Milena (Anna Maria Petrova) has been shot to death after a night in a hotel with her politician lover. Her husband Peter Doncev (Fabio Testi), who is sleeping with someone else — spoiler its his ex and the director of the show that he was in, Julia Yancheva (Florinda Bolkan) — which leads the police into an investigation. Meanwhile, his sister-in-law Tonia (Serena Grandi, The Adventures of Hercules, Graffiante desiderio) comes to help him with his paraplegic daughter Ania (Anya Pencheva). Inspector Ivan Zanova (Paul Martignetti) takes the case, which somehow ends up — more spoilers — with Ania being the killer, as well as offing her dad, and then thinking that a puppet is now her dad. She’s confined to a mental hospital and we walk away.

This was directed by Flavio Mogherini, who also made a much better giallo, The Pyjama Girl Case, and was the art director of Danger: Diabolik. It was shot by Luigi Kuveiller (Deep Red, The New York Ripper), so with those names, I expected so much. But ah, the 90s, when gialli became erotic thrillers and movies were getting made in Bulgaria instead of the Eternal City of Rome. Written by Daniele Stroppa (Delirium, Blue Angel Cafe), this has the elements of what a giallo should be but just goes through the motions. That said, Grandi is gorgeous and could have been a giallo queen two decades before.

Sweets from a Stranger has the elements of a giallo — a masked and black-gloved killer is slicing sex workers with a razor and then killing them with a bolt gun — but it’s just about how the women decide to stop taking it and empower themselves, which may not have been what audiences were looking for.

It was directed and written by Franco Ferrini (Phenomena, Nothing Underneath, Dark Glasses), who worked on the script with Andrea Giuseppini and got the idea while writing Red Rings of Fear. It’s the only movie that he ever directed.

Stella (Mara Venier) and Nadine (Athina Cenci) are a high end call girl and an older experienced prostitute who learn of the death of Bruna, a mutual friend. They organize their fellow sex workers Lena (Barbara De Rossi, Vampire In Venice) and Angela (Marina Suma) with the goal of finding out who the killer is and stopping him while the police are fumbling in the dark.

Ferrini has spent a lot of time working with Argento — as has editor Franco Fraticelli — so the film looks good. The first kill is totally Bava with a woman being killed while surrounded by sculptures of angels. In fact, it’s nearly one of the scenes from Blood and Black Lace. Thanks for noticing, Giallo Files. Steal from the best, right?

Yet it’s also a serious movie that doesn’t exploit the woman and shows the reasons why someone would sell their body, as well as the abuse and trauma that often comes with this profession. It’s an intriguing way to use the giallo form to tell a story about real life. Of course, the first two girls are simply to get you in, using the exploitative nature of the giallo trappings to whet your appetite for more mayhem and then making you consider the actual people who are often only presents as victims.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Rospo Pallenberg, the director of this film, is probably better known for the movies that he collaborated on with John Boorman, like Exorcist II: The Heretic, Excalibur and The Emerald Forest. This is the one and only movie he ever directed and sadly, it’s mostly known for being one of Brad Pitt’s first roles.

Brian Woods (Donovan Leitch, son of Donovan, the man who sang about smoking bananas in “Mellow Yellow”) has just been released from a mental hospital after his father was killed suspiciously. He quickly falls in love with Paula (who can blame him, she’s played by Jill Schoelen from Popcorn), but she’s already dating the big jock in town, Dwight (Pitt, who met Schoelen on set and got engaged to her at the end of filming). For some reason, the school’s principal Mr. Dante (Roddy McDowell!) is also in love with her. Once we get that all settled, a bunch of murders start happening and any of Paula’s suitors could be the killer.

I mean, how can you not love a movie where Paula’s district attorney dad (Martin Mull!) gets shot by arrows and spends the entire movie stumbling around and trying to get rescued?

The kills in this movie are ridiculous: one teacher is killed on a Xerox machine and every kid gets a copy of it. Another is having way too good of a time on a trampoline before a flag gets put under it.

It all ends with Dwight’s head in a vice and Brian making him choose between the two men. Paula screams, “Stop fucking with my emotions!” and literally sends a claw hammer into his brains and slicing him in half with a circular saw.

