As you know, I watch a lot of Tubi movies. And as I’ve been enjoying them, I started to realize that they just might be giallo. This article is my exploration into them and an attempt at creating a new subgenre. But first, for those not aware of the Italian giallo form, a short history.

What is giallo?

In Italian cinema, a filone is a term used by Mikel J. Koven in his book La Dolce Morte, as Italian movies form a large river and each genre is a small stream that flows off of it and then into several other smaller streams that come from it.

That means that while Italian exploitation film is itself a filone, so is giallo and so are the many films that are offshoots, such as f-giallo (female focused giallo, A Lizard In a Woman’s Skin), American giallo (Dressed to Kill), sex giallo (Strip Nude for Your Killer), post-1982* giallo (Obsession: A Taste for Fear) and even erotic thrillers (Night Eyes) and combinations of other filone.

This incredible article — A Genealogy of Italian Popular Cinema: the Filone — explains that a filone is:

1. It can be understood as a broader and more variable, flexible idea than genre
2. It can be understood as a tradition or formula of film narrative, rather than genre
3. Or in a double sense: it can be understood as a filone of a larger genre (like crime or horror), or simply as a filone with its own ‘strands’.

The giallo itself can be defined by so many criteria. Some believe that only Italian movies can be giallo. Or, according to The Giallo Files, “A giallo is a stylish European murder mystery.”

My own personal definition is that the classic giallo needs several elements:

• A series of murders committed by a black gloved and masked killer; we might see those murders from the killer’s point of view
• A psychosexual explanation for the reason for the murders, which may be seeing a murder at a young age, sexual issues, gender confusion, twins or money.
• A hero or heroine that is either suspected of the crime or nearly murdered; this person is usually a foreigner in a strange land and has to investigate the crime on their own outside of the ineffective police.
• Fashion. Italian 1970s giallo are known for high fashion, which also includes wild living spaces and parties that can only happen in films.
• Sex. Lots and lots of sexual content without becoming outright filth.
• Intangibles: The music, the talent involved, the title of the movie (animal titles get you closer to the genre) and bottles of J&B.

As you may already know, the secondary giallo filone can go completely away from these and become their own movies. It’s not a rigid thing but you can feel when something is giallo.

Giallo existed before Bird With the Crystal Plumage, but movies had been inspired by the Edgar Wallace aperback mystery novels published by Mondadori in yellow — or giallo — covers for a long time before that. After that film, however, giallo began to become more stylish and less in debt to American movies.

So how does the giallo get to America? Much less Tubi?

I’m not going to make the hypothesis that filmmakers like Chris Stokes have seen the films of Dario Argento, Sergio Martino or Umberto Lenzi.** However, they have seen the offshoots of giallo in the U.S., filone that took their own root: the slasher, the erotic thriller and the Lifetime movie.

The slasher: Whether you go back to Black Christmas, Peeping Tom, A Bay of Blood or even Psycho as the start of the genre, the slasher is the less fashion and sexually frustrated cousin of the giallo.

The erotic thriller: In my mind, there isn’t much difference between the erotic thriller and the giallo other than style. Then again, when you have directors like Adrian Lyne making them, you may get close to a giallo. However, many of these films are more about the sex than the murder set pieces and they miss the high fashion and tense camera work.

The Lifetime movie: Perhaps the closest American filone to the black giallo — we’re getting there. I mean the classic ones, not this new legitimacy that the channel has like No One Would Tell, Video Voyeur: The Sarah Wilson Story and Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life. These movies are either ripped from the headline or feature a murder plot that has a psychosexual reason. Therefore, bastardized giallo.

With Lifetime now making more celebrity movies, adaptions of books and made for cable movies with actual stars, where has the market for the movies that they made best gone? Tubi.

So what is an black giallo?

I always call out the films of Chris Stokes when it comes to Tubi Originals. So many of his films seem indebted to 80s slashers, direct to video films like The Stepfather and giallo. I Hate You to Death, Forever Us, Best Friend, The Assistant and several others are worth your time.

In You’re Not Alone, the hero has already lost his wife to a masked and gloved killer, but now he has to watch through security cameras — he’s on a flight — as the same killer comes after his daughter.

The Ex Obsession has Kim and John happily married while he gets a man crush on a co-worker named Grant. Kim and Grant used to date and start sleeping together and when John finds out, he kills his friend and ends up impersonating him.

Across three of The Stepmother films,  Zooey is a woman who needs a family but keeps killing, moving from husband to husband, family to family.

Stokes isn’t the only director making these movies.

Directed by Jaira Thomas and written by Briana Cole, Played and Betrayed has a total giallo plot: a young couple goes on vacation to fix their marriage, meets another couple who inspires them to live a more racy life and then, the husband kills the wife. Except the body disappears.

The Marriage Pass is directed by Sam Coyle and written by Briana Cole. It has a husband missing being single and a wife allowing him to have an affair, but she has a plot that twists to get her revenge.

Booker T. Mattison’s Twisted Marriage Therapist is very close to a Lifetime film, as a marriage therapist puts couples through the wringer just to get her kicks.

Of all the Tubi Originals, Surprise may have gotten the most reaction when I posted it. David Gamble has everything he wants, like a gorgeous wife and a profitable company with his best friend. Yet when he thinks his wife and friend are sleeping together, he loses his mind and goes as over the edge as it gets.

Should you watch these?

That’s up to you. I have a lot of fun with them. Don’t expect an Argento movie but you will never be bored. Like the giallo, these films eschew formula, often with the villains killing everyone and getting away with it or the protagonist killing an entire family and being left to deal with the result. The twists are often so crazy that you may see them coming which I appreciate. Now, if they had more Italian disco soundtracks, I’d be fully endorsing them.

*I usually put an alpha and omega to the Golden Age of giallo: 1964’s Blood and Black Lace — yes, I know The Girl Who Knew Too Much is also kind of a giallo — and 1982’s Tenebrae.

**Although they now can easily, as Tubi has an Italian horror and giallo topic subchannel that has some of the best movies of the genre, all free, all available to watch just as easily as you watch a basic Hollywood movie.