The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Mario Bava creates a convincing iconography of terror through Expressionist and film noir-ish lighting and camera set-ups, depicting the eruption of perturbing and frightening elements in real-life locations and stressing the clash between everyday reality and the uncanny. … Overall, La ragazza che sapeva troppo can be seen today as the fertile terrain where the seeds of a new incarnation of the giallo had been sown. It was just a matter of time before the first fruits would grow. Still, it was too little. Not enough violence on the one hand, and too much humor. Finally (as Bava himself should have known better after La maschera del demonio), the film lacked a key ingredient: sex.

Mario Bava may not have realized it when he began filming in 1962, but The Girl Who Knew Too Much was about to introduce a new style of thriller filmmaking to cinema. While there had been numerous thrillers produced in Italy prior to this, The Girl Who Knew Too Much was the first to really embrace the lurid tropes and aesthetics of the Mondadori paperbacks and deliver a cinematic equivalent. … The end result was not entirely in line with the genre as it would develop, but it established a neat blueprint of sorts for others, including Bava, to build upon.