Date: 2013-06-13 07:00:00+00:00
Description: Do not believe in what you think you see. Creeping mist, the milky fog of terror that can obscure untold dangers and shroud the confines of limited studio sets. Splashes of colour - purple, blue, green, deep red - a spectral spectrum, flooding the spaces between the darkness. Do you believe in ghosts? You must admit that there are things that frighten us. What's that strange shadow on the wall, or that flickering candle in the derelict crypt? Is it a trick of the light, or a trick of your imagination? That old castle perched on the cliff looks real, but it could simply be a photograph. And tho
Publisher: Zebra Print

MARIO BAVA

Destination Terror

Howard Hughes

MARIO BAVA: Destination Terror

Titles Coming Soon:

Dario Argento

Edgar Allan Poe

Jesus Franco

Also by Howard Hughes:

Cinema Italiano: The Complete Guide from Classics to Cult

Once Upon a Time in the Italian West: The Filmgoers’ Guide to Spaghetti Westerns

Stagecoach to Tombstone: The Filmgoers’ Guide to the Great Westerns

Crime Wave: The Filmgoers’ Guide to the Great Crime Movies

When Eagles Dared: The Filmgoers’ History of World War II

Aim for the Heart: The Films of Clint Eastwood

The Kamera Guide to Spaghetti Westerns

CONTENTS

Abracadaver: The Magic of Mario Bava

Mario Bava Filmography

I Vampiri (1957), Caltiki, The Immortal Monster (1959), The Mask of Satan/Black Sunday (1960), Hercules in the Centre of the Earth/Hercules in the Haunted World (1961), Erik the Conqueror (1961), The Girl who Knew Too Much/Evil Eye (1963), Black Sabbath (1963), The Whip and the Body (1963), Blood and Black Lace (1964), The Road to Fort Alamo (1964), Planet of the Vampires (1965), Savage Gringo (1966), Kill, Baby…Kill! (1966), Knives of the Avenger (1966), Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966), Danger: Diabolik (1968), Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1969), Four Times that Night (1968/72), Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970), Roy Colt & Winchester Jack (1970), A Bay of Blood/Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971), Baron Blood (1972), Lisa and the Devil (1973), The House of Exorcism (1975), Shock (1977)

Appendix 1: Further Bava Filmography

Ulysses (1954), Nero’s Weekend (1955), Hercules (1958), The Day the Sky Exploded (1958), Hercules Unchained (1959), Sign of the Gladiator (1959), The White Warrior (1959), The Giant of Marathon (1959), Son of Samson (1960), Esther and the King (1960), The Giants of Thessaly (1961), Last of the Vikings (1961), The Wonders of Aladdin (1961), Rabid Dogs (1974), Moses the Lawgiver (1975), La Venere d’Ille (1978), Inferno (1980)

Appendix 2: Bava Books & Films

Best of Bava

Acknowledgements

ABRACADAVER: The Magic of Mario Bava

Do not believe in what you think you see. Creeping mist, the milky fog of terror that can obscure untold dangers and shroud the confines of limited studio sets. Splashes of colour – purple, blue, green, deep red – a spectral spectrum, flooding the spaces between the darkness. Do you believe in ghosts? You must admit that there are things that frighten us. What’s that strange shadow on the wall, or that flickering candle in the derelict crypt? Is it a trick of the light, or a trick of your imagination? That old castle perched on the cliff looks real, but it could simply be a photograph. And those hundreds of extras. A multiple-exposure? In the illusory world of cinema, would you like to learn what is real and what is unreal? Come closer please, I’ve something to tell you. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mario Bava.

Director, cinematographer and special effects technician Mario Bava is best known for his imaginative horror films. He was one of the great Italian directors and a craftsman of the highest order. A maestro of the macabre and of resourcefulness over resources, he remains massively influential and peerless in his visual style. His finest work, including The Mask of Satan (1960 – also called Black Sunday), Hercules in the Centre of the Earth (1961), Blood and Black Lace (1964), Kill, Baby…Kill! (1966), Danger Diabolik (1968) and A Bay of Blood (1971 – aka Twitch of the Death Nerve) are landmarks in their fields. Bava’s critics label his films as ‘style over content’, while his champions trumpet his triumph over shoestring budgets, dubbing his colourful, imaginative approach ‘Bavaesque’. His painterly dabs of genius make his films unmistakable. His signature is unique, his cinematic brush strokes obvious and singular.

Modest Ambitions: The Early Years

Mario Bava was born on 31 July 1914 in the town of San Remo, on the Italian Riviera’s Mediterranean coast. He was the son of Eugenio Bava, the father of Italian special effects, from whom he inherited his great talent and special effect devices, such as a waterglass effect, which created a rippling, distorted image for use in flashbacks or delusional moments of hallucination. Eugenio Bava was born in 1886 and was present at the dawn of Italian cinema, working as a cinematographer on Quo Vadis (1913) and also as a special effects technician on the silent spectacle Cabiria (1914). Mario describes him something of an Archimedes, whose ‘little inventions’ became what is now known as ‘special effects’. Mario trained to be a painter, but ended up following his father into the film business. When Mario became a director himself in the 1960s, Eugenio was often on set as moral support, but not to impart technical advice, though he did make the bronze mask for The Mask of Satan. Eugenio died aged 80, on 23 October 1966.

Mario initially earned money at Rome’s film academy, the Instituto Luce, where in the 1930s he would create opening credits for imported American films. Amongst his assignments, he designed the opening and closing title cards for Carmine Gallone’s Scipio Africanus (1937), a powerful piece of fascist propaganda dressed up as a costume epic. In 1939 Bava took a chance and became an assistant cameraman to the cinematographer Massimo Terzano. Bava worked on films directed by Roberto Rossellini and Roberto De Robertis, and following the Second World War continued to work for directors such as Pietro Francisci, Mario Costa, Duilio Coletti, Luigi Comencini, Mario Soldati, Mario Monicelli and Steno (Stefano Vanzina) into the 1950s, as the Italian film industry got back on its feet following the devastation of the war years. Among the films Bava worked on during this period was the Totò comedy Cops and Robbers (1951) and Gina Lollobrigida vehicles such as Miss Italia (1950 – My Beautiful Daughter), A Dog’s Life (1950) and Beautiful but Dangerous (1955). At the time, Italy was garnering international recognition for Neorealism, but Bava wasn’t interested in the grainy ‘everyday life’ of the movement. In an interview published in 1979, Bava noted: ‘To me, shooting a film means tricks, inventions, magic. When I think about Neorealism, I can’t help but laugh: that wasn’t much of an effort, was it? You just have to walk along a street and shoot!’ His favourite films by other directors were Lewis Milestone’s First World War drama All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and the films of Charlie Chaplin, and his favourite writer was H. P. Lovecraft. But he was resigned to the fact that the author’s fantastical imagery could never be brought convincingly to the screen.

One area in which Mario Bava excelled was in his work on epics and spectacles. The Italian film industry had been making ‘sword and sandal’ epics since the silents that Eugenio had worked on. In the 1950s the genre again rose to prominence, due in no small part to Bava’s involvement. 1950s examples of the genre include Riccardo Freda’s Spartacus the Gladiator (1953 – Sins of Rome) and Theodora, Slave Empress (1954), Pietro Francisci’s La regina di Saba (1952 – The Queen of Sheba) and Attila the Hun (1954), Mario Camerini’s Ulysses (1954) and Guido Brignone’s Le schiava di Cartagine (1956 – The Sword and the Cross). Bava worked on some of these films – for example Theodora, Attila and Ulysses – without credit. In addition to his camera expertise, he was capable of great visual effects ingenuity, which made him an invaluable asset to these productions. Bava’s created ‘mattes’, which were essentially paintings that depicted sets or landscapes on pieces of glass. The actors could then be combined with the paintings, to create a single image. Attila, which told of the story of the ‘Scourge of God’ Hun chieftain’s invasion of Italy, was particularly notable for some magnificent Technicolor matte paintings of the Hun and Roman camps, the city of Ravenna, and the battle lines before the film’s climactic engagement. It also included vivid blue lighting effects in the Huns’ grotto. The cast featured big names (Anthony Quinn, Sophia Loren, Irene Papas and Ettore Manni) and was directed by Pietro Francisci, with a score by Enzo Masetti. Italian sword and sandal spectacles were christened pepla (singular peplum) by French critics, after the Greek word ‘peplos’, the short skirts worn by the heroes. There were many different variations on mythological and historical pepla, including comedy pepla, action pepla, romantic pepla and horror pepla. Bava provided the ‘lighting and special effects’ on Pietro Francisci’s hits Hercules (1958) and Hercules Unchained (1959), starring Steve Reeves and Sylva Koscina. Both these films were huge successes, not just in Italy and Europe, but internationally too. The films are credited with beginning the craze for ‘sword and sandal’ epics which made many bodybuilders stars in the early 1960s, until spy films, horror movies and spaghetti westerns overtook them in popularity. In the same period, Rome’s studios, dubbed ‘Hollywood on the Tiber’, were used by American filmmakers as the base of operations for such epics as Quo Vadis (1951), Helen of Troy (1955), Ben-Hur (1959) and Cleopatra (1963).

Epic Heroes and Mythmakers

Mario Bava worked uncredited in various capacities on many pepla of the period and it’s no coincidence that some of these fantasy films are among the best that the epic and mythological genre has to offer. Bava made a face mould which was used in Ben-Hur, for the scene during the sea battle when Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) pushes a flaming torch in the face of a Macedonian raider (the mask was worn by a stuntman). His father Eugenio Bava was billed as ‘Technical Advisor’ on Alberto De Martino’s Perseus the Invincible (1963 – Perseus Against the Monsters and The Medusa Against the Son of Hercules), starring Richard Harrison as Perseus and Leo Anchoriz, Arturo Dominici and Antonio Molino Rojo as the villains. The film is notable for some magnificent glass matte shots of cities, deserts and mountain landscapes (courtesy of Mario Bava), for its fast pace and non-stop action, and the transformation of warriors into stone statues by the Medusa, which decorate the monster’s misty Valley of Petrified Men (filmed at Tor Caldara, on the Mediterranean coast of Italy near Anzio). Carlo Rambaldi worked on the film’s special effects, including a manually-operated aquatic dragon puppet and the Medusa itself, a shuffling creature with a cascading mass of tentacles and one glowing, hypnotic golden eye.

Mario Bava worked on Riccardo Freda’s The Giants of Thessaly (1960) and Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World (1961), creating matte shots or visual effects. He worked on Last of the Vikings (1961) and Henry Levin’s The Wonders of Aladdin (1961), plus assorted pepla, including Sabatino Ciuffini’s Gold for the Caesars (1963), Carlo Campogalliani Son of Samson (1960) and Giorgio Ferroni’s The Bacchantes (1960). The Bavaesque women drummers and dancers who appear in Moloch’s lair in Ferroni’s Hercules against Moloch (1963 – The Conquest of Mycenae/Hercules Challenge) were lifted from The Bacchantes. Bava photographed Steno’s peplum farce Nero’s Big Weekend (1956) and worked uncredited on the second units of Pedro Lazaga’s Gladiators Seven (1962 – with Richard Harrison) and Vittorio Cottafavi’s Hercules Conquers Atlantis (1961 – Hercules and the Captive Women) starring Reg Park. Portions of the latter were cut-and-pasted, along with footage from Bava’s own Hercules in the Centre of the Earth, into Hercules the Avenger (1965), which was Reg Park’s final peplum. Bava worked on the ‘Circe’ episode of Ulysses (1954), starring Kirk Douglas and Silvana Mangano. He worked again with Steve Reeves on Jacques Tourneur’s The Giant of Marathon (1959), André De Toth’s swashbuckler Morgan the Pirate (1960) and Arthur Lubin’s Arabian adventure The Thief of Baghdad (1961). He also worked on the second unit of The Last Days of Pompeii (1959), which starred Reeves as vengeful centurion Glaucus, who is on the trail of the hooded assassins of his father. The screenplay for this exquisitely-made peplum, shot in Italy and Spain, was a group effort from such talent as Ennio De Concini, Luigi Emmauele, Duccio Tessari and Sergios Leone and Corbucci. It ends with a spectacular arena sequence (the top portion of the circus amphitheatre is an artful matte painting), as Glaucus saves the Christians from the lions, and an impressively-staged volcanic eruption. As Vesuvius blows, burning coals and cinders shower down, buildings collapse and yawning fissures swallow the populace.

Bava created special effects for Giuseppe Vari’s Rome against Rome (1964 – Night Star: Goddess of Elektra or War of the Zombies), where the high priest of the cult of the Goddess of Gold (John Drew Barrymore) reanimates an army of zombie Roman legionaries. Bava worked without credit on the visual effects (credited to Ugo Amadoro) on Hercules against the Moon Men (1964), which pitted Hercules (‘Sergio Ciani’ or Alan Steel) against space invaders in Giacomo Gentilomo’s imaginative sci-fi peplum. The appearances of translucent Moon Man Redolphis to tyrant Queen Samara (Jany Clair), the moonlit skies, a meteor impact, the green-hued bowels of the Mountain of Death which is patrolled by an army of stone men, and a multi-hued sandstorm, are trademark Bava visuals. The finale, with the blood of young Princess Bilis (Delia D’Alberti) being used to revive dormant luna queen Selena, resembles the climax of Bava’s own The Mask of Satan. Bava helped Riccardo Freda on the horror peplum Maciste in Hell (1962 – The Witch’s Curse), with second unit work and special visual effects. The story begins as a period witch hunt drama set in Loch Laird in Scotland, then Maciste (Kirk Morris) crashes the party in a loincloth and descends into Hell to remove a witch’s centuries-old curse. Set amid red hot caverns, the film depicts eternal suffering, as devils torture the damned, ensuring there’s no peace for the wicked. The fiery chasms, torments, hallucinations, a burning Great Iron Door and a wrestling giant (Pietro Ceccarelli) resemble Bava’s own Hercules in the Centre of the Earth, while the witch trials and stake burnings are straight out of Mask of Satan. An old hag transforms into a beautiful seductress and Maciste experiences flashbacks to earlier adventures (stock footage from Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops and Samson and the 7 Miracles of the World, neither of which starred Morris), before he breaks the curse and reduces the witch to dust with a kiss. Bava also worked on the photography and lighting of Maciste against the Vampire (1961 – Goliath and the Vampires in the US), which had Maciste/Goliath (Gordon Scott) travelling to Salmanak, where he explores the picturesque blue and green grottos of the Kingdom of the Blue Men and battles the vampire Kobrak (who materialises in a cloud of red vapour) and his army of zombie automatons.

Bava contributed to Alvaro Mancori’s Hercules the Invincible (1963), which has surfaced on DVD as The Son of Hercules in the Land of Darkness. Bava provided the special effects for this adventure that sent ‘Son of Hercules’ Argolese (Dan Vadis) inside the mountain of the Demios, a cannibalistic race who eat the flesh and drink the blood of their victims. The settings representing their kingdom, which is accessed across a chasm of lava via a secret lowered drawbridge, are again reminiscent of the caverns of Hercules in the Centre of the Earth. For the apocalyptic finale, Argolese destroys them by unleashing a creeping torrent of bubbling lava. There are several special effects sequences, including the drawbridge, horsemen plummeting down the lava chasm, a scene when Argolese uproots a tree to cross the chasm, and also moments when fire is used as a trap or a weapon. Argolese tries to save King Tedeo (Ugo Sasso) and his daughter Tecla (Spela Rozin), who live in a wooden city atop a promontory (a well-executed matte shot). When Argolese kills a dragon with a magic lance, it is stock footage of Jason from Francisci’s Hercules. Years later, Bava also worked on the special effects for Dario Argento’s Inferno (1980) and Gianfranco De Bosio’s six-part TV biblical epic miniseries Moses the Lawgiver (1974 – starring Burt Lancaster), which was also released in cinemas as simply Moses. More of Bava’s credited and uncredited assignments, representative of his varied output, are looked at in more detail in the first appendix of this book.

Out of the Shadows: A Director is Born

Bava’s transition to official credited director was facilitated by his aptitude for saving projects that looked to have run into trouble. In the 1950s, Riccardo Freda in particular became something of a mentor to Bava. When they worked together on I Vampiri (1957), the first significant Italian horror film of the post-war era, Freda left the production during the schedule and Bava completed it. This became a pattern in Bava’s work during this period. He had to perform the same task on Freda’s Caltiki – The Immortal Monster (1959) and on Jacques Tourneur’s The Giant of Marathon (1959). As a thank you from Galatea Films’ Lionello Santi, Bava was allowed to make a film of his own. He chose to make a black-and-white period horror film that mixed witchcraft and vampires, titled The Mask of Satan (1960), which was a huge hit in the USA in 1961 under its new title Black Sunday. It created a star in Wirral-born British actress Barbara Steele and kick-started a mini-boom in Italian Gothic horror that lasted until 1966. The Mask of Satan featured such classic fairy-tale ingredients as a castle, a prince, a princess, a murky tangled wood and witches, which Bava remoulded into a twisted horror tale.

Over the next 20 years, from 1960 to his death in 1980, Mario Bava directed films in many genres – from sci-fi spectaculars to spaghetti westerns, sex comedies to Viking adventures. But it was as a director of horror films that he excelled and for which he is remembered today. He was christened the Italian Hitchcock, a master of suspense, the ‘Hitchcock of Cinecittà’ or the ‘Master of Italian Horror’. An incredibly modest man, he didn’t see his mastery of cinema as anything more than a challenge to solve visual problems with his ingenuity: ‘I’m just a craftsman, a romantic craftsman’ he would say. Bava had a ‘them-and-us’ attitude to American filmmakers: ‘Them with their super-productions. I with my last-minute improvisations’.  According to producer Alfred Leone, who worked with Bava on four occasions, he was great when he had to use his imagination and improvise, due to budgetary constraints, but less so when handed large budgets: ‘If you gave Bava $500,000, he could make it look like a million. Give him a million and you were in trouble’.

Bava worked with some of the finest horror icons of the period – Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and Christopher Lee – and in making The Mask of Satan, created one in Barbara Steele, who through her series of nine Italian gothics, became the unforgettable, premier ‘scream queen’ of the 1960s. Freda later cast Bava’s ‘discovery’ Steele in his own horrors The Horrible Secret of Dr Hichcock (1962) and The Ghost (1963). Bava moved from the colourful, fantastical cinema of pepla and costume adventures, to the dark, but still colourfully vivid world of horror, and back again, with ease. He succeeded in creating fear in everyday settings from everyday objects – a telephone, a sculpture, or a toy ball. He could find horror in fantastical settings, but also horror in the commonplace. He thought the most frightening situation was for someone to be alone in a room, about facing the inherent fear that dwells inside us all. But in cinema, fear and threats had to be manifest as ‘monsters’ and Bava could deliver them too.

In addition to directing and lensing his movies, Bava also collaborated on many of the stories and scripts that he filmed, including The Mask of Satan, Hercules in the Centre of the Earth, Black Sabbath, Planet of the Vampires, Kill, Baby…Kill!, Danger: Diabolik, A Bay of Blood and Lisa and the Devil. According to Michael J. Weldon in his Psychotronic Video Guide, Bava also wrote the story for Schoolgirl Killer, also titled The Young, the Evil and the Savage (1968). Set in a finishing school, this Woolner Brothers production was released by AIP and Bava was originally to have been director. Antonio Margheriti ended up directing the film as ‘Anthony Dawson’, which starred Michael Rennie, Sally Smith, Mark Damon, Eleanora Brown and Luciano Pigozzi. Though Bava’s films have sometimes been criticised for being a bit thin, plot-wise, there are some passionate love stories on display in his work, which offer some very strong roles for women – from sisters Daya and Rama in Erik the Conqueror to Eva Kant in Danger: Diabolik and Lisa Reiner in Lisa and the Devil, and especially Nevenka in The Whip and the Body, a film which musters the haunting romanticism and intensity of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Among Bava’s writing collaborators were Ennio De Concini, Duccio Tessari, Franco Prosperi, Marcello Fondato, Luciano Martino, Ugo Guerra, Ernesto Gastaldi, Alberto Bevilacqua, Romano Migliorini, Roberto Natale, Castellano & Pipolo, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates, Dino Maiuri, Mario De Nardo, Giuseppe Zaccariello and Dardano Sacchetti. Some of his co-writers are among the greats of Italian popular cinema, while others shouldn’t have been allowed access to a typewriter. But whatever the written material, Bava’s visual skill and imagination always ensured the results were interesting.

John Phillip Law, who appeared on screen for Bava as the comic-book master thief Diabolik, reckoned that on set Bava was first and foremost a cameraman – and only secondly a director. Though he worked with many imported English-speaking stars, Bava himself didn’t speak the language. He wasn’t overly concerned with his actors and their performances, devoting most of his time to the production’s technical details. His attitude seemed to have been that acting was their business and he allowed them to take care of it. Many actors and crewmembers spoke of the utmost respect afforded Bava on set. His collaborators paint a picture of a modest man, a master craftsman, a dexterous technician, a problem solver, adept at the ‘make the best of it’ attitude of low-budget cinema, wherein he’d create ingenious, memorable B-movies.

Deadly Nightshades: The Darkness of Light

As a director Bava worked closely with his cinematographers – if he didn’t shoot his films himself, Bava’s regular collaborators were Ubaldo Terzano until 1964 and then Antonio Rinaldi until Baron Blood in 1972. Bava’s gifts as a lighting technician on costume epic fantasies can be best seen in the two Steve Reeves ‘Hercules’ films, or in his own Hercules in the Centre of the Earth and his Viking drama Erik the Conqueror. Until the raw realism of the kidnap drama Rabid Dogs (1974), Bava dealt mostly with unreality and escapism. Bava’s films have sometimes been criticised for their over reliance on style, as a cinematic ‘get out of jail free’ card. It’s true that there is an emphasis on style in his films – how people look, how they interact with their surroundings, how his camera interacts with them. Bava was also adept at the art of composition, in the way an architect or a landscape gardener orchestrate their buildings or landscapes, so that you look through something in order to see everything. He was also renowned for being meticulous in his settings and attention to detail. As Baroness Graps says of her deceased daughter Melissa in Kill, Baby…Kill! ‘She had a place for everything’, and so does Bava. His placement of objects or figures within the frame is heightened by his suffusions of colour. Bava deploys lustful reds and fearful greens, nocturne blues and lurking purples. These swathes of colour create pools of vibrancy – you can almost ‘feel’ Bava’s visuals. In his horror films, Bava’s colour compositions visualise the murderer’s alluring intoxication of killing, or the victim’s pulsating heartbeat of fear – as in the throbbing green lights that illuminate murder scenes in Black Sabbath and Blood and Black Lace. In scenes of horror, fearful greens give way to the ‘red mist’ of lust, anger and rage, which lead inevitably to murder.

Bava had a fine sense of perspective too and was able to perform trick shots using his camera that would have cost other directors a fortune. Bava’s dollying, orbiting, craning camera traversed his sets, drinking in their atmosphere. His attention to detail during the shooting of his films meant that it’s rare to find continuity errors in his work. In The Giant of Marathon at the beginning of the Battle of Marathon sequence, is that smoke curling up from Persian campfires in the distance, or a BC jet vapour trail? It’s actually the join on a multiple exposure that transforms the limited ‘Persian’ extras into a massed army on the march, in another brilliant Bava effects shot. Throughout his career, Bava’s films were made so modestly, they never lost money – and he had some big hits in Italy and also abroad. But his films were also handled unsympathetically by distributors and censors, and it has taken many years for some of his titles to be available in definitive versions.

Bava’s films are filled with recurrent images and themes, which add unity to his canon. A popular Bava theme is the return of someone from the past and their encroachment on the present. The returnees could be alive – Kurt Menliff in The Whip and the Body or Rurig in Knives of the Avenger – or dead, and the return takes the form of a resurrection, as in Baron Blood or The Mask of Satan. Another theme in Bava’s oeuvre is familial discord or betrayal. His films find horror in the worst places, in the safety of your own home, and the worst thing of all, to fear your father, as in ‘The Wurdulak’ story in Black Sabbath, or vampire Prince Vadja in The Mask of Satan. His films often depict a hero/visitor – in The Mask of Satan, Kill, Baby…Kill!, Lisa and the Devil, Planet of the Vampires and Hercules in the Centre of the Earth – and they are our guides to the manifestations of evil they encounter in the course of the narrative. There are sometimes characters with connections to the occult in Bava’s cinema – seers, tarot readers, oracles or mediums – as in Hercules in the Centre of the Earth, Kill, Baby…Kill!, A Bay of Blood and Baron Blood. Things are not always what they first appear to be. In Lisa and the Devil, a music box with a carousel of the Devil leading away the dead has its tinkling chimes provided by a cassette tape recorder. In Four Times That Night, drinks are dispensed from a gadget drink’s cabinet concealed in a table and in Hercules in the Centre of the Earth, a temptress bursts into flames and lava is revealed to be a harmless river. Bava’s stories sometimes feature doppelgangers or twins, or the duality of mirror imagery or reflection, often in pools of water. Water also features as a setting, either the coastal seaside, or a lake or island. Bava stylistic motifs include a recurrent rear-view mirror shot, a frame within a frame, as when Diabolik and Eva Kant case St. Just castle in Danger: Diabolik, or when the chauffeur George adjusts his mirror to make eye contact with backseat passenger Sophie Lehar, delineating their unspoken love, in Lisa and the Devil. Modern technology such as the telephone is key to Bava’s brand of horror. Brightly coloured telephones appear in many of Bava’s films, from A Bay of Blood and Blood and Black Lace, to Danger: Diabolik and ‘The Telephone’ segment in Black Sabbath. Kidnapper Riccardo makes his ransom demand from a payphone at the end of Rabid Dogs. There’s also Dr Goldfoot’s gold phone and General Benson’s burgundy one, with the American flag on the dial, for his calls from President Lyndon B. Johnson, in Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs. Most unlike Bava, the mysterious villa in Lisa and the Devil doesn’t have a telephone, thus stranding the travellers there for the night. In Bava’s stories, children or childlike characters are almost always safe from harm. If they are threatened, like Sonya in The Mask of Satan or Gretchen in Baron Blood, they escape and are spared. In both cases, it is these children who help the adults solve a mystery, by identifying key aspects of the riddle – Sonya recognises long-dead Javutich from a portrait and Gretchen suggests an amulet may help dispatch the Bloody Baron. In other Bava films, children are linked to the supernatural, as in Shock and Kill, Baby…Kill! and both adults and children display their innocence by engaging in childish behaviour – playing with a ball or on a swing – in a recurrent motif in Bava’s cinema, from Kill, Baby…Kill! and Four Times That Night to Five Dolls for an August Moon and Shock.

Bava reused visual effects, ideas and themes, but also sets, props and actual exterior locations. A chapel archway appears in The Mask of Satan and again in Black Sabbath. Diabolik’s revolving bed reappears in Five Dolls for an August Moon and an ornate, gold sculpted bed headboard appears in many Bava films from I Vampiri to ‘The Telephone’ episode of Black Sabbath and beyond. Telly Savalas appears framed by it at the beginning of the titles to Lisa and the Devil. The Via Appia Antica, the old Roman road so familiar from pepla, appears in several movies Bava worked on. Also known as the Appian Way, this location features a cobbled road, ruins and distinctive trees – the cloud-like stone pines and spear-like Italian cypress trees. Dr Goldfoot rents a villa on the road and Marquis Morell’s country retreat is there too in Blood and Black Lace. Bava reused the interiors of Villa Frascati near Rome for the faded grandeur of Madame Zena’s in Black Sabbath, for Villa Graps in Kill, Baby…Kill!, Countess Donati’s residence at the beginning of A Bay of Blood and the haunted villa in both Lisa and the Devil and its Exorcist-clone reedit The House of Exorcism. Bava’s most iconic and revisited location was Tor Caldara. The Tor Caldara Nature Reserve, on the Mediterranean coast north of Anzio, is a stretch of beach, a sandy inlet and a headland cliff which rises to approximately 15 metres. The pretty location, designated a protected natural area in 1988, features the evergreen Holm oaks, or Holly oaks (Quercus ilex) and sulphurous strata in the sandy cliffs. A tower at the location was built to defend the sulphur mines from pirates. This is a place of mythological importance in Italian cinema, appearing in many key films. It was also popular with other directors – it’s where Django gunned down Major Jackson in Sergio Corbucci’s spaghetti western classic Django (1966) and where Hercules lands back in Attica with his wife Iole at the beginning of Pietro Francisci’s Hercules Unchained. It appears in many Bava films, most prominently in Erik the Conqueror, The Whip and the Body, Five Dolls for an August Moon and Roy Colt & Winchester Jack, and several further films, such as Caltiki, The Immortal Monster and Danger: Diabolik, feature individual scenes filmed at the location.

Smoke, Mirrors and Tricks of the Light

In Bava’s Hercules in the Centre of the Earth – also known as Hercules in the Haunted World – the hero is told by Queen Arethusa, ‘Do not believe in what you think you see’, which could be Bava’s epitaph. Bava’s cinematographic expertise, in collaboration with his colleagues in art direction, set decoration, costume design and musical composition, make his films unique. Bava draws attention to and accentuates the effects of light on surfaces, the effect of light and shadow, and the black spaces between the swallowing darkness. Bava’s films feature vivid blue night skies, clouds masking moonlight, flashes of lightning and judders of thunder. Onscreen movement is established with milky, swirling impenetrable mist and creeping rippling ground fog.

Though he was a technician, Bava was also a magician. Like a conjurer, Bava had many different ‘tricks’ up his directorial sleeve, his skill sometimes literally reliant on ‘smoke and mirrors’. Bava deployed shock zooms, atmospheric fog, rainbows of colour filters and coloured gels, perspectival photography, miniatures and maquettes (small-scale models used to visualise and test shapes, sets and ideas without building them full-size). Bava’s past training as a painter enabled him to create glass mattes – paintings on layers of glass, sometimes more than one, to give depth. These paintings created a multitude of settings, at a fraction of the cost of creating physical sets. He also devised and deployed working mechanical devices, dioramas and models – the secret entrance to Diabolik’s underground lair, the train plummeting off the Lawrence Bridge or the crashed truck which blocks the train tunnel, all of which appeared in Danger: Diabolik, Bava’s biggest-budgeted film. For an underwater heist sequence in Danger: Diabolik, the close-ups of Marisa Mell and John Phillip Law, were actually shot ‘dry’, through a fishtank to provide the ‘underwater’ bubbles. Conversely, the landing of the spaceship Argos on the demon planet of Aura in Planet of the Vampires was filmed with a foot-long miniature that was dropped into a water tank. The ominous, inky black cloud formations in Bava’s movies were also created in water. A castle on a promontory in Erik the Conqueror was a picture cut from a magazine and positioned in the frame, to create the illusion of a coastal stronghold. Cameron Mitchell says his Viking movies with Bava were budgeted in the region of $100,000 to $200,000, most of which was spent on the actors. He maintained that Bava could have made the $44 million Cleopatra (1963) for only $5 million and made a better film. Bava demonstrated his frugality with Danger: Diabolik, for which he was offered a budget by Dino De Laurentiis of $3 million and delivered the finished film for only $400,000.

On some of his films, such as Planet of the Vampires, Bava used the mirror-based Schüfftan Process. This composite process enabled Bava and Antonio Rinaldi to combine live action with miniatures and avoid matte or optical printing techniques. The ingenious optical trick shot was named after its German inventor, director of photography Eugene Schüfftan. The technique uses an angled mirror, which has a section of the silvered surface rubbed off, to enable the camera to shoot actual action and actors. The mirrored section reflects miniatures of scenery, buildings or vehicles, such as spacecraft, to reflect a scaled environment for the actors to move within. The technique was used by Schüfftan in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). Schüfftan later worked on the special photographic effects on Ulysses (1954) with Bava and photographed the haunting French-Italian horror film Eyes Without a Face (1959). He won an Oscar for ‘Best Black and White Cinematography’ (in the days when there were awards for both monochrome and colour photography) for The Hustler (1961).

Cutting Edge: The Bava Legacy

Bava has proved influential on many filmmakers and genres. Visual ideas and references can be seen in the work of Tim Burton and Quentin Tarantino (Bava heroin is mentioned in Pulp Fiction), and from the low-key horror of Alejandro Amenabár’s The Others (2001) to Asian J-horror. Bava’s influence on horror and fantasy cinema has been colossal. His importance has been acknowledged with regard to the development of the Italian giallo thriller genre, which rose to prominence in the late 1960s. There was a myriad of influences on gialli – The Spiral Staircase (1945), Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960), Antonioni’s Blowup (1966), the West German Edgar Wallace ‘Krimis’ of the 1960s, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955 – aka Diabolique) and Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (1959) – but Bava’s Blood and Black Lace is perhaps the genre’s key work. Abroad, the British production City of the Dead (1960 – Horror Hotel) contains scenes very similar to the opening of Bava’s The Mask of Satan. There are also some atmospheric sequences in the haunted village of Whitewood, New England worthy of Bava, featuring a blanket of fog and hooded undead worshippers for a Puritan witch burning and the sacrificial rites on ‘Candlemass Eve’ and the ‘Witches’ Sabbath’. In Massimo Pupillo’s Bloody Pit of Horror (1965), both the narration and the manner in which the red-hooded Crimson Executioner is executed at the beginning of the film, in a sword-lined iron maiden, echo the sadistic opening of Mask of Satan. Later a bat attack contributes to breaking the seal on the Executioner’s casket, freeing his sadistic spirit to possess out-of-work muscleman actor Travis Anderson (Mickey Hargitay). Harald Reinl’s Poe-inspired Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967) owes much to Bava, while Blood and Black Lace inspired the NBC-TV movie She’s Dressed to Kill (1979 – Someone’s Killing the World’s Greatest Models), starring Eleanor Parker, Jessica Walter, Connie Sellecca, Joanna Cassidy, Corinne Calvet, John Rubenstein, Clive Revill and Peter Horton. And the ‘Friday the 13th’ and ‘Halloween’ teen bodycount movies were structurally influenced by Bava’s A Bay of Blood and Dario Argento’s giallo thrillers.

