What Have You Done to Solange?
The short film The Five Fingers of a Dog from local filmmakers Charlie Compton and Justin Landsman will play before our feature presentation.
Backed by Ennio Morricone’s abundantly creepy score, this giallo whodunit finds Fabio Testi (Revolver, Garden of the Finzi-Continis) as a college prof with a taste for his female students who’s blamed for a string of murders. Top-shelf arthouse filmmaking, endless jazzy twists. And, director Massimo Dallamano was cinematographer on Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More!
A sexually sadistic killer is preying on the girls of St. Mary’s school. Student Elizabeth witnessed one of the murders, but her hazy recollections of a knife-wielding figure in black do nothing to further the police’s investigations. Why is the killer choosing these young women? And what does it have to do with a girl named Solange?
“[The title] is an evocative question made even more evocative by the fact that the question, the answer, the character of Solange and even the name ‘Solange’ aren’t mentioned until 70 minutes into the movie. Up until then, it’s kind of a murder mystery, kind of a movie about adultery, sort of a movie about gossiping schoolgirls, and there’s, like, ESP or something going on. Honestly, it’s weird.” -- Kyle Anderson, Nerdist
ABOUT JANUARY GIALLO:
"Every January, we like to pour ourselves a glass of J&B whiskey, sharpen our straight razor and slip on those black gloves to celebrate our favorite horror sub-genre, the Giallo. For those of you who don’t know, a Giallo is Italy’s answer to murder mysteries and thrillers that was kicked off by Mario Bava with The Girl Who Knew Too Much (aka Evil Eye) in the early sixties. While filmmakers like Umberto Lenzi made some excellent Giallos in the late sixties/early seventies such as Orgasmo and Knife of Ice, the sub-genre became popularized by Dario Argento with The Girl with Crystal Plumage . Throughout the seventies, Argento along with Sergio Martino, Lucio Fulci, Luciano Ercoli, Aldo Lado and many more made several visually stunning and viscerally violent cinematic excursions. The word Gialllo means ‘yellow’ in Italian, which was the color of the pulp and crime books that some Giallo took inspiration from. Although stylistically, the Giallo shares DNA with the German Krimi Films, the sub-genre took some wild turns mingling with occult, Gothic horror, Poliziotteschi, and psychedelia elements that created many unique variations." - Cinematic Void
