They Call Me Mellow Giallo (AKA PULP FICTION Part 3!)

We all live in a giallo submarine, giallo submarine, gi--oh...hey! I didn't see you there.

Yep, it's that time again! PULP FICTION time!

So, what's this giallo stuff I'm talking about? Glad you asked! Now, I'm not here to give a dissertation on the meaning and reason of giallo literature and movies. I know most of you are smarter than you look. I'm not going to compare and contrast one director with another. I just want some of the hundreds of people a week who read my post on Marble Hornets to get a taste of something different. And as you know, I've been writing here and there on pulp fiction.

While we were over here in America dreaming of the jungles with Tarzan and Britain was fighting communism with Bulldog Drummond, Italy was producing its own pulp fiction (though a lot of it consisted of translation into Italian of English-language mystery and crime novels) on fairly cheap stock with yellow (giallo) covers.  And just the same way that the chicken follows the egg, the giallo book gave birth to the giallo movie.

I will interject that to Italians, giallo means something different than it does to Americans. We would not, for instance, look at film and consider Psycho anything but a high-quality masterpiece of American cinema. So I won't go there. I'll talk about giallo movies from this neck of the woods.

So, if you're an American, what does an Italian giallo have in store for you?

 Dario Argento's Opera 1987

Damsals, sans braziers. They may scream, they may plead for help in badly dubbed and overdubbed English and it may seem to take them HOURS to die, but they will do it clothed in flimsy lingerie, plunging necklines, or startlingl and unsettling slashes of light.

Mario Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much 1963

Music, sometimes known as noise.  Of course we all know that Italy is proud of its opera. And music in a giallo is essential. So most giallo films will scorch your ears off with the sounds of opera, classical, heavy metal, or in the case of Bird With the Crystal Plumage, what-the-heck-is-that-racket.  And there are times when the music plays such an important part that it takes on an actual role in the film. Check out Dario Argento's Opera for some brilliant use of ear-splitting metal when you least expect it (well, until after the first kill).

The killer. You probably won't see him, but his scenes are extended.  The murder scenes are the longest scenes in the giallo film.  They usually get no more graphic than a gallon of 1970s scarlet paint splashed across a wall, a back, or a bed sheet, but they're long. And who is this killer? Only time will tell. All you'll know is that he is one of the men (or could it be a strong woman?) who may be sweet on the starlet or trying to solve the murders.  Did I mention that there is always a string of them? Murders, I mean.

Umberto Lenzi's Paranoia 1968

Paranoia.  And as we all know, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

Black gloves.  They're everywhere. Holding knives.  Reaching into coat pockets.  Snapping photographs. Pulling back curtains.  Who do they belong to? Why does everyone seem to be wearing them? Are they in this year?

Dario Argento's The Bird With the Crystal Plumage 1970



So, do these qualify as pulp, aside from the fact that the books were printed on cheap paper? Let's see what we have.  Crime? Check. A mystery? Check. Exploitation? Check!  Epic battles? Well, yes, in the form of the time-consuming murder scenes. Check! Exotic locales? Well, Check if you consider that you're American and have not likely been to the wilds of Italy where many take place. Heroic adventures? Check! Except the heroes and heroines may not see it as such. A bit more sleezy than we're used to, but pulp nonetheless.

Put all these things in a pot and mix them up and what spills out is a giallo, for better or worse. Mind you, these are not action movies or cop adventures.  That's a different story for a different time.  For now, if you're interested, and want to expand your pulp experience, take a look at some of these listed here and let me know how you like 'em.

Massimo Dallamano's What Have You Done to Solange? 1972 

Lovecraft and Dick

I was reading science fiction when I was too young to know it was science fiction.  Recently, however, something has rekindled my love of the genre and I've been going back through stuff I should have read years ago and somehow missed.  Two works of short science fiction I devoured recently are reviewed here, by two of my favorite genre authors, Lovecraft and Dick.  I chose these two particular works because I feel they are some of the most poignant, most imaginative, and the most accessible of each authors' works to people who are not familiar with science fiction or who have not read these authors before.  Even non-genre fans will enjoy.

Title:  A Colour Out of Space
Author:  H.P. Lovecraft
Pages: approx. 35
Publication Date:  1927

One sentence synopsis:  An unwitting surveyor preparing to turn an old settlement into a reservoir stumbles across a mystery from half a century previous involving a strange and brilliant rock that fell from the heavens.

The Colour Out of Space is a perfect blend of horror and science fiction.  It also tells of the most alien creature ever to appear in literature or film.  Many alien stories and movies depict aliens that are either humanoid in some form, have thoughts and motives that we can relate to on some level, and behave in ways that, while we may not be able to sympathize, we can at least logically understand.  The creature in The Colour Out of Space has no form that can be described using human adjectives.  Its motivations are as foriegn as its appearance.  Its powers we can see the effects of, but we cannot fathom exactly what it is doing.  How, you ask, can a writer craft a story if his creation cannot be captured in words? Read this story.  NOW!

The Colour Out of Space lays to paper some of the most beautiful phrases and emotions I've ever read.  That's coming from an obsessive logophile. What should have taken me an hour to read took probably three hours because I had to keep going back to savor the heartbreaking loveliness of a particular passage, to consume a line of dialogue.  This story does for science fiction what Hamlet did for drama.