Argento is perhaps the director who has been most influenced by Bava and who has inherited the crown of King of Italian Horror. In contrast to Bava’s luminous blue oceans of night, Argento pitches his fans blindly into dimly-lit, pitch-black pits of darkness. Bava’s style in such films as The Whip and the Body influenced Argento’s shifting floods of colour, for example, in Jessica Harper’s stormy taxi ride at the beginning of Suspiria (1977). Bava’s style can be seen in the ultra-stylised cinematography of Argento’s Deep Red (1975) and Suspiria, and shortly before his death Bava himself worked with Argento on Inferno (1980). Bava’s legacy has also been continued by the next generation of Bavas, with his son Lamberto entering the family business. Born in 1944, Lamberto began working on his father’s films as assistant director, including Planet of the Vampires, Kill, Baby…Kill!, Danger: Diabolik, A Bay of Blood and Shock. Father and son co-directed the TV episode La Venere d’Ille (1978) and Lamberto shot extra footage to enable the kidnap thriller Rabid Dogs to be completed and exhibited after his father’s death. Lamberto worked as assistant director on such films as Cannibal Holocaust (1979), Inferno and Tenebrae (both for Argento), before ‘going solo’ with Macabro (1983), A Blade in the Dark (1983), Blastfigher and Shark (1984). Lamberto hit the big time with his grisly Demons (1985) and followed this with Demons 2 (1986), both of which were produced by Argento. Lamberto sometimes signed his work ‘John Old Jr’, as his father had occasionally used the nom de plume ‘John M. Old’ or ‘John Hold’. In 1990, Lamberto partially remade The Mask of Satan, with Eva Grimaldi as a witch named Anibas, and a cast that included Debora Kinski and director Michele Soavi, though it’s closer to Bava’s ‘Demons’ movies – its alternative title was Demons 5.

There’s a theory that Bava’s career success was compromised by the fact that he wouldn’t work abroad. He liked Italy, he liked living and working in Italy and he made few films outside his homeland. Later in his career, Bava turned down an offer from Dino De Laurentiis to work on the producer’s 1976 remake of King Kong in Hollywood. His old collaborator Carlo Rambaldi, who had mostly been working in the horror genre, accepted instead. The visual effects won an Oscar and Rambaldi ended up working on such prestigious Hollywood and British-based productions as Steven Spielberg’s family-friendly alien invasion movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and David Lynch’s fold-out sci-fi space epic Dune (1984). He designed the lost alien in another family-friendly fantasy, ET The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), for Spielberg, which was a far cry from his 1970s work on gory horrors such as Bava’s A Bay of Blood and Argento’s Deep Red. Rambaldi also worked on the hideous creature in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror Alien (1979). He won Oscars for both ET and Alien and there’s always a sense that had he travelled more widely for work, perhaps that could have been Bava.

In the 1960s, horror cinema’s innovation and inspiration on both sides of the Atlantic was a two-way street. The British Hammer horrors enjoyed great success internationally and spearheaded a revival in all things period horror, with vampires, mad scientists, mummies and monsters to the fore. In America, American International Pictures (AIP) had a hit when they distributed a reedited, redubbed and retitled version of Mario Bava’s The Mask of Satan as Black Sabbath. This in turn led to Barbara Steele’s casting in AIP’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, Pit and the Pendulum (1961). The AIP Poe films directed by Roger Corman were colourful and imaginative, modishly hallucinogenic, and some of the effects resemble Bavaesque flourishes. Consequently AIP actively co-produced some of Bava’s projects and in several cases – for example The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Black Sabbath and Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs – tailored an alternative release version, telling a different story to the Italian one, specifically for the English language market. Films are predominantly referred to in the text of this book by their best-known title, or alternately by my preferred title. So it’s A Bay of Blood, not Twitch of the Death Nerve (or any of its many other titles) and the Hitchcock-referencing The Girl Who Knew Too Much, not Evil Eye. The Mask of Satan and Black Sunday are two slightly different films, telling slightly different stories, while Hercules in the Haunted World is the best title, but Hercules in the Centre of the Earth (the unabridged international cut) is the better film. When referring to these various cuts, I’ll use their alternative titles.

Since his death on 27 April 1980, aged only 65, Mario Bava has enjoyed a fervent rise in popularity. The availability of his films on DVD and Blu-ray, often in magnificent presentations, has enhanced his reputation no end. In his lifetime, whilst being something of a prophet without honour in his own country, Bava was championed by critics in Britain and France. Other Italian directors, such as Fellini and Antonioni, greatly admired Bava’s work, attending screenings of Bava’s films and were complimentary – in the case of Fellini, to the point of quotation, as we shall see. Bava liked to tell the story of how when he was interviewed by Cahiers du Cinema about Blood and Black Lace, they asked ‘about the relationship between the sign swinging at the beginning in a rainstorm and the phone in the final sequence, when Eva Bartok dies’. Bava claimed: ‘I didn’t even remember what the ending was like’. It’s possible to read too much into his films and I would recommend simply enjoying them for what they are: great cinema. Many film critics have claimed that Bava achieved perfection with his official directorial debut The Mask of Satan and it was downhill thereafter. But The Mask of Satan was only the beginning of the story…

MARIO BAVA FILMOGRAPHY

Featured Films: I Vampiri (1957), Caltiki, The Immortal Monster (1959), The Mask of Satan/Black Sunday (1960), Hercules in the Centre of the Earth/Hercules in the Haunted World (1961), Erik the Conqueror (1961), The Girl who Knew Too Much/Evil Eye (1963), Black Sabbath (1963), The Whip and the Body (1963), Blood and Black Lace (1964), The Road to Fort Alamo (1964), Planet of the Vampires (1965), Savage Gringo (1966), Kill, Baby…Kill! (1966), Knives of the Avenger (1966), Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966), Danger: Diabolik (1968), Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1969), Four Times that Night (1968/72), Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970), Roy Colt & Winchester Jack (1970), A Bay of Blood/Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971), Baron Blood (1972), Lisa and the Devil (1973), The House of Exorcism (1975), Shock (1977)

Key to Filmography:

Production countries: IT (Italian), FR (France), US (United States), WG (West German), SP (Spanish), YUG (Yugoslavia)/UK (United Kingdom)

Orig: Original title

Aka: Alternative titles

Dir: Director/Directors

All running times are from the best DVD or videotape sources available, which may be either US NTSC or UK PAL.

I Vampiri (1957) IT

Aka: The Devil’s Commandment (US title)/Lust of the Vampire (UK title)

Dir: Riccardo Freda

78 mins

Gianna Maria Canale (Giselle Du Grand), Carlo D’Angelo (Inspector Chantal), Dario Michaelis (Pierre Lantin, journalist), Wandisa Guida (Lorette Robert), Angelo Galassi (Ronald Fontaine, photographer), Renato Tontini (Rinaldo, professor’s assistant), Charles Fawcett and Miranda Campa (Lorette’s parents), Giselle Mancinotti (schoolgirl), Antoine Belpêtré (Professor Julien Du Grand), Paul Muller (Joseph Signoret),  Armando Annuale, Emilio Petacci (men), Riccardo Freda (coroner), Ronny Holiday (Nora, dancer), Joy Holiday (Anita), Barbara Wohl (Lisette)

Story

Paris, 1957. Young women are being abducted and when their corpses are found, they have been bled dry. The only common dominator is the victims’ blood type. Journalist Pierre Lantin investigates, but the police are not convinced by the press’s scaremongering that a ‘vampire’ is at large in the city. Aristocratic Giselle Du Grand, the niece of aged Duchess Margherita Du Grand, hopes to make Pierre fall in love with her, but he’s uninterested in someone he sees as spoilt and selfish. Margherita and Giselle are never seen in the same place and with good reason. It is revealed that the Duchess’s husband, a professor of the ‘mad’ variety, is using blood transfusions from the young women victims to rejuvenate the Duchess’s youth. Margherita was spurned by Pierre’s father many years before and now she hopes to win Pierre’s heart as ‘Giselle’. Pierre bears a remarkable resemblance to his father, while Margherita and Giselle are one and the same.

Background

This Parisian-set murder mystery was the first Italian horror film of the post-war era. Overlooked for many years, it is also one of director Riccardo Freda’s finest achievements. It was filmed in the autumn of 1956 on sets at Titanus Appia Studios, Rome. ‘Street’ exteriors of Parisian Montemartre were recreated with the addition of deftly-executed glass matte paintings that added a Parisian skyline to street action shot in the studio’s courtyard. Mario Bava was billed as the director of photography, but Freda left the project after 10 days shooting and Bava completed it in two more. The project had been undertaken as a bet between Freda and producers Ermanno Donati and Luigi Carpentieri. Freda wagered that he and Bava could deliver a horror film in 12 days. Freda reneged on the deal, having only shot half the screenplay in 10 days, but Bava and scriptwriter Piero Regnoli managed to complete the film in the remaining two, by telescoping and editing the story.

Freda’s mistress, Giana Maria Canale, a talented actress who was equally adept at playing princesses and pirate queens, was perfectly cast as Giselle, ‘the most beautiful woman in Paris’. Canale had played Theodora, the wanton wild animal trainer and half-clad exotic dancer with come-hither eyes, in Theodora, Slave Empress (1954), which Freda directed, produced and co-wrote. Canale’s Theodora beguiles and seduces Emperor Justinian (Georges Marchal) in Ravenna in the Byzantine Empire, circa 547 AD, and rises to become empress, where she champions the underclass in a society where the patrician ‘blues’ look down on the plebeian ‘greens’: classes are designated by the colour of garments they wear. Freda’s grandiose epic (which Bava worked on uncredited as a cinematographer) features a thrilling chariot race, six years before William Wyler’s remake of Ben-Hur (1959).Canale also appeared in Freda’s version of the Spartacus story, Spartacus the Gladiator (1953 – aka Sins of Rome) and was later Antea, the bewitching queen of the Amazons in Pietro Francisci’s Hercules (1958).

As well as being a horror film, there’s a bit of class commentary at work in I Vampiri too: Giselle is noble, rich, aristocratic – the niece of a duchess whose Du Grand family motto is ‘I shall conquer hell’ – and therefore above suspicion. Giselle’s lover Pierre was played by Dario Michaelis, who is perhaps the first example of the bland heroic male leads which populated Bava’s later movies. Much more interesting was Antoine Belpêtré, as the Duchess’s husband Julien, who fakes his own death so he can continue his experiments in peace. His magnificent laboratory is hidden at the back of his own tomb in the Du Grand family chapel. Future peplum star Wandisa Guida played Lorette, one of the professor’s kidnap victims and Paul Muller was particularly good as the professor’s junkie minion, who abducts young women for the scientist’s experiments in return for his next fix. Elsewhere, Pierre is Margherita’s ‘fix’, which she will do anything to attain.

The atmospheric score from Roman Vlad, the sharp black-and-white cinematography, in 2.35:1 CinemaScope, and the meticulous set design are the film’s main assets. The movie exudes a Gothic romanticism that is quite unlike either the happy-go-lucky gloss of Italian popular cinema or the grainy docu-dramas of Neorealism. Though the story takes place in contemporary Paris, the Duchess’s castle and the duchess herself are from another age and anticipate the ruined grandeur and faded Gothic glamour of Bava residences in such films as Black Sabbath and Kill, Baby…Kill! The huge ‘stone’ interior sets at Titanus include a grand hall, with long drapes fluttering in the wind and an imposing fireplace, an ornament that will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Mask of Satan. The duchess’s fireplace even has a secret panel to the rear of the grate, which leads to the family chapel – as did the Vadja’s in Bava’s official horror debut. The elderly black-clad widowed duchess drifts through these interiors, like a haunting spectre. The webby chapel itself is even more impressive, with stone tombs decorated with skulls and crossed bones. One of the victims finds a cell filled with the desiccated, skeletal remains of several women, in a scene that is pure Bava. A scene with a rat leaping towards a terrified victim appears in trailer ads, but not the film itself, and another abduction of a woman in a bath also seems to have been cut from available prints. The lighting effects add a silvery edging to ornate carving, giving an almost three-dimensional depth to the castle’s ornate interiors. Through the mist, the shafts of light caused by the branches when Pierre arrives in his car at the castle, would be a visual effect that appeared in many future Bava movies.

The film’s eerie opening depicted the corpse of a girl named Mireille being pulled from the River Seine. In this and other aspects, I Vampiri can be seen as a precursor both of the giallo thrillers and the German-produced Krimi adaptations of Edgar Wallace’s murder mysteries. Police inspector Chantal (in his hat and mac), investigative journalist Pierre who acts on inspired hunches, and the clues, evidence and red herrings that litter the narrative, all fed into both genres. The victims tend to be photogenic females, such as dancers or schoolgirls. The film also looks at scientific horror well before Euro-excursions in this direction with Eyes Without a Face (1959) and The Awful Dr Orloff (1962). The mad scientist and his untested, trial-and-error methods became staples of Euro-horror in the 1960s and ‘70s. Opposite this science-horror, the story also addresses themes of narcissism and the fear of aging, of the beauty and purity of youth ‘defiled’ by time. Margherita and Julien search for the secret of eternal youth, while at a ball at Castle Du Grand, ‘Giselle’ refers to her elderly guests – her aunt’s friends – as ‘dried-up mummies’: ‘I despise the idea of becoming one of them’.

The film features two magnificent transformation scenes, as the flawless Giselle metamorphoses into wizened Margherita before our eyes. In the first, she transforms in front of photographer Ronald, whom she shoots, and later rather more inopportunely in front of the police. This was achieved with a Bava technique using red makeup on ‘Giselle’, which was invisible under red lights on black-and-white film. When the red light was faded out and replaced with green, the red paint representing wrinkles appeared on ‘Margherita’s’ face. This ingenious technique was also used to change centuries-old witch Asa into youthful Princess Katya, and vice versa, in The Mask of Satan.

In Italy the film died a death. Italian posters for I Vampiri (‘The Vampires’) were rather literal in their imagery, with bats featuring prominently (there are no bats in the film). It was premiered in San Remo, but as Freda recalled, as soon as audiences discovered it was an Italian film, they weren’t interested. Thereafter both Freda and Bava often signed their work with anglicised pseudonyms, to make the films appear to originate from America or Britain. I Vampiri was retitled The Devil’s Commandment in the US and cut from 90 to 70 minutes, with added footage featuring Al Lewis (later Grandpa Munster in TV series The Munsters [1964-66]). In the UK it was passed an ‘X’ certificate in February 1960, distributed by Gala as Lust of the Vampire.

Verdict

I Vampiri’s failure in Italy ensured that it was to be another four years – and another film by Bava – before Italian horror forged its identity. Historically important, if I Vampiri is the first flower of Italian Gothic cinema, at the time it was something of a withered bloom.

Caltiki, The Immortal Monster (1959) IT/US

Orig: Caltiki, il mostro immortale

Aka: The Immortal Monster (UK title)

Dir: ‘Robert Hamton’ alias Riccardo Freda

75 mins

John Merivale (Dr John Fielding), Didi Sullivan (Ellen Fielding), Gerard Herter (Max Gunther), Daniela Rocca (Linda), Vittorio Andre (Professor Rodriguez), Giacomo Rossi-Stuart (Professor Rodriguez’s assistant), Daniele Vargas (Bob, diving member of expedition party), Nerio Bernardi (police inspector), Arturo Dominici (Nieto, member of expedition party), Gail Pearl (Indian dancer), Tom Felleghy (astronomer)

Story

An expedition investigates the causes why the Maya civilisation migrated north and abandoned their grand cities and temples in 607 AD. At the sacred pyramid and ruined city at Tikal, 30 miles south of Mexico City, the party explore underground caverns, where they find a hoard of treasure – the jewels of the pre-Columbians – and a huge blob-like creature which attacks and infects one of the archaeologists, Max Gunther, before it is dispatched with fire. Back in Mexico City, the flesh of Max’s infected arm is eaten away by the corrosive creature, and Max escapes from the hospital, while a sample of the creature, which is identified as a prehistoric, unicellular being, grows to a great size and multiplies when it comes into contact with radiation. Eventually, as radioactive comet Asinoe approaches Earth from outer space, a celestial event that coincides with the Mayan migration in 607 AD, the Caltiki monsters run amok and a tank battalion armed with flamethrowers is called in to destroy them.

Background

According to the titles, Caltiki, The Immortal Monster is ‘Based on an ancient Mexican legend’. It’s something of a rarity for Italian genre cinema – a sci-fi monster movie in the manner of The Blob (1958) or the British ‘Quatermass’ films, particularly the first in the series, The Quatermass Xperiment (1955 – The Creeping Unknown in the US). According to the recollections of Bava’s son Lamberto, director Freda shot much of the film, ‘At my grandfather’s (Eugenio Bava) house when I was 11…so I was able to admire all the models, though I never actually saw the film’. Bava was officially credited with the film’s photography and special effects, as ‘John Foam’. This is another Galatea production and the story goes that Bava finished directing the film when Freda walked away from the unfinished project. Some sources state that Freda left this project before completion precisely to allow Bava the chance to direct a film himself. In addition to the film’s shadowy cinematography, Bava staged many ingenious special effects shots, including the oozing, bubbling title creature, which envelopes and corrodes human flesh, reducing its victims to skeletons. In the Tikal temple, a shrine to deity Caltiki, Dr John Fielding, the expedition’s leader, manages to obliterate the first Caltiki with an explosion caused by a gasoline truck, which is rendered in model work. Later, the regenerated monsters besiege John’s wife and daughter, Ellen and Jenny, in a house, moving through the building and destroying it: this is also achieved with model and process shots. According to cinema legend the creatures featured here, the blob-like Caltiki monsters, were made from tripe. Model work – in the manner of the Japanese ‘Godzilla’ monster movies – was used for the finale, for the 3rd Tank Battalion’s destruction of the rapidly multiplying creatures with flamethrowers. A shot of a volcanic eruption was created using coloured ink in water (an effect that appears in many pepla), while the Mayan ruined city of Tikal (which is actually located in Guatemala), a civilisation swallowed by the jungle, is depicted by matte paintings. The scenes in the Mayan caverns were filmed in the Grotto Di Salone near Rome, a regular location in pepla – the stone steps the explorers descend can also be seen in Hercules Unchained. In a variation on Quatermass, Max’s arm has its vital tissues removed, leaving him with a clutching skeletal right hand and when Max escapes from hospital and goes on the run, the manhunt unfolds at the nature reserve at Tor Caldara, Lazio. At the beginning of the film, Nieto, one of the explorers, escapes from the Caltiki – his hand emerges from the Earth and he staggers out of the mist, when he returns to camp. Nieto is played by Arturo Dominici, who as Javutich would claw his way out of a grave and stagger off into the mist in Bava’s official directorial debut, The Mask of Satan.

The explorers are missing one of their party, Ulmer, who vanished when he was investigating the caverns. His camera is found and the film reel is screened (it depicts the Caltiki monster attacking Ulmer and Nieto) in scenes that anticipate the ‘found footage’ of Cannibal Holocaust many years later. The atmospheric score was co-written by Roberto Nicolosi and Roman Vlad, while several of the cast – including Dominici, Gerard Herter and Daniela Rocca, as Max’s lover, Linda – had appeared in sword and sandal epics Bava had worked on. Giacomo Rossi-Stuart played a minor role as a lab assistant, but went on to star in Bava’s Kill, Baby…Kill!  The trailer billed the terrifying, vengeful goddess Caltiki, hungry for blood, as a ‘crawling crushing colossus’ of ‘man-eating protoplasm’, which featured ‘Voodoo witchcraft mated to Wild Atomic Energy’. Caltiki was released in Italy in August 1959 and in the US, by Allied Artists, in September 1960. The US dub was by Titra in New York. The film was passed with an X certificate in the UK in 1960 as Caltiki, the Immortal Monster, distributed by Warner-Pathé, and again in 1962, as The Immortal Monster by Golden Era Film.

Verdict

Caltiki is an entertaining creature feature. It was as a ‘thank you’ from Galatea’s Lionello Santi for delivering finished versions of Caltiki and the sword and sandal epic The Giant of Marathon that Bava was handed his first official directing project, The Mask of Satan.

The Mask of Satan (1960) IT

Orig: La maschera del demonio

Aka: Black Sunday (US title), Revenge of the Vampire (UK title)

87 mins

Barbara Steele (Princess Katja Vajda and Asa the witch), John Richardson (Dr Andre Gorovek), Andrea Checchi (Professor Choma Kruvajan), Ivo Garrani (Prince Vadja), Arturo Dominici (Igor Javutich), Enrico Olivieri (Prince Constantine Vadja), Antonio Pierfederici (village priest), Tino Bianchi (Ivan, Vajda’s servant), Clara Bindi (innkeeper), Mario Passante (Nikita, coachman), Germana Dominici (Sonya, innkeeper’s daughter), Tito Garcia, Renato Terra (locals in inn)

Story

In 17th century Moldavia, accused witch Asa Vajda and her lover Igor Javutich are sentenced to death for vampiric activity by the High Court of the Inquisition of Moldavia, led by Asa’s brother, Grayarvé. She is branded with an ‘S’ and has a spiked mask, the mask of Satan, hammered onto her face for eternity. As Asa is being burned at the stake, rain extinguishes the flames, so her remains are interred in a chapel tomb, while Javutich is buried in unconsecrated ground. Two centuries later, while en route by coach to a science congress in Moscow, Professor Choma Kruvajan and his colleague Dr Andre Gorovek take a shortcut via an eerie forest road, but their vehicle throws a wheel. While the coachman Nikita repairs it, the two men investigate a ruined chapel. There they find Asa, a glass window in her tomb allowing a cross to keep the vampire’s corpse in check. When he’s attacked by a bat, Kruvajan accidentally breaks the cross, smashes the glass and cuts himself – his blood revives Asa, who lives once more. Asa implores Javutich to rise from his grave on the centennial ‘Day of the Damned’ to wreak revenge on the House of Vadja’s descendants, in retribution for their persecution and execution. Javutich must bring beautiful Princess Katya, who is the living image of Asa, to the chapel as a vessel for Asa to inhabit and restore her youth. Katya, the 21-year-old daughter of the current Prince Vadja, lives with her father and brother, Constantine, in their ancestral castle. Strange occurrences and noises unnerve the old prince, who is visited that night by Javutich but scares the vampire away with a crucifix. While staying in an inn in Mirgorod, Professor Kruvajan is summoned to the castle to treat the prince for shock, but the professor succumbs to the vampires, when he is diverted to Asa ’s tomb where she drains his blood. Though he appears to be alive, he is in fact a walking cadaver. Left alone to treat the prince, vampire Kruvajan kills him, while one-by-one the castle’s residents are picked off – groom Boris is found drowned in a river, manservant Ivan is hanged and Constantine is chased by Javutich and falls into a shaft in a secret tunnel connecting the castle to the chapel – leaving Katya unprotected. Eventually Andre and the parish priest, an expert in local lore, piece together the story and realise that Katya is in mortal danger. They discover Professor Kruvajan’s corpse in Javutich’s grave and put out his left eye with a spike, to break the witch’s spell. Javutich carries Katya to the chapel and Asa transforms herself into the youthful princess. When Andre arrives to save Katya, he must deduce which is witch.

Background

The Mask of Satan, Bava’s official directorial debut, is the bridge between classic horror cinema of the 1930s and more contemporary developments in the genre. The expressionistic monochrome visuals, the lighting and the ‘stone’ sets, recall Universal studios’ classic horrors of the 1930s, such as Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), or the stormy, spooky atmospherics of The Old Dark House (1932). There’s even that Universal staple, a rabble of torch-and-pitchfork waving locals who storm Castle Vadja in the finale to capture Asa and burn her once more. But the film’s rather more graphic gore, albeit brief, is much more explicit, in keeping with the Hammer Horror imports, such as The Curse of Frankenstein (1957 – La maschera di Frankenstein in Italy) and Horror of Dracula (1958 – or Dracula il vampiro in Italy), both starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Bava’s gory shock effects – a litany of strange occurrences and slayings – include the splatter of blood through the orifices of the Mask of Satan as it’s hammered down, the sizzling ‘S’ branded on Asa’s pale skin, the spurt of fluid as Kruvajan’s eye is poked out, the castle’s guard dogs discovered bleeding to death with their throats slashed, and Prince Vadja’s burning, melting face, when he’s pushed into the blazing fire grate by Javutich. Asa accidentally reveals her rotten rib cage and guts, when her cloak falls open, in an effect that was repeated in gory-ous Technicolor in Bava’s Planet of the Vampires (1965). Asa’s gradual rejuvenation is masterful: the Mask of Satan is removed from her face, revealing scorpions crawling across her empty-eyed visage. Then maggots and blood and glowing eyes appear in her sockets, until finally Asa is restored to life. The torturous Mask of Satan with its hideous visage (‘the true face of the Devil’) was fashioned in bronze by Mario’s father Eugenio, who also made wax facial likenesses of Kruvajan (for the eye poking scene), Prince Vadja (for when his face melts in the fire, House of Wax-style) and Asa the witch, for the stages of her resurrection.

The Mask of Satan arose when Bava completed Galatea production’s Caltiki and The Giant of Marathon, after the directors on both films left the projects mid-schedule. Galatea’s executive producer Lionello Santi provided Bava with the resources and a $100,000 budget as a ‘thank you’. The film was an Italian co-production between Galatea and Jolly Film, produced by Massimo De Rita, who had co-scripted Francisci’s ‘Hercules’ movies. The story was loosely based on The Vij by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol, as adapted by Bava, Ennio De Concini and Mario Serandrei (who was also the film’s editor). Star Barbara Steele claims she never saw a completed script and received the pages day-to-day, as and when she needed them. In addition to directing, Bava was also the director of photography, with Ubaldo Terzano as his camera operator. For the leads, Bava cast two British ex-Rank Organisation stars – Barbara Steele and John Richardson. Richardson is okay as the pallid lead – a recurrent weak ingredient in what became the Italian gothic horror formula – but Steele is a revelation in dual roles which drastically changed her fortunes in the film business. She became the reigning ‘scream queen’ of 1960s horror cinema and Mask was her coronation. She plays both the victim and her oppressor, roles that she would revisit for other Italian outings. As well as appearing in several more Italian gothic horror films, including The Horrible Secret of Dr Hichcock (1962) for Riccardo Freda and Castle of Blood (1964) for Antonio Margheriti, she also worked on ‘arthouse’ projects, such as Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963). Steele is good as beautiful Katya, but is excellent as Asa, the busty, pock-faced demon-witch exacting vengeance down the centuries. She is both alluring and repulsive, as all good murderous-seducers should be. Her hypnotic gaze inspired the film’s US tagline: ‘Stare Into These Eyes’. Steele’s menacing performance and dominating omnipresence as Asa is even more impressive, as the witch lies inert in her tomb for most of the movie.

Asa’s lover Javutich was played by the great Italian actor Arturo Dominici, who had previously appeared in several Bava-associated productions, such as Hercules and Caltiki. A versatile actor, Dominici followed his shambling portrayal of the walking dead with a role as Greek hero Achilles in Giorgio Ferroni’s The Trojan War (1961). In Mask his daughter Germana played the innkeeper’s daughter Sonya. In support, Andrea Checchi was well cast as Professor Kruvajan, who is convincingly overtaken by the dark side. Enrico Olivieri played Katya’s younger brother Constantine, who manages to survive being thrown down a pit, while future spaghetti western bandito Tito Garcia can be spotted as one of the Mirgorod locals and Antonio Pierfederici is memorable as the village’s bearded non-denominational priest. Ivo Garrani, who’d worked with Bava on Hercules, The Day the Sky Exploded and The Giant of Marathon, was good as the nervy aristocrat Prince Vadja, who is also vampirised and tries to drink the blood of his own daughter. Bava wanted his villains to wear vampire fangs (they appear in cast publicity photos), but the film’s vampirism is implied: victims have colon puncture holes in their necks, but the actual blood-drinking is offscreen. Showing scant regard for vampire lore, they also cast reflections in mirrors and windows. The gruesome method of their dispatch (a poked-out left eye) reappeared in Jesus Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos (1970).

Filming began for six weeks from March 28 1960. Mask of Satan was mostly shot on soundstages at Titanus Studios, Rome – even for many ‘exteriors’, including Mirgorod’s old cemetery, which later made a reappearance in Bava’s Kill, Baby…Kill! The coach’s eerie journey through the tangled wood was created in the studio, with Bava’s deft camera trickery. According to Steele, the sets and entire crew were dowdily monochromatic, with no bright colours allowed on set, only black and white. For the landscape of Moldavia (which is now part of Romania), location work was carried out in the Treja Valley, Lazio, and at Canale Monterano which would have provided verdant Spring greenery, had the film been shot in colour. These include exterior shots of the coach en route to Mirgorod. The old chapel ruin’s exterior seen in the film and its surrounding area were the medieval ruins of the village at Monterano, in Lazio, while Boris is found drowned in the river at Canale Monterano. The Castle Vadja exteriors, a gate, tower and great door, were Prince Massimo’s castle, at Arsoli, Rome. The castello’s gardens were also used as Castle Vadja and Katya cries for help from the castle’s high windows. Roberto Nicolosi’s dramatic, percussive score lurks threateningly, enriching these settings, while the film’s natural soundscape includes such horror staples as whistling wind, howling wolves, nocturnal animal noises, claps of thunder and wails in the night. Nicolosi also provides a romantic piano theme for Katya, which the princess herself plays on the piano and accompanies her blossoming love affair with Andre. The cavernous sets at Titanus – partly reused from I vampiri – are the film’s most impressive settings. In one scene, a mysterious wind blows through the castle, the avenging wind of the undead. The stone hall features wall hangings, large portraits of Asa and Javutich, and a huge imposing fireplace grand enough to grace a country house residence’s entrance, that conceals a secret passage to the chapel in the rear panel of its grate. The bedchambers are similarly opulent, while other interiors include the village sacristy, the castle’s corridors, the Mirgorod inn and Irina the cow’s milking shed. All are recreated with great attention to detail and clutter. Perhaps the film’s greatest setting is the chapel interior, a shadowy gothic crypt serving as the location of Asa’s cobwebbed tomb, which reappeared in Bava’s Kill, Baby…Kill! In Mask of Satan, Bava drinks in the dank atmosphere of this chapel in an impressive 360° pan – a notable example of Bava’s style drawing attention to itself for the sake of a deftly-executed, wholly cinematic flourish. As Kruvajan states, ‘The history of ancient Moldavia is carved in these stones’.

Like bands which have years of great material and ideas condensed into their debut album, Bava packs his official debut with invention, genre reflection, reference and reverence, to create a masterpiece of devilry – at once familiar yet innovative, and haunting and lyrical. Presenting stock horror situations, Bava often delivers the unexpected. In contrast to earlier horrors, where Asa’s tomb lid would have slowly creaked open upon the undead’s resurrection, Asa literally blasts out of her tomb, as the stone encasing her shatters. Javutich’s resurrection amid the lightning flashes of a storm is more traditional. As Asa urges ‘Rise, Javutich, rise!’ the earth on his grave ruptures and the ghoul’s clammy hands claw out of the sod. The cloaked cadaver tramps off into the mist and removes the Mask of Satan from his face, to reveal a hideously pockmarked visage and cobwebs. Professor Kruvajan smokes his pipe beside a pool, in a scene that wouldn’t be out of place in a fairytale – albeit a grim one – but his tranquillity is interrupted by the arrival of Javutich and his hearse-like coach, which gallops though the misty forest, through shafts of moonlight, presented by Bava as gliding in slow-motion. Ripples in the pool dissolve into a shot of Asa’s face, a shot which became a Bava grace note. When the coach gallops back to the castle, the shots of Javutich lashing the horses in the driving seat were created in a studio with branches being whipped past the camera – another Bava trademark. As in other Bava films – for example Baron Blood – it is a child who establishes the essential link between the strange goings-on and those responsible, when she recognises the centuries’ old portrait of Javutich in the castle as the man who was driving the coach that collected Kruvajan from the village.

Bava’s mastery of special effects, visual effects and camera trickery make this horror outing richly rewarding time and again, and it seems only to improve with age. Bava created moonlit exteriors of the castle and stormy skies with glass matte paintings and miniatures. In the film’s infamous opening sequence – filmed on a Titanus soundstage – the hooded, torch-bearing inquisitors declare Asa in league with Satan. The beefy, bare-chested torturers, with their hoods and studded wrist gauntlets and belts, could have walked off the set of a peplum. The hoods are very similar to those worn by the nighttime assassins in the peplum The Last Days of Pompeii (1959), which Bava worked on the second unit of, uncredited. The torturers brand Asa and then the grand inquisitor orders: ‘Cover her face with the Mask of Satan. Nail it down!’ They hammer a devil mask onto her face with a huge mallet, the thorny spikes inside the mask penetrating Asa’s face. The camera trick for the aging of young Giselle Du Grand in I vampiri was reused, for the scenes when Katya’s youthful beauty is ‘transferred’ to Asa, and Katya ages hideously in moments. Red makeup applied to Steele, which was invisible under red lights on black-and-white film, magically appeared when the red light was faded out and replaced with green, as Asa promises Katya that she will ‘Enjoy a beautiful life of evil and hate in me!’ A double-exposure trick shot by Bava allows both Katya and Asa to appear in the same shot. Later, as Asa the witch burns atop a ladder on a bonfire, the process is reversed and Katya becomes youthful one more. The final shot of the film is of Asa’s corpse falling forward into the fires of Hell – at last the witch is dead.

Released in Italy in August 1960, La maschera del demonio (‘The Mask of the Demon) was a moderate success, taking 139 million lira. The Italian print includes a one-and-a-half minute dialogue scene between Katya and her father near a fountain, with Katya in melancholy reflective mood, sad at autumn’s approach and the prince regretful that they didn’t leave the castle years ago. The International version of the film, titled The Mask of Satan, was revoiced in English by members of E.L.D.A., the English Language Dubbers Association in Rome. This version runs 87-minutes and has English language dialogue written and directed by ‘George Higgins III’, which closely follows the original Italian script. This uncut version, with all the gore intact, was rejected a UK certificate in February 1961. It was later retitled Revenge of the Vampire for its belated X-rated UK release, as a cut version, in June 1968.

But it was in America where the film really took off. Presented by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff, this Alta Vista Production was distributed by American International Pictures, with an all-new, chilling evocative, sacrilegious title: Black Sunday. This version differs significantly from the International print, with narrator George Gonneau voicing an alternative opening narration. The plot is slightly rewritten to designate this day of the rising dead ‘Black Sunday’, while Javutich is renamed Javuto and is now Asa’s serf, not her lover. Andre is Dr. Andreas Gorobec and Kruvajan’s first name is Thomas. The film now begins with a warning from the film’s producers of the shocking content, suitable only for over-14s, though much of the gorier violence was removed in this 80-minute cut. AIP also cut down the romance between Katya and Andrea, removing a dialogue scene between them in the castle grounds, and abridged a necro-kiss between Kruvajan and Asa. This American version was produced by Lou Rusoff with new dialogue recorded at Titra Sound Studios, New York, directed by Lee Kresel and re-edited by Salvatore Billitteri. Andreas (and other characters) were revoiced by Bernard Grant, while Steele’s characters were dubbed by Grant’s wife, Joyce Gordon. It also replaced Roberto Nicolosi’s musical accompaniment with an inferior one composed by Les Baxter and coordinated by Al Simms. Baxter reorchestrates Katya’s piano ‘love theme’ but mostly it’s an overly dramatic, brassy, busy, sometimes intrusively distracting ‘horror movie’ score. Released by AIP in the US in February 1961, Black Sunday rapidly became AIP’s biggest success, even outgrossing Roger Corman’s The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) and began a relationship between Bava and AIP that would last, off-and-on, until the early 1970s.

There are still other variations of the film, such as the 81-minute SC Video Ltd hybrid released in the UK in 1986, rated 15, which uses the Black Sunday title inserted into the Italian language title sequence. This version is missing the caption ‘Two Centuries Later’, is cut for violence, but is the International rather than the AIP dub. Barbara Steele is misspelt ‘Barbara Steel’ in the title sequence of some versions. The Italian and International trailers feature an alternative take of Asa’s tomb exploding, while the most evocative trailer is the AIP version for Black Sunday. Both versions of the film – The Mask of Satan and Black Sunday – have their merits and as is often the case, it depends on which one you saw first. The dubbing is superior in the AIP edition, but I saw the UK The Mask of Satan version initially and this will always be my preference.

Verdict

One of the greatest black-and-white period horror films, The Mask of Satan remains an astonishing film debut. It is representative as a highpoint in Italian horror cinema, spawned dozens of imitators over the two decades – including such entries as Crypt of Horror and The Long Hair of Death (both 1964) – and heralded a ‘golden age’ of Italian horror that lasted in various incarnations until the early 1980s.

Hercules in the Centre of the Earth (1961) IT/WG

Orig: Ercole al centro della terra

Aka: Hercules in the Haunted World (US title)

Dir: Mario Bava

81 mins

Reg Park (Hercules), Christopher Lee (King Lico), Eleonora Ruffo (Deianara), Giorgio Ardisson (Theseus), Marisa Belli (Queen Arathusa of the Hesperides), Ida Galli (Persephone), Franco Giacobini (Telemachus), Mino Doro (Keros, councillor), Rosalba Neri (Helena, Deianara’s handmaiden), Eleanora Rossi Drago (Jocasta), Gaia Germani (Medea, the sibyl), Raf Baldassarre (assassins’ leader), Elisabetta Pavan (Tamar), Aldo Pedinotti (Sunis), Grazia Collodi (Elektra), Renzo Pevarello (assassin)

Story

Hercules, the mighty son of Zeus, returns to the city of Icalia to marry Deianara, but finds his betrothed spellbound by a mysterious malady. With Deianara not fit to take her throne as queen, her Uncle Lico has usurped the office in her place. Warned by chancellor Keros that Icalia is under the curse of ‘Forces of Evil’, Hercules visits the seer, Medea. She tells him that he must go to Hades, the Kingdom of the Dead, and retrieve Pluto’s magic stone. To do this he must first travel to the Island of the Hesperides and locate a golden apple, which will enable him to pass into Hades unscathed. Hercules and his companions, heroic Theseus and bumbler Telemachus, use Sunis’ magic ship that can sail against the wind for their mythical voyage. In the Garden of the Hesperides, Hercules manages to retrieve the Golden Apple from atop a huge tree and rescues his companions from the Grotto of Procrustes, a stone golem, which is about to kill them. Telemachus guards the apple on the ship, while Hercules and Theseus enter the Underworld, a magical land where they can never trust appearances. As they cross a lava marsh, Theseus appears to fall and perish, but he manages to escape the lava bed before Pluto can claim him. Hercules steals the Stone of Pluto and Theseus meets a beautiful woman, who he falls in love with. She accompanies them back to the ‘Land of the Living’, but is later revealed to be Persephone, Pluto’s favourite daughter. The adventurers return to Icalia, to find the land gripped by drought and pestilence. Deianara is cured, but Theseus’s love Persephone must return to Hades, to placate Pluto. She makes him forget their brief love affair: ‘I’ve given him forgetfulness’. On ‘The Night when the Moon is devoured by the Great Dragon’ (peplum-speak for an eclipse), Lico takes Deianara to the sacrificial altar to drink her blood, as part of a rite to make him ‘King for all Eternity’. Hercules must fight King Lico’s army of the undead, flying ghouls who emerge from cobwebbed stone tombs, if he hopes to save his love.

Background

Bava worked uncredited on many of the era’s top pepla, creating many of their most memorable settings and effects. It was his glorious lighting and visual effects which made Hercules and Hercules Unchained successful in the late 1950s, thus kick-starting the peplum craze. But Bava’s own contribution to the genre, Hercules in the Centre of the Earth, is exceptional on its own terms and a masterclass in peplum filmmaking. Like Maciste against the Vampire (1961 – Goliath and the Vampires in the US), Maciste in Hell (1962 – The Witch’s Curse), War of the Zombies (1964 – aka Night Star: Goddess of Electra and Rome against Rome) and Hercules Prisoner of Evil (1964), it is a peplum-horror. While working uncredited on the special effects for Vittorio Cottafavi’s Hercules Conquers Atlantis (1961), perhaps the greatest of all Italian pepla (which was released, re-edited in the USA as Hercules and the Captive Women), Bava was approached by the film’s producer Achille Piazzi. Bava’s horror film Black Sunday was making a fortune in the US via AIP, so Piazzi offered Bava the chance to direct a peplum of his own, with the Leeds-born muscleman star of Hercules Conquers Atlantis Reg Park, who was known in bodybuilding circles as ‘Reg the Leg’ (as in ‘legend’).

Shot under the working title ‘Hercules against the Vampires’, Hercules in the Centre of the Earth took three weeks to shoot, from May to June, 1961. Bava set himself a challenge to make a film using ‘one segmented wall containing doors and windows, and four movable columns’. Look out for the pillars and the gold door throughout the movie. The interior Icalia palace sets and exterior effects shots were filmed at Cinecittà Studios, Rome, reusing sets and décor from Hercules Conquers Atlantis. Bava’s art director and set dresser, Franco Lolli, also worked on Cottafavi’s movie. Bava also acted as his own director of photography, his camera operator was Ubaldo Terzano and the film was lensed in 2.35:1 widescreen Super/100 Totalscope, which is completely lost in cropped home video prints. The Acalian palace exterior, in the Grottarossa quarry near Rome, was used for Hercules’s homecoming and had also appeared as the exteriors of Atlantis in Hercules Conquers Atlantis. The two scenes filmed there for Hercules in the Centre of the Earth look to have been shot on the same day, with the same extras. The opening scene, with Theseus wooing Jocasta in a hayloft, and an ox cart stuck in the mud, were filmed at the beauty spot of tiered waterfalls at Monte Gelato in the Treja Valley, near an old stone watermill, which featured in many pepla and westerns. Raf Baldassare led the ruffians who attempt to kill Hercules, at Lico’s bidding, but are foiled by Hercules, who hurls the ox cart at them. The beach scenes, where Telemachus is almost torn apart by Sunis’s wild horses, were filmed at Tor Caldara. Lico’s lair, with its stone tombs and effigies, was filmed at the caverns of Grotto Di Salone in Rome, while Hell was recreated in the sensational natural wonder of Grotte Di Castellana (the Castellana Caves), an underground network of caverns that are still open today in Apulia to tourists. Riccardo Freda also shot part of his own peplum visit to Hades, Maciste in Hell (1962), there.

Park is perhaps pepla’s best Hercules – fearless and mighty, but with a sense of humour and mischief. Amid the ‘horror movie’ atmosphere, he gets to do proper peplum feats of strength too: throwing boulders, traversing chasms, tussling with wild horses and smashing down doors. When Hercules hurls Procrustes through the air, the stone demon crashes through a pile of rocks, which collapse and reveal the entrance to Hades. Giorgio Ardisson is good as young Theseus, a swashbuckling hero in the classic mould (Ardisson was doubled in his fight scenes by stuntman Nazzareno Zamperla wearing a blond wig). Franco Giacobini provided comedy relief as Jocasta’s fiancé Telemachus (the name of Ulysses and Penelope’s son in The Odyssey). The actresses in this mythical fantasy all look gorgeous, from Marisa Belli as Arethusa, Queen of the Hesperides, and Eleanora Rossi Drago’s Jocasta, to Eleonora Ruffo (billed as Leonora Ruffo is some prints) as bewitched Deianara. Ida Galli made a serenely beautiful Persephone, whose only desire is to love as mortals do.

If the ‘trip to Hades’ plot is straightforward, the film’s sights and sounds are eye-opening. The score by Armando Trovajoli is one of his best – at moments delicate, then threatening, epic then melancholy, but always interesting. Trovajoli deploys haunting gypsy violins as spellbound Deianara rises from a tomb. At Lico’s command in his cobwebbed underground lair, she floats, mesmerised, towards her entrancer, and elsewhere an eerie clarinet or strummed harp bodes ill. The heroes’ sea voyage in Sunis’ magic ship is lensed under a blood-red sky and in the Garden of the Hesperides, the ‘Land of Endless Midnight’, granite monster Procrustes (a stuntman in a suit) tortures Theseus and Telemachus on bone-crunching racks to make them fit their oversized or undersized beds. The Hesperides and Hades caverns are swathed in throbbing, vibrant colours (red, green, purple and blue) and swirl with dry ice, as Bava wreathes his modest budget in creeping mist. The heavens above Icalia are vivid blues and reds, and inky clouds trouble the skyline. The special effects are inventive and the occasion lapse apart, mostly convincing. In terms of sheer visual brio, Hercules in the Centre of the Earth is matchless.

The script – co-written by Alessandro Continenza, Franco Prosperi, Duccio Tessari and Bava – was titled ‘Hercules in the Realm of the Dead’. For the Hell scenes, Bava revisits the menacing, heady atmosphere of Queen Omphale’s lair in Hercules Unchained, but with radiated sensuality replaced by toxic dread. The hallucinatory visions of Hades, an unearthly world that trailers dubbed a ‘Foreboding place of no return’, were recreated more horrifically in Freda’s excursion Hell-wards, Maciste in Hell, with its paths of fire and writhing damned. In Bava’s film, Hercules has been told by Queen Arethusa, ‘Do not believe in what you think you see’. On their arrival in Hades, the heroes encounter a beautiful woman, naked and chained, who attempts to waylay them, but she is only an apparition, who laughs mockingly as she bursts into flames. A fiery chasm is really a river, while later Pluto tries to trick the heroes with real bubbling lava beds. Hercules and Theseus hack through a dense tangled forest of vines, which scream as they are cut, the branches dripping blood as they release the souls of the damned trapped within the vines.

Christopher Lee, then best known as Count Dracula in Hammer’s Horror of Dracula (1958) which had been a massive hit in Italy, was cast in this fantasy as Lico, the cloaked King of Darkness. To Lee’s dismay, the film was released as ‘Hercules against the Vampires’, or variations, in Germany and France. For the finale, the cobwebby, stone tombs in Lico’s dank lair creak open, hands clutch forth and shrouded ghouls spring into action, flying through the night to attack Hercules. During an eclipse, Lico takes Deianara to his sacrificial altar, in a ring of menhirs, to drink her blood. In the misty blue night, Lico attacks Hercules with a skeletal bone dagger, but the hero flattens Lico and his ghoul minions with the stone monuments. As the eclipse passes, Lico, like Dracula, burns.

Ercole al centro della terra – with the twin attractions of Hercules and Dracula – was the biggest hit of Bava’s career in Italy, taking 398 million lira on its release in November 1961. It was rated U for UK release by Golden Era Distributors Ltd in late 1962 at 76 minutes, under the title Hercules in the Centre of the Earth, a title that Bava maintains was intended to capitalise on the success of Henry Levin’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). Lee was dubbed by an unknown voiceover artist at International Dubbing Studios (I.D.S.) in the English language version, while Park is dubbed by Dan Sturkie. The US release by Woolner Brothers was retitled Hercules in the Haunted World for exhibition in April 1964. US posters proclaimed ‘An All New Height in Fright and Might!’ and it was doubled-billed with Antonio Margheriti’s atmospheric ghost story Castle of Blood (1964), starring Bava’s discovery Barbara Steele.

While not the victim of the hatchet job inflicted on Hercules Conquers Atlantis, which was reduced to the inferior Hercules and the Captive Women for the US market, there are three different English language versions of Bava’s horror-peplum available. The US Hercules in the Haunted World, which runs 82 minutes on video (from Sinister Cinema), was overseen by Hugo Grimaldi. It may bear many fans’ title of preference, but it’s the worst version of Bava’s film. It begins with livelier title music and a schlocky animated title sequence designed by Filmation Associates, with multicoloured whirlpool hypnotic swirls, flying ghouls, chained women and other characters from the film. It also added a new scene featuring the oracle as Hercules et al return to Icalia, plus a voiceover explaining that new challenges await the hero on his return. It removed the scene of Hercules riding through the draught and pestilence-afflicted landscape, with skeletal livestock carcasses, and abridges Hercules and the crowds in the city, welcoming him back from Hell. The full uncut version, titled Hercules in the Centre of the Earth and running 80 minutes in PAL, was released on home video in Holland in 1983 by EVC and includes a pre-titles sequence, with Lico at his sacrificial monoliths and a woman with a vampire-like neck wound lying nearby. Lico delivers a ‘sermon’ to his ghouls, that their day is soon at hand, when ‘night shall rule our lives’, the cries of the tortured ‘will become as music’, rivers will dry up and the sun will burn up the harvest, and ‘every mortal soul shall be damned forever’. Encouraged by this cheerful news, the ghouls return to their stone tombs (this is footage used later in the film, showing the ghouls emerging, played backwards). The title music that follows this scene, during the title sequence, is very similar to the staccato cue from the beginning of Trovajoli’s score to the peplum/sci-fi movie The Giant of Metropolis (1961). The 2002 DVD edition from Fantoma, called Hercules in the Haunted World on the cover but Hercules in the Centre of the Earth on the film, has yet another reorchestration from Trovajoli, a quietly threatening cue. In sumptuous anamorphic widescreen in 2.35:1 ratio and with both the original English language dub and the Italian language version, with English subtitles, and liner notes by Bava’s biographer Tim Lucas, this is the definitive edition of this wonderful film, which truly does the film justice.

Verdict

A magnificent film. Considering that Bava is best known as a horror film director, I rate this movie, with The Mask of Satan and Diabolik, as his greatest work. Bava’s command of colour and visual ingenuity, his sense of the fantastic and the epic, make this an exquisite peplum fairytale, where mythical meets macabro.

Erik the Conqueror (1961) IT/FR

Orig: Gli invasori

Aka: Fury of the Vikings (UK title)/Viking Invaders (UK video title)/The Invaders/Conquest of the Normans (US video titles)

Dir: Mario Bava

90 mins

Cameron Mitchell (Eron), Alice Kessler (Rama), Ellen Kessler (Daya), Giorgio Ardisson (Erik, Duke of Helford), Andrea Checchi (Sir Rutford), Jacques Delbo (Olaf, Viking leader), Franco Giacobini (Rustica, Erik’s servant), Raf Baldassarre (Blak, Rutford’s assassin), Enzo Doria (Bennett, Scottish baron), Joe Robinson (Garian, Eron’s rival), Gianni Solaro (Ranco, Viking who tries to save two brothers), Franco Ressel (King Lothar of the Britons), Folco Lulli (Harald, Viking king), Françoise Christophe (Queen Alice of the Britons), Livia Contardi (Hadda), Loris Loddi (young Erik)

Story

In 786 AD, during the Viking invasion of Britain, the Britons fight back against the invaders and King Lothar and his men attack Viking settlements on the coast. During one such raid, Viking King Harald is slain and his men routed, but treasonous Sir Rutford engineers the assassination of Lothar. Harald’s infant son Eron is saved during the raid and taken back home to grow into a mighty warrior, while Eron’s younger brother Erik is captured and raised by British Queen Alice as her own. 20 years later Erik is made Duke of Helford, commander of the British Navy, while Eron becomes a Viking chief and leads an expedition against Britain. In a sea battle, Erik’s ship is sunk and he and his retainer Rustica are shipwrecked in the land of the Vikings. Meanwhile Eron and his men are allowed into Alice’s castle via a secret passage and take Alice hostage. Erik has fallen in love with Rama, the twin sister of Eron’s bride-to-be Daya, so Rama helps Erik and his step-mother escape. In Britain, Erik leads his men and their Scots allies against Rutford’s forces at their coastal fortress stronghold. Eron faces Erik in single combat, during which Eron realises that Erik is his brother, when he notices a tattoo on Erik’s chest that is the hereditary mark of a Viking king. Eron is mortally wounded by one of Rutford’s assassins, so Erik must scale the castle walls to rescue Daya, who Rutford holds hostage. The Vikings and Erik’s Britons storm the castle and Rutford dies, riddled with arrows.

Background

Following the success of Giacomo Gentilomo’s Last of the Vikings (1961), star Cameron Mitchell was called back to Italy to make another Viking saga, this time with Bava directing. It was the first time they worked together as director and star and they would do so on two more occasions, to great success, on Blood and Black Lace and Knives of the Avenger. Like Last of the Vikings, Erik the Conqueror was patterned on Kirk Douglas’s swashbuckling adventure The Vikings (1958), and Galatea was again the Italian co-backers, with Lionello Santi producing. Mitchell is excellent as the heroic Viking leader and Giorgio Ardisson is back from Bava’s previous movie, Hercules in the Centre of the Earth. In fact he isn’t the only aspect of the ‘Hercules’ film making a reappearance.

Erik the Conqueror was filmed from August to October 1961, with Bava himself as director of photography. It is among the handsomest of his films and certainly one of the most vividly realised Italian costume adventures of the era. Of the brief spate of Italian Viking adventures in the 1960s, Mario Caiano’s Erik the Viking (1965) appears to have had the biggest budget. Its Viking explorers (led by Giuliano Gemma) depart from the medieval village set constructed for The Long Ships (1964) starring Richard Widmark, in Lim Fjord, Yugoslavia. Erik the Conqueror’s interiors were shot at Cinecittà and Titanus Studios. The sets included a vast Viking great hall, partly shot at the hewn-in-rock Grotto Di Salone, which is dominated by a huge gnarly root from Hercules in the Centre of the Earth. Later, when the Scots barons agree to help Erik take Rutford’s castle, there’s some hand-me-down obelisks from Lico’s sacrificial rite at the climax of the ’Hercules’ film. The film’s coastal scenes were lensed on the beach and headland at Tor Caldara, Anzio Cape. These include the opening scene (a British attack on a Viking settlement) and the Viking assault on the castle. The fortress itself atop the headland is a cut-out from National Geographic magazine, carefully aligned in the frame – the same castle cropped up in Giuseppe Vari’s Attack of the Normans (1962 – Invasion of the Normans), also with Cameron Mitchell. The Viking village huts were redeployed later in the film, also at Tor Caldara, as the fishermen’s camp where Erik and Rustica are shipwrecked. The beach is used lyrically in beautifully photographed scenes, when Queen Alice finds infant Erik on the beach after the massacre, and later when Erik is again discovered on a beach (in fact geographically the same beach) by Rama. Erik’s lancers thunder through the quarry at Grottarossa, while the Rutford’s castle is at Tor Caldara. The two armies face up to each other at completely separate locations, which through the magic of editing are spliced together seamlessly. The scene when Erik scales a wooden tower, using arrows fired by his men as a ‘ladder’, anticipates Diabolik scaling the St Just castle wall in Bava’s comic strip adaptation.

The colour-drenched Bava compositions, in widescreen Dyaliscope, make Erik the Conqueror a memorable experience. The scenes in the Viking hall, bathed in colour, are among the finest scenes of the director’s career – savour the vivid colours of Erik and Daya’s wedding ceremony. A torture scene, with Daya threatened by a tarantula, in the castle’s dungeon, is brilliantly lit. It helps that the Starz/Anchor Bay DVD release of this is a magnificent Italian print, which enhances the visual attributes of the film considerably. The cast included Andrea Checchi (from The Mask of Satan), Raf Baldassarre (from Hercules in the Centre of the Earth) and a quality supporting cast including Folco Lulli, Franco Ressel and Newcastle Upon Tyne-born champion wrestler Joe Robinson. As in Hercules in the Centre of the Earth, Franco Giacobini was on hand to provide comedy relief. Lothar is King of the Britons in the English language print, but of Scotland in the Italian version. Perhaps the film’s most remarkable virtue is the casting of the beautiful East German Kessler Twins, Alice and Ellen, as white robed Vestal Virgins Rama and Daya. These blonde bombshells are the two brothers’ twin love interests, but were in reality cabaret stars rather than actresses. They perform a synchronised dance routine in Erik (choreographed by Leo Coleman) and later appeared briefly in the biblical epic The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah (1962). AIP trailers for the US release of the film billed them as ‘Life’s Cover Girls’. In interviews, Mitchell rated Bava as one of the greatest directors of all time, to be mentioned in the same breath as John Ford, Orson Welles, Elia Kazan and Fellini. He recalled how Bava staged his sea battles indoors on studio soundstages – Bava dollied the camera alongside a stationary vessel, to suggest the forward movement of the ship and wreathed the set in sea mist. The final battle, as the Vikings storm the British fortress is a swirl of fire and sword, beefed up with stock footage from Last of the Vikings. With Rutford vanquished, the films ends on a downbeat note, with a Viking burial at sea, as the corpse of Eron and a very much alive Daya drift away on a burning longboat. It was released in Italy in December 1961 and was a huge success, taking over 326 million lira. It was rated U in the UK for release in April 1963 and AIP released it in the US in June the same year. It was released by Inter-Ocean in 1982 on home video in the UK, as Viking Raiders.

Verdict

Along with Hercules in the Centre of the Earth, this is the best of Bava’s early costume adventures. Both visually and narratively, it is perhaps the most satisfying of his early colour films, whether depicting the developing relationship between Erik and Rama, or staging village pillaging action sequences.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) IT/US

Orig: La ragazza che sapeva troppo

Aka: Evil Eye

Dir: Mario Bava

85 mins

John Saxon (Dr Marcello Bassi), Leticia Roman (Nora Davis), Valentina Cortese (Laura Craven-Torrani), Luigi Bonos (Stelletta Hotel receptionist), Milo Quesada (De Vico, aka ‘Paccini’, man arrested at airport), Robert Buchanan (Dr Alessi, the neurosurgeon), Gustavo De Nardo (Doctor Facchetti, police inspector), Lucia Modugno (nurse with Facchetti)), Gianni De Benedetto (Professor Torrani, psychiatrist), Virginia Doro (Torrani’s housekeeper), Dante Di Paolo (Andrea Landini, the former journalist), Jim Dolen (priest), Chana Coubert (Ethel Widnell Batocci, Nora’s aunt), Adriana Facchetti (woman in ‘Trattoria Del Gallo’ kitchen), Franco Ressel (arresting Narc at airport), Mario Bava (Uncle Augusto’s portrait), Titti Tomaino (inspector), Marta Melocco (Maria Straccianeve, murder victim), Geoffrey Copplestone (prison official)

Story

New Yorker Nora Davis, an impressionable reader of murder mystery novels, arrives in Rome to visit her ailing aunt Ethel Widnell Batocci. During a stormy night, Ethel suffers a fatal heart attack. On her way to fetch Ethel’s physician, Dr Marcello Bassi, Nora is mugged and has her bag snatched on the Spanish Steps, below the Trinità Dei Monti church. She falls to the ground and is knocked unconscious. When she comes to, she sees, or thinks she sees, a women stabbed by a bearded man. She falls unconscious again and a police officer finds her and takes her to hospital, where no one believes her fantastical story, as by the morning there is no sign a body and rain has washed away any blood. Marcello arranges for her to be released from hospital and the two set about solving the mystery. At Edith’s funeral, Edith’s friend Laura Craven-Torrani introduces herself and offers to allow Nora to stay at her house on the Spanish Steps, while she is out of the country visiting her husband in Switzerland. Nora discovers there have been a series of slayings in the city, dubbed by the press the ‘Alphabet Murders’, which after three victims are up to the letter D. Nora receives mysterious phone calls and after a scary rendezvous at the Hotel Stelletta with her tormentor, thinks she is on the killer’s hit list.

Background

Best seen today for its masterful monochrome cinematography, its ultra-stylised use of light and shadow, and its use of various iconic Rome locations, The Girl Who Knew Too Much is Bava’s homage to Hitchcock’s two thrillers called The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934/1956). It is also the template for what would later become the giallo subgenre of horror-thriller, with its foreign visitor to Rome caught up in a murder mystery, turning amateur sleuth and being unable to place why a vital clue (a button that a murder victim was clutching) is so important to the case. Nora’s evidence keeps vanishing mysteriously and the killer keeps a file on past and future victims. There’s also a tape recorder – a Dario Argento staple – that plays an ominous, threatening voice, or the sound of typewriter keys tapping, to make it appear someone’s in. Such tricks and motifs would become much-used in gialli.

Like many of Bava’s films there are two quite different versions of the story prepared for different markets, in a collaboration between Galatea’s Lionello Santi and AIP’s James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff.  The Italian language version, outlined above, plays for the most part as a straight thriller. Nora’s amateur sleuthing methods and neurotic imagination, fuelled by lurid paperbacks, are gently mocked by Bava, as is her awkward courtship with Marcello. At one point she rigs Laura’s apartment with a trap, involving talcum powder and a web of string, which Marcello inadvertently falls into. But the climax, as all is revealed behind an always-locked door in Laura’s apartment, is very effective and anticipates the denouements of Dario Argento’s later gialli. The US version, prepared by AIP, was titled Evil Eye and was much lighter in tone. John Saxon, Leticia Roman and Valentina Cortese dubbed themselves in the English language version. Both versions of the film have specially shot scenes that are unique to each print. In the US version, as Nora prepares to go to bed, she’s watched by a portrait of her Uncle Augusto, which is played by Bava himself. The endings to the two versions are quite different. In the Italian version, having solved the mystery (which involves a family inheritance), Nora and Marcello, filmed picturesquely at the Piazza Del Popolo, are to be married. As she’s about to light a cigarette, she suddenly remembers where she acquired the packet of Kent cigarettes. As she landed in Rome, she was given the packet by a fellow passenger, who was later revealed to be a drug trafficker, carrying marijuana-laced cigarettes. As such, Nora’s witnessing of the crime is thrown into doubt – did she hallucinate the episode. In the AIP print, in which Nora’s surname is Drawson, Nora and Marcello witness a shooting by a jealous husband of his wife, who is with another man, on a cable car. As Marcello has made her vow she’ll give up murder mysteries, she ignores the shooting.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much was shot from May to July 1962, with some brief reshoots towards the end of the year. It was made on location in Rome. There was no need for deceptive matte shots, as the glorious architecture of the Eternal City was at Bava’s disposal. This is the film of Bava’s that is most obviously Italian and the tourist spots are unmistakable. But Bava shows a macabre side to the pretty city, a place where Marcello states you can experience ‘a dream perhaps, a nightmare never’. The dark shadows of the city by night are contrasted with the blinding white sunlight of day. The film was photographed in monochrome by Ubaldo Terzano and includes such memorable effects as a shadowy intruder trying to look into Nora’s apartment, the murder on the Spanish Steps (including a virtuoso dolly shot below Trinità Dei Monti) and shards of light streaming through bullet holes in a door. Around Rome, in the course of the story we see the Colosseum, the Garden of Venus, the Sant’Angelo Bridge and Castel Sant’Angelo, and the Stadio Dei Marmi at the Foro Italico (a running track ringed by 60 statues). Nora’s aunt lives in a house in the Piazza Di Spagna and Nora witnesses the murder on the Spanish Steps, the cascade of three flights of stairs which is dominated by the Trinità Dei Monti. The Stelletta Hotel is in Mincio Square, for Nora’s rendezvous with her stalker, and Nora sunbathes in a bikini on the beach at Ostia. Interiors were filmed at Titanus Farnesina. Bava’s trademark waterglass effect, the rippling image that heralds hallucinations or flashbacks, is used to good effect for the murder.

The mystery is convoluted and the pacing occasionally slack. Perhaps it is for this reason that Bava opted to depict three brisker ‘short story’ vignettes in his next film, Black Sabbath. But the performances are engaging. Valentina Cortese is excellent in her comparatively brief but memorable role as Laura, who is revealed to be a key part of the puzzle. Dante Di Paolo, a dancer who appeared as Matt, one of the brothers in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), played ex-journalist Andrea Landini, whose investigation condemned someone named Straccianeve as a murderer, though in light of the recent killings, he may in fact have been innocent. Leticia Roman is effective as Nora and Saxon is bemused as her beau. Roman had got Saxon the role and promised him that it was an ‘art film’. Saxon, in his first Italian movie, quickly realised it wasn’t and termed it a giallo brillante, a spoof thriller. The supporting cast included Milo Quesada as the drug smuggler De Vico/Paccini arrested at Fiumicino Airport, Franco Ressel as his arresting officer and Luigi ‘Gigi’ Bonos as the receptionist at the Albergo (Hotel) Stelletta. Bava regular Gustavo De Nardo, cast as police inspector Facchetti, began his association with the director on this project, and went on to appear in four more Bava films.

La ragazza che sapeva troppo was released in Italy in February 1963, where it was the least successful of all Bava’s films, taking only 55 million lira. It wasn’t much of a success in the USA, retitled Evil Eye. It was rated X in the UK in March 1965. The AIP print replaced Roberto Nicolosi’s jazzy cues and the swaggering theme song ‘Furore’ from Adriano Celentano with Les Baxter compositions. It is the Italian print that has become the most widely seen version of the film. This version is interesting to see the early roots of later giallo and several key ingredients – the aunt’s stormy nighttime death, the mysterious telephone calls, Nora’s threatened apartment – would reappear in Bava’s next excursion into the macabre, Black Sabbath.

Verdict

While not one of the maestro’s greats, this little film has its fans. It’s more interesting now as a glimpse of a time when the streets of Rome were rather less jammed with tourists and you could actually see the Spanish Steps. It is also Bava’s last feature film in black-and-white, and the last to feature an offscreen narrator, voicing Nora’s thoughts in the third person. As such it’s his ‘giallo nero’, if that could be an approximation of an Italo-style ‘thrilling film noir’.

Black Sabbath (1963) IT/FR/US

Orig: I tre volti della paura

Dir: Mario Bava

92 mins

The Drop of Water Jacqueline Pierreaux (Helen Corey), Milly Monti (Madame Zena’s maid), Harriet White Medin (Helen’s neighbour), Gustavo De Nardo (police inspector), Alessandro Tedeschi (coroner) The Telephone Michele Mercier (Rosy), Lydia Alfonsi (Mary), Milo Quesada (Frank Rainer) The Wurdulak Boris Karloff (Gorka), Mark Damon (Count Vladimir D’Urfe), Susy Anderson (Sdenka), Massimo Righi (Peter), Rika Dialina (Maria), Glauco Onorato (Gregor)

Stories

In ‘The Drop of Water’, nurse Helen Corey is summoned to the mansion of Madame Zena, a medium who has died of a heart attack during a séance. Her worrisome maid thinks that vengeful spirits of the dead have killed her. While Helen dresses the corpse for burial, Helen steals Zena’s blue sapphire ring. Back in her apartment, Helen hears dripping water, is harassed by a bothersome buzzing fly and a cacophony of strange cries and cat yowls. Petrified by apparitions of Madame Zena, Helen is eventually scared to death. When the police arrive, Helen has throttled herself and her shifty neighbour appears to have stolen the ring. In ‘The Telephone’, Rosy is menaced in her apartment by threatening telephone calls from Frank, her ex-lover who has been dead for three months. Frank seems to be able to see her every move and when a blank letter arrives under her door, the words appear on the page, as though written by a ghostly hand: ‘There’s no way of avoiding it Rosy – it won’t be long now! Frank’. Rosy phones Mary, her friend who was also Frank’s one-time lover and invites her over for company and reassurance. In the morning, Frank breaks into the apartment, strangles Mary with a stocking and is stabbed to death by Rosy. But even after her tormenter’s death, the mysterious phone calls continue. In ‘The Wurdulak’, Count Vladimir D’Urfe discovers the headless corpse of Turkish bandit Alibek as he rides through the mountains towards Yessey. Stopping at a peasants’ lodge, Vladimir finds the family fearful of their father Gorka, who is away on a hunt for the bandit. The family are Gorka’s grown-up children Peter, Sdenka and Gregor, Gregor’s wife Maria and their little son Ivan. Alibek was a vampire, a ‘Wurdulak’, and when Gorka returns, clomping across the bridge on the stroke of ten, something is amiss. His own favourite dog doesn’t recognise him and he has been wounded in the chest. His family and Vladimir are suspicious and by night Gorka roams the house. He kills Peter and rides away with little Ivan. Later, Gregor returns with Ivan’s corpse, but Maria won’t allow her son to be staked before burial. Later Ivan rises from the grave, his plaintive cries allowing Gorka to get into the lodge and vampirise Gregor and Maria. Vladimir and Sdenka flee, but Gorka and the Wurdulak family follow, catching up with the lovers at a ruined village. They take Sdenka back with them to the lodge. Vladimir returns to their home, seeking Sdenka and as they share a final kiss, she sinks her teeth into Vladimir’s neck.

