I Just Saw

The giallo is a curious breed. Italian for “yellow”, the word refers to the colour used for paperback crime fiction that was sold in Italy and intended to be quick, exploitative, pulp entertainment. The term in its colloquial sense means murder mystery or horror thriller. Also known as Spaghetti Slashers (a la Spaghetti Westerns), the film genre called giallo came about in the late ‘60s and peaked in the ‘70s, arguably bottoming out in the ‘80s.

The genre perhaps reached its nadir in 2009 with a film literally called Giallo, a production so bad it was sued by its American star (Adrien Brody) for non-payment and couldn’t even rise above a 1/4 from Fangoria. That one was directed by Dario Argento, a former master of the craft who also made Four Flies on Gray Velvet.

Of Argento’s non-supernatural work, I’d say that Deep Red (1975) and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) represent his best, while Deep Red and 1977’s Suspiria (about witches) are his best films overall. Tenebrae (1982) might also be up there in both categories as a rare post-‘70s work of brilliance.

Produced a year after Bird, Four Flies on Grey Velvet begins with Roberto Tobias (Michael Brandon) drumming in a popular band when he feels himself stalked by a mysterious figure. He follows this man to an empty theatre where a violent struggle ensues, photographed by someone in a baby-faced mask. This latter figure then stalks and blackmails Roberto, escalating to serial murder as the rock star tries to find the truth behind this bizarre campaign of psychological torment. Suspects include his wife Nina (Mimsy Farmer), her cousin Dalia (Francine Racette), and Jacques Stany as a psychiatrist friend.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever really seen a film scholar or critic make this connection, so take it with a pinch of salt, but I’ve long thought that the American slasher films of the late ‘70s and ‘80s were derived from giallo. Especially the non-supernatural slashers can be described as degradation or (if you were being generous) distillation of the giallo formula: stalking scenes, a psychopathic killer, a truth that’s buried in the past, and of course the gory violence.

Slashers, though, strip out the motivating forces behind these elements in a giallo. Gone are the complex murder mysteries, abnormal psychology, and Freudian themes related to sex and gender, at least at a conscious level. Instead of these, you get teenagers and Final Girls, the plots are reduced to loosely arranged scenes, and the deeper sexual themes are more unconscious.

(Participants in the slasher genre’s creation have said that they never intended to say anything about virginity and such. The tropes came about because they were what appealed to audiences, who inevitably wanted to see the good girl survive and the “bad” girls punished.)

Four Flies on Grey Velvet sometimes feels closer to a slasher than a giallo. This might just be a facet of ‘70s films that we’re more sensitive about now, but it hurts the story that its protagonist is kind of an obnoxious arsehole. To be fair, Roberto does come across as an actual popular musician of the time. I doubt that John Lennon was a nicer guy.

Speaking of the ‘70s, some of the humour is… a choice. The hero hires a private investigator who’s a gay man and every scene with that guy vacillates between extreme cringe-worthiness and representation so dated that it’s honestly hilarious. I didn’t even know that the guy was supposed to be gay until he made a joke about jumping on a table like a sissy. Before that, he just looked like an average middle-aged man.

Come to think of it, he looks a bit like a guy in one of those 1950s PSAs about homosexuals. (“But Billy didn’t know that this ordinary-seeming man was a deviant…”) I wasn’t offended by the character, though. It’s too silly to be offended by, and I’ll say this for the sleuth: he’s the most likeable character in the film. I cared more about his arc than Roberto’s.

Other comedic elements in Four Flies include a sad sack mailman and a couple of heavies that Roberto hires for protection. And from whom he should get his money back, honestly, they’re so incompetent. Giallos often have comedic elements, but this one leans into them to a point where it feels almost like a flat-out comedy thriller at times. The humour is mostly awkward and bizarre, generating laughs of incredulity more than anything, but a laugh’s a laugh, I guess.

The film pays homage to the famous staircase murder in Psycho (1960). The best thing about the film is its stalk ‘n’ slash scenes. The sheer strangeness of classic giallo, such as how it overdubs its actors depending on which market a given work is being sold to, creating an uncanny valley effect, adds to this and makes those scenes still chilling to a modern audience even if other elements of the narrative fall flat.

My favourite was the murder of a blackmailer in a public park. This is where the filmmaking, which has always been eerie, edges into the surreal. The blackmailer looks at people and they snap out of existence, a technique meant to show the passing of time as the character waits for an assignation, before realising that it’s dark. And they’re alone.

A murder in a subway is also gorgeously filmed, making vibrant use of light and dark. I love the use of music in giallo murders, too. It’s almost counterintuitive, relying on pop and rock as opposed to more classical or gently melodic strains. Yet it’s perfect, drawing you into another world, one just to the left of our own that’s filled with madness and terror. One that we could wander into at any time.

The mystery is extremely intriguing at first. The opening scene, intercut with weird shots of a human heart supposed to indicate Roberto’s excitement as he performs, gears you up for the film and then becomes progressively eerier when Roberto is drawn into a lunatic game that neither he nor we understand. (Going back to my beef with the protagonist, I was amused that the game depends partially on an assumption that he’ll act like an aggressive arsehole.)

However, the plot becomes less engaging as it continues. This is one of the more weakly plotted giallos. I have a vague feeling that plotting was never really Argento’s strong point anyway, hence why even his best films are known for their abrupt endings and exposition dumps. Here he papers over the cracks with comedy scenes, but it doesn’t come together as well as in something like Deep Red, where motivations and narrative flow are more developed.

The killer’s motivation, when it comes, feels very slasher-esque, and you can see a similar pattern in later American films like Sleepaway Camp (1983). If you’ve seen Deep Red and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage you can probably guess how the story will turn out in a general sense. This was a genre that was kind of obsessed with sex and gender norms, making women both instigators and victims of violence.

If you’re a fan of horror thrillers you’ll probably enjoy Four Flies on Grey Velvet, even if essayist Fran Liebowitz described it as the worst film of all time. It’s much less solid than its early peers, but still atmospheric and engaging.