Sound and Horror in the Giallo Film

The Italian giallo was a sleazy, violent, and stylistically baroque form of horror film that was produced in great numbers from the 1960s to the 1980s. Sound and Horror in the Giallo Film listens closely to these films and asks how their soundtracks and their use of the human voice can help us understand their significance within Italy's profound postwar social, economic, political, and cultural changes. Throughout the history of Italian cinema, soundtracks have been a site of concerted and sustained intervention by political and economic forces. In Sound and Horror in the Giallo Film, author Damien Pollard argues that, because the giallo film pushed the boundaries of the form while also touting unapologetic commercialism, the voices on its soundtracks were both aesthetically exaggerated and directly shaped by commercial imperatives, which were influenced by Italy's turbulent postwar years. Featuring case studies of several well-known giallo films, including The Girl Who Knew Too Much, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and Tenebrae, Sound and Horror in the Giallo Film is an original analysis that reveals how the cinematic voice binds film and history.