While the release of Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage gave rise to a glut of imitators, there was more to the giallo than just shameless copycats setting out to ape a rigid formula. This volume of Giallo Essentials celebrates the range and breadth of the genre with three lesser-seen films from its early 1970s heyday.In Silvio Amadio's Smile Before Death, familicide with a sprinkling of Oedipal love is the order of the day when teenager Nancy (Jenny Tamburi, The Suspicious Death of a Minor) returns home to discover the apparent suicide of her mother, and quickly comes to suspect that her stepfather (Silvano Tranquilli, The Bloodstained Butterfly) and his mistress (Rosalba Neri, The French Sex Murders) are to blame.Next, Horny priests and self-flagellating nuns abound in Francesco Mazzei's The Weapon, the Hour, the Motive, as police commissioner Franco Boito (Renzo Montagnani, Massacre in Rome) investigates the brutal murder of a young clergyman, only to enter into an af