Background

From the voiceover narration of The Girl Who Knew Too Much, this time Bava provides us with an onscreen guide to his three-strong tales of terror. And what better guide than that old master of the cobwebbed castle, Boris Karloff? The screen’s most famous Frankenstein’s monster and a horror fixture from the 1930s until the 1960s, Karloff was about to gain a whole new audience via AIP’s Edgar Allen Poe adaptations The Raven and The Terror (both 1963). His role as maleficent magician Dr Scarabus in The Raven is a great later-day role of genial menace, while the colourful opening of The Terror, with Karloff wandering Castle Von Leppe, is very Bavaesque. Later in the decade, Peter Bogdanovich, a Corman apprentice, brought Karloff’s brand of classic Gothic horror into the modern world when he cast Karloff as horror star Byron Orlok in Targets (1968), having the grand old movie star foil a spree killing at a drive-in theatre. AIP co-financed Black Sabbath and they picked Karloff. Lionello Santi at Galatea co-produced the film, with Nicholson and Arkoff at AIP.

There’s something of a tradition in horror – with bound collections of ghost stories and the Ealing Studios portmanteau horror collection Dead of Night (1945) – in presenting groups of unrelated tales, with a linking device or brief introductions, as one entity. The year before Bava made Black Sabbath, AIP staged Tales of Terror (1962), its own three-part anthology horror movie, based on four tales by Poe and starring Vincent Price (who appears in all three segments), Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone. Advertised as ‘A triumphant trilogy of terror!’ the episodes were ‘Morella’, ‘The Black Cat’ (which also interweaves ‘The Cask of Amontillado’) and ‘The Case of M. Valdemar’. The multicoloured photography that often appear in Bava’s films, with faces lit by a series of vivid colours, appears here via the hypnotic revolving lantern used by Rathbone in his ‘mesmerism sessions’, for once providing a light source for such vivid tints (this prop also appears in The Terror). Floyd Crosby was the cinematographer on Tales of Terror and it looks tremendous in Panavision – Bava never used 2.35:1 ratios for his horrors, only his costume epics and westerns. Corman had bigger and better sets than Bava, whereas Bava had to use trickery and ingenuity to achieve similar effects. For Black Sabbath, Zena’s grotesquely twisted face and Alibek’s severed head, which is hung up outside the hunting lodge, were created in wax by Bava’s father, Eugenio.

There are moments in Black Sabbath where Bava’s Gothic cinema approaches perfection. It’s one his most popular and enduring films and a personal favourite of Bava himself, no doubt due to Karloff’s involvement. ‘The Wurdulak’ is the closest Bava came to an AIP-style gothic horror. Bava was happy to cast iconic horror stars such as Karloff and Christopher Lee in his films, as much for genre resonance as box office appeal. Mark Damon had starred to considerable box office success in AIP’s Fall of the House of Usher (1960), another guarantee for AIP that Bava’s film was a sound investment. Bava filmed during February and March 1963, for eight weeks. The interiors of ‘The Telephone’ were filmed at Cinecittà Studios, the interiors of the other segments at Titanus Studios, with the interior of Madame Zena’s being lensed at Villa Frascati, on the outskirts of Rome. The peasants’ handsome, stout lodge and its cosy, log fire-lit interiors, were filmed on soundstages at Titanus Studios, the exterior snowbound location lit by vivid blue night and wreathed in Bava mist. The landscape exteriors for ‘The Wurdulak’ were filmed in Canale Monterano, Lazio, including a wooden bridge and on the River Treja in the Treja Valley, with cliffs in the background, for the scene when Vladimir finds Alibek’s beheaded corpse. There’s snow on the ground in some scenes. The wooden bridge appeared in several Italian westerns and pepla, as well as in the Sermon on the Mount sequence of Ben-Hur (1959). The ancient ruins used by Bava were the remains of the medieval village of Antica Monterano, including the distinctive derelict nunnery the Monastero di S. Bonaventura, also seen in Find a Place to Die, Adios Sabata and many other Italian genre films. These ruins, in the Monterano Nature Reserve, were perched atop a promontory above a valley, not far from the waterfall seen in Hercules in the Centre of the Earth. The ruins’ interior was created in the studio, using a glass matte shot and scenery, including an archway from Katya’s introductory scene in The Mask of Satan. The scenes when Sdenka’s Wurdulak kin corner her at the ruins are among the best Bava filmed, the simple trolley dolly manoeuvre towards camera making it appear the vampires are gliding forward through the air, as bewitched Deianara does in Bava’s peplum-horror.

Bava’s three-part ‘demonthology’ Black Sabbath exists in two very different versions – one specifically tailored to the Italian market, one to the US. For the English language version, the running order for the stories is ‘The Drop of Water’, ‘The Telephone’ and ‘The Wurdulak’. In the Italian print, they are ordered ‘The Telephone’, ‘The Wurdulak’ and ‘The Drop of Water’, and have separate intertitles and no Karloff linking passages. In France, the story order was ‘Telephone’, ‘Water’, ‘Wurdulak’. The English language print replaces Roberto Nicolosi’s score with compositions by Les Baxter – his descending jazzy cues for the ‘The Telephone’ are atmospheric, but nowhere near the smoky late-night jazz session of Nicolosi’s cuts. Baxter’s Cossack-flavoured score to ‘The Wurdulak’ is excellent however and probably superior to Nicolosi’s accompaniment. The AIP titles play out to a lively comedic polka, while the Italian version ends with frantic piano polka. The Italian version lightens the mood further with a final bizarre visual joke from Bava. Karloff is seen being filmed on a dummy horse in Titanus Studios, in costume as Gorka, in front of a wind machine, while the floor crew run around him brandishing fir branches, making it appear Gorka is galloping through a wood – master magician Bava for once revealing his tricks of the trade. Some love this ending, but I think its goofiness undermines the film’s effectiveness. I generally prefer AIP’s Black Sabbath, mainly for Karloff’s real voice in the English language dub and his humorous linking segments, but also for the placing of the tales, with the weakest (‘The Telephone’) sandwiched in the middle and the best (‘The Wurdulak’) at the end. In the Italian version, Karloff only appears as himself in the introduction and at the end. In the AIP cut, he introduces each story – his face is reflected in a pool of water, a giant hand reaches for a telephone which dwarfs him and he lurks in a misty wood and vanishes, at the click of his fingers, in a puff of smoke.

‘The Drop of Water’ and ‘The Wurdulak’ are very similar in the AIP and Galatea versions. There is more emphasis on sound effects rather than music to build apprehension in ‘The Drop of Water’. Helen is named Miss Chester in the Italian version, while other names are different – Gregor is Giorgio, Peter is Pietro – and the gore in ‘The Wurdulak’ (the headless corpse, the severed head itself) is dwelt upon more. The ruins Vladimir and Sdenka shelter in are identified as a convent (as they were in real life) and the start of AIP’s ‘Wurdulak’ has Vladimir following a trail of bloodstains in the snow, which is missing from the Italian print, and his horse gallops away from the lodge at the end in the AIP version. The two versions of ‘The Telephone’ are quite different however. In the US version, as described above, Rosy is menaced in her apartment by nuisance phone calls from her ghostly ex, whom she betrayed to the police. In the Italian version, it is Rosy’s ex-lover Mary who makes the threatening phone calls, in an effort to renew their relationship, while Frank is a criminal and very much alive. In the US print, Rosy receives the mysterious note under her door, while in the Italian print she receives a newspaper cutting detailing Frank Rainer’s prison escape. In the AIP version, we meet Rosy’s elderly neighbour, the Colonel, who walks his dog outside as an intruder lurks. The most telling difference is the omission of any lesbian subtext to Mary and Rosy’s relationship, which in the US version plays as a ghost story.

All three tales deal with ghosts and the supernatural and all trap their protagonists in the place they should feel safest – their own homes. In striking imagery, the vampiric Wurdulak stare through the window of the lodge, as another victim falls prey to their curse. Family ties and notions such as ‘blood’s thicker than water’ are fully realised in this haunting tale, as Gorka tells Sdenka: ‘Why did you leave us? No one can love you as much as we do’. Gorka seeks to drink the blood of those he loves the most: his own grandchild. In addition to the confines of the cosy huntsman’s lodge, ‘The Wurdulak’ is set in snowbound, frosty wastes, replete with howling dogs, whistling wind and wispy fog – a troubled land of folklore superstition, witchery and banditry. This episode features some of the most exquisite gothic cinematography this side of AIP’s Poe films. The cobwebs, skeletal remains, tangled vegetation, irrational splashes of colour, eerie woodland and the frozen landscape conjure up quintessentially Gothic settings and situations. The milieu is beautifully realised and moodily photographed by Ubaldo Terzano – the overgrown ruins and picturesque lodge, the modern chic of Rosy’s apartment and the cluttered décor of Madame Zena’s, a house of cats and dolls, which anticipates Villa Graps in Bava’s Kill, Baby…Kill! Though these grand sets and visual effects, Bava’s camera arabesques. With their threatening roving camerawork, urban settings, thunderstorms, grandeur and throbbing neon lights, ‘A Drop of Water’ and ‘The Telephone’ anticipate giallo thrillers. In both episodes, Bava builds atmosphere and tension, with music and mundane sound effects: drips, cats, flies, thunder, telephone rings. The cause-and-effect of the theft of Madame Zena’s ring – like the concentric outward ripples from a drop of water – and its fatal consequences for Nurse Corey, anticipate the chain reaction of events in Bava’s A Bay of Blood. There’s even a shot of a glinting knife held in a black leather gloved hand in ‘The Telephone’ that now looks positively Argento-esque.

Some Bava aficionados prefer the Italian version, but the English language version of Black Sabbath, is the definitive edition. ‘The Telephone’ may be more adult in the Italian print, but it plays fine as a ghost story too. The fact that Karloff introduces each of the stories in jokily macabre fashion (‘Come closer, I have something to tell you – this is Black Sabbath’) also makes the AIP edition superior. Damon is excellent as the young nobleman – he’s the best of Bava’s young heroes of this period and it would have been interesting to have seen him cast in the lead in The Mask of Satan, The Whip and the Body or Kill, Baby…Kill! all of which would have benefited from a stronger heroic presence. Karloff, the veteran, is ideally cast as the caped cadaver. Arthritic Karloff, with his lumbering gait as he clomps across the rickety bridge as the clock strikes (10 in the AIP cut, midnight in the Italian), is superbly sinister, dressed in a fur-trimmed black hood and cape. His cadaverous face, lit with rainbow colours in the ruined chapel, is iconic Bava imagery. The English language title was chosen by AIP to evoke Bava’s earlier Black Sunday, the US title of The Mask of Satan. The Italian title translates as ‘The Three Faces of Fear’ and runs 92 minutes. The US trailer called the Black Sabbath ‘the Seventh Night of the Seventh full moon’ and that the anthology was ‘as ancient as superstition, as modern as the telephone’. The film was released in Italy in August 1963 and took over 103 million lira. In the UK it was rated X for release in December 1964. The US version, exhibited by AIP in May 1964, was a huge success when released with a poster campaign featuring Karloff’s severed head (‘The most gruesome day in the calendar of the Undead!’) and a headless horseman. The severed head featured prominently on the cover of Inter-Ocean Video’s early-1980s UK videotape release of the AIP cut, which for many years was the only way to see the English language edition. In 1969, Ozzy Osbourne’s British heavy metal band Black Sabbath took their name from a poster for the film. Giorgio Ferroni, the director of the excellent period horror The Mill of the Stone Women (1960), remade Bava’s ‘Wurdulak’ episode in 1972 as Night of the Devils, with Gianni Garko and Agostina Belli.

Verdict

For its multicoloured menace and atmospheric perfection of the Karloff ‘Wurdulak’ episode, Black Sabbath is a massive leap forward for Bava after The Girl Who Knew Too Much. If the enterprise as a whole fails, through too-leisurely pacing, then ‘The Wurdulak’ alone is a contender for Bava’s greatest work – a perfectly realised, perfectly executed, perfectly horrible piece of period horror. Even among a career’s worth of shock and gore, the scene when little Ivan returns from the dead, kneels at the door and implores: ‘Mama, I’m cold, let me in’ is the most unnerving, disturbing moment in Bava’s oeuvre.

The Whip and the Body (1963) IT/FR

Orig: La frusta e il corpo

Aka: The Whip and the Flesh (Canadian title), What (US title), Night is the Phantom (UK title)

Dir: Mario Bava

87 mins

Daliah Lavi (Nevenka Menliff), Christopher Lee (Kurt Menliff), Tony Kendall (Christian Menliff), Ida Galli (Katia), Harriet White Medin (Georgia, housekeeper), Gustavo De Nardo (Count Vladimir Menliff), Alan Collins (Losat, servant), Jacques Herlin (priest)

Story

Kurt Menliff returns to his ancestral castle, perched atop an outcrop above a beach, to reclaim what’s rightfully his. Years before, Kurt brought shame on the family, seducing and abandoning Tania, the daughter of the castle’s housekeeper Georgia. Tania had subsequently committed suicide with an ornate dagger. Kurt’s brother Christian has recently married Nevenka, Kurt’s one-time paramour, while their cousin Katia still loves Christian too. The patriarchal old Count Menliff is sure that Kurt will force his way back into the household and inherit the castle and title, and decides that Christian will be his heir. All those in the castle’s household have varying degrees of motive for wanting Kurt dead. Kurt assaults Nevenka on a beach, whipping her with a riding crop, and is murdered soon afterwards in his room by persons unknown, stabbed in the throat with Tania’s suicide dagger from behind a curtain. But following his funeral and interment in the chapel crypt, Kurt returns in the dead of night to torment Nevenka and murder the old count, slitting his throat with Tania’s dagger. Nevenka overhears that Christian and Katia are still in love. She is shattered by the news and continues to be haunted by her night visitor. Kurt’s ghost visits her chamber and whips her with a riding crop. Torchlight in the chapel and trails of muddy boot prints seem to give credence to her imaginings. Christian and his servant Losat immolate Kurt’s casket in the chapel crypt, in the hope that it will exorcise Kurt’s spectre forever, but it seems that Kurt and Nevenka’s eternal love is destined to last beyond the grave.

Background

The Whip and the Body is a strong contender for Bava’s best-photographed film. It takes the fantastical cinematographic effect achievements of Hercules in the Centre of the Earth and other fantasies and deploys them in a Gothic horror setting. When Ernesto Gastaldi was approached to write the story and screenplay, the producers screened Roger Corman’s Pit and the Pendulum (1961), which features Les Baxter’s finest score and a literate script, to give him a flavour of what they were after. Visually Bava’s film is also infused with the same vivid colour schemes and exquisite Gothic mise-en-scene of Corman’s second Edgar Allan Poe adaptation. In Corman’s film, Vincent Price’s Nicholas Medina wonders if it is he who is subconsciously willing his dead wife (Barbara Steele) back to life – wrecking a room, playing a harpsichord – to make it seem that if she is still alive. This perpetuation of someone else’s life is a key theme of Bava’s film. The Whip and the Body’s story has a timeless setting, a clifftop castle, with protagonists dressed in vaguely 18th or 19th century costumery, but rooted in no specific time or place. Both films are set in coastal castles, which automatically add elemental, picturesque dimensions to their stories. But throughout two equally dramatic stories, Bava’s sea is tranquil, poetic, Corman’s tempestuous, wild. Bava’s pacing is also rather stately – some horror fans find it draggy – but this allows the audience to wallow in Bava’s cinematography, the gliding camera movements, the period settings and Bava’s telling little details.

Bava shot The Whip and the Body in seven weeks, beginning in July 1963. It cost approximately $60,000, a tiny amount of money, even then. The beach and headland scenes were of course filmed at Tor Caldara, which Bava shot during some magnificent sunsets. The clifftop castle is actually the same fortification from Erik the Conqueror, with the National Geographic cutting positioned on a glass pane. Bava reportedly shot a scene on Tor Caldara beach, of Kurt arriving at the castle from a ship moored offshore by rowing boat. In the finished film, Kurt rides to the castle on horseback, though there is a rowing boat visible in the background, during a dialogue between Christian and Katia on the beach. Interiors were shot in Rome, at a villa and at Titanus Appia, Bava’s regular studio base of the time. The film’s second assistant director, after Gastaldi, was future giallo director Sergio Martino. Exteriors such as the chapel were effect shots created in the studio by Bava via his matte and miniature mastery.

Bava was working with Christopher Lee for the second and last time and the film remains Lee’s favourite of his Italian work. He is effectively the romantic lead of this very strange, masochistic romance, and his tall, dark and gruesome physique is ideally suited to such a suave-yet-demonic portrayal – akin the Heathcliffe in Wuthering Heights, with tempestuous Nevenka as his Kathy. Unfortunately like the rest of the cast, he was dubbed by someone else in the English language release of the film. Lee’s voice – one of his greatest acting assets – appeared in other Italian Gothics, but not here. His screen presence is powerful enough to compensate for its absence and his ghostly appearances, with a bloom of red blood seeping through the white bandage on his neck, are wonderfully realised. Israeli actress Daliah Lavi is perfectly cast as Nevenka. Lavi’s performance is exceptionally good, her face registering fear and pleasure in equal measure, as she traverses the castle’s corridors and seeks out her dead lover. Lavi appearance becomes more demented as the story progresses and her voice was dubbed by Carolyn De Fonseca in the English language version. Tony Kendall was actually actor Luciano Stella and is another of Bava’s handsome-but-bland heroes – think Giacomo Rossi-Stuart in Kill, Baby…Kill! or John Richardson in The Mask of Satan. They look great in period costume, have square jaws and pretty hair, but as characters the women in Bava’s films are usually more interesting and complex than their straightforward beaus. The original casting for Christian was Gianni Garko, with Giulia Rubini as Katia, a role that eventually went to Ida Galli, billed here in the credits as ‘Isli Oberon’. The cast also has two lower-tier, lower class characters: family retainer and servant Losat, played by Luciano Pigozzi (who acted under the name ‘Alan Collins’) and vengeful housekeeper Georgia, played by Harriet White, who also appeared in Black Sabbath and two of Freda’s top-class Gothics The Terrible Secret of Dr Hichcock (1962) and The Ghost (1963). White excelled in sinister roles – a sinister housekeeper, maid or neighbour. She played a sinister hotel receptionist in the spy spoof Hot Enough for June (1964), where her own voice can be heard in the English language dub.

With the exception of Lee, Lavi and White, the entire cast and crew adopted anglicised pseudonyms, in an attempt to disguise the film’s Italo-French roots. Bava became ‘John M. Old’, Gastaldi ‘Julian Berry’ and cinematographer Ubaldo Terzano was ‘David Hamilton’. Composer Carlo Rustichelli appeared as ‘Jim Murphy’ in the credits. The score, one of his best, features the sweepingly dramatic ‘The Windsor Concerto’, a lush piano and strings composition that adds drama and class to proceedings. Rustichelli’s ominous incidental themes are also impressive. A distinctive descending cue reappeared in Bava’s Blood and Black Lace and Kill, Baby…Kill! and became a recycled Rustichelli favourite, being heard in such fare as Antonio Margheriti’s men-on-a-mission peplum The Giants of Rome (1964). Rustichelli’s richly romantic score is the ideal compliment to Bava’s intense gothic imagery, the lyrical coastal setting and ‘bump in the night’ shocks.

The Whip and the Body was shot in 1.85:1 ratio Technicolor by Ubaldo Terzano. After the monochromatic Mask of Satan, this film offers a glimpse of what it might have looked like, had the earlier film been shot in colour. There are several elements in Whip that reappear from Mask – the old count, the castle, the fireplace with a secret passage in the grate, and a family chapel in the vicinity. The sets recall Castle Vadja, with its grand stone architecture. Bava’s mastery of colour is literally amazing, as the dark spaces between night and shadow – the corridors and chambers – come alive and are lit with red, blue, yellow, green and purple pools. Bava often arranges three planes of colour, creating splendid perspectival effects and a magnificent sense of depth, and his intense compositions vibrantly match the tale’s passion. This artful ‘pure cinema’ is so vibrant you can almost ‘feel’ the colours. As in Black Sabbath, outside the windows is Bava’s trademark vivid electric-blue night light for nocturnal scenes. In creating his make believe period atmosphere, Bava includes red hooded and robed pallbearers at Kurt’s funeral, red drapes in the castle, a plethora of red roses and Christian iconography. His languorous, graceful camerawork is thankfully reticent in the zoom department, but the sumptuous cinematography is almost too overwhelming and the film’s simple plot threatens to be swallowed by its own picturesqueness. The chapel crypt is a startling creation, with deep shadows, caskets, iron gratings and cobwebs. The castle’s silent night is shattered by crashes of thunder, flashes of lightning, ominous footsteps, moans and screams, the howling wind, and a trailing vine of ivy lashing a window, which echoes Kurt’s whiplashes. The melancholy beach scenes contrast with the hauntings, as Nevenka submits to sadomasochistic ritual and we wonder if Kurt is man, ghost or a figment of Nevenka’s fevered imagination. Falling under his whip by night, Nevenka is Kurt’s willing victim: willing him back to life, willing him to whip her. Kurt’s claw-like spidery hand reaches from the darkness, from beyond the grave, and tears her bodice, before flogging her with relish, as bloody wheals crisscross her back. Kurt tells her, ‘You always loved violence’, and their love is binding, destructive. Their shared love and the story’s unspeakable horror is monstrous Kurt’s whip fetish and Nevenka’s wild imagination and nightly flagellation, which culminates in her ecstasies of pain.

The film was charged with, but later cleared of, accusations of obscenity in Italy, and it only took 72 million lira on its release in August 1963. It was released with a new title sequence depicting the fireplace, the castle and beach, as What by Futuramic Releasing in 1965, after AIP had passed on it. Snipped of 10 minutes of sadomasochism, it appeared in the UK from Regal Films International in 1965, rated X, as Night is the Phantom.

Verdict

Now available on DVD in a version billed as the ‘Uncut Widescreen European Version’, The Whip and the Body‘s stock has risen considerably over the years. It is now rightly regarded as one of Bava’s finest films and an archetypal exponent of 1960s Italian horror. It’s a cracking tale, with lashings of atmosphere.

Blood and Black Lace (1964) IT/FR/WG

Orig: 6 donne per l’assassino

Dir: Mario Bava

85 mins

Cameron Mitchell (Max Morlan), Eva Bartok (Countess Christina Como), Thomas Reiner (Inspector Sylvester), Arianna Gorini (Nicole), Dante Di Paolo (Frank Scalo), Mary Arden (Peggy Peyton), Franco Ressel (Marquis Richard Morell), Claude Dantes (Tao-Li), Luciano Pigozzi (Cesar Lazar, dress designer), Massimo Righi (Marco), Lea Lander (Greta), Francesca Ungaro (Isabella), Giuliano Raffaelli (Zanchin, Sylvester’s aide), Enzo Cerisico (gas station attendant), Harriet White Medin (Clarice, housekeeper), Nadia Anty and Mara Carmosino (models), Heidi Stroh (blonde model)

Story

The Christian Haute Couture fashion house in Rome is run by manager Max Morlan in partnership with its recently widowed owner, Countess Christina Como (Eva Bartok), whose husband has been killed in a car accident. One stormy night, model Isabella is murdered in the grounds of the fashion house and her body dumped in a wardrobe. Inspector Sylvester is on the case and discovers that the world of high fashion conceals a tangled web of narcotics, infidelity, murder and blackmail. Sylvester’s list of suspects includes Morlan and his employees – furtive Marco, who is epileptic, and ratty dress designer Cesar Lazar – plus cocaine-using antiques dealer Frank Scalo and debt-ridden marquis Richard Morell, both of whom are dating models. Searching through Isabella’s belongings, Scalo’s girlfriend Nicole finds Isabella’s diary, which causes considerable unease at the salon, as everyone seems to have something to hide. Soon afterwards, Nicole is murdered by a masked killer with a taloned gauntlet in Scalo’s antiques shop, but the diary is nowhere to be found. Another model, Peggy, has stolen it, but she is attacked by the killer in her home and kidnapped. Held hostage in a basement, she is tortured against a red hot stove, but she has already burned the journal. All the key male suspects are arrested, but when Greta, the marquis’s fiancée, is smothered with a cushion at the rural farm they share, Sylvester has no choice but to release them – they all have perfect, foolproof alibis. Sure it’s the work of a homicidal sex maniac, the police continue their investigation, as another model, Tao-Lin is drowned in her bath, in a killing that’s made to look like a suicide.

Background

Blood and Black Lace, in its uncut form, is Bava’s most aggressive film of the 1960s and the proto-giallo, punctuated with disquieting moments of tension, violence and mortality. The film also resembles the Edgar Wallace ‘Krimi’ films that were being produced in West Germany in the early 1960s, that detailed serial killers and murder mysteries, as they followed police inspectors carrying out investigations. The Krimis were shot in grainy black-and-white, but Bava brought a great deal of visual beauty to proceedings with his trademark grace and style. A very well constructed scenario from Marcello Fondato, Blood and Black Lace explores the thriller format that Bava had utilised for The Girl Who Knew Too Much and the ‘The Drop of Water’ and ‘The Telephone’ portions of Black Sabbath and deploys the lesions learned. The virtuoso scene in Blood and Black Lace, as petrified Nicole is pursued through Scalo’s cluttered, dusty antique shop, is lit by the pulsating green of a flashing neon bar sign outside advertising ‘Dancing’ in the street, as was Helen’s apartment in ‘The Drop of Water’. In Bava’s cinema, green and red are the colours of fear and killing.

Bava shot the movie in Rome during the winter of 1963-64 in six weeks. His director of photography was again Ubaldo Terzano. The fashion house’s exterior and estate grounds were filmed at Villa Sciarra, with its sphinx-and-skulls fountain, and beautifully maintained parkland. Scalo’s ANTICHITA shop exterior and a gas station were on Via Del Velabro, the exterior of Peggy’s house was situated on Via Di Parione, while the marquis’s villa country retreat was on the Via Appia Antica. Interiors were filmed at A.T.C. Studios, Rome, while the interior scenes at Scalo’s antiques shop, cluttered with ephemera including suits of armour, like an old castle, were filmed courtesy of La Società DEDALO. The chilly nighttime exteriors, with foggy streets and windblown leaves, create a milieu worthy of Jack the Ripper, while the sumptuous interiors of the fashion house speak of comfortable opulence – the sofas, drapes, mirrors and antique furniture of salon chic. The production values are excellent and the film looks much more expensive than its $150,000 budget. Typically for a Bava movie, it’s revealed that there is a secret passage leading to the cellar behind a bookcase in Morlan’s office. Bava worked again with Cameron Mitchell in the second of their three collaborations and Mitchell delivers his best Bava performance. Hungarian actress Eva Bartok, who was briefly married to Curd Jurgens, had appeared in Burt Lancaster’s Italian-shot swashbuckler The Crimson Pirate (1952) and looked classy as black widow Christina, in mourning attire designed by Eleanora Garnett. Stuttgart-born Thomas Reiner, as the policeman, came with the German money for that authentic Krimi atmosphere. The supporting cast included such familiar faces as Franco Ressel, Luciano Pigozzi, Massimo Righi and Dante Di Paolo. Harriet White Medin again cropped up as the creepy housekeeper, while the actresses who played the models are beautiful, but most didn’t garner many more film credits beyond this movie.

What’s most troubling about Blood and Black Lace is the attractive way Bava presents the violence, with stylised, unreal settings contrasted with very real, sadistic killings. Bava applies his colourful, garishly seeping palette from his period horror films, to what is effectively an urban killer-on-the-loose movie. The incriminating diary links some of the killings on a flimsy pretext, but Isabella is initially murdered because she is blackmailing the killer. Isabella also knew that Christina’s husband’s car crash was no accident. Her blackmail was logged in her journal, but everyone at the salon seems to have something to hide. Among the feisty young models and their lovers, there’s plenty going on, including unpaid loans and cocaine use. The discovery of the red leather-bound diary, a visual alarm bell, immediately causes furtive, suspicious glances and widespread unease.

The killer’s costume – a long black belted Mac, black gloves and brimmed hat – was highly influential on world horror cinema, as was the white stocking mask which shields the killer’s identity, but still looks vaguely ‘human’ in form. The killer was actually played onscreen by stunt double Goffredo Unger, who acted in many genre films of the period as Freddy Unger: he can be seen prominently in Antonio Margheriti’s sci-fi/horror The Wild, Wild Planet (1966). Bava’s camera takes perverse pleasure stalking victims in gliding POV movements. Unger really goes for it when he enacts the films’ graphic, berserk killings, lashing out at his victims with fists and a three-taloned claw (a similar weapon later appeared in the entertaining 1967 Krimi The Blue Hand, starring Klaus Kinski). The killer kills with suffocation, drowning and tortures Peggy for the diary’s whereabouts by pressing her hand and face against a red hot stove. Once slain, the lifeless, bloodied women’s corpses, their clothes torn, their faces disfigured, are manhandled, shoved in car boots and dragged around, as bodies begin to stack up. The giallo form and content are there for all to see, but with westerns and spy films being the box office champions during the next few years, the genre didn’t catch on. Nevertheless, Dario Argento’s success owes much to this movie.

Carlo Rustichelli’s score showcases a famous percussive bossa nova trumpet main theme and threatening descending cues. The score builds on themes from The Whip and the Body and creates a rich atmosphere. The haunting main title melody is reorchestrated for trumpet or saxophone. The US version retained Rustichelli’s incidental score, but substituted a slower version of the lively main cue for the title sequence. The uncut, international version begins with the starry, blurred sequins of a model’s dress, and includes all the main cast members photographed as though they were wax dummies, amid garishly-lit mannequins. The cut version has a new title sequence, designed by Filmation Associates, with wicker tailor’s dummies, skulls and mannequins with bloody gunshot wounds, lensed in lurid, Bavaesque fashion. Several of the character’s names are different in the Italian version, with Mitchell playing Massimo Morlacchi and Reiner as Inspector Silvestri. The film only took 123 million lira on its release in Italy in March 1964 – more than The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Black Sabbath and The Whip and the Body, but nowhere near Hercules or Erik’s league. If the English language title is darkly poetic (blood spilled on the fashion house’s elegant garments), the original Italian title, 6 donne per l’assassino (‘Six Women for the Murderer’) is more representative of content. The uncut English language version is now available and the violence is strong stuff for 1964.

In the UK, Blood and Black Lace was X-rated in 1965, following a plethora of cuts. This version, presented by ‘Gala Film’ surfaced on home video from Revolution Films, still rated 18 in 1986 (with cover art more appropriate for 1980s Lucio Fulci sleaze). This was the same print as the US version, presented in 1965 by Woolner Brothers, with their logo at the beginning of the titles and the alternative Filmation title sequence. Rustichelli is billed as ‘Carl Rustic’ and Terzano is ‘Herman Tarzana’. In this version, the killer writes ‘Where is the diary?’ in questioning Peggy in English; in the uncut English videotape from Nouveaux Pictures, the text is in German. All the murders and their aftermaths are toned down in 79-minute abridged print (the whole of the stove torture is missing, as is Tao-Li having her wrist slashed after she has drowned). Even the dialogue is snipped to remove references to ‘sex maniacs’ and this edit was prepared by Lou Moss for the Woolner release – it’s as choppy as that company’s version of Hercules in the Haunted World. Lurid posters featured models in their lingerie and the faceless killer. Taglines promised ‘Guaranteed! The 8 Greatest Shocks Ever Filmed!’ starring ‘30 of the most Glamorous Girls in the world!’ as ‘A Fashion House of Glamorous Models becomes a Terror House of Blood!’

Verdict

Blood and Black Lace is one of Bava’s undisputed masterpieces. It would be six years before giallo murder mysteries hit the box office with Dario Argento’s directorial debut The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, but the first stalks of the genre are here.

The Road to Fort Alamo (1964) IT/FR

Orig: La strada per Forte Alamo

Aka: Arizona Bill

Dir: Mario Bava

76 mins

Ken Clark (Bud Messedy, alias Lieutenant John Smith), Jany Clair (Janet), Michel Lemoine (Carson), Andreina Paul (Mrs Collins), Alberto Cevenini (Slim, alias Sergeant Jim Kincaid’), Gustavo De Nardo (Sergeant Woolwich), Antonio Gradoli (Captain Hull), Gerard Herter (Mr Silver), Pietro Tordi (bartender), Claudio Ruffini, Renzo Pevarello (gamblers), Claudio Scarchilli (cattle thief),

Story

The Osage Indians are on the warpath. In the badlands near the town of Wagon City, wandering drifter Bud discovers the corpses of a troop of US cavalry. On one of the dead Bud finds a requisition order instructing the Wagon City Bank to give the US army $150,000. Bud rides into town to tell the sheriff that the Indians are causing trouble, but instead is caught up in a fracas over a card game in the saloon. He escapes with young outlaw Slim, and the pair hook up with the kid’s partners, a gang of cattle thieves operating from a cave. The band, led by Carson, decides to disguise themselves as soldiers (complete with uniforms, and false beards and moustaches), ride into town and under false pretences extract the cash from the ‘Gold Exchange’ bank. During the ruse, Carson shoots down an innocent bystander and they have to escape. Osages have raided their hideout and pilfered the gang’s clothes, so Carson and the gang double-cross Bud and Slim and steal all the money. The Osages capture Bud and Slim and stake them out on the trail to die, but a passing US cavalry troop, commanded by Captain Hull, on its way to Fort Alamo picks them up, mistaking them to be two soldiers. Bud introduces himself as ‘Lieutenant John Smith’ and Slim is ‘Sergeant Jim Kincaid’, who have been assigned to repair the telegraph line to Fort Alamo. The military party includes women and children en route to the fort and Janet, a prisoner who is being taken to Fort Alamo to stand trial for attempting to kill a soldier. Sergeant Woolwich guesses Bud is no cavalryman, when Bud says he attended Annapolis Academy – a naval college – but doesn’t give the game away, as they need all the help they can in the hostile badlands. Bud and Slim plan to slip away in the night, but the Osages attack and the pair help to fight them off. The troops also save Carson from the Osages and recover the cash bank haul, which they take to be a payroll for the Alamo garrison. Eventually the convoy is besieged at a river by the Osages. Their last throw of the dice is Bud riding for help. He manages to get through to Fort Alamo and when all seems lost, he saves the day with a troop of cavalry.

Background

Bava’s first western is a low-key comic book affair, in the manner of other early Italian westerns, which followed the template of the West German-Yugoslavian ‘Winnetou’ films. It is essentially a Hollywood-style ‘Cavalry and Indians’ western, with requisite recourse to romance and campfire chats between the action. It was filmed around the same time as Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and was released in Italy in October 1964, a month after Leone’s film. The two movies clearly demonstrate the divergent paths the Italian genre was taking in 1964, as films such as Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West and Bava’s outing deployed peplum stars as western heroes, escorting wagon trains, romancin’ the ladies and fighting off hordes (or as many as the budget would allow) of ‘Injuns’. The Italian titles has the stockade destination as ‘Forte Alamo’ (‘forte’ is often mistranslated as ‘Strong’, most famously on international releases of Ennio Morricone’s LP of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), but posters corrected this to ‘Fort Alamo’.

Bava shot his western entirely in Italy. Wagon City was the newly-built Elios Studios western street (constructed near Rome for the Cameron Mitchell western The Last Gun in 1964) and interiors were shot at the studio too. As was his technique, Bava also staged the nighttime camp ‘exteriors’ in the studio, and some close-up action shots, such as Bud and Janet driving the covered wagon during an Osage ambush. Location scenes, decorated with the occasional fake cactus, were filmed at the Canale Monterano region, Grottarossa quarry, the pebbled banks of the River Treja and the caves at Grotto Di Salone. The stone caves of Salone were a regular setting for pepla and appeared as the Valley of the Lepers in Ben-Hur. With deft camera trickery, Bava superimposes grand red sandstone cliffs and mesas on the familiar quarry excavations, as he would for Tor Caldara in his later western Roy Colt & Winchester Jack. The daytime scenes are prosaic western fare, but the nighttime and cavern settings are unmistakably Bavaesque. In a memorable scene, two Union soldiers are discovered in a subterranean grotto, blinded and crucified to ‘X’ crosses. The studio-shot nighttime campfire scenes, often shot amid tangled foliage, are lit by Bava’s trademark vivid blue sky. But there’s no disguising this is a modest film – the army convoy consists of two covered wagons and a passenger stagecoach, the Osages tend to attack in small groups and action switches from day to night in an instant. The road to Fort Alamo is littered with danger – the Osages are a likely-looking bunch, who in the colourful outfits, feathers and bandannas resemble Incas. The entrance to their ‘Valley of the Dead’ cemetery is decorated with hokey ‘Italo-Indian’ artefacts, poles, skulls and tomahawks. In a well-staged sequence, innumerable Osages (an effects shot) appear massed atop canyon cliffs, and for their river attack, the ‘savages’ send many dollar bills on little rafts downriver, to lure the troopers into the open to pick them off. The fatal allure of wealth has perhaps never been more vividly displayed in a Bava movie.

Ken Clark, in the first of his two westerns for Bava, is good as the hero. In an eclectic screen career, Clark had appeared in Hollywood westerns (The Proud Ones and The Last Wagon), musicals (South Pacific), AIP creature features (Attack of the Giant Leeches) and as a peplum villain (Hercules against the Mongols and Hercules against the Barbarians). He died in Rome in 2009, aged 81. Bud Messedy hates the US army since they burnt his ranch and stole his cattle during the Civil War, and his developing relationship with Jany Clair is well played by Clark. Sergeant Woolwich recognises decency in Bud and Slim, despite their deception, so doesn’t reveal they are impostors, and it is renegade Bud who rides for help in the finale. When his rescue mission is a success, it’s acknowledged that he will remain an unsung hero: ‘Nobody will remember you’. His status as outlaw ensures he can never receive the credit he deserves. The supporting cast includes Alberto Cevenini (billed as ‘Kirk Bert’), Antonio Gradoli (or ‘Anthony Gradwell’), Gerard Herter and Claudio Ruffini, all of whom made more spaghetti western appearances. The score, by Piero Umiliani, is traditional, with a romantic theme that resembles ‘Home on the Range’ (‘Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam’), and a title song,’ The Way to Alamo’, crooned by Tony Wendall. The film took 130 million lira in Italy, and was released in the US in 1966. Bava directed this one as ‘John Old’ and the rest of the crew also adopted pseudonyms, as was the fashion in Italy at the time, to make this appear to Italian audiences that this was ‘the genuine American article’. Ubaldo Terzano, who photographed the film in impressive Eastman Color and 2.25:1 Totalscope, became ‘Bud Third’, while art director ‘Demos Philos’ was future B-spaghetti director Demofilo Fidani.

Verdict

This cheap western is an excellent early example of the spaghetti western genre – that is to say, it is an excellent example of why the genre had to change direction. In its quaintness, it catapults the genre back 20 years, and it was clearly a job of work for Bava.

Planet of the Vampires (1965) IT/SP/US

Orig: Terrore nello spazio

Aka: The Demon Planet (US TV title)

Dir: Mario Bava

83 mins

Barry Sullivan (Captain Mark Markary), Norma Bengell (Sanya), Angel Aranda (Wes), Evi Marandi (Tiona), Franco Andrei (Bert), Federico Boido (Keir), Stelio Candelli (Brad), Alberto Cevenini (Toby Markary), Mario Morales (Eldon), Ivan Rassimov (Kell Carter), Massimo Righi (Captain Sallas), Fernando Villena (Doctor Karan)

Story

Voyaging spacecraft Argos and Galliot investigate a strange signal emanating from the fog-shrouded planet Aura. They lose radio contact and both craft are dragged down by a sudden gravitational pull of 40G. On landing, the crew of Argos are possessed by a strange force and impulsively attack each other and only the quick thinking and strong will of Captain Mark Markary saves them. Those piloting Galliot aren’t so lucky – when they investigate their sister ship’s crash site, Mark and his crew find their cohorts dead or missing. Although the Argos appears to be undamaged, the craft’s solar batteries have short-circuited and they have no power to take flight, so engineer Wes carries out repairs. Meanwhile, three members of the Galliot’s crew, which the Argos astronauts have laid to rest, rise from the dead as zombies, possessed by the parasitic spirits of Aura. Temporarily grounded on the supernatural planet, the astronauts find a gigantic wrecked spaceship – a strange ship from another system and another visitor that Aura didn’t allow to leave. Aura is an eerie world, of mist and unexplained phenomena, including darting, elusive light sources. Argos crew member Tiona claims to have seen their dead comrades alive once more and two of the Galliot’s crew – Captain Sallas and Kier – arrive at the Argos to seek refuge. But they are in fact undead zombies, vessels playing host to Aureans: Sallas explains that the Aurean’s sun is dying and so too is their world. Their signal is a beacon to lure a ship to the planet, to help them escape, as Aureans exist on a ‘vibratory plane’, but can’t actually construct anything. Kier manages to steal the Argos’ invaluable meteor rejecter, without which the Argos cannot leave the planet. Mark and his crew launch an assault on the Galliot, destroying the ship and its zombie Aurean crew with plutonium and take off in the Argos. But the cost of investigating Planet Aura has been high – of the 18 personnel who landed on Aura, only Captain Mark and two of his crew, Sanya and Wes, have escaped.

Background

Bava fused sci-fi with horror in Planet of the Vampires (1965 – The Demon Planet), which was part of a mini-cycle of Italian science fiction movies in the 1960s. Antonio Margheriti was its pioneering leading light. Margheriti was a noted director and special effects maestro, who was Bava’s main competition in the Italian Gothic horror stakes, casting Steele in two superior efforts: Castle of Blood (1964 – La Danza Macabra) and The Long Hair of Death (1964). Margheriti, who often signed himself ‘Anthony Dawson’, directed the sci-fi films Assignment: Outer Space (1960 – Space Men), Battle of the Worlds (1961 – with Claude Rains), War of the Planets (1966 – The Deadly Diaphanoids), its sequel The Wild, Wild Planet (1966), War between the Planets (1966 – Planet on the Prowl) and The Snow Devils (1967 – Space Devils). Margheriti was filming Assignment: Outer Space on the soundstage next to Bava’s, at Titanus Studios, during the making of The Mask of Satan. Like Bava’s films, Margheriti’s work received international exhibition, either in cinemas or as part of TV packages.

Bava’s foray into extraterrestrial terror was known by a plethora of pre-shooting and pre-release English language titles, including Planet of Blood, Planet of Terror, Haunted World, Planet of the Damned and Outlaw Planet, before Planet of the Vampires was settled upon, despite the undead more closely resembling space zombies. The film was produced by Fulvio Lucisano, for Italian International Films in Rome, with co-production money from Madrid-based Cooperativa Castilla Cinematografica and AIP. Nicholson and Arkoff presented the US version, some prints of which have an alternative score by Kendall Schmidt, featuring darting synthesizer arpeggios, in imitation of stuttering computer data, and piercing electronic feedback. This is the score on the 83-minute UK videotape version, released in ‘The Hollywood Horror Collection’ by RCA/Columbia Pictures in 1989. The original score by Gino Marinuzzi is more subdued and is present on MGM’s US DVD release. The screenplay was based on Renato Pestiniero’s ‘One Night of 21 Hours’, published in Interplanet #3 Science Fiction Magazine. The American ‘name’ for the posters was Hollywood actor Barry Sullivan, a regular presence in tough gangster thrillers and westerns – he was particularly good in Samuel Fuller’s Forty Guns (1957). The supporting cast was international, with Argentinean Norma Bengell prominently cast as Sanya and future star Ivan Rassimov in a small role as crewmember Carter. Spanish players such as Angel Aranda and Italians like Evi Marandi, Federico Boido, Stelio Candelli, Alberto Cevenini and Bava regular Massimo Righi, filled out the crews. Bengell and Aranda went on to co-star in Sergio Corbucci’s western The Hellbenders (1967).

This was the first film Bava made as director without his trusted cinematographer Ubaldo Terzano. The pair parted company in 1964 and never worked together again, with Terzano feeling underappreciated for his hard work on Bava’s projects. Planet of the Vampires was photographed in Technicolor by Antonio Rinaldi. It was shot in April 1965 entirely on soundstages and as effects shots at Cinecittà Studios, Rome. Carlo Rambaldi worked uncredited as ‘model maker’, with Bava crafting the film’s special effects. The Argos and Galliot spaceships are sleek, horseshoe-shaped craft, whose interiors feature steel corridors and control rooms filled with consoles and control panels – pretty standard fare for sci-fi. But the red throbbing interior of the vast rusting spacecraft, with its giant skeleton crew and spiralling concentric circle corridor, is more akin to settings found in Margheriti’s fantastical sci-fi, such as the inside of the galaxy invader, The Outsider, in Battle of the Worlds. The eerie world or Aura is one of Bava’s finest creations, with the rock spires and boulder outcrops wreathed in creeping, swirling space mist. Bava maintains that he created this alien landscape by using a couple of papier-mâché rocks, leftovers from a sword and sandal epic. To reach the Galliot, the astronauts must traverse the red-hued, bubbling lava beds of a space marsh, while the perpetual Aurean night is haunted by darting ‘luminous globes’ and unsettling sights and sounds. The film’s electronic effects were created by Paolo Ketoff and the sound design is suffused with humming generators, sonar blips, whooshing meteors and Aura’s moaning wind, which draws you in and immerses you in the misty, surreal world.

The spacecraft are operated by two nine-person crews. The Argos‘s crew is Tiona, Sanya, Dr Karan, Bert, Brad, Carter, Wes, Eldon and their skipper, Captain Mark Markary. They’re kitted out in black leather spacesuits with orange trim and helmets, or else variations in orange and grey. Their numbers are depleted, as the disembodied Aureans possess and infest the helpless crew, making them ghosts of flesh. They are vampires in the true sense, in that they prey ruthlessly on others, and their gory facial disfigurements are very well done. In one scene, Captain Sallas’s putrid rib cage is exposed, revealing him to be deceased and harbouring an Aurean, in a similar special effect to one that appeared in The Mask of Satan. In the film’s most famous scene, three of Galliot’s deceased crew rise from their Aurean tombs, casting aside the steel tomb covers, tearing off their transparent polythene body bag shrouds, and lurch off into the mist. The story’s carefully established mysterious aura is dispelled for the dénouement however. The film rushes to a conclusion, as it transforms into an action-packed sci-fi thriller, complete with brawling fisticuffs and laser gun shootouts, as Mark and his team storm the Galliot, steal the meteor rejecter and make their escape. There’s a good sting in the tale though, as the Argos’ meteor rejecter is damaged and it must detour to ‘a puny civilisation’, the third planet of the star Sarl, which is identified as our Earth.

Bava’s film was released in Italy in September 1965 and took 90 million lira. The iconic Italian poster artwork, which depicted the planetary cloud formations of Aura resembling a skull, was designed by Averardo Ciriello. The US release followed the following month, through AIP, double-billed with Boris Karloff’s Monster of Terror (1965 – Die, Monster, Die! in the US). Planet of the Vampires was released in Spain in April 1966 and it was rated X in the UK for release by Anglo-Amalgamated in 1968 (it was re-rated 15 in 1986 for home video). The English language version of the film benefits from a good English language dub, courtesy of Titra, New York, with Sullivan using his own voice and Dr Karan voiced by Bernard Grant. The English language dub script was written by Ib Melchior and AIP producer Louis M. Heywood, and includes such quality genre dialogue as: ‘In 60 fractions of megon we’ll start the landing manoeuvre’. The US TV version retitled the film The Demon Planet. There are two different English language versions of the film under the Planet of the Vampires title – one with the brasher score by Schmidt (the UK home video version), the other with low-key title music by Gino Marinuzzi Jr. Each films’ end titles are altered accordingly, with Schmidt’s name substituted for Marinuzzi’s in a completely different font. The white lettering of the titles in the Italian release (which translates as the straightforward ‘Terror in Space’) play out on a plain black background and are inferior to the AIP titles, which include shifting starfields, planets, galaxies and sister ships Argos and Galliot. Bava’s space vampires were partially revamped by Alfonso Brescia (as ‘Al Bradley’) in the wonderfully colourful but inept Italian sci-fi, Cosmos: War of the Planets (1977). There was some Bavaesque cinematography and plotting in Antonio Margheriti’s bodysnatching War of the Planets (1966), which had the Diaphanoids, bodiless patterns of energy represented by green mist and floating lights, possessing astronauts and taking them to a mining colony. Planet of the Vampires has also been cited as the partial inspiration for scenes in Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) – the wrecked ship and its giant crew – but Scott and scripter Dan O’Bannon claimed not to have seen Bava’s film. They didn’t have to: Carlo Rambaldi worked on both movies.

Verdict

With Margheriti’s The Wild, Wild Planet (1965), this is the finest slice of 1960s spaghetti sci-fi, as Bava applies the vivid style of his period Gothics to outer space. It remains one of Bava’s most popular cult movies, probably due to those groovy space suits. Definitely one not to be mist.

Savage Gringo (1966) IT/SP

Orig: Ringo nel Nebraska

Aka: Nebraska Jim

Dir: Antonio Romàn and Mario Bava

83 mins

Ken Clark (Ringo, also called Nebraska), Yvonne Bastien (Kay Hillmann), Piero Lulli (Bill Carter), Renato Rossini (Lou Felton), Alfonso Rojas (Marty Hillmann), Anthony Gradoli (Brack, bartender), Paco Sanz (Dr Parson), Livio Lorenzon (Sheriff Bert), Angel Ortiz (Hanck Dewey), Jose Canalejas (Elmer Dowson), Frank Braña (Dickson), Simon Arriaga (Tedder), Guillermo Mendez (Manuel, ranch hand), Rafael Vaquero (Joe, ranch hand)

Story

Drifter Ringo, also called ‘Nebraska’, rides into the New Mexico ranch of Marty Hillmann. Marty and his wife Kay are being targeted by gunmen working for Bill Carter, who wants to kill Marty, have Kay as his lover and find out the location of a large amount of cash hidden on the ranch. Marty hires Ringo, ostensibly as a ranch hand, but his fast gun will come in handy against Carter. Bill Carter controls the nearby village of Bandera and even the drunkard sheriff Bert is powerless against him. Ringo stands up to Carter, but on their way back to the ranch, Carter ambushes them in a glade and badly wounds Marty. Kay nurses Marty at the ranch and sends for Dr Parson, while soon afterwards Carter’s men also murder the sheriff in the same glade as the earlier ambush and frame Ringo for the crime. The new sheriff, former bartender Brack, musters a posse and hunts for Ringo, who picks off Carter’s men and gathers evidence against his nemesis. Meanwhile Dr Parson can’t save Marty, who perishes from a haemorrhage, and Kay makes advances to Ringo. Carter goes after Kay, who is revealed to be the daughter of notorious New Mexico outlaw Duke Kramer. Marty is actually an outlaw himself, ‘Marty Ball’ and Kay sold her own father to the Rangers following a robbery in El Paso that garnered $50,000 which Kay has since stashed on the ranch. As Carter forces Kay to reveal the hiding place, Ringo intervenes and takes on Carter and his henchmen Dickson and Lou Felton. Sheriff Brack and the posse arrive and round up the rest of the band, and Ringo hands over a boot filled with the stolen cash, before riding on.

Background

Bava’s second excursion west is more what you’d expect from a spaghetti western. The film was credited to Antonio Romàn, a Spanish director, whose name was anglicised to ‘Antony Roman’ for international posters. Savage Gringo starred Romàn’s wife, Yvonne Bastien, who played lusty, flame-haired Kay and she also co-executive produced the movie with Fulvio Lucisano. Romàn was one of the co-scriptwriters of Bava’s Planet of the Vampires, which was also produced by Lucisano. Lucisano brought Bava on to Savage Gringo to speed up shooting, or to help with sets and costumes (the stories differ) and Bava oversaw the shooting of the project and also worked on the second unit. The only Bava name that appears in the title sequence is Mario’s son Lamberto, who is one of two assistant directors. The film closely resembles an early Italo-Spanish co-production western of the type Anthony Steffen was turning out around Madrid in 1965-66. That said, there are some recognisably Bavaesque moments – the macabre opening sight gag plays with genre expectations, as a whistling, guitar-strumming rider is shot off his horse and then crawls through the barren landscape in search of help, under the film’s opening titles – a scene perhaps inspired by the opening shot of Sergio Leone’s For a Few Dollars More (1965), where an outlaw is felled by an unseen marksman. When Ringo and Kay kiss, the fluid camera orbits them, and later, in another visual surprise typical of Bava, Ringo ‘rises from the dead’ to take on Carter and his men, when he emerges from under a bed sheet that we presume is covering Marty’s corpse. There’s great use made of a split-focus diopter, for the scene when the sheriff’s corpse arrives back in town slung over a saddle. A diopter fitted on the camera made half the lens nearsighted, giving the shot deep focus – the images of both Bert’s face in the foreground and the heavies in the background are sharp.

Bava and Ken Clark had worked together on The Road to Fort Alamo. Clark’s hero is still rather more traditional Hollywood than ‘Man With No Name’ spaghetti western – he’s clean shaven and drinks milk, as Giuliano Gemma’s Ringo did in Duccio Tessari’s A Pistol for Ringo (1965), the trigger film for the ‘Ringo’ series of westerns. Ringo’s relationship with Kay verges on the traditional too, though she makes all the running and isn’t backward is being forward. But the villains are much more interesting, with Piero Lulli excellent as the all-in-black baddie Carter. Lulli went on to appear as the chief villain in one of the best spaghetti westerns, Django Kill! (1967), where his memorable demise, as his torso was mangled by greedy townsfolk searching for Django’s golden bullets, was excised or trimmed by censors from many prints of the film. Paco Sanz and Frank Braña both also went on to appear in Django Kill! In Savage Gringo, Lulli played Bill Carter and was billed in the film under the pseudonym ‘Peter Carter’, while one of his henchmen was Renato Rossini, who was billed in the credits as ‘Red Ross’ in the period before he adopted his regular pseudonym of ‘Howard Ross’ – he later appeared as such in Bava’s Five Dolls for an August Moon. Lulli and Rossini had both appeared in pepla, while Carter’s gang and Hillmann’s ranch hands included several actors who went on to many more spaghetti westerns – Braña, Simon Arriaga, Jose Canalejas, Guillermo Mendez and Angel Ortiz. Another peplum star, Livio Lorenzon, played drunkard sheriff Bert, and Alfonso Rojas was good as rancher Marty.

The film features as much fisticuffs as gunplay, though the fistfights are marred by some unconvincing stunt double work – Clark was doubled in a saloon fracas by Roman Ariznavaretta, who looks quite unlike Clark facially. There’s some fairly bloody moments of action – Ringo shoots one of Carter’s henchmen, Elmer Dowson, in the ear, and during a fight in Brack’s saloon, Ringo is slashed with a broken bottle. There’s also lots of riding scenes, which were both the signature and the bane of low-budget spaghetti westerns. Fortunately Savage Gringo’s location scenes were shot in picturesque Madrid ‘wild west’ locations, which offer an attractive backdrop to the hoofing action. The rock formations at La Pedriza, Manzanares El Real, and the blue expanse of the Santillana Reservoir are used on several occasions. Dr Parson and ranch hand Joe are hindered by a swollen river at the cliffs at Titulcia. The exteriors of the town of Bandera were filmed on a western town set at Colmenar Viejo, with saloon and ranch interiors at Elios Film (Rome) and at Ballesteros Studios (Madrid). The shack where Cater and his men hide out was located at Manzanares El Real and Marty’s cattle spread was a ranch set near Torremocha De Jarama, also used for ranch scenes in Sergio Corbucci’s Minnesota Clay (1965), Django and Navajo Joe (both 1966).

The trademark spaghetti western score, composed by Nino Oliviero and directed by Robby Poitevin, includes the requisite trumpet Deguellos and whistles. The title song ‘Quando muore il sole’ is sung in Italian by Vittorio Bezzi, backed by Nora Orlandi’s vocal group ‘4+4’. Savage Gringo was released in Italy in March 1966 and took 143 million lira. A version on American television surfaced in 1966, presented by American International TV. As is often the case with trailers, the promotional clip for Savage Gringo features alternate takes of action from the film. This was due to trailers often being assembled from offcuts of celluloid of scenes and takes that didn’t make the final cut.

Verdict

A not-bad spaghetti western that plays best today with eyes fixed on its Spanish locations (filmed in 2.35:1 Eastman Color by Guglielmo Mancori) and its wicked, bushwhacking villains, than its plot or action.

Kill, Baby…Kill! (1966) IT

Orig: Operazione paura

Aka: Curse of the Dead (UK title), Curse of the Living Dead (US title + TV title)

Dir: Mario Bava

83 mins

Giacomo Rossi-Stuart (Doctor Paul Eswai), Erika Blanc (Monica Schuftan), Fabienne Dali (Ruth), Piero Lulli (Inspector Kruger), ‘Max Lawrence’/Luciano Catenacci (Herr Karl, the burgomaster), ‘Giana Vivaldi’/Giovanna Galletti (Baroness Graps), Micaela Esdra (Nadine), Franca Dominici (Martha), Giuseppe Addobatti (Hans, innkeeper), Mirella Panphili (Irena Hollander), Valerio Valeri (Melissa Graps), Bruno Ukmar (gravedigger)

Story

Remote Kernigan is a village cursed to live in fear of ghosts and the vengeful dead. Following the apparent suicide of Irena Hollander, a maid at Villa Graps, who is found impaled on spiked railings, coroner Dr Paul Eswai arrives to investigate. During the autopsy he discovers a silver coin embedded in her heart, to ward off evil spirits. Eswai joins Inspector Kruger and Kernigan burgomaster Karl, to try to solve the mysterious case, but they encounter a wall of silence, cemented by terror and mistrust. The locals are gripped by superstition and fear, and their only saviour against evil spirits is ‘good witch’ Ruth, Karl’s lover. The village is haunted at night by Melissa Graps, a seven-year-old girl who was trampled to death by drunken locals as she tried to retrieve her bouncing ball and bled to death during a village festival 20 years ago. Ghostly Melissa’s revenge is orchestrated from Villa Graps by her mother, the baroness, who is also a medium. Deaths are heralded by Melissa’s stuttering, marrow-chilling laughter, a tolling bell and her ghostly white bouncing ball. Whoever sees Melissa is driven to suicide by the ghostly apparition. Kruger visits Baroness Graps and is later found dead in the cemetery with a self-inflicted bullet wound to his temple, the innkeepers’ daughter Nadine impales herself on a spiked candle stand and Karl slits his own throat with a billhook. Paul is helped in his research by Monica Schuftan, who has recently returned to her home village after many years away and is revealed to be Melissa’s sister, who was adopted by the Schuftans. But in channelling the vengeful spirit, Baroness Graps begins to loose her grip on Melissa, as her supernatural power spirals out of control.

Background

Don’t let those awful titles put you off, this tale of sceptics and spectres, apparition and superstition, is one of Bava’s greatest films. The Kill, Baby…Kill! title is almost totally meaningless in the story’s context, while Operazione paura, or ‘Operation Fear’ was attached to the movie due to Erika Blanc’s association with the James Bond-inspired Eurospy craze. In Germany it was released as the evocative but redundant Die toten Augen des Dr. Dracula – ‘The Dead Eyes of Dr. Dracula’. Many of Bava’s early films were tailored to the American market by AIP and during their making it was known that they would have a US theatre run. But Kill, Baby…Kill! was filmed with the cast speaking Italian and is an Italian horror movie that plays best in its original language with English subtitles. It’s a literate Italian script and the performances of actors such as Giacomo Rossi-Stuart and Erika Blanc are much more convincing in the Italian version. The English dub isn’t up to much, to the detriment of some performances. Charismatic actors like Piero Lulli and Luciano Catenacci have stronger screen presences in the film and play fine when yoked to the English track. If the film has a further failing it’s Bava’s overuse of the zoom, already a trademark Bava signature, a ’shock effect’ that was lessening with its every appearance.

Giacomo Rossi-Stuart played sceptical ‘man of science’ Dr Paul Eswai, who is baffled by the village’s total belief in folklore, myth and witch-brewed remedies. The village is littered with candles, religious icons, garlic, crosses and shrines, but the ruined church and lack of a priest indicates that there’s no God here, only shadowy superstition. Erika Blanc (real name Enrica Bianchi Colombatto) played Monica Schuftan whose family name is a reference by Bava to the German cinematographer, Eugene Schüfftan. Blanc said of Bava: ‘Most people, when they grow up, lose the creativity they had as children. Bava never lost that. I think that really great artists remain like children’. Giuseppe Addobatti and Franca Dominici played innkeepers Hans and Martha, and Micaela Esdra was their daughter Nadine. In the English language version, their family name is Morgan, in Italian Morano. Nadine’s death sees her become entranced by the spike of a candle stand, her mortal fascination leads to her impaling herself on the spike, in the film’s most horrific scene. All Melissa’s victims bleed to death, as she had done, and when Irene Hollander plunges from height onto spiked railings, Bava deploys his waterglass effect to illustrate her entrancement. Fabienne Dali was well cast as raven-haired sorceress Ruth, who we’d expect to be an evil character, but turns out to be the village’s benevolent saviour, on whom the villagers rely for magic spells, reassurance and salvation in the face of devilry, ignorance and poverty. When Nadine sees Melissa at the window, Ruth performs rites to protect the girl from harm: she scourges Nadine’s naked back with switches and ties a protective cilice around her torso (the English language dub defines this ritual as a leech vine). It is Ruth who imbeds coins in corpses’ hearts, to ward away Melissa’s spectre, and Ruth is the fearful villagers’ only hope. The coin allows those who suffered violent death to rest in peace. Melissa herself, who resembles a ghostly Alice in Wonderland, was actually played by a male actor, Valerio Valeri, in a long blonde wig and dress. Melissa bled to death, while she tolled the church bell, and the drunken revellers ignored her. Her ghostly appearances, playing on a swing or as shadowy hands pressed to window panes, are heralded by her mysterious bouncing ball, the ball she was trying to retrieve when she died

Bava filmed most of the Kernigan village exteriors on two locations in Lazio: Calcata and Faleria. Shooting exteriors on real locations – not virtual settings created by photos stuck on pieces of glass, or painted optical effects in studios – seems to bring Bava’s story of the undead to life. The film was shot in Eastmancolor by Antonio Rinaldi, in January 1966, for approximately $50,000. It was based on a 30-page treatment, which was adapted as filming went along, and reputedly filmed in 12 days. Calcata is a medieval fortress town (Calcata Vecchia, the ‘old town’) perched atop a rocky promontory overlooking the Treja Valley in Viterbo, Lazio. Its higgledy-piggledy warren of narrow streets, mossy steps and decaying walls was ideal as the terror-struck village, where terrified folk cower behind bolted and barred doors. The nearby village of Faleria is equally distinctive, with its old town, gate portals, arches, crumbling walls and steep, winding thoroughfares. In Bava’s hands, these ramshackle streets and ancient architecture became an almost fairytale ‘olde worlde’ setting. Bava bathed these already distinctive locations in bold colours, and incorporated wafting fog, tolling bells and the occasion stray cat for atmosphere. When Paul first arrives by coach in Kernigan (filmed near a church and gate arch in Faleria), he sees Irene Hollander’s coffin being hurriedly carried off for burial by red-hooded bearers before he can examine the corpse, and the locals in the village inn are tight-lipped and unhelpful when it comes to questions from strangers. This is classic Gothic horror stuff, done with more élan than British Hammer horrors of the period. The exterior of grand Villa Graps was Villa Grazioli, Grottaferrata in Rome, with interiors filmed at Villa Frascati and Titanus Studios, Rome. Bava also created his highly atmospheric spooky haunted graveyard on a soundstage at Titanus, where he shot many of the village interiors: the inn, the coffin-strewn undertakers, the Burgomaster’s office, Ruth’s home (decorated with stuffed birds and animal skulls) and Nadine’s bedroom. The faded grandeur of Villa Graps is a tour-de-force of set design and mood, with its dizzying spiral staircase (layered in green, yellow and blue), corridors lined with suits of armour and lantern holders shaped like arms, Melissa’s doll-filled room, the cobwebbed crypt and the baroness’s bedroom, with its four-poster bed, drapes and cluttering ephemera and artefacts. The crypt and graveyard sets at Titanus were familiar from The Mask of Satan. Villa Graps is grand and ancient, like the baroness herself, with her mane of wiry, terror-stricken grey hair. In the villa’s disorientating atmosphere, Paul chases an apparition of himself though multiple rooms (which all look the same) and in a staggering cut, becomes tangled in a cobweb-draped painting of Villa Graps, and then finds himself outside the villa in an immense cobweb – the entrapping spider’s web that is the curse of Villa Graps. As in Bava’s later Baron Blood, the real settings add immeasurably to the film.

Carlo Rustichelli’s score brings both unity and familiar associations with Bava’s earlier The Whip and the Body and Blood and Black Lace. There’s even a brief reprise of

Whip’s ‘The Windsor Concerto’, and the composer’s trademark descending, threatening cue reappears, as Paul and Ruth converse in the dead of night, or as two gravediggers hurry to inter Inspector Kruger before Eswai can examine him. The film’s most memorable musical theme is a tinkling music box melody, accompanied by odd, sliding bass notes, which accompanies Melissa’s sudden ghostly appearances and stuttering giggles. The killings are somehow more shocking for being perpetrated by the victims upon themselves. Bava’s childlike manifestation of evil influenced Federico Fellini in his ‘Toby Dammit’ segment of Histoires Extraordinaires (1968 – Tales of Mystery and Imagination or Force of Evil), with spaghetti western actor Toby (Terence Stamp) haunted by the Devil herself: a little girl with a bouncing ball. Bava’s film was released in Italy in July 1966 and took 201 million lira, making it the most successful of his 1960s gothics in Italy by some stretch. It was released by Europix Consolidated Corp. as Kill, Baby…Kill! in the USA in 1966 and re-released by them (as Curse of the Living Dead) in 1970. As Curse of the Dead it arrived in the UK courtesy of Miracle Films Ltd in 1967, where it was X-rated. The US release was plugged by the terrible tagline: ‘KILL BABY KILL – Makes You Shiver & Quiver!’

Verdict

Many fans rank Kill, Baby…Kill! as Bava’s finest period Gothic work, but the English language version – while visually splendid and a picturesque ghost story – lacks the bit of The Mask of Satan or ‘The Wurdulak’ in Black Sabbath. The Italian language version is far superior and rates as Bava’s supernatural masterpiece. Scenes such as the misty graveyard set have such incredible depth as to be almost 3D. Kill, Baby…Kill! is a horror film of great depth, both visually and emotionally.

Knives of the Avenger (1966) IT

Orig: I coltelli del vendicatore

Aka: Viking Massacre/Bladestorm (US video titles)

Dir: Mario Bava

85 mins

Cameron Mitchell (Rurig), Fausto Tozzi (Aghen), Giacomo Rossi-Stuart (King Arald), Luciano Polletin (Moki), Amedeo Trilli (Viking king, Karin’s father), Elisa Pichelli, aka Lissa, aka Lisa Wagner (Karin), Goffredo Unger (Aghen’s henchman in tavern), Bruno Arie (Aghen’s henchman at Karin’s), Osiride Pevarello, Renato Terra, Sergio Cortona (Aghen’s henchmen)

Story

Renegade Viking Aghen and his men are scouring the countryside for Karin and her little son Moki, who have been warned by seer Shula to go into hiding. Karin and Moki hide out in the mountains, where they are visited by a wandering stranger, who introduces himself as Helmut. He’s a skilled fighter, equally adept with crossbow and throwing knife. Karin’s husband, King Arald, is thought lost at sea off the coast of Britain and has been missing for three years. Karin remembers that on her wedding day to Arald, troublemaker Aghen interrupted the ceremony with news he had killed and beheaded the wife and son of rival chief Rurik, to foment division within the tribes. In his vengeance-driven search for Aghen, Rurik and his men ran amok, sacking villages, sparing Arald’s life but raping Karin. The warrior Rurik wore a visored helmet and Karin doesn’t realise that her visitor ‘Helmut’, to whom she has given shelter, is in fact Rurik. ‘Helmut’ recognises Karin though and also realises that Moki could be his son. Aghen and his men comb the land, seeking Karin to be Aghen’s queen, but Rurik is able to kill all those sent against them. Aghen arrives in Arald’s village, which he was exiled from years before, and he and Rurik duel in a tavern, but Aghen escapes, kidnaps Moki and hides out in a cavern. Meanwhile, Arald hasn’t drowned and returns with his men, to fight Rurik. When Karin reports Moki’s kidnapping, the two warriors join up to face Aghen, who’s hiding in the Secret Grotto.