The story:  Told through first and second hand accounts of a past event, the tale unfolds to a man who starts out as a skeptic.  A meteroite crashes on a farm and is taken to a lab for examination with bizarre results.  Finally, it fades away, leaving something behind that begins to slowly taint the entire landscape, causing devastation to the farm and the family living on what is called by locals "the blasted heath."  Read it for that description alone:  "the blasted heath." 

News:  While waiting impatiently for del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness, Lovecraft fans can try to get their hands on a copy of the DVD or Bluray of Germany's Die Farbe, an indie release of an adaptation of A Colour Out of Space that has been getting better reviews than most Lovecraft adaptations.

3.99 for all Lovecraft in one bundle on kindle.  That is the best way to go if you're just wanting to dabble in his material.  Some of it can be quite daunting, however Colour Out of Space is the perfect starting point.

Title:  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Author:  Philip K. Dick
Pages:  approx. 135
Publication Date:  1968

One Sentence Synopsis:  In a partially deserted earth-future of fallout dust and aptitude tests, renegade androids who have killed their masters and fled to earth to try to make a life for themselves are hunted by bounty hunters for 1,000 dollars a piece, money that can buy the much-coveted living animal pet.

The movie blade runner, while based on this book, has flip-all to do with it beyond some surface scrapings.  I was a fan of Blade Runner as a teenager, but I hadn't read a lot of Dick at the time. 

Pervading themes throughout the book are loneliness, empathy, identity, and destiny.  All of these are things that slap us into reality as we move from birth to death.  But in a world where only the genetically unaltered from fallout dust can immigrate to other planets and procreate, where android slaves are used as incintive to do so, and where animals from spiders to elephants are all but extinct and coveted as signs of wealth and humanity, loneliness and destiny begin to define life.

The Story:  Bounty hunter  Rick Deckard, in the middle of a stressful time in his marriage, dons his fallout-proof codpiece and hits the hovercar-highway to hunt down renegade android murderers so he can buy a real animal to replace the electric sheep he has grazing on his rooftop garden.  The importance of the animals invades all aspect of life on earth.  Without public displays of affection toward helpless creatures, one can be suspected of being an android.  Affection toward raising and keeping animals has become a measure to define humanity.  Androids do not feel empathy or care to have animals.  At least that is the general consensus.

Rick's been looking for a big break and he might have found it when a group of android hellions murdered their slavemasters on the Mars colony and fled to earth to rape and pillage.  But what Rick finds on his 24 hour journey to bring them to justice (i.e. retire them, i.e. kill them) will challenge the very fabric of his humanity.  Through encounters in his day-long task, Rick finds questions about what makes someone human, worthy of life and respect, and what weight should be put upon intelligence, organs, and acts of despiration.  Questions to which there are no answers.

Another important theme:  Religion is as central to human life on this future-earth as pet ownership.  Mercerism is the religion of the day.  Only humans are allowed to participate in Mercerism because it centers on empathy for all actual living things and a desire for human companionship.  Because the earth is so sparsely populated after the last World War, from death and immigration, many people live their lives without much human contact.  Mercerism connects them to other human beings.  Through Mercerism, Dick explores what makes people human, what draws people to each other, and what a person (or Android) becomes when left out of the circle of humanity.

In so few pages, Dick tells a story so vast and important that it should be required reading.

My Reading Challenge

On the right hand sidebar of my blog I've listed about 60 or 70 books that I've never read.  The school I attended until my last few high school years did not have a focus on literature for whatever reason, so the books that are often required reading for high schoolers, I never read. Of course, I was never seen without a book in my face. Cheerleading practice, I was sitting with a book until everyone got there (usually a horror novel to gross out the other girls).  In the dressing room at ballet school I was reading (usually a novel or biography of famous prima ballerinas or primier danseurs).  And in bed at night or in my treehouse I was usually reading some spanning epic like Count of Monte Cristo or Anna Karenina or Gone With the Wind.

History in novels was always an attraction for me.  The Alienist, Sherlock Holmes, the French Revolution, Jack the Ripper, the Spanish Inquisition.  I read Count of Monte Crist, of over 1000 pages, when I was 14! But I didn't read Anne Frank's diary. I read Hamlet when I was 12, but I didn't have the required (for other schools) Julius Caesar.

So what I've done here is look over twenty or so greatest books lists, and seek suggestions from others which did not go over well (forcing me to assume that the majority of people I know do not read), and compile a list of what I think are great novels that I have never read, or read so long ago that I do not remember enough about them.  I tried to pick works from across the board: German, Netherlands, Asia, Europe, Britain, America, men, women, classics, modern, horror, science fiction, fantasy, tear-jerkers, young adult, exploitative, political, etc.

I've toyed with the notion of creating a 2nd list of the greatest short stories or poems that I've not read because these are often over looked and have contributed to the advancement of the culture as much as novels.  We'll see. I have an ambitious list already!

I would like anyone who happens upon this blog to post a comment with any book, short story, poem, etc. that should be on my list but isn't.  Just put whether it is a novel, short story, etc. out to the side and the author if known.  I don't anticipate finishing this in any short time span, and I'm sure that I will close a few of them after 100 pages and never pick them up again.  The point isn't to torture myself; the point is to enrich my knowledge of what is out there to be consumed.