US lobby card #1

As The Cat o' Nine Tails(1971) opens we see Franco and his young ingenue, Lori, walking down the street. The two overhear a conversation between two men in a car and Franco is intrigued. Oscar-winner Karl Malden (wow, you don't say giallo and Oscar together very often) portrays Franco, a blind ex-newspaperman now obsessed with crossword puzzles. "I like solving puzzles," he later says, explaining his interest in mysteries. When a nearby genetics lab is broken into but nothing stolen, Franco's interest is piqued and he approaches reporter Carlo Giordani to aid in solving the crime.

The Ripper claims another victim


Blade of the Ripper or The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh opens with a man picking up a prostitute from one of Italy's seemingly endless hooker roads. In less than a minute, said hooker is topless and in the next she is being brutally stabbed. A Sigmund Freud quote is displayed on the screen over a freeze frame shot of a plane which carries our heroine, Edwige Fenech!

Classic shot of Edwige Fenech from All the Colours of Dark
All the Colors of the Dark opens with a hallucinogenic dream sequence that includes a nude pregnant lady, a killer, and an "Alice in Wonderland" reject. Jane awakens from her dream and decides to take a shower with her clothes on. Not a bad start to this strange entry into the giallo category.

This 1972, text-book giallo opens with a pair of murders within the first few minutes. A killer is loose and, at first, the victims seem unrelated except for the half-moon pendant left at each crime scene. The police catch a break when a young girl is attacked by the killer but is