Giallo Month Pictorial: Weird Weapons
The classic giallo weapon is the straight razor, as featured in Dario Argento’s seminal The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, but the genre is famous for its many more unusual instruments of death. Can you name the gialli in which you’d find murders committed using…
Bees driven mad by a special perfume? A cat with poisoned claws? A decapitating digger? A wooden dildo? A motorbike fitted with an electric chair? An English horn? A giant hatpin? A mathematician’s setsquare? And a metal fist covered in spikes?
It’s enough to give Jason Voorhees a headache!
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Ross, you’ve got some corkers there! I’d take a wild swing at the cat as being from Lucio Fulci’s The Black Cat, but I haven’t seen that in years. Intensely curious to the source of: digger, dildo and spiked glove! Hopefully someone out there is up to the challenge.
I’m pretty sure that the hat pin is from Fulci’s Murder Rock, and the setsquare is from Bad Inclination unless I’m mistaken. I want to say the electic chair motocycle is Welcom to Spring Break, but I don’t think that’s correct. The others are a mystery to me.
Isn’t the horn from NON HO SONNO (SLEEPLESS) ?
Is the dildo from Sister of Ursula?
The dildo is; I think, from The Sister of Ursula, the spiked glove Death Walks at Midnight and the flute Crimes of the Black Cat. The pin is Murder Rock and the Cat is The Black Cat.
I got my wires crossed the Flute is of course Sleepless and the set square is Bad inclination and I think the electric shock is welcome to spring break.
Not bad, people!
The hatpin is indeed from Murder-Rock; the dildo from The Sister of Ursula; the electric chair from Welcome to Spring Break; the setsquare from Bad Inclination; the glove from Death Walks at Midnight; the horn from Sleepless; and the cat from Crimes of the Black Cat (NOT to be confused with Fulci’s The Black Cat!).
Any takers on the bees or the digger?
I though Spring Break was an American slasher ?!!
I toyed with the idea that the bees might be phenomena, but it isn’t gialli. I think it might be Delirium which I know has some insect connection.
The digger. I know what it is, but I didn’t want to be Grady. Damn it. it’s My Dear killer.
Well done, Glenn — you’re spot-on with both!
You’re right, nzhorrorfan: Welcome to Spring Break is a giallo/US slasher hybrid. I allowed it here because it was directed by Umberto Lenzi (Eyeball, Spasmo and many others)… and because that weapon is pretty crazy! An enjoyable film too, with the killer’s identity also very much in the giallo mould.
Bava’s “nod” to TENEBRAE – A BLADE IN THE DARK is another I enjoy which not many have seen – I have mentioned my liking of this film on the Facebook page RETRO has as well – it has some excellent scenes in it, including a tooth bashing scene which is harrowing to watch, and I think it has a foot impalement – or is it a hand one ? Can’t remember off hand, but it is also quite nasty.
The soundtrack is one similar to a Fulci flick ( House by the Cemetery ), some of the shots are copied directly from TENEBRAE ( the p.o.v looking at the blade, etc … ) hell, even one female victim has clothes which looked like they were ripped off from the motorbike female victim in TENEBRAE. Will watch this again this weekend.
Ross – This was a fantastic and fun piece. Great interactive idea!!!
Call my crazy, but I do not want to die by dildo.