Seriously, this movie is just weird. It has no set tone and usually, that’d make me hate things, but it works here. Also, if you like Wall of Voodoo, they and lead singer Andy Prieboy are all over the soundtrack.

You can get this on blu ray or 4K UHD from MVD. Each includes the 2018 4K restoration from the 35mm original camera negative, as well as interviews with Jill Schoelen and Donovan Leitch, an R-rated cut and a trailer. There’s also a DVD without these extras.

This movie begins with Dorian (Shane Marriott) and Shantae Graham (Sagine Sémajuste) reading their marriage vows to each other. The thing is, we aren’t watching their wedding, but instead a bloody bathroom and signs of a murder. Maybe this marriage hasn’t worked out so well.

A year into their marriage, all the Grahams do is argue. They had planned to have a baby that she lost and she’s left the nursery, going in there to cry when she thinks of the child. As for Dorian, he works too much and often stays out late. Early on, we see him at a gentlemen’s club for a bachelor party when he runs into Reagan (Krista Nazaire), the sister of his wife and the bad girl of the family. She’s wasted and fighting with a bunch of guys, so he gives her a ride home but promises not to tell her sister that she’s back in town.

Dorian used to be a lothario back in the day — a year ago — and he misses his freedom. Shantae decides to give him a marriage pass — think Hall Pass but more of a giallo plot — where he will be allowed to cheat for one night with one person. She also gets the opportunity to do this and he’s already freaking out about it, but this does not stop him for getting with her sister, who even makes him say that he loves her while they’re having sex, even if he doesn’t mean it. She starts wanting more quickly, even if he’s explained that he doesn’t want anything but the one night marriage pass.

Of course, once he learns that Reagan is dating his friend Myles (Colton Royce) — he says that she has a great throat game, a thing I’ve never heard before and I was shocked. Shocked, I’ll tell you — he decides that he wants to be with her as much as he can, even having her sneak into his gynecology office for special appointments that his front desk nurse (Sarah Cleveland) is already spilling the tea over.

There’s also an uncomfortable family barbecue — Shantae and Reagan’s parents dislike Dorian and have no problem telling him that. Then things get way worse when Myles follows Reagan and attacks Dorian and things get out of hand with Dorian forgetting his Hippocratic oath to do no harm and killing his friend and hiding the body. Can it get tougher on him? What if Reagan gets pregnant and starts sending letters to the house telling Shantae that whoever her husband used his marriage path with has the child she can’t have?

Directed by Sam Coyle (Deadly Estate) and written by Briana Cole, who wrote the book that this was based on. I haven’t even gotten to the big twist, which is pretty great. You can see this as “psychological and domestic suspense” or, you know, a giallo. It’s a pretty fun movie and exactly the stuff that I love from a Tubi Original.

You can watch this on Tubi.

La ragazza del vagone letto (The Girl In the Sleeping Car) also goes by Terror Express and Horror-Sex im Nachtexpress. It’s directed by Fernando Bali, who also made Nine Guests for a Crime and Treasure of the Four Crowns. It’s writer? Luigi Montefiori, the lunatic best known as George Eastman.

It’s as if someone said, “Can we make Last Stop on the Night Train but somehow make it scummier and more upsetting?” And that someone was George Eastman and maybe people told him, “George, that movie is already pretty upsetting.” But this was the same year that George ate a baby on a Greek island in Antropophagus, so was telling him no? No one, that’s who.

You should never get on a night train in Italy. But if you do, if you see David (Werner Pochath, the vampire-like killer of Bloodlust), Ernie (Carlo De Mejo) and Philip (Fausto Lombardi). They lose their composure when Guilla (Silvia Dionisio, Andy Warhol’s Dracula), a sex worker who has a deal with the conductor (Gino Milli) to do business on the train, refuses to sleep with any of them. They harass everyone in the dining car and despite a frustrated married woman named Anna (Zora Kerova, prepping for how horrifically she would be killed in The New York Ripper) defending them and coming on to Ernie, two of them assault her in a bathroom.

