the death is caught on film. Necrophilia soon follows.” If you don’t think I’m not furiously tracking that down after posting this, you don’t know me at all.

You can watch this on YouTube.

This post-Bava pre-Argento giallo is named for the punctuation that combines a question mark and an exclamation mark, which is the necklace worn by the character Valeria. It was directed by Giuliano Biagetti, whose career was mostly in comedy and erotic films.

Fashion photographer Fabrizio (Umberto Orsini, The Damned) has set sail with his business partner wife Anna (Beba Loncar, Some Girls Do), her sister Valeria (Haydee Politoff, Count Dracula’s Great Love) and a model named Margarit. They soon learn that a murderer is on the lamb after killing a cop just in time for their boat to run out of fuel. Meanwhile, the women explore the island and meet the mysterious poet Marco (Corrado Pani, Watch Me When I Kill). Then they find the body of that dead cop.

Of course, Marco is about to seduce all three of the women. You know how giallo goes. And you know that no one is getting out of this unscarred.

Interrabang isn’t an easy movie to find, only coming out on DVD in Italy as of 2012. That said, you can watch it on YouTube.

Umberto Lenzi’s early giallo — before the Argento influenced Seven Blood Stained Orchids — feel more like film noir than the standard films of the genre. Speaking of that same movie, it would also use the J. Vincent Edward song “Why.” And while we’re discussing influences, this movie is definitely feeling all sorts of Les Diaboliques.

Jean (Jean-Louis Trintignant, Amour) is a rich socialite who has come to the aid of Nicole (Carroll Baker!), a gorgeous woman mixed up with Klaus (Horst Frank, The Dead Are Alive). Sure, Jean is married, but that doesn’t stop him from falling for her, even when he learns that she’s been paid to kill him. Of course, his wife Danielle (Erika Blanc!) is mixed up in this, but Nicole is smarter than she seems. Beryl Cunningham (The Salamanders) is also in this as a dancer and Helga Line (Nightmare Castle) is on hand as well.

This was produced by Sergio Martino and has a screenplay by Ernesto Gastaldi, the writer of The Whip and the Body, The Possessed, The Sweet Body of Deborah and All the Colors of the Dark. And check out that Riz Ortolani score!

This is coming out in the huge The Complete Lenzi/Baker Giallo Collection set from Severin, which has plenty of other great films like Orgasmo, A Quiet Place to Kill and Knife of Ice. I know that I’ll be buying it!