The B-to-Z programs have unearthed a few gems from the legendary Italian giallo genre, launched by Mario Bava in the 1960s with The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace, and later taken to new heights by Dario Argento with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage.

This allowed us to screen prints of several curiosities such as The Killer Nun, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, and The Fifth Cord, with three-time Academy Award winner Vittorio Storaro behind the camera. Film prints that, sadly, have since deteriorated beyond use.

One of the (still) surviving uniques is Emilio Miraglia’s The Red Queen Kills Seven Times. As in his previous film, The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave, Miraglia perfectly captures the hybrid nature of the giallo. The genre is often associated with a gloved killer and a whodunit plot—hallmark ingredients in the work of Bava and Argento—but it is far more varied than that. Erotic thrillers and “conspiracy films” (inspired by Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques) are also part of its lineage. Miraglia’s films stand apart from classic gialli through their combination of gothic and fantasy elements. One of the many strengths of The Red Queen Kills Seven Times is Bruno Nicolai’s sublime score, a true giallo soundtrack classic. Music, in fact, is an integral part of the genre’s rich history. The soundtrack for Lucio Fulci’s The Psychic, composed by Fabio Frizzi and as hypnotic as some Goblin tracks, was later reused by Tarantino in Kill Bill. The film owes its reputation to its gripping plot, which brilliantly reinterprets the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe.