- Year
- 1963
- Country
- Italy
- Runtime
- 86 min
- Director
- Mario Bava
- Updated
- 9 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- known (26/100)
- Also known as
- The Evil Eye · Incubus · Evil Eye
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The one usually called the first giallo. Still half a krimi.
The film usually credited as the first giallo, though it is still half a Hitchcock homage in crisp black and white. A tourist in Rome witnesses a murder, is believed by no one, and gets drawn into a series of alphabetical killings.
Mario Bava is inventing the template in real time here: the foreign witness, the murder nobody believes, the amateur turned investigator. The colour and cruelty the cycle became known for are not here yet, but the skeleton is.
More charming than frightening, and the origin point for everything on this shelf.
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Written about
- The giallo, 1963 to 1976
A line of yellow paperbacks, a killer in black gloves, and Mario Bava building the American slasher a decade before Hollywood cashed the cheque.
Filed alongside
▶ watchcultThe Black Abbot
The standard-issue Wallace krimi. Hood, abbey, inheritance, fog.
▶ watchcultDeath Walks at Midnight
Ercoli's brighter, faster Death Walks. Nieves Navarro sees a murder and nobody buys it.
▶ watchcultThe Sinister Monk
A whip-wielding monk killing heiresses. Closest the krimi got to giallo.
▶ watchcultThe Inn on the River
The Rialto Wallace machine at full tilt: fog, a harpoon and Klaus Kinski looking guilty.
▶ watchcultThe Perfume of the Lady in Black
Barely a murder mystery. A slow psychological collapse, and superb.
▶ watchcultThe Dead Eyes of London
Blind killers, insurance fraud, and the best fog in the series.