Turno di notte

Back in the tasteless '80s, "Maestro of the Macabre" Dario Argento produced a giallo-esque Italian TV series called TURNO DI NOTTE (Night Shift 1987) and directed a bunch of three-minute vignettes called "Dario Argento's Nightmares" which opened each show. The series mixed TAXI CAB CONFESSIONS with ONE MINUTE MYSTERY in quarter-hour episodes directed by genre faves Lamberto Bava (6) and later Luigi Cozzi (9).

Each episode (with titles like "Death Is Fashionable", "Giallo Christmas", and "Lights Camera Death") features one of three cabbies (a young man "Red 27", a young woman "Calypso 9", an old man "Tango 28") who solve murders either they or their passengers get involved in by remembering little details the viewer is also privy to. All of the assorted murders are pretty easy to figure out but they're not the only crimes on display- the garish colors, hideous fashions, big frizzy hair, and contemporary pop tunes can also be charged with assaulting the senses. There's a "ghost cab" that wends its way through the series as well and it's raison d'etre is finally revealed in the out-of-this-world final episode.

Cozzi's entries are gorier and more imaginative than Bava's which would seem to indicate he was brought in to rescue a flagging series. Welcome guest stars include Asia Argento, Daria Nicolodi, Brett Halsey, and Corinne Cléry as herself in a Cinecettà-set episode.