All right, three more gialli!

A weirdly common way for gialli to begin is for some complete rando to get killed by some other complete rando, right before we jump to our main cast of characters. And every time this happens, I end up forgetting about it — I didn’t have any connection to those people, I don’t care that some rando died — until later in the movie, it turns out to be totally significant, at which point I’m like oh right, that first murder, got it.

And so A White Dress for Marialé starts off exactly like that, with a double-murder/suicide (as a guy kills his wife and her lover in flagrante delicto), at which point we now cut to this castle, where a bunch of people start arriving for the world’s most suspicious dinner party. Every single person involved in this party is deeply weird and is obviously concealing some secret, and they’re all behaving in bizarre, borderline insane ways. You will be shocked to learn that the party devolves into murder and sex, and that psychosexual trauma underlies characters’ actions. I hope I didn’t spoil it too hard.

As gialli go, it’s… fine, I guess, but the part where it’s set in a weird isolated castle makes it feel not quite right, almost more gothic than giallo.

Nine Guests for a Crime also starts with a murder; a couple in flagrante delicto is interrupted for the dude to be brutally killed. But only one death here, so it’s comparatively a very gentle and mild giallo, right.

We then cut to a boat taking a family of terrible, terrible people to an island. They’re a rich family, and so help me god, all I could think about for this whole movie was the Bluths, because they give extremely Arrested Development vibes. But with a giallo twist, which means that most of them are sleeping with each other’s wives, they all have terrible secrets, and oh yeah, there are about to be some killings.

So this whole movie is also set in a single isolated setting — early on, the killer kills the yacht crew and sends it away, stranding everyone on the island — but it doesn’t feel as gothic, because it’s a very stylish midcentury house (with so very many Sharper Image executive desk toys), not an ancient castle. I can’t say this is an especially above-average giallo, but it’s a good solid one, and the ending has some fun energy.

And finally, there’s Tropic of Cancer, an Italian movie about Haiti, with all the cultural sensitivity that you’d expect from a giallo. (But honestly, it’s not bad! I mean, they go hard at voodoo, but that’s almost just baseline Haiti horror content.)

The setting does make it feel unique, with fun tropical vibes, despite the horrific giant spiders. The plot is absolute nonsense, centered around a scientist who invented some kind of aphrodisiac that is tempting everyone to murder; but a bit of light nonsensicality is pretty much the giallo price of admission, so. I think that, like the other two, this one lands at good but not great.

Ultimately all of these are mostly recommended for giallo fans, but considering that they came from volume five of the Forgotten Gialli series of Blu-ray box sets, you’ll forgive me for imagining that giallo fans are pretty much the only likely audience anyway.