DVD: Giallo (18)

A killer with an oddly yellow hue is abducting women on the streets of Rome and torturing them in his lair.

When a model goes missing, her sister implores a New York detective to track her down before it is too late. Dario Argento doesn't mess around with much plot development in Giallo, instead moving quickly to the torture. That the film is short is perhaps its main attribute virtue. The in-joke of the killer's skin colour – "giallo" refers to the genre, the Italian word for yellow and slang for thriller novels – palls quickly. Despite the casting of Oscar-winner Adrien Brody, the acting is almost universally terrible – everyone seems to have been dubbed badly – and pacing is flat.