ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK ROAST

"If you’re a person who loves to reach for a movie like Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street when the calendar turns to October, you have giallo to thank for that. If you like a good slasher film with obscene amounts of blood and vivid gore and violence, you have giallo to thank for that. If you’re a person who has seen all 247 installments of the Saw series, you have giallo to thank for that.

Our Halloween dark roast for 2026 is a nod to giallo films and named for one of my favourite movies in the genre, “All the Colors of the Dark”. So, by now, I’m sure many are asking what the heck even is giallo?!

Giallo movies (gialli, plural) is a descriptor given to a style that originates from 1960s Italy through to the early 1980s. During this time in Italy, “the years of lead” were on full tilt; political violence from all sides became rampant in Italy, resulting in terrorism, murders, kidnappings, and some torture. The giallo films reflect the fear and paranoia of violence in the nation but make it fully arthouse: bright technicolour saturation, odd camera angles to create tension and the unknown, closeups of victims’ faces and eyes during their brutal deaths. To understand what gialli look like, just think of Joseph’s technicolour dream coat but with buckets of bright red blood pouring all over the place. 

Giallo is Italian for yellow, which was the colour an Italian printing press and publisher used for all their covers for books that were pulp detective stories in the 1920s. This whodunit becomes giallo when we shift the focus from cops solving cases to the wrongdoers perpetuating the violence.

Just like every procedural on American television follows a basic template, so to do gialli: a person, usually a woman and often foreign, sees a murder or something they shouldn’t have and now the killer must go on a spree of fantastical violence in bright colour to cover up the intial muder or secret. Usually, we see the brutality through the eyes of the killer, black gloves extend past the camera as these leather clad hands strangle and stab people (mostly women) to cover up their other crimes. As a giallo reaches its denouement, we get a reveal of the killer and why, but almost never because the cops did anything right. Law enforcement in Italy had no handle on the political violence during the years of lead, so they have no competency in the world of gialli.

Gialli would hit its peak in the 70s behind the big three Italian directors, Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Lucio Fulci; but by the mid-80s, the style was fading as American slasher films incorporated aspects of giallo. Argento made many more giallo films throughout the 90s and even into the 2000s, but to much less critical and fan acclaim than the heyday.

But just because Italy isn't pumping out hundreds of these psychedelic horror films, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy them! So here’s a short primer on five gialli to watch and brew some coffee:

1. Blood and Black Lace, dir. Mario Bava, 1964. This is the origin point of the genre. Sure, the Bird with the Crystal Plumage came first, but the look and feel of the genre starts here.
2. Opera, dir. Dario Argento, 1987. This is the quintessential masterpiece of gialli. Must see. Absolute must-see.
3. Don’t Torture a Duckling, dir. Lucio Fulci, 1972. Fulci is the king of gore in the genre; his work is where American horror get their use of splatter from.
4. Deep Red, dir. Dario Argento, 1975. Opera has the visuals and bombast to be the King of Giallo, but Deep Red is Argento’s magnum opus.
5. A Bay of Blood, dir. Mario Bava, 1971. This was Bava’s attempt to match Fulci in the blood and gore, and it’s impressive.
6. BONUS: Malignant, dir. James Wan, 2021 and I Know Who Killed Me, dir. Chris Silverton, 2007. The former is fun, the latter is terrible but both owe so much to giallo films.

Enjoy the coffee, enjoy the films, and Happy Halloween! "