It wasn’t like the train was all that great to start with, what with a family falling apart — the father (Roberto Caporali) wants his daughter (Fiammetta Flamini) and not his wife (Gianfranca Dionisi) — along with a dying elderly couple and a cop (Giancarlo Maestri) transporting Peter, a criminal  (Gianluigi Chirizzi) to prison riding this evening’s rails. The criminals free Peter and slowly ruin everyone’s life, including playing dice for the chance to deflower the teenager, making her dad throw the final roll to see who gets her. But that guy isn’t blameless, because he’s already paid Guilla to wear his daughter’s nightgown while he takes her.

These criminals should be killed in the most brutal way possible, which doesn’t happen, but nonetheless, if you want to see how far things will go — if this movie was made in an Italian exploitation high school, the mean lady teacher would say, “I expect this from you, Montefiori, but I can’t believe that you’ve corrupted Fernando like this.” — this movie will drag you there.

A holiday movie in January? Sure. But this one has a strange tradition I’ve never heard at the center of it.

Mummering is a Christmas-time house-visiting tradition that is mainly done in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ireland, parts of the United Kingdom and in Philadelphia. People dress in disguise and go from home to home. If they’re let inside, they may dance, sing, tell a joke or share a riddle. Their hosts then guess the mummers’ identities before offering them food or drink. The mummers wears masks and speak while inhaling to change their voices. Once everyone knows who they are, they remove their masks, spend some social time and then move on to the next location.

In the 80s, mummering had a revival when the band Simani released “Any Mummers Allowed In?”

Seriously, I had no idea this existed.

Now that you know what mummering is, you can enter the world of Guess Who.

Directed by Amelia Moses and written by Aaron Martin, Ian Carpenter and Matt Wells (Martin and Carpenter wrote the Terror Train remake and its sequel, as well as Marry F*** Kill on Tubi), this begins with Michael Gosse (Corteon Moore) and his new fiancee Kaitlyn Martindale (Keeya King) driving to his hometown. He explains that mummering will be part of the holiday, which seems to unsettle her. He tells her that he will be there and will keep her safe and that it’s all in fun.

When they get there, however, she has a mummer named Warren (Ryan Bommarito) steal her mother’s necklace. Michael attacks him and soon gets it back, which shows that he may have a darker side. Then, she’s taken to his house, where she meets his mother Edith (Elizabeth Saunders), brother Bobby (Gabriel Darku) and sister Sofia (Vanessa Jackson) and her girlfriend Taylor (Amanda Ip). Everyone in town lives in trailers and things seem dire, but the families try to make the holidays fun even if they’re going through things like Bobby’s wife not letting him see their daughter.

That evening, as they go to the mummer parties, things go from fun and a little scary to horrifying as there’s a killer on the loose. And just when the movie seems to be setting up that anyone could be the killer, well…spoiler warning.

Michael’s family kidnaps Kaitlyn because her rich father Norman (Chimwemwe Miller) caused the suicide of their father and they want money from him to pay it back. The loss of a parent plays into both protagonists but isn’t as developed as well as it could be. In fact, the movie seemingly shifts from being surprising and different to expected with the idea of who the slasher is seemingly forgotten and the idea that Kaitlyn could be killing people seemingly lost, as that was an intriguing angle. Instead, the supernatural air of a riddle slasher turns into a crime drama and I felt lost.

Guess Who is so close to being a good movie that I still advise that you see it. It has a different premise and setting that hasn’t been used in the genre before and for that, I enjoyed most of the film.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Tell Me No Lies feels inspired by Denise Huskins, who was accused of faking her own kidnapping. That’s the subject of American Nightmare, a Netflix series, but this is a Tubi Original.

Sofia Rose (Keturah Chambers) and her boyfriend Ben (Aaron Fontaine) are getting together for dinner. He tries to make it seem like they’re still a couple and tries to fix where their relationship went wrong, even if she wants nothing to do with him. He breaks down her defenses and later that night, while they’re in bed together, a kidnapper with a voice changer breaks in and kidnaps her. Ben’s the main suspect, as best friend Emily (Nkechi Simms) has hated him for the way he treats her galpal. But this feels like a giallo — everything does to me, I’m obsessed — and the truth is always much odder than the stories we tell.

