Plot
Maria is interrupted during a massage by her angry husband, Paolo. He has proof she has been unfaithful to him, though she denies it. That night, someone dressed in black and wearing surgical gloves brutally murders her after injecting her with a chemical that leaves her paralyzed but still conscious. The next day, the inspector assigned to the case, Tellini, questions Paolo. The police find a picture of Maria caressed by a man's hand, but his identity is unknown because half the picture is missing. At home that night, Tellini confesses to his artist wife, Anna, that he doesn't feel cut out for homicide investigations.
Tellini continues to investigate the crime and trace the needles used in the crime to a local doctor. The doctor protests his innocence, and when Tellini leaves the office, he is accosted by Paolo. Paolo too insists he is innocent and plans to conduct his own investigation. The killer strikes again, this time murdering a clothing store owner with no connection to Maria. Tellini visits a scientist acquaintance of the woman, who demonstrates that a species of wasp will use a toxin to paralyze and eviscerate a tarantula to lay its eggs in the corpse. Tellini has the scientist arrested on drug possession charges.
Laura, who owns the spa that Maria patronized the day of her death, phones Mario, who was Maria's lover in the picture. He and Laura take photos of lovers to blackmail them, and she tells him to deliver the last batch of photos of Maria's indiscretions to a woman named Franca. When Mario goes to deliver the package, Tellini and Paolo (who is now working with Tellini) chase him. After a brief struggle with Mario, Paolo falls to his death, but Mario is then run down by a car in the street below. Shortly after being interviewed by Tellini, Franca is murdered. But the police rule that Mario was the killer of all three women. When a tape of Tellini and his wife making love is made public, Tellini again determines to leave the force. But when he is nearly killed in a staged automobile accident, he realizes he needs to solve at least this one last crime.
One of Laura's spa employees, Jenny, resigns in protest of the blackmail ring. Laura obliquely threatens her life, but their conversation is interrupted by the spa's blind masseur. Jenny spends the night at a friend's house but is followed by the killer who brutally murders her, and then leaves her body in a trash bag to be found the following day. Tellini interviews some of Jenny’s coworkers, including the aloof Laura, a nurse who wears gloves identical to the killer's, and the blind masseur, who takes off his darkened glasses to reveal colorless, unseeing eyes.
That night, Laura telephones Tellini to inform him that she has determined the killer's identity. But when he goes to the spa, he finds her dead, with a colorless contact lens next to her body. Realizing the masseur had been faking his blindness and was indeed the killer, Tellini races home to find the killer attacking Anna. The men struggle, and Tellini subdues him and saves Anna. The next day, a psychiatrist tells Tellini that the masseur had begun faking his sightlessness after killing his unfaithful, sexually voracious wife; he then continued to kill to satisfy his inner demons. Satisfied at solving the case but still disillusioned with police work, Tellini wanders the crowded streets of Rome.
Giancarlo Giannini is an Italian actor and voice actor. He won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor for his performance in Love and Anarchy (1973) and received an Academy Award nomination for Seven Beauties (1975). He is also a four-time recipient of the David di Donatello Award for Best Actor.
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The Girl Who Knew Too Much is a 1963 Italian giallo film. Directed by Italian filmmaker Mario Bava, the film stars John Saxon as Dr. Marcello Bassi and Letícia Román as Nora Davis. The plot revolves around a young woman named Nora, who travels to Rome and witnesses a murder. The police and Dr. Bassi don't believe her since a corpse can't be found. Several more murders follow, tied to a decade-long string of killings of victims chosen in alphabetical order.
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is a 1970 giallo film directed by Dario Argento, in his directorial debut. The film has been credited with popularizing giallo, an Italian genre of thriller developed in the 1960s. It is the first in what has been called the "Animal Trilogy", along with Argento's next two gialli, The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971) and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1972).
Lovers and Liars is a 1979 Italian comedy film directed by Mario Monicelli and starring Goldie Hawn and Giancarlo Giannini. It is Hawn's only foreign film. It was released in the United States in February 1981.
Sleepless is a 2001 Italian giallo film directed by Dario Argento. The film stars Max von Sydow and Stefano Dionisi and marks Argento's return to the giallo subgenre. The film was another box office success when it opened in Italy, taking in over 5,019,733,505 lira by the end of its theatrical run.
Giallo is a 2009 Italian horror giallo film co-written and directed by Dario Argento and starring Adrien Brody, Emmanuelle Seigner and Elsa Pataky.
The Monster of Florence is the name commonly used by the Italian media for an unidentified serial killer active within the Province of Florence between 1968 and 1985. The Monster murdered fourteen victims, usually young couples secluded in search of intimacy, in wooded areas during new moons.
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Paolo Cavara was an Italian screenwriter and film director. He is best known for collaborating with Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco E. Prosperi on the 1962 mondo film Mondo Cane, and for directing the fiction film The Wild Eye (1967) and two giallo films, Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971) and Plot of Fear (1976).
The Bloodstained Butterfly is a 1971 giallo film directed by Duccio Tessari. It starred Helmut Berger and Ida Galli.
The Murri Affair is a 1974 historical drama film directed by Mauro Bolognini, starring Giancarlo Giannini and Catherine Deneuve. It is based on real events of a notorious 1902 murder trial. It was awarded with a David di Donatello for Best Film.
Giallo a Venezia is a 1979 Italian giallo film directed by Mario Landi. The film released on December 31, 1979 in Italy and starred Leonora Fani. It is known primarily for its extremely graphic scenes of sex and gore, including a woman's leg being slowly sawed off with a long knife. There is also a Brazilian VHS version containing XXX scenes under the title Pesadelo em Veneza.
Milonga is a 1999 Italian giallo film co-written and directed by Emidio Greco. For his performance Giancarlo Giannini won the Globo d'oro for best actor.
Seven Blood-Stained Orchids is a 1972 giallo film directed by Umberto Lenzi, who also co-wrote the screenplay.
The Weekend Murders is a 1970 Italian giallo film directed by Michele Lupo. It starred Ida Galli, Beryl Cunningham, Anna Moffo and Orchidea De Santis.
The Suspicious Death of a Minor, a.k.a. Too Young to Die, is a 1975 Italian giallo film directed by Sergio Martino.
So Sweet, So Dead is a 1972 Italian giallo film directed by Roberto Bianchi Montero.
Midnight Killer is a 1986 Italian giallo film starring Valeria D'Obici and Leonardo Treviglio, and directed by Lamberto Bava.
The Editor is a 2014 Canadian black comedy giallo film by Astron-6 and starring Paz de la Huerta, Adam Brooks, Laurence R. Harvey, and Udo Kier. The film is an homage to and parody of giallo, a cinematic and literary subgenre originating in Italy and popularized through films like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Torso, Deep Red, and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin.
