The Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody has successfully blocked the further US sale of a film by Italian horror master Dario Argento in which he stars as an FBI special agent hunting a serial killer in Turin.
Brody secured a court order on Monday banning the continued sale on DVD of Giallo, an English-language Italian thriller, until he is fully paid for his performance. The actor says he is still owed $640,000 (£400,000) for his role and stands to lose up to $2m if it is sold freely on DVD in the US. In a sworn declaration made prior to Giallo's video release in Italy last month, he said fellow producers lied to him about financing and vastly overstated how much the film's Italian distribution rights were worth.
US district judge Dale S Fischer ruled that the film should no longer be distributed, marketed or sold in the States. He also said Brody was likely to win the final case and ruled that his likeness could not be used in the film or to promote it (the actor's face appears twice on the DVD cover). The ruling also states Brody was "suffering, and [would] continue to suffer, immediate and irreparable harm" unless the injunction was granted.
Argento's film sees Brody play Inspector Enzo Avolfi, an Italian-American detective who teams up with Emmanuelle Seigneur's French flight attendant to find her younger sister, a model who has been abducted by a serial killer – also played by Brody, in heavy makeup – known only as "Yellow" (giallo in Italian). The term also refers to the pulp crime novels with trademark yellow covers which lent their name to the horror-infused crime thriller subgenre for which Argento is most famous.
Giallo has not yet received an official UK release, though it did screen at the Edinburgh film festival and London's FrightFest event last year. Total Film's Jamie Graham called it "shockingly bad – so bad it's actually raucous good fun. The hilariously dud script gives Brody all the worst lines and the actor generously returns the compliment by delivering them amid a tornado of Method-y tics and twitches, like King Lear with a power drill in his ear." He added: "Argento's decline [is] a distressing thing to witness."
There have been reports that Argento disliked the producers' cut of the film and is no longer attached to the project. Brody has reportedly been paid nearly $1m for his role. The film-makers deny any wrongdoing.
