A Bava And Beyond
The Call Of Duty
All The Colours Of Giallo
USA 2017 Severin Films Blu Ray Zone A
There’s a moment during Kat Ellinger’s commentary track for a giallo trailer on Severin Films’ new release All The Colours Of Giallo, where she says “Thanks God for multiregion and bootlegs.” I’m so grateful someone finally said this because, for people who are accustomed to passing time in the shadowy world of the predominantly Italian giallo thriller, this is often the only way such films can be seen. If this kind of black market, cinematic contraband didn’t exist then I suspect the giallo film wouldn’t be experiencing the kind of popular resurgence that it has, internationally, since the dawn of the DVD age... for a number of reasons.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here.
All The Colours Of Giallo is a new, three disc Blu Ray set from Severin which you can/could buy either as a stand alone title or, as I did, with a special double slip case release (with a cool t-shirt and accompanying pin badges... always wanted an Edwige Fenech pin badge) housing both this and their newly restored, two disc edition of Sergio Martino’s All The Colours Of The Dark. I’m not cracking into the Martino film and accompanying soundtrack CD (which I hope is a remaster or is in some way different from the previous Digitmovies release) yet because I need to start watching and revisiting the genre with a fair few giallo Blu Ray upgrades from the last year or more but, I couldn’t resist breaking into the All The Colours Of The Giallo release before I watched anything else.
Imagine my surprise when I found out the main reason I was buying this set was, actually, the extras and not the main part of the release (although, frankly, that’s debatable because the extras are where the main meat of these discs are). The main attraction, so to speak, is supposed to be a feature length documentary about the genre which... I watched with interest but I certainly didn’t feel I was the target audience. I must have hundreds of these kinds of movies lining the shelves by now and I think the documentary from which this set gets its title is more for those viewers less experienced in the form and who would like a little more info about the history of the genre.
The documentary is predominantly one guy, Fabio Melleli, telling the audience about the history of the genre with a few other, ‘hands on’ talking heads from various movies of the time. Some of the usual suspects plus a few others. This includes discussing the meaning of the term giallo, which means yellow, coming from the yellow covers of the Mondadori thriller reprints in Italy and then goes on to cover some... but not all.. of the major players that were making these things. So, yeah, if you’ve been hanging around in the world of giallo for a while then you’re probably not going to have much of a takeaway from the documentary itself as you’ll already know it inside out but this piece, indeed the whole set, would be an absolute essential purchase for people who are only just starting to explore the field. Yes, there are some translation short cuts in the subtitles and, bearing in mind I know no Italian whatsoever, even I could see the damage done when the subtitles translate a very specific word, 'giallo', at one point as the resident expert uses it to illustrate a point, as 'gialli'... which is the plural and implies other films within the same genre, which isn’t what the guy was getting at in this particular instance. Even so, though, it’s a pretty good documentary for people who are new to this stuff and it also touches briefly on the influence of the German krimi movies of the time (okay... I’ll come back to that point a little later in this review).
I must admit, the documentary for me was a little disappointing but I didn’t mind that so much because the stuff I was after listed as extras was the real main course. However, before that main course there was another little starter, which is a mini documentary on the same topic called The Giallo Frames, an interview with John Martin, editor of The Giallo Pages and it’s something I found much more palatable but also a more or less compressed version of the other documentary on this disc. Again, like all the stuff here, this is an excellent introduction to the genre and I’m sure a lot of people who are just starting out watching these films will find it very informative.
And then we have 'the main course' of the first disc... the thing I was actually buying it for... the Giallothon. Which is 82 giallo trailers comprising just over four hours of viewing time. Now this is where the fun really begins... I’ve bought giallo trailer compilations before on DVD but this one, although it only has one trailer for each film it presents here, by far surpasses all of those previous trailer selections. Why? Well the reason is two fold. Surprisingly, two fold, in my case.
Firstly the quality of these trailers is amazing. I’ve never known some of these trailers to be in as good a shape as this and I can only assume the people at Severin have spent some time lovingly restoring them all... which is great. There are still a couple which are a of a slightly, dodgy quality but I suspect that speaks volumes about what terrible shape the material was in, in the first place. Seriously folks, the quality of these trailers is phenomenal.
Secondly, the whole four hours comes with an optional, continuous commentary track by Kat Ellinger. Now, I’ve read some of Ms. Ellinger's work in a couple of print venues and, I have to admit that in the past I have sometimes found her writing style a tad dry and academic for what she’s trying to say but, I have to say, after hearing this fantastic commentary I’m willing to give her another try and buy some more stuff with her writing in it (maybe her new book on Sergio Martino, one of my personal favourite giallo directors). Asides from the comfort issue of someone who sounds, just a little bit, like Eileen Daley... she really seems to know her stuff and comes across as quite chatty and knowledgeable about the subject. I was properly impressed because I’ve only seen about 70 of the movies Severin chose to showcase here (a few of my favourites were not included here, either) but Kat seems to know them all fairly well and, bizarrely, I found myself agreeing with almost everything she says on this track (yeah, that almost never happens).
