Before horror’s slasher craze of the 1980s came another subgenre that took over the imagination of fright fans: giallo. The Italian style of horror, which had its heyday during the late ’60s and into the mid -’70s, didn’t have the popularity of later American slasher films, but its uniqueness helped to inspire what was to come. The king of giallo was and always will be Dario Argento. The 82-year-old director’s career continues today, with his first film in a decade, Dark Glasses, coming out last year. He is the man responsible for so many giallo classics, from Suspiria to Phenomena, but his masterpiece will always be 1975’s Deep Red. It’s the epitome of what giallo represents, but one scene with a creepy-looking doll takes it from being a well-filmed proto-slasher into something so intense that it’ll make you scream out loud.

RELATED: From ‘Blood and Black Lace’ to ‘Deep Red,’ These are the Best Giallo Horror Films

What Are the Typical Tropes of Giallo Movies?

Giallo films stand out from other horror entries in many ways. Part of that distinction lies in the color. So much giallo is focused on bright, popping colors, especially red, and not just from the use of blood. Giallo does have plenty of gore though, but it usually comes from the hands of an unseen killer, oftentimes just shown in the form of a black glove holding a knife. Most giallo movies are a mystery, with a reporter or a detective trying to figure out who is behind a series of gruesome murders. That style can lead to the creation of some of the scariest scenes in horror. Dario Argento is responsible for a lot of that, from needles taped to a victim’s eyes in Opera to the look of the skeletal Mater Tenebrarum from Inferno as part of his « Three Mothers » trilogy. Argento has competition too. The eye-gouging scene that starts Mario Bava‘s Blood and Black Lace will make you squirm. Massimo Dallamano‘s What Have You Done To Solange has a drowning murder that’s highly uncomfortable. Scenes like these, while disturbing, are to be expected in the genre. However, Argento turned that up with something beyond disturbing in Deep Red, creating a scene where the kill itself is the least frightening part of what happens.

What Is ‘Deep Red’ About?

Deep Red hits every mark of what’s expected from a giallo without becoming a series of tropes. The film opens with someone being stabbed to death in a house on Christmas. That’s terrifying enough. Two decades later, we meet a psychic named Helga (Macha Méril) who is killed by a black-gloved figure. Her murder is witnessed by a musician named Marcus Daly (David Hemmings). The killer begins to stalk Marcus, even whispering outside his door and playing a child’s song. Helga had heard a child’s song as well before she was killed, but in her mind.

Marcus teams up with a reporter named Gianna, played by Daria Nicolodi, who was Argento’s frequent collaborator, girlfriend, and the mother of their daughter, actress Asia Argento. Another victim is seen at a house where baby dolls hang from the ceiling with nooses around their neck. The gloved killer is in the house and begins to play that eerie song again. They then attack, drowning their victim. Without giving anything away, Deep Red is a series of twists and turns with the characters following a series of clues that draws them closer to the killer. It leads to many memorable scenes, including a mural depicting the Christmas killing in a creepy old house, and a mummified corpse with a Christmas tree in a wall. In an empty school, Gianna is attacked and Marcus discovers the killer in a very clever twist (you won’t get that reveal here) that’s a callback to the Christmas intro, but suffice to say, the killer meets their end in a gruesome manner. Deep Red is the first time Argento teamed up with Goblin for the tense score. Combine that with the unpredictable twist and turns of the plot, the gory kills, the bright colors, and the stellar cinematography, and you have a giallo that would often be imitated but could never be replicated.

You’ll Never Forget the Doll Scene in ‘Deep Red’

Amidst all the mystery and mayhem lies one moment that helps Deep Red achieve that distinction of the greatest giallo. The scene in question follows not Marcus or Gianna, but a friend named Professor Giordani (Glauco Mauri) who is also fascinated by the case and helping to investigate. He shows up at one murder scene looking for clues. He finds words written on the shower glass that appear and then disappear in the steam. He goes to his office and begins to take notes. Right away, you know something bad is in store for poor Giordani, as he’s all alone and everything is much too quiet. The long office is lit by only one lamp, the corners of the room dark and uninviting.

Marcus walks around the room, thinking to himself, letting the suspense build. At any moment, that glove-handed killer is going to pop out of the darkness, we know it. Instead, he walks out of the office, down a long hallway, and to another room, before returning to the office. The camera settles and zooms on open doors and large windows looking into the night. Argento is messing with us. Could the killer be here, or here? Back in the office, Giordani hears something move. Modern movies would have the music kick in at this point, but Deep Red stays uncomfortably quiet. Giordani’s bulging eyes scan the room but find nothing. A curtain moves from an open window. He glances that way for a second, but no, nothing there. He picks up a knife from his desk, arming himself, then smiles and puts it down, as if he’s being ridiculous. He’s not.

A voice whispers his name and he picks up the knife. The camera switches to a POV behind a partition. Now the Goblin score blasts. This is it, the part where the killer is going to jump out. Several seconds pass until we can’t take it anymore. Something then finally pops out all right as a door by the partition swings open, but what runs out isn’t human. Instead, it’s a doll, a porcelain nightmare about three feet tall and dressed in a tuxedo, its head cocked to one side, a sinister smile painted upon its pale face. You can tell Billy the puppet from the Saw franchise was inspired by this monstrosity. It runs at Giordani, legs swinging but almost floating. As it moves, a haunting laugh comes from within it. When it gets to him, Giordani swings the knife down onto the crown of the doll’s head, splitting it in two. The thing crumbles to the ground, arms and legs still doing a robotic, animatronic dance. All Giordani can do is laugh at the absurdity of it all.

It’s then that the killer attacks, jumping from behind the curtain where they’ve been all along, swinging a fireplace poker at Giordani’s head. The black glove comes into view, repeatedly pushing our poor victim’s mouth into the corner of the fireplace mantel, bloodying him and smashing his teeth. They then swing Giordani around and ram his busted mouth into the corner of a table. Satisfied with the pain they’ve caused, they take Giordani’s knife and shove it into his neck, killing him, all while one eye of the broken doll watches on.

We already knew that the killer had a fascination with dolls, but no viewer could ever have expected this, with a large animatronic popping out at the screen. That’s exactly what makes it so scary. Argento hits us with a double whammy of intense fear, first tapping into our primal fear of dolls, and then the fear of the unexpected. Our brains are telling us we are going to see a human pop out from that door. It might make us jump, but we can fathom that, so we’re prepared. What we can’t prepare ourselves for is the form of something inhuman showing up in a very human film. It’s completely unsettling. Other giallo films have plenty of gory, frightful moments, but only Deep Red gives us a scene so scary that it became one of the most famous jolts in horror history.