Giallo: Death in Style

Pizza, pasta, even the great Michelangelo himself, Italy has contributed more wonders to the world than one could hope to shake a stick at. That said, stick-shaking, as well as knife stabbing, gun shooting, hand strangling and any other method of murder one can conjure up is more than acceptable in regards to one of Italy’s other great exports, I speak of course of Giallo.

As a literary genre, Giallo (the Italian word for yellow) established itself in Italian culture during the 1930s shortly after publishing powerhouse Mondadori begin to translate and publish the works of Agatha Christie, James M. Cain, Sir Authur Conan Doyle and numerous others celebrated crime authors, all behind a series of bright, garish yellow book covers which oddly stood in stark contrast to many of the grizzle tales beneath.

Contrary to first impressions, the yellow jackets employed by Mondadori were not used to underplay the content there within but instead to draw the consumer's attention towards their next fix of crime fiction, regardless of the author’s notoriety or the quality of the books. If a reader enjoyed crime fiction, detective stories, murder mystery or horror come thriller, they quickly learned a Giallo book was what they needed to look out for.

As is often the case, success in one realm of entertainment is inevitably adopted by another, and by mid-1970 Giallo had bled its way from paperback onto the silver screen. However, unlike the early literary works Mondadori had imported from around the world, Giallo was becoming something distinctly Italian and almost completely at odds with the direction horror had taken in America.

Stylishly violent, uncompromising brutal and seamlessly blendable with just about any sub-genre of horror imaginable, Giallo evolved in leaps and bound froms it’s inception to the golden age during the 70s and 80s. And while today the genre may not feature as prominently as it once did the influence of Giallo continues to shape works of horror the world over, perhaps none more so than VanGore’s own The AlleyMan.

A true nail-biting murder mystery, The AlleyMan wears its admiration for all things Giallo on its sleeve, gruesome kills, heart-stopping suspense, a seemingly supernatural menace and a plot that will keep the reader guessing right up until the final drop of blood is spilt.