Background

Bava’s second official period Viking movie is markedly different in tone to Erik the Conqueror. It’s more low-key, less ‘epic’, and with the accent on plot and characterisation rather than scope and spectacle. It’s also less illusory and the drama’s action more real. Knives of the Avenger is essentially a revenge western, though occasional Bava visual signatures – splashes or gore, swirling mist, shadows and hints at the mystical – make this another Bava hybrid, minting ‘Viking horror’.

Reportedly filmed in a week in February 1966 for around $75,000, Knives looks worth a lot more. It was lensed by Antonio Rinaldi in 2.35:1 Techniscope and Technicolor, the same processes used for most spaghetti westerns. It was again filmed mostly on the coast at Tor Caldara, for the beach and headland scenes, with other location scenes amid the lush greenery of Manziana, Lazio. Karin’s cabin was filmed below the forest-topped cliffs beside the River Treja in the pretty Treja Valley. Riding and ambush scenes were filmed in the Tor Caldara Nature Reserve. Interiors were shot at Titanus Studios, though the tavern interior closely resembles a Mexican cantina set from spaghetti westerns. The ‘Viking village’ set is actually a US cavalry fort from early spaghettis such as Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West and One Silver Dollar, with the buildings disguised by copious foliage. Through suggestion, editing and a section of log cabin ‘wall’, Bava convincingly creates the illusion that the village and tavern stand on Tor Caldara’s beach.

The Italian film industry was now shifting its focus from costume adventures and muscleman epics to westerns, and Knives of the Avenger is clearly a transitional film. The shadow of George Stevens’ Shane (1953) looms large, abeit a Shane dressed in Nordic garb. The arrival of Rurik at Karin’s ‘homestead’ and his father-son relationship with Moki are both explicit Shane references. During the scene where Aghen arrives in a tavern, a dog gets up and slinks out of the villain’s way, as a hound does when Jack Palance arrives in town in Shane. Marcello Giombini’s ‘riding themes’, with horns and percussion, would serve equally well for a traditional western, and Aghen’s chest armour, a shield against Rurik’s knives, recalls Clint Eastwood’s trick with a square piece of iron, a makeshift bullet proof vest, in A Fistful of Dollars (1964). The film’s shooting title was ‘Raffica di coltelli’ (Shower of Knives) and the action is very western-like, with Rurik a wandering knife-slinger, capable of hurling three daggers simultaneously. Costumes aside, the scene when he arrives at the tavern, with Aghen waiting patiently for him within, wouldn’t be out of place in a Corbucci western.

The film features unexpectedly complex characterisations for a spaghetti Viking movie, thanks to good performances, particularly from Mitchell, in the last of his 1960s Italian Nordic roles. Mitchell is probably best remembered for his role as Uncle Buck Cannon in the western TV series, The High Chaparral (1967-71). Rurik is initially presented as the sympathetic hero, a loner in search of revenge, who is later revealed to have a dark side, as a ruthless plunderer, instilling terror into the hearts of his enemies with his imposing visored helmet. Known variously as Rurik or Rurig in different prints, Mitchell continues Italian genre cinema’s tradition of masked heroes/villains. Mitchell himself notably played a masked gunfighter-avenger in the Zorro mould in The Last Gun (1964). The blank-faced ‘visor’ of his aggressor also recalls the featureless visage of the killer in Blood and Black Lace. Rurik’s inner turmoil at his realisation of Karin and Moki’s relationship to him are articulated via his thoughts in voiceover. As in Erik the Conqueror, a distinctive tattoo (this time on his wrist, of man holding the disk of the Sun) is the clue to the hero’s true identity. Fausto Tozzi made an excellent snarling villain and Giacomo Rossi-Stuart was heroic as Karin’s husband, while beautiful blonde Elisa Pichelli gives a good performance as the woman fought over by all three antagonists. The opening scene, of the old witch on the beach beside a circle of Runes warning Karin and Moki of Aghen’s threat, has echoes of Macbeth. But it is only in the finale, filmed in the cavernous hewn shadows of Grotto Di Salone, that Bava style is in evidence. The strong story, of Rurik’s ‘forbidden love’ with Karin and the fact that Moki has no idea Rurik may be his father, gives the narrative added punch, and the ending, as Rurik rides away into the swirling mists of time, adds poignancy. The international trailers stated, ‘The Knives of the Avenger – They Hit Dead Centre’. It was released in Italy in May 1966 and took 250 million lira. It wasn’t released in the UK and had to wait until 1968 for a US release. These days Alfredo Leone is billed as producer and owns the rights, while on original prints Bava was billed as ‘John Hold’ or ‘John M. Old’.

Verdict

This Viking-horror-western is a little gem, with its widescreen cinematography and rugged, ragged costumery a feast for the eyes. While not as fantastical, nor quite as visually sumptuous, as Erik the Conqueror, it’s still well done.

Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966) IT/US

Orig: Le spie vengono del semi fredo

Aka: Dr Goldfoot and the ‘S’ Bomb/Il clan dei due Mafiosi (1972 Italian re-release)

Dir: Mario Bava

84 mins (Italian version)/80 mins (US version)

Vincent Price (Doctor Goldfoot and General Willis), Fabian (Bill Dexter), Franco Franchi (Franco), Ciccio Ingrassia (Ciccio and his robot duplicate), Francesco Mule (Colonel Doug Benson of S.I.C.), Laura Antonelli (Rosanna, Benson’s secretary and her duplicate robot), George Wang (Fong), Moa Tahi (Hardjob), Ennio Antonelli (Goldfoot henchman in bathroom), Mario Bava (angel on cloud/angry fairground owner), Romano Puppo (general killed near igloo), Veriano Ginesi (bald Goldfoot henchman)

Story

OK, here goes. Dr Goldfoot unleashes his latest creations on an unsuspecting world (and us) in this breakneck spy spoof. His secret weapons for world domination are seductive women clad in gold bikinis fitted with ‘proximity fuses’. When they are kissed, the ‘girl bombs’ explode. Goldfoot has been deploying them to eliminate UN generals and the last remaining general, Willis, is the exact double of Goldfoot himself. Meanwhile Franco and Ciccio, two inept Italian doormen at the ‘The Bang Club’, inadvertently become agents for Security Intelligence Command (S.I.C.) when they meet S.I.C. agent Bill Dexter. Master villain Goldfoot – so-called because of his gold curly-toed slippers with bells on – assassinates Willis and then by rewiring S.I.C.’s IBM computer ensures that Franco and Ciccio are assigned to solve the ‘Case of the Exploding Generals’ by S.I.C.’s Colonel Doug Benson. Bill becomes romantically involved with Benson’s secretary Rosanna, who is later kidnapped and replaced by a robotic duplicate. Backed by Red China, Goldfoot is aided by his accomplices Fong and Hardjob, and plans to cause nuclear war between the USA and Russia, by dropping a Super Hydrogen Bomb on Moscow. Franco and Ciccio investigate a villa on the Via Appia Antica in Rome, but it appears to be a girl’s school run by a Mother Superior (actually Goldfoot in drag). The school conceals Goldfoot’s lair and the two agents are captured, but are saved by Dexter and the real Rosanna. When Goldfoot sets off to steal the B-52 carrying the Super Hydrogen Bomb, he’s chased along Via Appia Antica to the Luna Park fairground by the agents. Goldfoot and his two accomplices take off in the B-52, and the agents give chase in a hot air balloon. They manage to catch and board the bomber, and in the struggle Franco and Ciccio are launched from the bomb, straddling the device as they attempt to diffuse it. They end up in a snowbound Russian gulag, where they are approached by someone looking very like Dr Goldfoot, with an offer of work from the Russian Secret Service.

Background

A radical change of mood for Bava, after Kill, Baby…Kill! and Knives of the Avenger, this isn’t as poor as its ‘bomb’ reputation with some critics suggest. Following the success of Giorgio Simonelli’s 007 spoof The Amazing Dr G (1965 – Due mafiosi contro Goldginger), starring Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia, the highly popular Italian duo found themselves starring in AIP’s latest Anglo-Italian venture. The result united Franco and Ciccio’s unique brand of slapstick with AIP’s exploitationeering. AIP were looking for a sequel to its own Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965). Directed by Norman Taurog, and produced by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff, Bikini Machine was a strange spy spoof made with a ‘beach party movie’ mentality. It starred Frankie Avalon as S.I.C. (Secret Intelligence Command) agent Craig Gamble, who finds that sexy robotic women created by Dr Goldfoot are marrying rich men for their money and then stealing their assets. Craig falls for Diane (Susan Hart), one of Goldfoot’s robots, who has targeted wealthy Todd Armstrong (Dwayne Hickman). Goldfoot is accompanied by his idiot sidekick Igor (Jack Mullaney) who provides the film’s few laughs. There are numerous references to AIP’s Edgar Allen Poe movies with Price – including Armstrong being tortured in the dungeon with the pendulum from The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), via stock footage – and ‘Beach Party’ cameos from Annette Funicello and Harvey Lembeck. The film was shot on location in San Francisco and ends with a crazy chase in the manner of a Mack Sennett comedy, involving cars, motorbikes and sidecars, trams, boats, jeeps and bicycles. Craig, ‘a S.I.C. man’, is codenamed 00½ but the spy parodies are far outweighed by the exploitation angle. Clad in little more than gold bikinis, Goldfoot’s creations are the film’s chief asset and the end titles are accompanied by their go-going gyrations. Les Baxter wrote the score and a title song written by Guy Hemric and Jerry Styner was performed by the Supremes.

For the sequel, AIP producers Nicholson and Arkoff, plus AIP’s Louis M. Heywood, co-produced with Italian International Film’s Fulvio Lucisano. Not for the first time there would be two different versions of Bava’s film for different markets. The Italian version was presented by Lucisano’s IIF, while the US release was from AIP. Originally the film was to have been titled ‘Dr Goldfoot and Love Bombs’ and Vincent Price, back for the sequel, clearly says ‘love bombs’ during the film, but the words are dubbed in as ‘girl bombs’ in the release version. The film also delivered two Vincents for the Price of one – the actor played stuttering General Willis, apparently only because the actor slated for the role dropped out – and also appeared in drag as a Mother Superior nun, as a religious statue and as a very tall Sicilian. Fabian does ‘confused’, as S.I.C. agent Bill Dexter, who although he has a different name, is clearly supposed to be the same character as Avalon’s in Bikini Machine. George Wang and Moa Tahi were Goldfoot’s Bondian ‘oriental’ aides and Laura Antonelli appeared in one of her earliest roles as Dexter’s love interest.

Bava wasn’t keen on the project, a knock-off of a not-very-funny American comedy, but he was under contract to AIP for one more movie, and Goldfoot was it. The film was shot from late March 1966 on location around Rome, including the funfair in Luna Park, with interiors at Cinecittà Studios. The film’s most memorable setting is Goldfoot’s lair, which is filled with exercising gold-bikinied and swimsuited girl bombs. Outside, the nefarious doctor has a piranha-filled swimming pool, but such intriguing, macabre touches are alluded to, glanced at and then forgotten in the quest for slapstick. The visual humour of this film, heavily physical and self-consciously goofy in nature, was Franchi and Ingrassia’s stock in trade. Some of the fights and gags are speeded up, and the extended chase sequence includes explanatory silent movie ‘intertitle’ cards. Franchi and Ingrassia parodied the popular genres of the day, with admirable irreverence but lamentable facial expressions (and in English, near incomprehensible dubbing).

The film is awash with images of duality and mirroring – Dr Goldfoot’s doubles, his impersonation of Willis, even the two versions of the film. The 80-minute AIP version of Girl Bombs begins with a reprise of moments from Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, via clips from the earlier film, thereby establishing its lineage and showing Goldfoot to have ‘died’ when his jeep plummeted off a cliff. The plot outlined above is that of the AIP English language release, which has an end-titles song, ‘Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs’, again co-written by Hemric and Styner, performed by The Sloopys (this plays out to clips of Goldfoot’s beautiful army exercising and dancing in the villain’s lair). The US version was scripted by producer Heyward and Robert Kaufman (who had worked on Bikini Machine) and had a score by AIP regular Les Baxter. For the US release, trailers dubbed Goldfoot ‘That tongue-in-cheek terrorist’ and Price still calls his creations ‘love bombs’, each one of which is ‘An exact reproduction programmed for love and destruction’. The colourfully-designed ad campaign boasted the memorable tagline: ‘Meet the Girls with the Thermo-nuclear Navels’. The accent in the English language version is on Price and Fabian, with Franco and Ciccio relegated to the supporting act. Price is a bit looser and funnier in this sequel and clearly enjoys delivering such lines as, ‘I don’t want to osculate her, I want to duplicate her’. One of few funny scenes in the US cut has Goldfoot spying on a summit of UN generals in Rome through a comical periscope.

The 84-minute Italian version is quite a different proposition and much more entertaining. It’s a superior Franchi and Ingrassia vehicle and Fabian and Price are fleeting guest stars. The Italian version is called Le spie vengono del semi fredo, ‘The Spies that came in from the Semi-cold’ (a reference to John le Carré’s Cold War novel The Spy Who Came in the from the Cold, which has been adapted for the cinema by Martin Ritt in 1965). The names of several of the characters are mistranslated in the Italian subtitles on the Italian International Film’s DVD release – Dr Goldfull, or Goldfood and Bill Dester, while Fong is Fong Pen and Hardjob is named Sergio. Colonel Benson speaks Italian with a very strange English accent, which is described as being like Oliver Hardy. The Italian version opens with a comic book title sequence, by Biamonte & Grisanti, featuring the two incompetent spies and various giant bikini-clad women, which pop when Franchi pokes them. The title music is the strange song ‘Bang bang Kissene’, with a twanging Sicilian maranzano, sung (and I use the term loosely) by Franchi in wailing style. Gone is the scene where Dexter recognises Goldfoot at the airport, with the accent now being shifted to Franco and Ciccio’s budding secret agents. The bumbling duo knock out Dexter, in mistake for Chinese agent Fong, Ciccio metamorphoses into a chicken behind a tree, there’s much more with the duo negotiating Goldfoot’s deadly garden, with its hedge knives and piranha pool (in the picturesque grounds of the villa on the Via Appia Antica) and they arm themselves in S.I.C.’s well-stocked armaments ‘Supermarket’. The dozens of girl bombs who appear in the US version are shown to have been created by accident by Franco fiddling with the controls in Goldfoot’s lair. Their appearance in the Italian version is a big production number, with the prancing, stretching squads of ‘regazze bombe’ in their revealing gold attire and multiplied by mirrors, which is marred only by some slack choreography. In the end, Franco and Ciccio are sent to Siberia, to Compound 47 with an electric fence, where Franco keeps himself warm with several hot water bottles and in a humorous final gag, inside a cooking pot of spaghetti. It is this version that is Bava’s film, not the alternative AIP print.

In both versions Franchi appears dressed in a gold bikini, in scenes not easily forgotten. Ingrassia dresses up as Goldfoot (for an old Marx Brothers’ mirror routine with Price) and is duplicated by Goldfoot – his robot double is a mad axe man, who Bill blinds (like cyclops Polyphemus) with paint. Such minute signatures – the allusions to classic comedy and classical mythology – are the scant signs of Bava’s hand, which is more prevalent in the Italian version. Only the presence of Price make this outing distinguishable from Franchi and Ingrassia’s many other outings. Lallo Gori’s excellent jazzy score is much better in the Italian version, though Les Baxters score isn’t a complete failure. Lamberto Bava was his father’s assistant director and Bava appeared onscreen himself, as the irate fairground owner and an angel on a cloud. Franchi and Ingrassia were massively popular in Italy at the time – their comedy style didn’t travel well and they never really attracted an English-language following, mainly because most of their films were never dubbed into English. They were much more Abbott and Costello than Laurel and Hardy. Thanks to the presence of Franco and Ciccio, Dr Goldfoot was one of Bava’s biggest hits in Italy. It may even have inspired the title of Lucio Fulci’s Italian-Egyptian co-production How to Steal an Atomic Bomb (1967), which featured Franco and Ciccio in another spy parody alongside characters named Modesty Bluff, Derek Flit, James Bomb and Doctor Si. The film was released in Italy in July 1966 and took 365 million lira, making it one of Bava’s biggest successes in his homeland. It was reissued in Italy as Il clan dei due Mafiosi in 1972 and AIP released the English language version of the film in the US in November 1966. It was this kind of 1960s kitsch that infused such would-be spoofs as Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), but the originals are somehow beyond parody.

Verdict

Though Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs in some ways anticipates Bava’s next project – with its super villain outwitting incompetent law enforcers – the US cut is diabolikal. If you’ve only seen the AIP version, it’s well worth locating the Italian cut, which is more coherent, stylish, sexy and a lot of fun. Even if your Italian isn’t great, Franchi and Ingrassia’s movies aren’t known for their witty scripts and you’ll get the gist. A viewing of Bava’s ‘regazze bombe’ made of ‘plastica’ is well worth 84 minutes of your time.

Danger: Diabolik (1968) IT/FR

Orig: Diabolik

Dir: Mario Bava

96 mins

John Phillip Law (Diabolik), Marisa Mell (Eva Kant), Michel Piccoli (Inspector Ginko), Adolfo Celi (Ralph Valmont), Claudio Gora (chief of police), Mario Donen (Sergeant Danek), Renzo Palmer (Mr Hammond, new Minister of the Interior), Lucia Modugno (prostitute), Annie Gorassini (Rose, Valmont’s moll), Carlo Croccolo (hijacked truck driver), Lidia Biondi (police radio controller), Andrea Bosić (bank manager), Federico Boido (Joe), Giorgio Sciolette (Dr Ferrara, autopsy doctor), Terry-Thomas (minister of finance), Edward Febo Kelleng (Sir Harold Clark, British Finance Minister), Caterina Boratto (Lady Clark), Giulio Donnini (Dr Vernier), Giorgio Gennari (Rudy, informant), Robert Buchanan (official at railway station), Giuseppe Fazio (Tony, identikit specialist),  Francesco Mule (crematorium official), Ennio Antonelli (gangster in black), Wolfgang Hillinger, Tiberio Mitri, Isarco Ravaioli (Valmont’s gang), Domenico Ravenna, Enzo Mondino (party guests)

Story

Through his trickery and cunning, ingenious master thief Diabolik always stays one step ahead of the law. For his latest caper, Diabolik second guesses his arch nemesis Inspector Ginko – Diabolik realises that a large-scale armoured car and escort convoy is merely a diversion and that a shipment of $10 million in cash to the port is actually being carried in a low-key Rolls-Royce disguised as a diplomatic courier. Diabolik steals the cash in the port and makes a clean getaway, with help from his beautiful lover Eva Kant. In an effort to apprehend the criminal, the Minister of the Interior announces the restoration of the death penalty and special powers for the police. These drastic measures increase the enforcers’ zeal and efficiency during a crackdown on crime, which seriously compromises the underworld’s syndicate operations in the city. Crime lord Ralph Valmont strikes a deal with the police to help them, as Ginko reasons that ‘it takes a thief to catch a thief’. Ginko again sets a trap, knowing that Diabolik will not be able to resist the chance to steal the valuable Aksand emerald necklace. Diabolik manages to scale the walls of St. Just castle, steal the necklace as a birthday present for Eva and escape. Meanwhile, Valmont has captured Eva, with the $10 million and the necklace demanded as ransom. Diabolik manages to free her and kill Valmont, but he seems to have been killed in the process. At the morgue, Eva manages to revive Diabolik in the nick of time – he had taken a serum that replicates a death-like state of suspended animation and Eva administers the antidote. The government now announces a new reward of $1 million, but Diabolik is so disgusted with the misuse of public money that he blows up all buildings containing the country’s tax records. As a last resort, Ginko hatches a plan and melts all the country’s gold into one massive 20-tonne ingot, which is then transported by rail inside a steel container in Operation Goldvan. Diabolik blocks the track with a hijacked lorry and forces the train to reroute across the Lawrence Bridge, which he detonates as the train crosses the trestle. Underwater, Diabolik steals the ingot using inflatable balloons and takes it back to his lair. While he is extracting the gold at high temperature from the steel canister, the police storm his hideout – the casing was radioactive and they have tracked a signal to his lair, finally trapping the master thief.

Background

Danger: Diabolik is the biggest movie of Bava’s directorial career – in terms of the film’s look and visual impact, it’s his Star Wars, with his full range of cinematic tricks on display. Diabolik owes much to the James Bond films, but also to psychedelia and pop-art. It’s a wonderful collision of sounds and images, with Bava’s colour palette and visual imagination at full throttle to create perfect fantasy cinema.

Diabolik was the hero of a comic book series in Italy, where comics are called ‘fumetti’ – literally ‘puff of smoke’, a reference to the characters’ speech bubbles. The ‘Diabolik’  series was created by Milanese sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani in 1962 and initiated what became known as ‘fumetti neri’, which were more adult in tone to standard comic strips. There was a fashion at the time to adapt comic strips for the small and big screen. In the US there was the Batman TV series and 1966 spin-off film. In Europe there was the frantic-if-uneven pop-art masterpiece Modesty Blaise (1966) starring Monica Vitti and Terence Stamp, Piero Vivarelli’s sexy rejuvenation thriller Satanik (1968) starring Magna Konopka, and the liberated ‘free love’ sci-fi extravaganza Barbarella (1968) with Jane Fonda and John Phillip Law. Barbarella was an Italian-French co-production financed by Dino De Laurentiis Cinematografica (Rome) and Marianne Productions (Paris), which also co-financed Danger: Diabolik. Producer Dino De Laurentiis approached Law, who was already cast as blind angel Pygar in Barbarella, to play the title role of Diabolik, as commencement on Barbarella was delayed. Law was a great selection as the athletic, virile superthief. A couple of years earlier, Jean Sorel and Elsa Martinelli had been cast as Diabolik and Eva in an aborted production which had stalled. The role fits Law as snugly as his striking black or grey bodysuits and masks. The rubber outfits were designed for the film by Carlo Rambaldi, who also designed Pygar’s feathered wings in Barbarella.

The international supporting cast is perhaps Bava’s strongest assembled ensemble. The film may be larger-than-life and sometimes comedic in tone, but it’s never mocking or childish. Instead it satirically mocks its figures of authority, in particular a government minister played by British comedy icon Terry-Thomas, transposed to Italian genre cinema with tooth-gap and monocle intact. For his three scenes he was on the production for about a week’s filming. The casting is perfect, the results hilarious, as a press conference given by the Minister of the Interior is hijacked by Diabolik, who unleashes an Exhilarating Gas that reduces the assembled journalists to gales of laughter. The minister loses his job, but later when Diabolik destroys the country’s tax records, the newly-appointed Minister of Finance (Terry-Thomas again) is once more humiliated on national television, as he appeals to the population’s ‘civic pride’ to come forward and pay what taxes they think they owe. Austrian bombshell Marisa Mell was cast as Eva, after Catherine Deneuve was fired from the role, for refusing to do a scene where she was required to lie near-naked on a bed covered in money. Marilu Tolo was an early choice of Bava’s for Eva also, but Mell is perfect. She and Law generate sizzling chemistry and became an item offscreen also. During filming Bava told Law and Mell: ‘Look, I’m just a dog of a director, but I know the camera very well. If you trust me and do what I ask, I guarantee that you will both look incredible on the screen’. He kept his promise and the duo is perhaps the 1960s most beautiful cinema criminal match this side of Bonnie and Clyde (1967). French star Michel Piccoli insured Marianne’s stake in the movie and he is good as the thorn in Diabolik’s side, who coordinates the thief’s downfall. Sicilian Adolfo Celi, as crime lord Valmont brings with him the iconography of Bond villainy from his role as Largo in Thunderball (1965), the most successful 007 adventure of the 1960s. Claudio Gora was cast as the Chief of Police and Andrea Bosić was the manager of the First International Bank Trust Company, whose shipment is robbed in the film’s opening sequence. Future actor-director Carlo Croccolo appeared as a truck driver whose vehicle is hijacked. Annie Gorassini was Valmont’s airhead moll, Rose, who resembles Marilyn Monroe’s ditzy bombshells. In one scene, Bava has Rose’s mini-dress blown upwards by a trapdoor in a plane, like Marilyn’s billowing hem in The Seven Year Itch. Federico Boido, Tiberio Mitri and Wolfgang Hillinger can be spotted among Valmont’s hoodlums. Peplum regular Giulio Donnini played Dr Vernier, who Valmont ‘crosses off the human register’ with a salvo of machine-gun bullets, and the presence of actors of the calibre of Renzo Palmer, Lucia Modugno and Francesco Mule in brief, one-scene roles, indicate the high quality of this De Laurentiis production.

The original story was written by the Giussani sisters, Dino Maiuri and Mario Bava, with Maiuri, Bava, Brian Degas and Tudor Gates creating the screenplay. Degas and Gates had also worked on Barbarella. The witty, parodic script includes such memorable lines as Eva’s ‘I was expecting you, inspector’, Diabolik’s ‘With this suit I could swim through the centre of the sun’ and Ginko’s dramatic ‘To the morgue!’ Ever cost-conscious, Bava must have shuddered when he was offered a budget of $3 million by Dino De Laurentiis. The setting of the film is unspecified – signage is in English, the currency is dollars – but the film was shot entirely in Italy. The European city setting in the Diabolik comics was called Clerville, while a map in the police HQ before a raid on Valmont’s druggy disco appears to be Los Angeles (with the names Huntington Park, Inglewood, Hawthorne, Lynwood and South Gate visible). Diabolik was filmed from April to June 1967. Locations included the Fiat plant in Turin, for the scenes at the First International Bank Trust Company, and various locations around Rome, including the Rome Hilton (now Rome Cavalieri) for Valmont’s villa and swimming pool. The opening heist was staged amid the dock cranes of Port of Naples, on the Tyrrhenian Sea. The train heist was filmed on the disused Capranica-Viterbo ‘Ferrovia’ railway line. The road picturesquely winding beside the sea that appears in the film, when Diabolik evades capture in his E-type Jaguar, was on the Amalfi coast, south of Naples. Other aerial car chase shots were filmed further north, over Tor Caldara nature reserve in Lazio, which can be seen briefly from the air in some helicopter shots. When Diabolik parachutes out of Valmont’s private plane, to rescue Eva from a cabin and kill Valmont, he lands at Tor Caldara – Valmont’s death certificate identifies this area as ‘Devil’s Land’. The exterior of the robbery sequence at St. Just Castle, when Diabolik arrives on the beach, was also shot at Tor Caldara, with the castle a glass matte. Water cavern scenes and Eva swimming were shot in the Blue Grotto caves on the isle of Capri. Interiors were lensed at De Laurentiis Studios, Rome. Much to De Laurentiis’ pleasure, Bava delivered the film for just $400,000.

The film’s thrilling visual beauty and colourful images were created by Bava using his special effects skills. The interior of Diabolik’s underground hideout is a masterclass in visual effects. The lair’s cavernous interior, with its towering mushroom-like structures, walkways, tunnels, automatic doors and fleet of Jaguars, was concocted via a mixture of miniatures, matte paintings and forced perspective shots. Though the police that chase him use helicopters, cars and motorbikes and the costumes set the film firmly in the pop-art 1960s, Diabolik’s technology is futuristic. The intruder warning system in Diabolik’s lair is a set of church organ pipes, which sound a chord and change colour when the police arrive uninvited. To steal the Aksand necklace owned by Lady Clark, Diabolik breaks into St. Just castle by scaling a tower, Spiderman-style, using suction cups. The castle is protected by close-circuit television, so ingenious Diabolik takes a photograph of Lady Clark’s room with an instamatic camera, then props the photograph up on a candle stand, in front of the security camera, while he makes off with the necklace. This trickery is the kind of optical effect that Bava would employ in his filmmaking technique. Back at his lair, Diabolik and Eva bask in the glory of their success in the kind of luxury accommodation that befits a superthief, with a revolving bed with a TV/music centre sound system pillar, swimming pool and glass panelled ‘his-and-hers’ showers. There’s an animated cartoon sequence, when Eva’s face is constructed by an identikit machine and Bava signatures, such as the reflected image in a car’s rear-view mirror, as Diabolik and Eva case St. Just Castle. The underwater heist, staged by Nicola Balini, when Diabolik tows away the gold ingot using inflatable balloons and a submersible jet sled, resembles a James Bond film. The subsequent sequence when Diabolik dons a silver heatproof suit to melt down the gold with a laser and then fires the molten liquid into ingot moulds resembles a sci-fi film. During a shootout with Valmont, Diabolik shoots the crime lord with the 11 Aksand emeralds loaded in his machine-gun, he later picks up Valmont’s ashes from the crematorium. Bava stages a succession of memorable set pieces, lensed in rainbow Technicolor by Antonio Rinaldi, in a tour-de-force that defines Bava’s zooming, whip-panning, comic book verve. The assistant director was Bava’s son, Lamberto. What is largely obscured by the film’s fantasy elements throughout is that Diabolik is effectively a terrorist. He steals a $10 million cash shipment, by lifting the Rolls-Royce into the air with a dock crane whilst confusing the guards with plumes of coloured smoke, then makes his escape in a speed boat and E-Type Jag. He derails a train by mining a trestle bridge and blows up the country’s tax offices – the latter would please all anarchists, but also most honest taxpayers too.

Danger: Diabolik’s other key component is its outstanding score, from Italian maestro Ennio Morricone. Even stacked up against his spaghetti westerns, gialli and more critically acclaimed work on films such as The Mission and Cinema Paradiso, this one shines as one of his finest. There are myriad influences assembled here, as acid rock and psychedelia meet spaghetti westerns and Euro-pop. The score was conducted by Bruno Nicolai, the collaborator that he had an almost symbiotic creative relationship with during the 1960s and early 1970s. Jarring electric guitar discords herald Diabolik’s presence and as he speeds along in his Jaguar, he’s accompanied by frantic, jagged guitar riffs and wailing cornet. When Diabolik drives into his subterranean lair and Eva walks towards their boudoir, Morricone’s pulsating, sinuous cue mixes sitars, tabla, echoing flutes and violins, to create an Eastern-influenced composition – fans of this tune should check out ‘From Bed to Worse’ from Morricone’s soundtrack to Listen, Let’s Make Love (1967). For a night out in Valmont’s far-out drugs den discothèque, patrons groove to a pounding psychedelic chorus and trumpet ‘Deguello’ during their hippy happening – such groovy nightclub scenes later appeared in Bava’s Four Times that Night and Hatchet for the Honeymoon. For the film’s ‘moderate violence’ and ‘soft drug use’ (a joint is passed around in the nightclub) the film is rated a 12 certificate in the UK. There are also atmospheric cues for tension-filled scenes, similar to those found in a spaghetti western, and lighter cues, as when Ginko’s men impersonate diplomats. The underwater heist features the vocals of Edda Dell’Orso, the soprano soloist from the soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in the West and The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. Her soaring, ethereal vocal, as Diabolik prepares to float the ingot, is followed by a great Morricone pop composition, with vocal ‘wah-wah-wahs’ from the Alessandroni Singers (aka I Cantori Moderni), plus chugging guitars, syncopated drums and jokey flute, as Diabolik makes off with his haul. This scene is as pure a distillation of sensational Italian cult cinema as you will ever see. At Valmont’s swimming pool, an instrumental of Rita Monico’s song from Thrilling (1965), composed by Morricone, wafts from a radio. If Diabolik’s score has a weakness, it’s the lilting theme song ‘Deep Down’, sung by Christy (of The Big Gundown fame). The lyrics, by one of Morricone’s regular lyrical collaborators, Audrey Nohra, could refer to Diabolik’s love for Eva, crime or money:

Deep deep down, longingly, hungrily, hauntingly, all I want is you.

And every minute of the daytime I’m, and every moment of the nighttime

And every second of my lifetime, I’m longing to be loving you, deep, deep down.

You only you deep down, in my heart deep down, in my blood, deep down.

Very deep deep down.

No one but you, deep down, in my mind deep down, only you deep down

Very deep deep down.

You, only you deep down, in my mind deep down, in my heart deep down

It was recorded in both Italian and English language versions, though the instrumental reorchestrations during the movie make better use of the melody. This track was released as a 45 rpm single by Parade (with the theme from 1967’s Operation Kid Brother, aka OK Connery on the B-side) and the Italian language version was included on the CD ‘The Ennio Morricone Songbook Volume 1’, Canto Morricone: The 60s. Criminally Morricone’s complete soundtrack to Danger: Diabolik has not received an official LP or CD release, though there is a bootleg edition that includes dialogue clips and tracks extracted directly from the film, including sound effects such as gunfire, laughter and engines. The pity is that the original master tapes were immolated in a garage fire.

