Giallo (film)

Giallo is a 2009 giallo film directed by Dario Argento and starring Adrien Brody. The film was poorly received and is perhaps most-known for Brody's lawsuit against the film for not having been paid rather than the movie itself.

Plot

Turin, Italy: French flight attendant Linda and Italian-American detective Enzo Avolfi team up to find Linda's younger sister Celine. Celine, a model, has been abducted by a serial killer. Known only as "Yellow" ("Giallo" in Italian) he kidnaps beautiful foreign women in his unlicensed taxi cab. After drugging them, the killer proceeds to mutilate and finally murder them. He photographs his deeds so that the photos may grant him personal sexual gratification.

Enzo receives a phone call from a fellow officer, who finds the body of an Asian woman outside a church near a fountain. They find out she's still alive, and starts to speak in Japanese. Enzo and Linda start to look for a translator, who tells them that the girl was praying Buddha and then repeated "yellow". They visit the morgue, where Linda realizes that the killer's face could be yellow, and the coroner tells Enzo that yellow skin is symptom of liver disease, so the killer might be in the waiting list for a new liver.

Giallo

Giallo (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒallo], plural gialli) is a 20th-century Italian slasher genre of literature and film, usually with mystery elements and often with either supernatural horror or crime fiction elements. In Italy, the term simply denotes thrillers, typically of the crime fiction, mystery, and horror subgenres, regardless of the country of origin. In English-speaking countries, however, the term "giallo" is used to refer to a particular style of Italian-produced murder mystery film which often includes elements of horror fiction and eroticism (similar to the French fantastique genre). The genre began in the mid-to-late 1960s, peaked in popularity during the 1970s, and subsequently declined over the next few decades (though some examples continue to be produced). It has been considered to be a predecessor to and significant influence on, the later American slasher film genre.

The word "giallo" is Italian for "yellow". Its use as a label denoting the thriller genre derives from its association with a series of cheap paperback mystery novels, popular in post-fascist Italy, which were adorned with yellow covers.