i read this because i wanted to know more information about the development of the giallo genre and i heard it was the best book available on the topic. in my experience, giallo scholars prefer to offer up the same tired formalist analysis, giggling at "tacky" costumes and bad acting like it's mystery science theater 3000, and criticizing these films made in the 60s-80s for sexism instead of actually providing any information about the genre that would be useful to a viewer who doesn't want the same boring self-affirming style of film criticism spat back at them. given that, i had high hopes for an italian guy writing a history of the genre in english.

the book shines when it actually talks about how the genre developed and died, but about 70% of this book is taken up by the author describing, analyzing, and reviewing movies. a majority of this film discussion doesn't contribute very much to a historical understanding of the genre besides being a reference point for movies that aren't available yet in english.

maybe i was misled on the purpose of this book but i gave up on trying to finish it about halfway through and only read the parts relating to the italian film industry and the making-of movies i have already seen. clearly the author put a lot of work into this book, using primary sources only available to italian-speaking people, and he did a good job correcting many misconceptions about the genre. i learned some surprising things, like the fact that giallo tv serials were popular in italy long before argento ever made a movie, so the destruction of the giallo movie in favor of tv shows was actually more of a return to form that it seems like. however, removing all the descriptions of movies that didn't directly contribute to the development of the genre, this book would be 100 pages at most. this particular field of film studies has a lot of work to do, at least when it comes to making information available in english.