Diabolik was released in Italy, distributed by Paramount, in January 1968 and was successful, taking 285 million lira. It was released in the UK, rated A, in January 1969, though this was a slightly cut version, running 88 minutes. The uncut version released in the US in December 1968 – rated M, ‘suggested for mature audiences’ – was the uncut 100 minute version. The trailer, voiced by Telly Savalas, stated: ‘Meet Diabolik, a bank-robbin’ hood who baffles the cops. He robs from the rich to give to the girls’. The thief is ‘The absolute gold-plated end – ask Eva’. It includes alternate takes not used in the finished film. For Diabolik’s English language release two different dialogue dubs were prepared. One version, titled simply Diabolik, has the credits sequence in Italian and dubs the cast with American-sounding accents, while Danger: Diabolik’s accents sound British. Terry-Thomas, Law and Mell dubbed themselves in both versions. In Danger: Diabolik Celi was voiced by Bernard Grant. In Diabolik, the thief’s name is pronounced Dee-abolik, in Danger: Diabolik it’s Die-abolik. The Paramount videotape released in the US in 1992 is rated PG-13 and is the Diabolik release, at 100 minutes. The UK DVD, at 96 minutes (the NTSC/PAL difference), is the Danger: Diabolik version. DVD versions crop the top and bottom of the image (this is noticeable with the tank parked outside the bank in the opening sequence), while the US videotape is uncropped. DVD prints are 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen and are visually splendid, as befits this psychedelic masterpiece. De Laurentiis was reputedly so pleased with Bava’s efforts – which looked like millions of dollars, but didn’t cost them – that he offered the director the rest of the money Bava had saved from the $3 million budget to make a sequel, but the director refused. There had been too much ‘studio interference’ during the production for Bava’s liking, particularly regarding the level of violence permitted, which had to be toned down from the comic books. The film ends on an ambiguous note. Diabolik is presumed dead by the police, but is actually encased alive in molten gold in his gold-plated cavern – a result of the molten ingot exploding at high temperature – protected by his heatproof suit, as a living statue. This at least left De Laurentiis’ options open for a sequel. Bava did however work again for De Laurentiis on his next production, providing the special effects for Franco Rossi’s TV miniseries Odissea (1968 – The Adventures of Ulysses), starring Bekim Fehmiu.

Verdict

None of the videotape or DVD releases of Danger: Diabolik mentioned above are the 88-minute UK print I watched at the Cornerhouse Cinema in Manchester in 2001, which was my first viewing of the film. Scenes such as the 20-tonne ingot being loaded by crane onto the train and the underwater heist look really impressive in a theatre and Danger: Diabolik demands to be seen on a cinema screen – it is Bava’s biggest film, both visually and in stature. In 2008, it was rated 429 on Empire magazine’s ‘500 Greatest Movies’, Bava’s only entry on the list and of all his work, I rate this as Bava’s greatest achievement.

Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1969) SP/IT

Orig: Un hacha para la luna de miel

Aka: Blood Brides (UK title)

Dir: Mario Bava

85 mins

Stephen Forsyth (John Harrington), Dagmar Lassander (Helen Wood), Laura Betti (Mildred Harrington), Jesus Puente (Inspector Russell), Femi Benussi (Alice Norton), Antonia Mas (Miss Louise), Luciano Pigozzi (Vences, designer), Gerard Tichy (Dr Kalleway, medium), Veronica Llimera (Betsy), Jose Ignacio Abadaz (Jimmy Kane, Alice’s fiancé), Silvia Lienas (Vicky), Guido Barlocci (John Harrington as a boy), Monserrat Riba (bride murdered on train), Pasquale Fortunato (club waiter), Elina De Witt (dress model), Bruno Boschetti (policeman)

Story

John Harrington has inherited the House of Harrington, his mother’s Parisian bridalwear design house, which was founded in 1927. John is trapped in a loveless marriage to his wife, Mildred, who refuses to divorce him until they are separated by death. There have been as series of unsolved murders, for which John is responsible. He has killed five young women and is completely mad – he freely admits his paranoiac condition and with each murder, he learns another vital piece of a catastrophic past event, deeply rooted in his psyche, when he apparently witnessed the murder of his mother and her second husband-to-be. He murders one of his bridal house models, Alice Norton, who is about to marry, and disposes of her remains, as he has with other victims, in the leaf incinerator in his botanical hothouse. Inspector Russell and Alice’s betrothed, Jimmy Kane, visit John, but can find no evidence to link him to the murder. A serial adulterer, John has become romantically involved with a new model at his fashion house, Helen Wood. Mildred says she’s going to visit her cousin Gladys, but returns unexpectedly. John kills her at their home and buries her corpse in a flowerbed in the hothouse. But soon afterwards, Mildred reappears, her apparition visible to everyone except John. He incinerates her body and carries it around in a bag, but still her ghostly presence is seen, as though she’s still alive, by others. He’s haunted by her and is not even rid of her in death. He drops the bag containing her ashes in the River Seine, but when he returns home, the bag is on the stairs and her mocking laughter rings in his ears. During a storm he scatters her ashes in the garden. John goes to kill wealthy Lady Wooster’s daughter, but when the police think they have John, Helen alibis for him. Back at his home, John attacks Helen, to trigger the last piece of the puzzle, which reveals the exact events of his mother’s murder. The police arrive and Helen is really an undercover police officer working for Russell. In the back of a police van, now it is only John who can see Mildred’s apparition, as he’s carted off to an insane asylum.

Background

Following Diabolik and Odissea, Bava travelled to Barcelona in the autumn of 1968 to shoot this off-kilter, Paris-set psychological thriller. The film was mostly filmed at Estudios Balcazar, Barcelona, and the Harringtons’ residence was Villa Parisi in Frascati, near Rome, with some inserts filmed in Paris – John throws the bag containing Mildred’s ashes from the Pont Au Double bridge and of course the Eiffel Tower makes an appearance. The story owes much to Bava’s earlier Blood and Black Lace – especially the fashion house of horror setting, the victims being beautiful models and the perpetrator being connected to the business. The film’s most effective scenes have John in a room full of mannequins wearing bridal dresses, which resembles the international title sequence to Black Lace. John lovingly caresses and kisses the dummies and then dons bridal veil and lipstick to kill his victims in a frenzy with a gleaming meat cleaver. The film is no ‘whodunit’ – we see John kill two honeymooners on a train in the film’s opening sequence, and in voiceover he freely and matter-of-factly admits that he’s mad – but rather a expository ‘why-dunit?’ John must keep on killing, every time he hears the footsteps of his younger self climbing the stairs to his mother’s murder scene, to finally figure out why he must kill brides-to-be. It’s a Catch 22 which can only have one resolution. John is convincingly played by Stephen Forsyth, his stylish attire and handsome good looks masking a psychopathic, compulsive killer.

The story is definitely of two halves. With John’s condition and modus operandi established in the first half, the film becomes a jet-black horror spoof for the second half, as John kills his wife and even in death can’t get rid of her. Laura Betti is excellent as John’s hectoring wife and even better as her undead counterpart, with her pallid face and black, shroud-like garments. She has an interest in ‘mediums and spiritism’, even attending a séance by famed author Dr Kalleway, in an attempt to contact her deceased first husband, and eventually is herself a ghost in the eternal limbo of a spectre. Mildred tells John she will be, ‘Always by your side’, driving him even more insane. John carries Mildred’s ashes around in an old bag, but she still continues to reappear – the ‘old bag’ perhaps being a reflection off John’s opinion of his wife. There are also elements of Kill, Baby…Kill! Here John has a young observer watching his activities, who turns out to be young John himself. Bava displays a nice line in visual black humour, via unusual cuts, with Mildred complaining to John at the breakfast table that there’s ‘something burning’ – it’s toast, not young models in the incinerator – and later John smashes into a boiled egg, with yellow yolk overflowing, following a lurid murder scene. Following the opening murder on the train, Bava cuts to a model train and the audience immediately presume this is an awful train exterior shot of the locomotive, using a model train, as occurs in a couple of Eugenio Martin films, such as Pancho Villa (1971). But it is in fact a children’s model train set, which John plays with in his nursery, which is preserved intact from his childhood.

Dagmar Lassander and Femi Benussi can play ‘beautiful models’ with ease, while Jesus Puente played the police inspector who matches wits with wily John Harrington. There are some very good moments, some genuinely Bavaesque flourishes, but there are stodgy dull patches too. Bava photographed the movie himself and one of the assistant directors was his son Lamberto. The hellish red interior of the incinerator, a wash hand basin where the water turns blood red and Harrington’s secret ‘room of brides’ where he waltzes with his victims before slaughtering them, are pure Bava. The flashbacks deploy Bava’s rippling waterglass effect and the murders include disorientating effects and kaleidoscopes of images. In a nice in-joke, John passes off Mildred’s terrified screams as sound effects on the horror movie screening in black-and-white on his TV – the film showing is Bava’s own Black Sabbath. The main theme by Sante Romitelli is stately in pace and lushly romantic, while the musical ‘shock effects’ throughout, are more conventionally ‘horror’. The film’s best composition is a groovy track used for a blackly humorous scene in a nightclub, when John sits by himself with two drinks, the bag and ‘invisible’ Mildred. The piece is also used in the film’s excellent trailer, by Biamonte & Grisanti, which somehow mixes up the identities of Betti and Lassander. Hatchet for the Honeymoon was released in Italy in June 1970 and took 59 million lira, making it one of Bava’s least successful films in Italy. Tigon Film released it in the UK in 1973, where it was X-rated, and it was released the USA in February 1974.

Verdict

Too loose and second-rate, by Bava’s own high standards, to be a complete success, this feels like one story shoehorned into another, with neither emerging victorious.

Four Times that Night (1968/72) IT/WG/US

Orig: Quante volte…quella notte

Dir: Mario Bava

83 mins

Daniela Giordano (Tina Brandt), Pascale Petit (Esmeralda, aka Jean-Pierre), Brett Halsey (John Price [English]/Gianni Prada [Italian]), Dick Randall (janitor), Valeria Sabel (Mrs Sonia Brandt), Michael Hinz (Rudy), Rainer Basedow (Jack), Brigitte Skay (Mumu), Calisto Calisti (scientist), The Bananas (pop group), Santa Lucerlini (Duccio), Ivan Scratuglia (Bill/Pino)

Stories

Three different participants give three different accounts of the same evening.

As she’s walking her dog one morning near a park, virtuous Tina is followed by kerb-crawler John in his flashy sports car. They get chatting, he seems harmless enough, and she agrees to go on a date with him. He picks her up from her apartment which she shares with her widowed mother. They go to a nightclub discothèque and dance the night away. Later Tina returns to her house, at 3.30 in the morning, her dress torn. In Tina’s account to her mother, John enticed her into his apartment and tried to rape her, during which she scratched him on his forehead and he tore her dress. John’s recollection of the evening is very different. He tells his drinking buddies that it was Tina who was pushily forward and he was shy. She came on to him in the park and went back to his apartment willingly – in fact she would accept no other end to the evening – and is a nymphomaniac. She wore John out with her insatiable lovemaking and her ‘claws’ scratched John’s forehead. Only the arrival of John’s friends Esmeralda and George put an end to their night of passion. In the third recollection, the apartment block’s sex-obsessed janitor watches the events from a rooftop, as John and Tina are joined by John’s friends Esmeralda and George. In this telling, John is homosexual and couples up with George, leaving bisexual Esmeralda to drug Tina and seduce her. As she makes her escape, Tina rips her dress and scratches John on the forehead. Eventually the real story is told. The two did indeed meet in a park one morning by chance and agreed to go on a date. They enjoy themselves dancing in a nightclub. To prove that John’s not ‘a groper’ and is trustworthy, she agrees to go back to his apartment and they kiss, as the voyeur janitor spies on them. It gets late. As they leave to drive her home, the wrought iron gate to the apartment complex is jammed. Tina tries to scale the gate, ripping her dress and scratching John’s forehead in the process. They sit in the garden waiting for the janitor to open the gate, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Eventually two more of the complex’s tenants, Esmeralda and George, return, the gate is opened and the two drive to the sea, to watch the sunrise.

Background

This was the first of Bava’s three films for producer Alfred Leone (four, if you count Leone’s remix of Lisa and the Devil’s footage as The House of Exorcism). Bava’s ‘thrice told tale’ is an interesting experiment for the director. It may have been a filmed comment on the way the images in his films had been used to tell different stories in different markets – for example The Mask of Satan/Black Sunday and the ‘The Telephone’ episode of Black Sabbath. Different words or music can create completely different effects, adding emphasis or nuance, allowing the same images to tell many different stories. Four Times that Night’s obvious inspiration is Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), which recounts a bandit’s ambush of a husband and wife. The film’s structure also resembles the ‘portmanteau’ films once popular in Italy – such as Boccaccio ’70, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, The Witches and Woman Times Seven, which often highlighted the versatility of actresses like Sophia Loren, Silvana Mangano or Shirley MacLaine, as they played diverse roles in different scenarios. The origins of the three fictions are finally revealed to be far from the truth, but are tailored by their tellers. In Tina’s account, John is violent and predatory, she’s coyly innocent and her mother is a worrisome old widow. In John’s account, he’s shy, Tina’s a man-eating tease and so is her randy mother. In the pervert janitor’s account, everyone’s a sex maniac, as per his worldview. His office is plastered with nudie pin-ups of naked models – he was played by the famed exploitation producer Dick Randall.

Bava makes a joke of the film’s ‘obscene’ content, as the ‘debauchery’ and ‘perversion’ takes place in the three fictional scenarios, while the reality is shown to be perfectly innocent. Unusually for a Bava film, there are several instances of female nudity. In an interview, Bava noted that, ‘I only made that film because, at that time Italy, if you refused to make an erotic film, everybody took you for a homosexual’. However, though the vignettes include female nudity, the film doesn’t dare show two men kissing, which occurs offscreen – all we see is Tina’s horrified reaction to it. In Tina’s recollections, John unexpectedly appears in his apartment wearing only a pair of budgie smugglers, and she is shocked and terrified as he tries to assault her. In the second, Tina is the seductress and her beauty and gall is unnerving for Peter. The janitor imagines a free-for-all. The ‘truth’ and our perceptions of it are explained by an onscreen commentator. The film’s title sequence incorporates butterfly-like inkblots from the psychologists’ Rorschach test and a psychologist (Calisto Calisti) pops up to explain the different ways different people interpret events. One person sees one thing, another perhaps another. Which is the truth? At the end, there’s a great visual gag from Bava the joker, as a hand reaches down and picks up John’s car as it drives towards the beach. It’s the psychologist, picking up his ‘subject’ and asking if we’ve seen the real truth.

At one point, seemingly to spin-out the running time, Esmeralda recounts how she met Peter. This cues a flashback to a nightclub (in the English print called ‘Karma Sutra’) that wouldn’t have been out of place in Diabolik, with a synchronised-swaying all-girl beat group (The Bananas), almost-naked women in cages, freaky-looking dancers and whip-wielding women. Tall John is described in the Italian version as ‘An actor out of a western’ (Halsey has recently appeared in the spaghetti western Today it’s Me…Tomorrow You), while his consort, Mumu (Brigitte Skay, later of A Bay of Blood) is snapped naked by photographer Esmeralda in a side room which is furnished with yellow inflatable chairs. This outré nightclub scene, shown in an effects shot to resemble a giant toyshop, is perhaps the film’s best moment. Familiar Italo-film ingredients in Bava’s movie include groovy fashions, Lallo Gori’s jazzy lounge score and bottles of J&B Whisky, dispensed from a gadget drinks’ cabinet concealed in a table – nothing in this story is what it seems. Bava motifs include the swing in John’s pad, which recalls Melissa’s in Kill, Baby…Kill!, the open glass showers from Diabolik, and John is referred to as ‘the Devil himself’, so the film depicts a relationship between ‘Tina (not Lisa) and the Devil’.

For its nudity and depiction, abeit coyly, of lesbian and homosexual encounters, the film ran into trouble in Italy, where it was initially banned. This explains the gap between its filming dates and release. Four Times that Night was shot in October 1968 (before Five Dolls for an August Moon) on location in Rome and on interior sets (the apartments and nightclubs) at Dino De Laurentiis Studios. Judging by the actors’ lip movements, it was shot in English. The film was ready for release in 1969. As Giordano recalled about working with Bava, ‘In his mind he had already montaged (edited) the film, so he knew exactly what frame (shots) he needed’. But the head of the Italian board of censors in 1969 was Riccardo Freda and the story goes that he banned the film, not for reasons of taste, but to protect Bava’s reputation. The film was finally released in Italy in July 1972, promoted and distributed as a sex film. The US release, in April 1975, advertised the film as a smutty sex comedy (‘The title is suggestive…the movie is hilarious’) with artwork akin to a ‘Carry On’ farce. Giordano recalls filming two versions of some scenes in the film – the Italian version would be more restrained and tasteful in its depiction of sex and nudity, while the export version was raunchier. The ‘export’ English language print omits much of the psychiatrist’s two appearances and his story about different participants’ (including a giraffe and a dove) recollections of the Great Flood, and runs 76 minutes, but includes the same nudity and sex as the 83-minute Italian version. At the end of the English language print, the psychiatrist notes, ‘Do you believe it? Do you really believe that things went exactly that way? And despite the tainted figment of our imaginations, they watched the sun rise on a very bright day’. At a basic script level, the English language version is courser and more suggestive – for example, in Italian, Tina’s dog is called Collie Nose, in English Cool Rump. The psychedelic title sequence – featuring animations of the Rorschach test, plus (inexplicably) an American Indian warrior, a pirate galleon, a knifed murder victim, an old witch, a Christ-like religious icon, and a topless hula dancer – is the same in all prints. Four Times that Night was one of Bava’s least seen films, and its showing in English on Channel 4 in the UK in 1999 as part of the Eurotika! season was the first time it had been shown on TV anywhere.

No Bava film is entirely without at least one redeeming feature, and this film’s is the awesomely beautiful Sicilian Daniela Giordano: Miss Italy 1966. Bava told Giordano that the film ‘Was something like Rashomon’, but she laughs, ‘You know, there is a big difference between Rashomon and Four Times that Night‘. Her costume for most of the film (when she’s clothed) is a vivid blue mini-dress (‘A Paris original’) with golden links decoration. It is her presence, and Bava’s artful photography of her beauty, that makes the film worthwhile, though she wasn’t enamoured of working in this particular genre: ‘I like to make westerns, but not sexy movies’.

Verdict

Tellingly Halsey and author John B. Murray barely mention this film in Halsey’s biography, Art or Instinct in the Movies, but discuss his work with Bava on the equally awful Roy Colt & Winchester Jack at length. It has some stylish moments, but is perhaps Bava’s worst in his ‘official’ filmography.

Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970) IT

Orig: 5 bambole per la luna d’agosto

Dir: Mario Bava

81 mins

William Berger (Professor Jerry Farrell), Ira Fürstenberg (Trudy Farrell), Edwige Fenech (Marie Chaney), Renato Rossini (Jack Davidson), Hélèna Ronée (Peggy Davidson), Teodoro Corra (George Stark), Justine Gall (Isabel), Edith Meloni (Jill Stark), Mauro Bosco (Charles, houseboy), Maurice Poli (Nick Chaney)

Story

Businessman George Stark and his wife Jill invite a group of guests to stay at their luxury seaside pad on a secluded island. The visitors are Professor Jerry Farrell, his wife Trudy, mysterious Isabel, and businessmen Jack Davidson and Nick Chaney and their wives Peggy and Marie. The trio of businessmen want to persuade Jerry to part with the formula for a new type of synthetic industrial resin. Jerry stubbornly refuses, even though they offer him a million dollars each for the information. In the boozed-up, decadent atmosphere of Stark’s retreat, murder games, marital infidelity and jealousy flourish.  Marie is having an affair with the Stark’s houseboy Charles. George sends away the island’s yacht and later the motor launch – the only way to leave the island – vanishes, while radio contact with the outside world ceases. Charles is found stabbed and unable to contact the police, the islanders put Charles’s corpse on ice in the house’s refrigerator. The party’s suspicions of each other mount, as the businessmen continue to try to gently persuade Jerry. But he is shot on the beach by Isabel, who seemingly drags his body into the sea. Peggy is shot as she relaxes on the terrace, Marie is found strung up to a tree and stabbed, and Jill commits suicide in her bath, leaving a message in lipstick on a mirror: ‘Forgive me, I can’t go on’. Their bodies are similarly hung up in polythene body bags in the fridge, among the animal carcasses. While the rest of the party is apparently drugged, Nick is killed. Only George, Trudy, Isabel and Jack are still alive and there are more killings as the search for the formula continues.

Background

The principal object of this static abeit stylist giallo is to kill off its attractive cast – in that respect, it is very much a rehearsal for Bava’s A Bay of Blood the following year. Some of the scenes in the Starks’ landscaped garden, with it tropical palms, are very similar to the later film. Five Dolls for an August Moon is Bava’s riff on Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel And Then There Were None, which is also known as Ten Little Indians, or Ten Little Niggers. The driving force here is greed for Jerry’s formula for resin, which he plans to unveil at a chemists’ convention in Geneva the following month (presumably September). By the end of the film, one of the protagonists has unlawfully become rich from the invention, that it is revealed to have been stolen by Jerry in the first place. He murdered his friend and colleague Dr Kruger to have sole rights. This is ironic, given Jerry’s claims that he invented the resin for the benefit of humanity, not for profit.

Though seemingly set on an island, Five Dolls was shot on location, mostly at Tor Caldara, Anzio Cape, in autumn 1969. The Starks’ flashy two-storey pad, with its sweeping staircase and flat roof, was a matte shot atop the headland at Tor Caldara, right on the beach, while jetty moorings stretched into the sea. The island in Christie’s original novel is based on Burgh Island, off the coast of Devon, with its grand art deco Burgh Island Hotel. The interiors of Stark’s plush retreat were at DEAR Studios in Rome. The beachside residence, tropical garden and stylish interiors are a fine setting, rather overshadowing the film’s action. The lounge is dominated by a staircase spiral and the décor screams conspicuous, tasteless wealth – the Starks even have a ‘houseboy’, named Charles in the English language version, or Jacques in the original Italian version. For their decadent ‘murder games’, the sacrifice of a virgin, Charles serves up a variety of knives to the houseguests on a tray. The film is vibrantly colourful and the cast’s garish attire stands out, even amid the brightly-coloured soft furnishings. Antonio Rinaldi was responsible for the zoom-happy cinematography, with Bava as editor. Piero Umiliani’s main theme, which accompanies shots of Isabel wandering around the beach at Tor Caldara, was a snappy syncopated lounge groove, with Hammond organ. The sometimes overly intrusive score, with great swathes of organ and bass, is present throughout, in the manner of a Jesus Franco film, while hazy, Led Zeppelin-esque rock tracks ‘Neve calda’ (‘Hot Snow’) and ’Ti risveglierai accanto a me’, performed by Italian experimental band Il Balletto Di Bronzo (The Ballet of Bronze), appear for the dénouement, as the slaughter’s survivor drives off rich, towards Switzerland, in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce. The corpses, hung like pieces of meat in the film’s macabre running gag in the walk-in fridge, are accompanied by a strange, waltzing honkytonk leitmotif from Umiliani. On the soundtrack, listen out for the whooping ship’s siren sound effect from Diabolik, while the master thief’s revolving bed reappears in the Chaneys’ room.

All tension in the narrative relies on who was where, when? The film’s title, in typical giallo style, is evocative, but meaningless. The ‘five dolls’ are the five pretty women and the film’s French title, 5 Filles dans une nuit chaude d’été, translates as ‘Five Girls on a Hot Summer Night’. Most the mystery’s revelations involve flesh. Edwige Fenech, the beautiful heroine and future screen goddess of continental sex comedies and gialli, is most memorable as Marie, one of the female protagonists, mostly for the fact that she plays the role clad in underwear, bikinis, towels or less. She dies luridly, stabbed and tied to a tree trunk, clad in bright red lingerie. Most of the actors are rudimentarily going through the motions, with William Berger, Ira Fürstenberg and Justine Gall being most notable amongst an unmemorable bunch. The women aren’t particularly well-rounded characterisations and exist mostly to be dressed, undressed, caressed and distressed. The men are iniquitous, unsympathetic – Nick tries to persuade Marie to seduce Jerry to gain the formula – and as a result it’s difficult to become involved in the plot. The film is more successful as an exercise in style, though it’s made with little of the Bava élan. This less-than-romantic story was released in Italy on Valentine’s Day 1970, where it took 65 million lira. It was released in the UK in June 1972, rated X, but was never exhibited in the USA until its DVD release. It is one title Bava singled out for criticism in interviews as the least favourite of his films: ‘They paid me on Saturday and I had to start filming on Monday. I had to accept the script (by Mario Di Nardo) which was just a horrible rip-off of Ten Little Indians. I had to keep all the characters, but I took revenge by changing the identity of the killer’.

Verdict

Bava’s clearly marking time with this listless giallo that’s either loved or loathed by his fans. All the giallo ingredients are here – even down to bottles of J&B Whisky – but the whole enterprise is too self-consciously ‘groovy’ to wholly succeed. Unlike the primary colours of the cast’s attire, Bava is cruising in neutral.

Roy Colt & Winchester Jack (1970) IT

Dir: Mario Bava

85 mins

Brett Halsey (Roy Colt), Charles Southwood (Winchester Jack), Marilu Tolo (Manila), Teodoro Cora (The Reverend), Lee Burton, Maura Bosco and Piero Morgia (Winchester’s henchmen), Franco Pesce (old man), Vincenzo Crocitti (deaf man), Isa Miranda (Mammola), Osiride Pevarello, Pietro Torrisi, Bruno Corazzari (Reverend’s men), Rick Boyd (Boida), Giorgio Gargiullo (Samuel), Bruno Ukmar (Manila’s escort)

Story

Quarrelsome outlaws Roy Colt and Winchester Jack fall out and Roy leaves to get an honest job. Meanwhile, Jack and his gang save Indian girl Manila, an accused murderer, from being taken to jail. When Jack tries to rob a stagecoach, Roy’s guarding it and their hold-up is foiled. In Karton City, outlaw the Reverend and his men besiege Samuel, who owns a treasure map. The Reverend and Jack team up and steal the map and set off to locate the gold. Samuel tells Roy that the map is a decoy, tells him the real location of the gold, and Roy is officially made sheriff to track down the outlaws and the haul. Jack and the Reverend split the map in two and Jack sets off to find the gold. Roy tells the Reverend about a shortcut to the gold, then tells Jack where there’s a good location to ambush the Reverend, which he does. Roy and Jack take a detour to the bordello in Wimpy City. Moving on, Manila leaves Jack for Roy and they abandon Jack in the desert. The Reverend is still doggedly in pursuit and captures Roy and Manila, and takes them to the Indian cemetery where the gold is buried. In the finale, the gold is unearthed, the Reverend disposes of his own two henchmen, and Jack arrives and saves Roy and Manila. The Reverend accidentally blows himself up with dynamite and Manila runs off with the cart full of gold, leaving Roy and Jack as we found them – squabbling.

Background

This is a prime candidate for Bava’s worst directorial effort. The cast looks good and costumes are great, but the story is awfully drawn-out and the locations overly-familiar. Brett Halsey is okay as the hero, Teodoro Cora is a so-so villain, while the underrated Charles Southwood and beautiful Marilu Tolo make a striking couple, creating real chemistry. Too bad this is a comedy, as Bava has a macabre sense of black humour, but broad farce is not his forte. The film was lensed by cinematographer Antonio Rinaldi in November 1969, mostly at the Tor Caldara Nature Reserve, which provides almost all the exterior locations. Interiors and exteriors (including Karton City) were filmed at Incir De Paolis Studios. The settings, according to the treasure map, have evocative names, such as Vulture Canyon and Scorching Sands, but they are mostly Tor Caldara, filmed from every angle imaginable. Bava deploys the Mediterranean Sea as the Pacific Ocean and in a matte shot superimposes what appears to be the Totem Pole and Yei Bi Chei rock formations from Monument Valley over Tor Caldara’s headland. The obviously fake visual effects, cut-out landscapes and phoney cacti doom the project and invite ridicule.

This low-budget mini-western would probably have fared better played straight. Instead it has a farcical mass brawl in a bordello and other moments of silly physical comedy that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Franco and Ciccio movie. In that respect it predates the ‘Trinity’ comedy western cycle. A rare Bava signature appears, when Roy’s face is reflected in a rock pool, when he surprises Jack and Manila in their sleeping bag. The assistant director was Lamberto Bava and the score – which includes some effective compositions (a trumpet deguello, jazzy Hammond organ cues, acoustic themes, threatening atmospherics) – was by Piero Umiliani. The film begins with the theme song ‘Roy Colt’ performed by Free Love, as Halsey and Southwood’s stunt doubles interminably fight it out at Tor Caldara, setting the tone for the rest of the film. Roy Colt & Winchester Jack was released in Italy in August 1970. Though from their lip movements all the main protagonists are obviously speaking English, the film is only available in an Italian language version. If an English language dub was prepared it remains elusive.

Verdict

Halsey remembered that , ‘Bava loved the picture while we were shooting it. He had such fun’. At least somebody did. Halsey, Tolo and Southwood are completely wasted in thankless roles and the film squanders everyone’s talent, not least Bava’s. Very poor, with not even Bava’s trademark imaginative lighting to enliven it.

A Bay of Blood (1971) IT

Orig: Reazione a catena (Ecologia del delitto)

Aka: Bloodbath (UK title)/Carnage/Twitch of the Death Nerve/Last House – Part II (US titles)

Dir: Mario Bava

84 mins (uncut version) 80 mins (cut version)

Claudine Auger (Renata), Luigi Pistilli (Albert), Claudio Volonté (Simon), Anna Maria Rosati (Laura), Chris Avram (Frank Ventura), Leopoldo Trieste (Paolo Foscari), Laura Betti (Anna Foscari), Brigitte Skay (Brunhilde), Isa Miranda (Countess Federica Donati), Paola Rubens (Denise), Guido Boccaccini (Duke), Roberto Bonanni (Robert, aka Bobby), Giovanni Nuvoletti (Count Filippo Donati),  Renato Cestie and Nicoletta Elmi (Renata and Albert’s children)

Story

‘La Baia’ is a pretty beauty spot, its overgrown banks teeming with insects and undergrowth, and dotted with chalets. But schemes and schemers are plotting to transform it into a lucrative resort, regardless of what it will mean to the peaceful area and its residents. On 13 February, the Countess Donati is murdered in her home by her husband, who makes her hanging appear a suicide. But soon after the deed is done, the count is himself stabbed and his corpse dumped in the bay. In his absence, he becomes the murder’s chief suspect. The count’s daughter, Renata, her husband Albert and their two children arrive at the bay to claim her inheritance. Meanwhile, four teenagers – Duke, Brunhilde, Denise and Bobby – arrive at the bay in their dune buggy and break into a disused ruined nightclub and later into an empty villa owned by architect Frank Ventura. Brunhilde goes skinny dipping and accidentally snags the count’s body. As she flees, she’s killed with a billhook sickle. The same weapon slays Bobby as he answers the door and a spear skewers Denise and Duke as they make love on a bed. Their bodies are dumped by the killer in a bath. Renata and Albert visit two of the bay’s residents – insect enthusiast Paolo Foscari and his wife Anna, a medium. Paolo is vehemently against the bay being commercialised, while Anna has premonitions of impending death. They tell Renata that the countess, her stepmother, had another child, an illegitimate son, the offspring of an affair, which the countess kept secret for years. The boy, named Simon and now a grown man, lives on the bay in a cabin: ‘A constant reminder of her weak flesh’. When Renata and Albert visit Simon, they find Frank there and the count’s body in Simon’s fishing boat – he claims to have just found it in the bay. Renata and Albert return to Frank’s villa and discover the carnage. Frank is there and thinks Renata’s an intruder. He’s about to attack her with an axe, when she stabs him with scissors. Renata and Albert decide to do away with the Foscaris who are now unwelcome witnesses, so Albert throttles Paolo with the telephone cord, as he attempts to call the police, and Renata kills Anna with an axe. Then to further complicate matters, Frank’s lover Laura appears and is strangled by Simon, who is then skewered with a spear by Albert in the nightclub. It looks like Renata has gained her inheritance and the bay will be theirs.

Background

As the above plot outline suggests, even in précis, the killing spree that engulfs the ‘Bay of Blood’ makes this a very bloody film indeed. In fact, it’s the most brutal film of Bava’s career. Its notorious carnage, with 13 lurid murders enacted before our eyes and staged convincingly by Carlo Rambaldi, has over the years been severely cut by various different censors, with varying degrees of tolerance for this kind of sadistic business.

There’s a lot going on in Bava’s deceptively simple film, as characters arrive, are introduced and then dispatched with alarming regularity. There’s also more than one culprit responsible for the killings, rather than a lone lunatic, as was the case in later ‘stalk and slash’ type psycho-on-the-loose movies. The plot’s driving force is ownership of the bay’s prime real estate and greed is a popular motivation among the antagonists. The film opens rather like one of Bava’s Gothic horrors – the old countess, in her wheelchair in her grand villa, could easily be traversing Villa Graps in Kill, Baby…Kill! or the salon of Blood and Black Lace. Her fake ‘suicide note’, dated 13 February, is actually a page torn from her red-covered diary, which also recalled Black Lace. Her wheelchair, here a sign of her vulnerability, was later used by Bava to throw audiences off the scent of Alfred Becker, the new owner of Castle Von Kleist and the human face of Baron Blood. Her killing, a helpless woman garrotted and her wheelchair kicked from beneath her, is a horrible ending for her and a jolting start to the film. That her killer – her own husband – is stabbed to death and dumped in the bay moments later, sets the ‘chain reaction of death’ in motion that will see almost the entire onscreen cast wiped out over 84 gruesome minutes.

Bay of Blood was photographed by Bava himself during January and February 1971 over six weeks at Sabaudia on the Lazio coast, with interiors at Villa Frascati and Elios Studios. The bay is in fact a lake, the Lago Di Sabaudia, in the province of Latina – the lake is separated from open sea by a strip of land, the Lungomare (seaside promenade) Di Sabaudia. The tranquil bay oozes eerie atmosphere and allows Bava to shoot some great location footage, as the beauty spot seems perpetually on the verge of twilight. Bava lensed some burnished, dusky sunsets and augmented the undergrowth with offcuts of foliage bought from a florist and placed in the foreground of shots. One of the most famous shots of Bava’s career is included in Bay of Blood, as the focus shifts and reveals that what we think is a blurry sun is in fact a staring eye. Bava intercuts watchful, cold, unblinking eyes – prying, preying – into the action throughout the film and also deploys stalking POV camerawork and his obligatory ‘shock zooms’, as in the scene where Renata finds the teenage quartet’s bodies piled in a bath. All the dialogue scenes were shot twice, with both English and Italian language dubbed versions being prepared for release. In the Italian version the four teenagers were named Teresa, Luca, Roberto and Luisa.

