Deep Red is a novel about anger, of the slow burn and the itch for violence, and the unexpected places that fury can take us. Sixth grader Kanako was looking forward to her school trip, and she sure is enjoying it. At night, as she and her friends exchange scary stories after lights-out, her teacher barges into their room to summon her. Yet he seems more solicitous than scolding, and when he asks her to pack her things so he can take her back to Tokyo in a cab, Kanako realizes that something terrible has happened to her family. Educational supplies salesman Norio Tsuzuki was bamboozled into co-signing a fraudulent loan agreement by a business relation of his to whom he couldn’t say no. Enticed by the unscrupulous entrepreneur to recover the sum by unethical means, Tsuzuki indeed descends into criminality—by brutally murdering the man and his family. The only survivor, a daughter the same age as Tsuzuki’s own, just happened to be away on a school trip… When the orphaned Kanako grows up into a young woman, she cannot but feel vengeful toward Miho, the fiend’s daughter, and seeks her out under false pretenses. What follows is a memorable waltz of two unmoored souls.

The release of Italian director Dario Argento's Deep Red in 1975 saw both a return to form for the director and the crystallization of tropes of the giallo genre. While the film's immense popularity in Italy spawned a wave of copy-cat formula thrillers, this enthusiastic reception was not replicated by English-speaking audiences on its theatrical release. With its loosely woven narrative and hyper-stylized violent set pieces, Deep Red was critically panned in the United States and the UK as clichéd and exploitative Euro-schlock. Tracing the film's history of censorship, re-edited releases, and its subsequent celebration by cult film audiences, this book considers how these competing discourses have helped to transform the film's cultural status and to fashion it as an exemplar of cult cinema.

We are at the dawn of the 22nd century. The United Nations agree to allow Deep Red – a brilliant supercomputer – to control the world’s entire nuclear arsenal. Deep Red’s prime directive is to protect humanity, even from itself. Her other duties include finding concrete solutions to the desperate plights of humanity. Indeed, by the year 2100, many of planet Earth’s natural resources are nearly depleted. Food and fresh water are scarce, and overpopulation is causing major pollution and sanitation problems. Soon, an unidentified mutant virus appears and ravages the island of Borneo. Deep Red is the creation of mastermind Professor Sutton Lawry. After succumbing to the mutant virus, Professor Lawry’s two sons, Malcolm, a young journalist from Boston, and Marcus, a new medical doctor, join Deep Red to find a vaccine before the disease spreads and decimates humanity. Deep Red, Malcolm and Marcus soon suspect that a group of elites may be the cause behind the creation and spread of the mutant virus. Meanwhile, Deep Red is fast evolving. She realizes her android ambitions, names herself Pixie, and becomes a primary threat to the world’s elite societies and to humanity. True to her original mandate and identifying an innate moral flaw in humankind, Deep Red now follows her own utopian aspirations. Will Malcolm and Marcus be able to halt the virus, thwart the elites and disarm Deep Red? This captivating dystopian science fiction adventure considers many of the obstacles humanity may encounter over the course of the 21st century and beyond.