A 50th Anniversary Giallo Celebration

August 21-23, 2026  |  11 pm  |  The Logan Theatre  |  Chicago

 

 

Everyone loves ice cream and murder! This August, cool off at Logan's Late Nights with a scoop and a scream as cult film curator and horror maven Stephanie “La Gialloholique” Sack returns with GIALLO GELATO 2026: MONDO GIALLO — a three-night plunge into the international evolution of the giallo.
 

This year, the black gloves are holding passports. Born in Italy but far too stylish, sordid, and strange to stay put, the giallo became a global cinematic fever: spreading through post-Franco Spanish nightmare cinema, Carter-era American paranoia, and Italy’s own shadowy countryside, where folk horror, Catholic dread, and murder-mystery madness bloom like poisonous flowers.

More than a genre, giallo is a language: beautiful people behaving badly, repressed memories, unreliable narrators, razor-sharp suspense, and psychosexual panic. MONDO GIALLO follows that language across borders, tracing how filmmakers both inside and outside the classic Italian canon absorbed its colors, obsessions, and delirious style — then twisted them into something unmistakably their own.

Each screening begins at 11:00 PM and is personally introduced by Sack, whose deep knowledge and infectious passion for 20th-century Eurohorror will guide audiences through this wild, worldly expansion of the giallo universe. Whether you’re a diehard devotee or a curious newcomer, GIALLO GELATO: MONDO GIALLO serves up blood, beauty, bravura, and brain-freeze in equal measure.

And yes, there will be themed gelato flavors inspired by each night’s cinematic carnage. Because nothing says la dolce vita like ice cream and murder — especially when murder has gone international!

 

 

Night 1 
Friday, August 21 – Who Can Kill a Child?  Trailer
Narciso Ibáñez Serrador  /  1976  /  Spain 

Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s blistering Spanish nightmare, a film that begins as sun-struck vacation horror and curdles into something far more disturbing: a ruthless confrontation with innocence, violence, and the unthinkable. It remains one of the most morally provocative horror films of its era — shocking, bleak, and impossible to shake. This film screened at the Chicago International Film Fest in 1976!

 

 

 

 

Night 2
Saturday, August 22 – Alice, Sweet Alice  Trailer
Alfred Sole  /  1976  /  US 

Originally screened under the title Communion — a grimy, Catholic-gothic proto-slasher that feels both deeply American and gloriously diseased. Set amid religious ritual, family resentment, and suburban decay, it delivers masked-killer thrills with the atmosphere of a bad dream. Its Chicago history only sweetens the appeal: this is not just a cult classic, but one with a documented connection to the CIFF as well!
 

 

 

 

 

 

Night 3
Sunday, August 23 – The House With Laughing Windows  Trailer
Pupi Avati  /  1976  /  Italy

Pupi Avati’s masterwork of slow-building Italian dread. Less a conventional giallo than a poisoned pastoral, it lures viewers into a sleepy provincial landscape and gradually reveals rot beneath every surface — in art, religion, desire, and memory. It is eerie, elegant, and utterly corrosive: the kind of film that leaves an audience stunned into silence. This film was impossible to see for decades and late last year a GORGEOUS 4K restoration was finally completed.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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