When she was young, Sofia’s father was shot in a convenience store by a criminal accidentally released by Detective Wright (Wil Johnson). By coincidence — hmm, maybe not? — he’s on the case. And when Sofia frees herself from being kidnapped, he suspects her. But she’s smart enough to work with Jessica (Emily Eaton-Plowright), a young reporter who wants to prove herself.

I just read another review of this movie that was beyond distressed that this movie took a true case and twisted it. Have you ever watched an exploitation movie before? If that upset you, you can never watch so many movies.

Tell No Lies keeps things switching and changing and moving until the end, genuinely having some surprises beyond what you expect from a Tubi Original. Actually, I have to change my mind on that, as not only do I watch every single one of them but I also have to tell you that the quality has improved so much recently.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Courtney Paige, who wrote the script with J.R. Reher, Chapel starts with Cohen Black (Jeremy Sumpter) waking up in a hospital, unsure of who he is, where he’s been and why a fisherman found him nearly drowned five months ago. He’s helped by a nurse named Sofia Bloome (Pardis Saremi) to learn who he really is and what the name Ethan Tucker means.

Filmed in Utah, this movie is referred to as a country crime thriller. Once Cohen wakes up, he becomes a suspect in a serial murder case and followed by Detective Wyatt. He also has a series of memories that flood back in which he is surrounded by a table of women, which includes Grace Veum (Taryn Manning).

Whatever the past is, Cohen is drawn to a rundown motel where he meets 10 o’Clock Jack (Lochlyn Munro) and despite his relationship with Sofia, he falls for a girl named Misha (Carol Anne Watts). Then he starts to forget attacking — and even killing — women and the police close in, with Wyatt telling him that Sofia can no longer save him. And what’s the story with the envelope that Grace gave to Sofia? And is this whole thing a cover version of Identity by way of Momento on a Tubi budget?

Regardless, it starts strong and is shot pretty well, which is more than you can say for most streaming movies, right?

You can watch this on Tubi.

John Houseman called director George Marshall, “one of the old maestros of Hollywood … he had never become one of the giants but he held a solid and honorable position in the industry.” He started as an extra and made his first short in 1915 with And the Best Man Won. His career was nearly six decades long and he worked the whole way to an episode of The Odd Couple in 1972, as well as acting in episodes of Police Woman and the Playboy movie The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder. Some of the more recognizable movies in his career include The Ghost Breakers, Papa’s Delicate Condition, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! and The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz.

Marshall is obviously not an Italian director, but L’Intrigo (AKA Dark Purpose) — co-directed by Vittorio Sala — feels like a giallo.

Art historian Raymond Fontaine (George Sanders) and his assistant Karen Williams (yes, that’s Shirley Jones in a giallo) have been brought to Italy by gallery owner Monique (Micheline Presle) to appraise the collection of Count Paolo Barbarelli (Rossano Brazzi). What they don’t know is that the count also has a deranged daughter named Cora (Giorgia Moll) who just might be dangerous to be around. Blame the skiing accident she just had for making her an amnesiac and quite angry that her daddy has found a new American love interest. Good thing — or bad for Karen — that she has a dog who can’t wait to eat a young lady.

Thanks to Suburban Pagans, I learned that costume designer Tina Grani (Blood and Black Lace) worked on this movie, which makes sense, as Jones is constantly the most fashionable young American in Rome. Cora also claims to be Count Paolo’s wife, and not his daughter, then she finds her way to the bottom of a cliff. That’s because Paolo caused her skiing accident and has felt guilt ever since, so he was killing her slowly. Once he met a new and interesting — and outspoken — new love, he got rid of the old one. She’s half his age and he has all the money, so men have never changed. They just get a new model every few years. Not as many outright kill the ex-wife.

This is a giallo as much as The Girl Who Knew Too Much is. By that, I mean that the genre had not found its strangeness yet and was still inspired by Hitchcock. It’s a good movie, but don’t go in expecting neon, black gloves and psychosexual murder.