Why bad things happen to bad people: investigating evil in the Italian giallo

Abstract

This essay explores the idea of evil through its relationship to ideas of justice and representations of suffering. It does so to consider the particularity of the giallo genre both in relation to the wider detective and horror genres of which it is a hybrid, and to the development of Italian cinema in the post-war decades. In its delirious depictions of a hellish modernity the giallo overturns faith both in Catholic tradition and in reason. By rejecting a moral standpoint the giallo represents a historic turning point in Italian popular culture. While maintaining the imagery and symbolic reference points of a Catholic sensibility, gialli discard all interest in moral improvement to indulge instead their one primary purpose, enjoyment.