The other day I was blathering on about something and something led to me thinking about Harry Stephen Keeler and his weird ass writing which made me remember these weird ass things from my youth and I thought – why not? A cheap and lazy look around finds this:

Giallo: [ˈdʒallo]) is the Italian term designating mystery fiction and thrillers. The word giallo is Italian for yellow. The term derives from a series of cheap paperback mystery and crime thriller novels with yellow covers that were popular in Italy.

Over the years I’ve read the thoughts of many, many people who have chronicled these things who did and will do a MUCH better job than I ever could or can but, we do what we can and I remember these fondly, mainly from and old movie site I used to run in the early days of wordpress. We used to have a lot of fun with these movies, back before things got kind of out of hand, so why not have another look, now that we’ve calmed down and aged like smelly cheese? Because, if anything, I could compare myself to fucking stinking smelly cheese and that would be pretty close.

How do we approach this now that we’re mature? A killer is going around a London All – Girl’s School killing young ladies by sticking a knife up their WAZOOM BLLEP BLORP DELETE CENSOR. You can’t talk about shit like that these days. Fuck, you can barely talk about anything any more without getting a fucking talking to or a “hey woah, you can’t say that” type of warning. Remember when that last Rambo movie came out and ‘film critics’ were crying because it was too violent? When did people become such pussies? Can you even call people that? Probably not. BLOP BAZZORP BLEEP SHUT UP! Stow it! LOL – I was watching something just today where Robert Loggia tells Glenn Close that (she’s all dressed up) and “Looks like a real broad!” He’s so proud too. Can you imagine how the media would react if someone called (insert whoever you can think of) a broad? The world would probably collapse.

As it turns out there’s a reason behind these types of murders and it’s not just for shock value. And it’s just a fucking movie.

What’s the plot of this movie? Well – I kind of summed it up earlier. The key to this thing – which I actually think is a really good piece of filmmaking – is trying to figure out what’s actually going on and who’s committing these crimes. They introduce about a dozen possible suspects and, while I’m not going to give it away, you won’t guess who’s doing it. Is it the gymnastics teacher who may be having an affair with his student(s)? Is it whoever the perv is who eyeballs showering girls through a hole in the wall? Is it the guy who hates Italians? Is it any of the number of priests taking confessions? You probably can’t say this either but I think priest are fucking creepy in the first place, especially older English ones. But… a lot of people creep me out… like Greeks,,,, so there’s that too.

When I was writing about the shit above, I thought about approaching the amount of nudity in this (and other such Giallos) and how this isn’t exploitation but seems more of an attempt at an example of how the female body can corrupt men and what comes from that, but we can talk about nudity in movies some other time – anyway, there’s a ton of it in this, if you’re not into that type of thing. So… corruption? Sexual deviance? Or the sinful treachery of a group of teenage females and their secrets they keep?

No bras! Stick shifts! Rotary phones! People smoking in public! Treacherous cliques! Sounds like my high school experience. This is actually a pretty good movie, it’s out in HD these days and you don’t even have to use a choke to start your car.

Filed under: GIALLO-RAMA