The most fun I had in my year of horror movie immersion came when I went down the rabbit hole of Giallo Cinema.

Previously, I knew the term, and knew it was associated with the work of Italian director Dario Argento, but I didn’t know anything more than that. This project was my opportunity to remedy the blind spot.

Giallo is Italian for “yellow,” and it is the name given to a certain kind of hard-boiled murder mystery (in both book and movie form). The name derives from the bright yellow covers of pulp novels published in Italy starting in 1929. Think of the American “pulp fiction” novels that inspired the title of Quentin Tarantino’s movie.

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