Now, I have to admit, in regards to this commentary, I was expecting the subject to be about the trailers themselves and the way the companies were marketing the films but, no, this is actually Ellinger diving into various facts and figures about each giallo in question and giving a fairly good, informed critique of each one... not an easy thing to do with some of the shorter trailers and, I did note, that on a few of the promos she ran into the next one too, when she got really passionate about a subject. She also seems to have the same kind of knowledge of the home video industry of the last couple of decades that I have too so, there were some refreshing observations about availability of prints on here that I really appreciated.
Which brings me back to her brilliant “Thank God for multiregion and bootlegs” because, yeah, I suspect the popularity and availability of a lot of these movies over the years has increased because of these kinds of supplies, as people finally got to see the films and were able to appreciate them and look for better quality sources and transfers. So good for her and, again, if you are just starting out to explore the genre then you will find Kat Ellinger’s commentary track absolutely indispensable here. There were a few films trailered here which I personally didn’t think quite belonged in the giallo genre (and I suspect if I were to ever meet Ms. Ellinger we might come to verbal blows as to the validity of The Perfume Of The Lady In Black as a giallo... as great a film as it is... although that’s also not included here, either) but that just opens up people to seeing other Italian genre movies too so no real complaints from me here on that score. I would say that you might want to not try and watch all four hours (with or without commentary) in one straight sitting but, if you do attempt that, make sure you have a bottle of J&B by your side.
Okay so, after the main course of this set, as it were, we are given two discs of really great dessert...
Now the second disc is great for me because the subject matter is something I am a complete novice in... the German krimi. There’s a short, fairly informative documentary called The Case Of The Krimi which is presented by an interesting guy called Marcus Stiglegger and which does a similar thing to the documentaries on the other two discs. He talks about the origins of the Krimi in the red covered paperbacks of authors like Edgar Wallace, Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and, of course, as a giallo fan, I could immediately see the parallel. He also talks about the way the krimi and giallo films kind of overlap by influencing each other at a certain point in their respective cycles, which I also found fascinating. And then, of course, there’s the really great feature of this second disc... 32 beautifully restored Krimi trailers. No commentaries this time, which is a shame but, as someone who’s never had the bulk of these available to watch in my home country, I found the whole slew of trailers both fascinating and, in many cases, hilarious. And, my gosh, these krimi films must have kept the young Klaus Kinski in steady employment for years, by the looks of it. And Karin Dor, who Bond fans may remember from You Only Live Twice, is in a fair few of these too. And there’s even a couple which feature a young Christoper Lee here. I loved the fact that almost all of these were based on Edgar Wallace films and were almost all set in London which, as Stiglegger explained in his mini documentary, were almost always shot in places like Hamburg with English signs going up and cars imported to ‘do London on the cheap’, as it were. I absolutely loved this stuff and I’m so glad Severin included these because I would have never had known to bother to explore this strand of films until now.
Oh... and the third disc in this package is another thing I was highly anticipating. It’s a CD called The Strange Sounds of the Bloodstained Films... presumably as a mixed gialloistic, parody/homage of the title What Are Those Strange Drops Of Blood Doing on Jennifer’s Body? (which was an alternate title for The Case Of The Bloody Iris) and The Bloodstained Shadow. It’s basically a musical compilation of tracks from various gialli and, while I love this, I have to confess I was slightly disappointed because I have already got the full score CDs to all but one or two of the films represented here and I was hoping for some more obscure, previously unreleased tracks, truth be told. Still, that being said, it’s a lovely compilation and something people unfamiliar with some of the famous giallo scores outside of Argento’s collaborations with Goblin and Ennio Morricone might use as a kind of music sampler to allow them to go off and explore the full albums at some point.
So yeah, all in all, All The Colours Of Giallo is a blisteringly good release from Severin, who have really gone ‘a bava and beyond’ the call of duty to bring us this beautifully packaged set (I love that double slip case) and it’s something which should be on any cinephile’s movie shelves, as far as I’m concerned. Especially if they’re not into this material in the first place. This is an excellent place for newbies to start and I wish I’d had something like this to hand a few decades ago when I started being drawn into the genre. An absolutely first class release and something which shouldn’t be ignored. Try and grab one of these if you can... it’s one of the best releases of the year, so far.
