A Lawyer, a Mortician, and a Professor Walk Into a Morgue...

One of the trends of the gialli, when possible, was for the film making team to attract a formerly successful Hollywood star who had aged out of his heyday a bit... think The Pyjama Girl Case who nabbed Ray Milland, The Cat O’Nine Tails starring Karl Malden, or The Killer Is On the Phone featuring Joseph Cotten... and, with today’s example, Farley Granger leading So Sweet, So Dead (1972). Directed by Roberto Bianchi Montero, the feature, which is also known as the less subtle The Slasher ... Is the Sex Maniac! follows a small city detective, Inspector Capuana (a mustached Granger – They Live by Night; Side Street), who has recently moved to a larger locale in southern Italy.

A very important film from 1935 that is probably not as well known today as it should be, the swashbuckling action adventure Captain Blood, directed by Michael Curtiz (The Sea Wolf, The Breaking Point), featured numerous important happenings that would leave rippling effects on the industry for many years to come. Though Curtiz had immigrated to the United States years before, having some success in the silent era with Noah’s Ark (1928) and with the early sound pictures Doctor X (1932) and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), it was this bigger budget extravaganza that would help him become a top tier film maker, someone who would go on to make an inordinate number of future classics, including The Adventures of Robin Hood, Angels with Dirty Faces. Yankee Doodle Dandy, Mildred Pierce, and perhaps most importantly, Casablanca... among others.

A fun little fact to start... the colourful monikers utilized by Quentin Tarantino as criminal code names in his breakout feature Reservoir Dogs (1992) was done in homage to the film reviewed here today, Joseph Sargent’s crime thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) – which used a similar method to keep the criminals unknown to others. Set in the cement underground that is the New York City subway system, all cold, rugged, and dirty, it seems like any other day. . . that is, until these code named gun wielding assailants, led by accented mastermind Mr. Blue

Already getting buzz as one of the top films of this past year and perhaps being in line for the Academy Award Best Picture next month, One Battle After Another (2025), written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (and inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Vineyard”), features big stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Benicio del Toro, and has everything going for it... meaning that it should wow and amaze. Yet, from a screenplay perspective, a lot is missing... despite being nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay as well.

After director John Kosinski got the need for speed while making the big smash hit sequel Top Gun: Maverick back in 2022, he clearly wanted to stay in the fast track, deciding to co-write and direct what has become one of the 2026 Academy Award Best Picture nominees – F1: The Movie (2025). With racer Lewis Hamilton on board as a producer and the film making team getting permission from all of the actual F1 racing teams, they shot at real Grand Prix weekends throughout the 2023 and 2024 seasons, with a faux garage set up between the Mercedes and Ferrari pits... making things look as accurate and impressive as possible. Following longtime driver Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt – who did most of his own racing), he has become a jack of all trades of sorts – driving everything from F1 and Daytona, to taxi in New York, he is basically a meandering racer-for-hire.

You know you’re in for a doozy of a caper when you’ve got dead bodies piling up, a mysterious black cat wandering around (with all that revolves around the creature and its unlucky curses), a disappearing wicker basket (simply suspicious), and a seemingly occultist person wandering around whilst wearing a striking white cape... remember what George Costanza once said in the comedy Seinfeld – “I bet you he is mixed up in this. I don't trust men in capes”. Without further ado, we look at co-writer/director Sergio Pastore’s Italian giallo The Crimes of the Black Cat (1972) – sometimes also known as Seven Shawls of Yellow Silk. Clearly influenced by Dario Argento’s 1970 hit The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and part of the massive gialli boom that happened soon after, things start off in Copenhagen, Denmark (it was actually shot there)