bensonmum2 The House of the Yellow Carpet is one of those movies where the less you know about, the more you're likely to enjoy it. With this movie, too much plot detail would be a bad thing. I'll just say that a young couple, Franca and Antonio, have a carpet (yellow of course) they'd like to sale. It was a present from Franca's stepfather, but it doesn't work in their small flat. While Antonio is away, Franca answers the door to an old man with an interest in buying the carpet. But is the carpet really all he came for? Anymore detail would seriously be too much. The House of the Yellow Carpet is s small, often claustrophobic, thriller/giallo with only four speaking parts. It's filled with more tension and suspense than many better known movies. I'd compare the felling to something like Wait Until Dark. It's a little slow to get going, but once it does, it's edge of the seat type stuff. The acting is beyond first rate. Erland Josephson as the old man and Béatrice Romand as Franca give some of the best performances I've seen in a while. Just brilliant. And I can't say enough about director Carlo Lizzani. Every twist and turn in the script works flawlessly. This is a fantastic movie that deserves a much wider audience.

Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki Small cast does well in small setting; claustrophobic film largely takes place in their flat, as weird husband and his wife, who calls out another's name while asleep, try to sell a the biggest yellow rug, which doesn't even fit in their flat and was given to her by her now dead father. Potential buyer appears, while hubby is out, and proceeds to psychologically taunt and terrorise her, knowing personal information about her, before turning violent, and she kills him in self defense. His wife shows up looking for him, and that first of several twists is where the real fun begins. Surprisingly for a giallo, it mostly shows restraint in regard to violence and gore, using them sporadically, in only a couple of scenes, relying on acting and atmospheric photography to create tension and suspense. Interesting composure as well, and the film doesn't over do the dark lighting.

lazarillo This a technically a giallo (it even has the word "giallo" or "yellow" in the Italian title), but it was made late in the giallo game and is different in many ways from most films in the genre. While many giallos are jet-set travelogues (stereotypically, beginning with an airplane taking off or landing), this movie is very claustrophobic, confined almost entirely to a dingy city apartment. Also, while most giallos are very cinematic, this one, with its limited sets and emphasis on acting, is very theatrical. As another reviewer said,it is a lot like "Wait Until Dark", but that movie was originally a play; I'm not sure whether this was as well, but it sure seems like one.A married woman is left alone in an apartment after her husband leaves for a LONG time to attend to parking tickets. A strange man shows up looking to buy a yellow carpet that the couple is selling. The man reveals personal information about the woman and then attacks her, mercilessly chewing the scenery (I'm not sure if he's just a bad actor, or if he's actually a good actor PLAYING a bad actor). She accidentally murders the man (or he commits suicide--I was a little unclear on that part). Then the man's wife shows up looking for him . . . So is this another hare-brained giallo plot? Perhaps. So who might be behind it? Hmmm.As ridiculous as the plot is, it is pretty effective in places. This kind of theatricality is often pretty annoying in movies, but it works sometimes when the characters themselves are SUPPOSED to be ham actors. Even more than "Wait Until Dark" this reminded me of another English move called "The Penthouse" in this respect. It's not as good as either of those, but it's not too bad for an 80's giallo either.

amedusa50x "The House of the Yellow Carpet" is a keen, witty, highly imaginative psychological thriller that has nothing to do with "supernatural rugs" or any such nonsense and is a cut above plenty of Italian horror films I've seen. I stumbled upon mention of this rare film in one of those long, long lists of "My Favorite Horror Films" people love to post on the Internet. The title grabbed me immediately and struck me at first as hilarious. I just had to find out what, if anything, could be so "horrifying" about a yellow carpet that it could provide the basis for a "horror" film.Well, there's nothing much horrifying about a yellow carpet, but there's plenty horrifying about a husband who stays awake all night staring at his sleeping wife and working himself into a fury because in her sleep she's amorously murmuring some other guy's name. I wish I could say more without spoiling the plot. All I can say is, this film features a highly unusual serial killer whose "method acting" is as unsettling as it is, at times, amusing, though the underlying message of "The House of the Yellow Carpet" is dead serious.Erland Josephson, a noted Swedish actor (and collaborator with Ingmar Bergman) who has a huge list of TV, film, stage, and literary credits to his name, is super here as "the man who comes to buy a carpet." You might remember him from "Fanny and Alexander," "The Passion of Anna," "Saving Grace," "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," "Hanussen," "Sophie," and "Prospero's Books." Born in 1923, he's still alive and working (he played Franz von Papen in the 2003 Italian made-for-TV movie "Il papa buono" about Pope John the 23rd). See "House of the Yellow Carpet" for him alone, but you might be pleasantly surprised that he's not the only thing about this film worth watching.