A Bay of Blood has a class cast, one of the finest Bava ever assembled and certainly superior for what initially appears to be just another ‘killer-on-the-loose’ movie.

Miss France 1958, Claudine Auger was most famous for playing Domino in the 007 movie Thunderball (1965) and was very effectively cast here, against type, as a conniving, greedy murderess, who convinces her husband to kill too, for avaricious ends. She was also good in Paolo Cavara’s superior giallo, The Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971). Luigi Pistilli was familiar to filmgoers from such spaghetti westerns as For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Death Rides a Horse and The Big Silence (both 1967). Renata and Albert’s two children, who are staying in a caravan on the bay, were played by Italian horror regular Nicoletta Elmi and Renato Cestie, who is perhaps best known for his role as young ‘un Chip Anderson opposite Bud Spencer in the broad comedy western It Can Be Done…Amigo (1972 – The Big and the Bad). Bava was lucky that with such reliable performers of the calibre of Leopoldo Trieste and Isa Miranda, his protagonists’ characterisations were in safe hands. Laura Betti, who had worked with Bava on Hatchet for the Honeymoon, remains best known for her work for Pier Paolo Pasolini, such as Theorem (1968). As in Hatchet, Betti’s role is tinged with the occult – Anna reads Tarot cards and is given to ominous pronouncements like: ’The sickle of death is about to strike’ as she can ‘sense the rattled breathing of death’. The cast’s standout is Claudio Volonté, as the billhook wielding Simon – the countess’s illegitimate son who lives in a shack on the bay. Claudio, who also acted under the name ‘Claudio Camaso’, was Gian Maria Volonté’s equally talented brother. His evil, sickly smile is truly devilish and his presence on the lake, as he gnaws on raw squid or frustratedly plunges his curved billhook blade into furniture, ensures there’s always tension in the air.

If the lake is notable for its bleak, out-of-season prettiness (Bava shot in the winter, not the best time to see the location in all its glory) then the chalets and villas are where most of the killing is done. The countess’s villa’s interiors were shot at the Villa Frascati (from Blood and Black Lace and Kill, Baby…Kill!) near Rome, while Frank Ventura’s house was the vacation villa of Bay of Blood’s producer, Giuseppe Zaccariello. The exterior of the Donatis’ villa was a glass matte shot at the lake, in a Bava film which is noticeable for its lack of visual effects. The creepiest of the lakeside buildings is the eerie, disused nightclub built by Frank Ventura, with its empty rooms, silent disco dance floor and fetid swimming pool. It was the beginning of his resort venture, but never opened. The film’s Italian titles are Reazione a catena (‘Chain Reaction’) and Ecologia del delitto (‘Ecology of Crime’). It’s interesting that Bava has a character, Paolo, who is an ecologist and who is also an entomologist, collecting his insect specimens from the shoreline. He wants the lake to be left unspoilt by any modernisation which will leave it buried under a sea of concrete. He talks to his water boatmen insects in his study as though they are his friends, christening one ‘Little Ferdinando’, but they still end up pinned as specimens. Paolo cares for ecology and insects more than humans and at the final reckoning, Albert leaves Simon pinned to the wall of a decrepit nightclub by a spear – another ‘specimen’ in Bava’s ghoulish gallery of horrors.

Bava’s film opens with a macabre gag, as the narrative’s first victim, a fly, plops dead into the bay and soon characters start dropping like flies. The killings in this film are convincingly done, with Carlo Rambaldi on top form. Bava shot two versions of Laura’s demise – the one in the film, where she is strangled, and also a version where Simon plucks her eyes out. Brunhilde is almost decapitated in the uncut version of the film, Anna is decapitated with an axe and Bobby has his face bisected with a billhook. The scene when the count’s corpse is revealed, with a squid squirming on his face, is truly repulsive, and the spear that kills the lovemaking couple, Duke and Denise, passes through both of them and the mattress below. An early draft of the story was titled ‘That Will Teach Them to be Bad’. These gruesome slayings are paraded, gloatingly, in the uncut version, like exhibits in a ‘house of horrors’ circus sideshow. Stelvio Cipriani’s score is one of his best. The soft, syncopated percussive bossa nova theme tune, sinuous like a coiling snake, deploys a harpsichord melody and threatening strings. The dune buggy teens have a Euro pop theme, as do the children, who gambol beside the bay in the film’s black surprise ending, which in quoting William Shakespeare, a playwright famous for his murderous tragedies, purports to ensure that ‘All’s well that ends well’.

The Italian release in September 1971 was not a success, while the film has fared rather better internationally: it was released as Carnage in the USA in May 1972 and later that year again as Twitch of the Death Nerve, and in 1974 as Last House – Part II, to cash in on the US film The Last House on the Left (1972). It was rejected by the BBFC in April 1972, but surfaced on home video from Hokushin as Blood Bath and ended up on the notorious ‘Video Nasties’ list, along with works by Argento, Fulci and other Euro-horror directors. Rated 18, the cut UK DVD from ‘Film 2000’ runs 80 minutes 27 seconds, with the killings and their explicit aftermaths abridged. The uncut US DVD release, as part of the eight-film The Mario Bava Collection Volume 2 boxed set, is uncut and runs 84 mins 13 seconds.

Verdict

Bava’s most graphically violent, shockingly jarring piece of terror is also one of his most influential, informing such films as Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980). The killers on the loose down by the ‘bay of blood’ inspired and unleashed a whole horror subgenre, the ‘slasher movie’, where movie maniacs and misunderstood misfits embarked on killing sprees with their sharpened weapons of choice. Bava’s original holds it own with the best of them.

Baron Blood (1972) IT/WG/US

Orig: Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga

Dir: Mario Bava

98 mins

Joseph Cotten (Baron Otto von Kleist, alias Alfred Becker, alias Baron Blood), Elke Sommer (Eva Arnold), Massimo Girotti (Professor Karl Hummel), Luciano Pigozzi (Fritz), Antonio Cantafora (Peter Kleist), Umberto Raho (police inspector), Nicoletta Elmi (Gretchen Hummel), Dieter Tressler (Herr Dortmund), Gustavo De Nardo (Dr Werner Hesse), Valeria Sabel (Martha Hummel), Rada Rassimov (Christina Hoffman and Elizabeth Holly), Pilar Castel (Madeleine, doctor’s assistant), Rolf Hadrich (auctioneer), Alfred and Kathy Leone (passengers on 747 jet), Lamberto Bava (airport traveller), Maurice Poli (land surveyor)

Story

Arriving in Vienna from America, Peter Kleist visits his ancestral home, the ‘Castle of the Devil’, where 300 years ago his blood relative Baron Otto Von Kleist pitilessly tortured victims to death. The Austrian castle is in the process of being renovated and converted into a hotel and tourist attraction, the ‘Schloss Hotel’, in the hope that gullible foreigners will flock to it due to its notoriety – no superstitious local would ever check into the premises. Peter has discovered an ancient incantation for the resurrection of the Baron, with the failsafe of another parchment that will send him back again. One night, with help from history student Eva Arnold, Peter brings the fiend back from the dead, but the second parchment is blown into an open fire and burns. The Baron, though hideously burned and scarred, with weeping wounds, sets about reclaiming his castle and eliminating his only living male descendant – Peter. The Baron is treated by Dr Werner Hesse, whom he then kills. The Bloody Baron murders several locals, including Herr Dortmund, who is renovating Castle Von Kleist (he ends up hanging from the rafters) and the building’s unhinged caretaker, Fritz, who he shuts in a spike-lined iron coffin in the dungeon. With the hotel project curtailed, the castle is bought at a sealed-bid auction on Friday the 13th October 1971 by Alfred Becker, a wheelchair user who takes up residence there and plans to renovate it to its former glory. Peter and Eva enlist the help of Peter’s uncle, Professor Karl Hummel, and Christina Hoffman, an occultist. During a bonfire ritual at the site where witches were put to death, Christine invokes the spirit of witch Elizabeth Holly, who cursed the Baron centuries before. The Baron kills Christine and captures Peter, Eva and Karl, locking them in his dungeon and torturing them. But when all seems lost, Eva reanimates Fritz and the Baron’s other victims with an amulet given to her by Christina – only at the hands of his victims can the Bloody Baron be vanquished.

Background

In the intervening years since his last period Gothic horror film, Kill, Baby…Kill! in 1966, Bava had directed Diabolik, his psychedelic masterpiece, but had then sunk into a doldrum. There’d been comedies with Dr Goldfoot, Four Time that Night and Roy Colt & Winchester Jack, and patchy psychological thrillers (Five Dolls for an August Moon, Hatchet for the Honeymoon), before his return to form with the savage A Bay of Blood, his domino-killing tour-de-gore.

Baron Blood harks back to Bava’s period gothics of the 1960s, and is something of a ‘best of’ compilation album of his greatest moments, an anthology of his own work. It’s atmospheric, though playful, and includes all the requisite ingredients for an archetypal 1970s Euro-horror. Perhaps the film’s most successful achievement is the collision of ancient and modern – the old dark house atmosphere of the castle with some garish 1970s apparel, including mini skirts, bobble hats and frantic knitwear sported by Sommer, and flashy Mercedes cars. The renovators have even tactlessly installed a Coca Cola machine in the beautiful building. The juxtaposition of old and new is very effective – contemporary Euro-horrors such as the ‘Blind Dead’ films or Jacinto Molina’s ‘Werewolf’ films also hit the mark, by using classic horror settings and characters and rebooting them in a modern world. In Baron Blood tourists visiting the chamber of horrors torture room would have atmosphere provided by wailing sound effects of terror. These give way to real screams, as the Bloody Baron plies his trade on Peter, Eva and Karl – though following the visual excesses of Bay of Blood, their ordeals occur largely offscreen.

Baron Blood was Bava’s second film produced by Alfred Leone. With Leone came money, and with that came great locations and actors for Bava to work with. The Bloody Baron’s residence was no film set. Exteriors and some interiors were filmed on location in Austria from September to November 1971 at Burg Kreuzenstein, a fairytale castle north of Vienna in the Lower Danube Valley, with turrets, slate roofs, crenellations, gargoyles and vaulted arches. One of the alternatives available to Bava was Burg Hohenwerfen, the ‘castle of the eagles’ from the World War II film Where Eagles Dare (1968). Korneuberg Museum was also used for interiors (the armoury), with the town of Korneuberg deployed for street scenes and the university exterior. Peter leaves New York on a Pan Am TWA 747 jet (producer Alfredo Leone and his daughter Kathy can be spotted among the passengers) and arrives at Flughafen Wien (Vienna Airport). It is one of the few films Bava shot outside Italy. The cinematographer was Antonio Rinaldi, Carlo Rambaldi designed the Baron’s hideous face and hand makeup, and the stunt co-ordinator was Giulio Maculani, an actor and stuntman from such films as The Last Gun and Django. Peter and his uncle must be reasonably well off, as we see them drive three different Mercedes saloons: Karl’s white one (reg. number W635 211), Peter’s black one (N9 270) and a grey one (N39 076). In fact, when Karl realises that his daughter Gretchen walks by the castle on her way home from school, they speed off in N9 270 and arrive in N39 076. Baron Blood demonstrates Bava and his producers’ ability to attract top acting talent – there’s Joseph Cotten, Rada Rassimov, Massimo Girotti and Elke Sommer. Sommer, had appeared in everything from Winnetou westerns to spy thrillers, and was prime suspect chambermaid Maria Gambrelli in A Shot in the Dark (1964). Hollywood legend Cotton, once a collaborator with Orson Welles, followed Welles’ lead and worked in Europe, often on somewhat lowbrow productions, such as White Comanche (1968), a bizarre shot-in-Spain western which starred William Shatner as twins. Cotten accepted the role of the Baron’s alter ego, to Bava’s surprise, after original choices Vincent Price and Ray Milland (both from AIP’s Poe films) turned him down. The Baron himself is a horrible creation, with Franco Tocci in special effects makeup as the bloodily scarred, reanimated cadaver, and wearing cape and broad-brimmed hat in classic horror tradition. As the human face of the Baron, his elderly alter ego, Cotten plays it straight, as the castle’s new owner who isn’t all that he seems. It’s rather odd that no one asks how a resident negotiates the staircase-riddled castle in a wheelchair, without the aid of an escalator or lift. Child actress Nicoletta Elmi played freckle-faced, red-haired Gretchen, who is stalked through the castle’s woodland by the Baron and who suggests that Christina’s amulet is key to sending the Baron back to Hell. Elmi was prolific in this period, appearing in Visconti’s Death in Venice (1971), Bava’s A Bay of Blood, Argento’s Deep Red (1975), as well as Who Saw Her Die? (1972), Footsteps and The Night Child (aka The Cursed Medallion, both 1975), and later playing an usherette in Demons (1985), directed by Lamberto Bava, who was one of his father’s assistant directors on Baron Blood.

Despite the eye-catching cast, the castle’s the star of the show and Bava uses both the interiors and exteriors very well. Wide angle lenses accentuate the dark shadowed spaces of the vast castle’s cavernous timber and stone interiors, Gothic in its magnificence and oppressive in its malevolence. There’s even a chapel, with heightened galleries and stained glass windows. Bava also makes the most of the exterior architecture, whether wreathed in mist or blessed with sunlight. In a memorable scene, the Baron has decorated the turrets with the stake-impaled bodies of his victims. Every horror movie castle has a resident mad caretaker and Baron Blood’s is no exception. Bava and Margheriti regular Luciano Pigozzi played the role here, named Fritz, under his regular pseudonym ‘Alan Collins’. There’s also a dungeon filled with torture devices – another genre staple – that get an airing when the Baron begins to take revenge on any interlopers in his domain. Bava’s litany of death references his own work and other classic moments from the genre. The Baron clawing his way out of his mouldering grave and the bloody puncture holes in Fritz’s face recall moments from The Mask of Satan, while Gretchen appears clutching a ball, referencing Kill, Baby…Kill! During the Baron’s resurrection scene, the reanimated cadaver menaces Peter and Eva in ‘the burned room’ where the Baron died – blood seeps under the wooden door, which eerily bends inwards under the Baron’s supernatural force, as in The Haunting (1963). The mad torturer references Pit and the Pendulum (1961). Bava’s oft-used rippling waterglass effect simulates Eva’s vertigo high above the chapel and he throws in some multiple zooms for good measure. The film’s best scene has Eva pursued through narrow, old town foggy streets, in homage to Andre De Toth’s 3D House of Wax (1953). In the original, Vincent Price played Professor Henry Jarrod, who is hideously facially scarred following an inferno at his wax museum. He hunts victims to turn them into wax sculptures, whilst dressed in black hat and caped coat, but also lives a double life. Jarrod is apparently a wheelchair user with hideously burned hands, while it is his deaf-mute assistant Igor (Charles Bronson) who crafts his works of art. In House of Wax’s iconic scene, Jarrod chases Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk) through foggy streets and she calls out for help to a cabbie. In Bava’s restaging, Eva is chased by the Baron from her Studenenheim (student digs) and she calls out to a taxi driver. Bava’s redo includes a radiant yellow light burst, as shafts shine through a holly bush – perhaps a reference to the Baron’s vanquisher, Elizabeth.

The film was released in Italy in February 1972 and took almost 263 million lira, relocated to ‘Castello di Norimberga’ (Nuremberg Castle), which references Antonio Margheriti’s The Virgin of Nuremberg (1963).Though it was a West German co-production, the film wasn’t distributed there, despite the story’s obviously ‘Germanic’ trappings, in the land of mists and Mercs. For the 98-minute international English language version, Cotton, Sommer and Elmi provided their own voices. Baron Blood’s first appearance in the UK was on videotape from Guild in June 1982 (at 87 minutes) and later Redemption Films (at 93 minutes, due to NTSC to PAL conversion) in 1993. It was just like old times for Bava, as AIP theatrically distributed Baron Blood in the US. This version runs 87 minutes, removing a blossoming romance between Peter and Eva, the preamble to Christina’s invocation ceremony, and tones down the violence. Most notably, it replaced Stelvio Cipriani’s cues with new ones courtesy of AIP regular Les Baxter. Cipriani’s Euro-pop theme tune sounds like Tom Jones’ ‘It’s Not Unusual’, while his atmospheric incidental themes work better, though in this case Baxter’s score equals Cipriani’s original. Baxter’s new theme music is more threatening than Cipriani’s and the eerie flute theme and sonic oscillations for the resurrection scenes create great apprehension. Like Black Sabbath, AIP’s edition of Baron Blood is a slight improvement on the original. AIP’s posters wisely denied any responsibility for patrons who suffered ‘Apoplectic Strokes, Cerebral Hemorrhages, Cardiac Seizures, or Fainting Spells’.

Verdict

Often written off by horror fans as by-the-numbers Bava, or camp nonsense, this is something of a light-hearted romp – if a Gothic horror movie can be described as such – following A Bay of Blood. But not only is this old-school Bava, it’s also an archetypal 1970s Euro-horror and an object lesson in cinematographic style.

Lisa and the Devil (1973) IT/SP/WG

Orig: Lisa e il diavolo

Dir: Mario Bava

95 mins

Telly Savalas (Leandro), Elke Sommer (Lisa Reiner and Elena), Sylva Koscina (Sophie Lehar), Alessio Orano (Maximillian), Gabriele Tinti (George, chauffeur), Kathy Leone (Kathy, Lisa’s friend), Eduardo Fajardo (Francis Lehar), Franz Von Treuberg (antique shop owner), Espartaco Santoni (Count Carlos), Alida Valli (the countess)

Story

While visiting Toledo in Spain, tourist Lisa Reiner is separated from her friend Kathy. Lost in the back streets, Lisa encounters a man who looks devilishly like the Devil himself, as depicted in a fresco in Toledo’s main plaza, which portrays Satan carrying off the dead. The Devilish doppelganger she encounters is carrying the dummy of a man. Later the ‘dummy’ approaches her and seems to be alive, mistaking her for someone called Elena, but Lisa pushes him down some steps, killing him. Night falls and in the foggy Toledo streets Lisa hitches a lift with a wealthy couple, Francis and Sophie Lehar, and their chauffeur George. Their Packard automobile breaks down and they stop to take refuge in the villa of a blind countess, her son Maximilian and their butler, Leandro, who is the same Devil lookalike from Toledo’s streets. The guests are put up in the villa’s cottage. Max is convinced that Lisa is Elena, his step-father Carlos’s lover, while Sophie is having a clandestine affair with her chauffeur. George manages to fix the car’s water leak and the party prepare to leave, but their departure is interrupted when George is stabbed in the neck with scissors. Francis is run over by his own car driven by Sophie, who is then bludgeoned to death by Max. Lisa experiences memories of embracing and kissing Carlos, who is the man Lisa thinks she killed on the steps in Toledo. Carlos appears to be alive and within the villa’s grounds, despite the fact that Leandro is making preparations for his imminent funeral. Eventually, after a night of terror, during which the countess and Max are killed, Lisa awakens in the overgrown ruins of the villa, which has been long abandoned. She is mistaken for a ghost by some schoolchildren – the house hasn’t been occupied for a century – and leaves Barcelona airport on a TWA jet.

Background

With the success of Baron Blood, producer Alfredo Leone financed Lisa and the Devil, to the tune of an estimated $1 million, which had the working title ‘The Devil and the Dead’. It is Bava’s most personal film and a definitive attempt by the director to create something more than a standard horror movie. The film’s rhythm is stately, more arthouse, despite the fact that to prevent Lisa from leaving the villa there is a domino chain-reaction of killings, as in A Bay of Blood, with Lisa seemingly killing Carlos, the countess appearing to stab George, Sophie killing her husband, and so on.

Lisa and the Devil was shot in Spain and Italy, from September to November 1972. It was photographed by Cecilio Paniagua and Bava doesn’t seem to have had much control over the film’s visual style. Put simply, for what was supposedly such a personal work from the director, it doesn’t look much like a ‘Mario Bava film’. Paniagua prefers soft focus and filters to Bava’s coloured light effects. In one scene towards the end of the film, Max and his mother are lit in mauve, and the décor is the familiar Bavaesque clutter of artefacts, as in the funeral chapel and Leandro’s workshop, littered with dummy heads. But mostly the style is less imaginative than you’d expect from a Bava movie. It was filmed on location in Toledo (including the Primate Cathedral of Santa Maria), at a castle near Madrid (for the villa’s exterior shots), the runway at Barcelona Airport, the interior of Villa Frascati (some of the villa’s interiors) and in the streets of Faleria, from Kill, Baby…Kill! (as the streets of Toledo, when Lisa becomes lost). As in Kill and Baron Blood, the real locations are a boon. Lamberto Bava was the film’s assistant director, Franco Tocci again did the special effects and Franco Freda (who had worked on I Vampiri and The Whip and the Body) was the production’s makeup artist.

Carlo Savina composed the loping, dreamy theme music (with darting piano and harpsichord figures, strings and Edda Dell’Orso’s wilting soprano) which is heard over the animated title sequence of a Tarot dealer. Each of the actors is introduced as images on monogrammed cards, in the same way the international title sequence of Blood and Black Lace introduced its cast. It also introduced the story’s theme of the random hand dealt by fate, which takes Lisa from a guided tour of Toledo to Hell. Telly Savalas, in another of his several Euro-outings, makes a sinister Devil and a truly odd lollipop-sucking butler – this was before Savalas made the Kojak TV series, so Theo Kojak’s lollipop prop may have emanated from Leandro. He is also an undertaker of sorts, as he takes victims’ measurements before he constructs dummies of them. Sommer is back from Baron Blood, while the reliable cast included spaghetti western regular Eduardo Fajardo, Gabriele Tinto (in a role originally slated for Ivan Rassimov, who later worked on Bava’s Shock) and Alida Valli as the countess (Bette Davis was mentioned for this role). ‘Is this the face that launched so many deaths?’ asks Leandro of his Helen, Lisa, at one point. It’s horrible seeing Hercules’s beautiful Iole, Sylva Koscina, having her skull smashed, in the film’s most gruesome murder. The producer’s daughter Kathy again made a cameo appearance, as Lisa’s fellow tourist Kathy in the Toledo scenes. Leone’s original choice for Max was Anthony Perkins, with all his associated Psycho and Hitchcock baggage, but Alessio Orano was eventually cast. He’s another of Bava’s weak male leads and it would have been interesting to have seen what an actor of Claudio Volonté’s calibre would have brought to the demented role. The killings are well staged, but in the longest version of the film now available, they are abridged. As we shall see, the uncut versions of the slayings were used in a later Leone project, called The House of Exorcism.

Although Lisa and the Devil has been praised for its morbid poeticism, its dreamlike mood and its disturbing, funereal subject matter, there’s also an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Bava seems to be repeating himself here, mostly via Kill, Baby…Kill! and Black Sabbath – the reflections of Leandro in pools of water or wine, the images of Lisa and her ball, Carlos’s face menacing Lisa in a blue-lit window, the nighttime pursuits, an empty-but-rocking rocking chair, the film’s several funeral processions (including a tinkling music box carousel) of the Devil carting off the dead, the gory murders (one victim is impaled from a window on a spiked railing), the faded grandeur of parts of the villa, inhabited by aristocrats and servants – though in this case, the ‘upstairs’ and ‘downstairs’ would probably refer to Heaven and Hell. There are also echoes of Antonio Margheriti’s Castle of Blood (1964 – La Danza Macabra), with an alive visitor communing with ghostly residents, and also elements of the ‘old dark house’ scenario, with a group of travellers stranded in a spooky mansion when their car breaks down. ‘Lisa and the Devil’ had already been united onscreen in Jean Brismée’s Euro-horror, The Devil’s Nightmare (1971 – The Devil’s Longest Night) which cast Erika Blanc from Kill, Baby…Kill! as beautiful Lisa Müller, who terrorises a coach party staying in a castle while the Devil himself (Daniel Emilfork) drives the hearse that causes the coach to swerve and plummet off a mountain road.

Lisa is a very strange fantasy-horror viewing experience, far from standard Euro-horror fare, that veers from the genuinely nightmarish and perverse, to illogical protraction, via necrophilia, murder and matricide. But, as with most of Bava’s oeuvre, it is always interesting and at times engrossing. The film’s most unnerving moments have little to do with bloodletting. When Lisa encounters Leandro, who is carrying a wax dummy of Carlos (as he’s called in the English dub, though a signed picture of Elena calls him Carlo), the dummy is replaced in some shots by actor Espartaco Santoni (ambitious producer Leone reputedly wanted Burt Lancaster for this role). This technique is very effective and later Leandro snaps Carlos’s legs like twigs, at the ankle, to cram them into a too-short coffin in a toe-curling moment that is more wincingly effective than gallons of blood. Bava arranges the villa’s corpses (including Elena) at the dining table, like Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’, for a wedding feast with a wormy cake. In the film’s most famous, lyrical and disturbing scenes, impotent Max attempts to make love to sedated Lisa on a four-poster bed, beside the skeletal corpse of long-dead Elena. This is choreographed to the second movement of ‘Concierto De Aranjuez’ by Joaquín Rodrigo. The actual recording use in the film was directed by Paul Mauriat and released by Philips Records (L6444-504). Bava played the haunting piece, written for guitar and English horn by the blind composer in 1939, on set to establish mood during filming. During Max’s attempted assault, the room is filled with floral bouquets and uneaten pieces of chocolate cake – the many gifts Max has bestowed on his dead lover. When Lisa awakens, she is alone in the ruined, long-abandoned villa, naked but for fallen leaves, amid the overgrown tangle of vines, ivy and erupting vegetation. This is one of the most ethereally beautiful scenes of Bava’s career, which recalls the otherworldly mythical beauty of grottos in Francisci’s ‘Hercules’ films, the abandoned temples claimed by the jungle at the beginning of Caltiki or the fairytale settings of the Brothers Grimm. Earlier Leandro has compared Lisa to Helen, Cleopatra and the Sleeping Beauty, but as she stands in this netherworld, she most resembles Eve, as fluttering birds break cover, spooking her. Lisa’s emergence from the overgrown villa from the nightmare is a striking glass matte shot by Bava. This ending would have been an eloquent ‘was it all a dream?’ payoff. But an awkward, tacked-on dénouement dissipates this marvellous finale – the meeting of the past and present, of dead and undead, as playing children mistake Lisa for a ghost. Lisa then takes a taxi to Barcelona airport and boards a TWA 747. She finds that the only passengers are the corpses from the villa and the pilot is Leandro. At this moment, she collapses, doll-like, having transformed into Elena, and dies – a typically preposterous 1970s ‘shock ending’ that attempts to jolt the audience with one final revelation. Leone thought of this finale and negotiated access to the 747 for six hours and wanted to make use of it, as he had in Baron Blood. This ending didn’t appear in the film’s shooting script.

An Italian trailer was prepared, top-billing Sylva Koscina, using portions of the animated title sequence and action from the film (largely unused alternate takes), but a title for the film was never decided upon. Despite having a premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973, the only theatrical release for Lisa was in Spain, as El Diablo se lleva los muertos, in 1974. It wasn’t until it was shown on TV in the US in 1983 that it was exhibited in the USA. In the UK it received its TV premiere in the late 1980s, introduced by Kim Newman, on a double-bill with The Mask of Satan. Redemption released it on home video in 1992, rated 18. Fortunately Savalas, Sommer and Valli used their own voices in the English language dub, though Sommer has very little dialogue. She makes up for that in The House of Exorcism, Leone’s plan to make some money out of the footage of his unsaleable, undistributed investment.

Verdict

Many fans rate this as Bava’s masterpiece, but several of his 1960s works – The Mask of Satan, Black Sabbath, The Whip and the Body and Kill, Baby…Kill! to name but four – are superior to it. Lisa and the Devil is beautifully made but is too dawdling to be a really good horror movie and too self-conscious to be truly great art. If it’s a masterpiece, it’s a flawed one – perhaps ‘Art Bava’ was a step too far.

The House of Exorcism (1975) IT/SP/WG

Orig: La casa dell’esorcismo

Dir: Mario Bava

96 mins

Telly Savalas (Leandro), Elke Sommer (Lisa Reiner), Robert Alda (Father Michael), Kathy Leone (Kathy), Carmen Silva (Anna), Sylva Koscina (Sophie Lehar), Alessio Orano (Maximillian), Gabriele Tinti (George), Eduardo Fajardo (Francis Lehar), Franz Von Treuberg (antiques’ shop owner), Espartaco Santoni (Carlos), Alida Valli (the countess)

Story

Whilst on the tourist trail in Toledo, Lisa Rainer explores the backstreets and becomes separated from her friend Kathy. Drawn to an antiques shop, she meets a mysterious man who resembles the Devil in a fresco in Toledo’s main plaza. When Lisa has left, the mysterious man in the shop possesses her. Lisa collapses in the street and is taken with her friend Kathy to hospital by ambulance, where she is sedated and after attacking staff, restrained. Kathy and priest Father Michael attempt to figure out what has happened to Lisa. Possessed by Satan, Lisa convulses, vomits and swears profanities at the priest, who tries to help her. As part of her possession, Lisa imagines that as she wandered the streets of Toledo, she accidentally killed a man named Carlos, and she was picked up in an automobile by a wealthy couple, Francis and Sophie Lehar, and their chauffeur George. Their vehicle breaks down, so they stop to take refuge in the villa of a blind countess, her son Maximilian and their butler, Leandro, who is the same Devil lookalike from the antique shop. The guests are put up in the villa’s cottage and Max is convinced that Lisa is Elena, his step-father Carlos’s lover. Sophie meanwhile is having a clandestine affair with her chauffeur, while Carlos seems to be alive and well. George manages to fix the car, but before they can leave George is stabbed in the neck with scissors, Francis is run over by his own car driven by Sophie, and she is then bludgeoned to death by Max. More murders follow, while Lisa suffers in hospital. At one point in hospital, Lisa transforms into Father Michael’s deceased girlfriend and tries to tempt him into making love to her. Eventually Father Michael performs an exorcism and Lisa is rid of the Devil. In her dream, Lisa emerges from the villa, which is now overgrown and long abandoned. Father Michael then goes to the villa in Lisa’s dream – a real, though deserted place – and performs a rite which releases the murdered victims’ souls from the limbo of damnation.

Background

Alfred Leone had spent about a million dollars on Lisa and the Devil and wanted a return on his investment. Having screened the film at the Paris Theatre in Cannes, to great audience response but no buyer interest, Leone’s film itself seemed destined for the limbo of damnation and obscurity. Despite interest from Samuel Z. Arkoff from AIP, the best offer Leone had on the table was $6,000 for the Far East distribution rights.

The film as it existed was shelved and Leone set about spicing up Bava’s dreamlike, hallucinatory tale with some grabby bile and gore. With the imminent success of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), Leone filmed a framing story, depicting Lisa in a hospital, possessed by the Devil. Bava’s original film was spliced throughout, as Lisa’s experiences in a madhouse of murders. The resultant movie was retitled The House of Exorcism. Leone also abridged the ending of Lisa and the Devil – there’s no children mistaking Lisa for a ghost, no bouncing ball and no 747.

In 1973, Leone shot for three-and-a-half-weeks with Bava, resulting in about 40-50 minutes of additional footage. The hospital scenes, of Lisa restrained on a bed in a ward, with green vomit and bile smeared up the walls and pooled on the floor, were filmed in Rome’s suburbs at a disused hospital. Sommer came onboard and worked for nothing on the project, in the hope of salvaging it. Leone’s daughter reprised her role as tourist Kathy, while Robert Alda was cast as Father Michael, Lisa’s saviour. A new scene was shot in Leone’s office, with a stand-in for Telly Savalas, as the moment when Lisa is possessed by the Devil in the antiques shop. The final battle between good and evil was staged by Bava in Lisa’s original location, at Villa Frascati in Rome. For this scene, skeletal Elena lies in her bed, while Father Michael is accosted by a mighty wind (staged with giant fans), flying snakes and a fiery Bible. In this new finale, good triumphs and the Devil is defeated, unlike Satan’s victory in Lisa, as he flies the dead killers away in the 747.

For House of Exorcism, the new scenes in the hospital are of the gross-out variety, with Sommer convulsing on a bed, engaging in arched-back acrobatics and fits, attacking the staff, vomiting luminous green bile, foam and toads, and spitting profanities. Sommer is convincingly manic in these scenes, as her lips peel, her face becomes pallid and her eyes glare. Leone reckons it’s her best film performance. Exorcism also features copious nudity, most notably in a gratuitous scene when Lisa is transformed into naked temptress Anna, played by Carmen Silva, who was Father Michael’s girlfriend. Anna was killed in a car accident, which was the reason Michael turned to the priesthood. Cecilio Paniagua didn’t return as director of photography. According to Leone, Bava shot most of the additional House of Exorcism footage, apart from the scenes featuring excessive language or gratuitous nudity, which was filmed by Leone and Lamberto Bava. When Leone assembled Exorcism, he used the full-length cut of Lisa, which has since been lost and several scenes play longer in this rehash. The love scene between Sophie and George, tastefully shot with the suggestion of nudity in Lisa, is considerably more explicit in House, as is the nudity when Lisa is disrobed beside Elena. The murder of Sophie is much more graphic in this version too. Consequently the plot of Lisa, now cut up and dispersed into another narrative, makes even less sense than it did originally. With its full-on gore, House of Exorcism anticipates the direction Italian splattersploitation horror would head by the late 1970s and ‘80s, with ever more explicit sex and violence – including such offerings as Lamberto Bava’s own Demons (1985) and Demons 2 (1987).

La casa dell’esorcismo was released in Italy in April 1975 and The House of Exorcism was rated X in the UK, for release by Scotia-Berber at 93 minutes in November 1977. Bava had his name removed from the film and the credited director was ‘Mickey Lion’ – after Michael, Leone’s son (leone means lion in Italian). Albert Leone certainly knew the movie business and The House of Exorcism was a big success in the USA, rated R at 87 minutes. It took $5 million when distributed by Peppercorn-Wormser in July 1976, cashing in, as planned, on the craze for possession and ‘Exorcist’ movies. But Bava clearly didn’t regard it as one of his works. When asked about his latest film, The House of Exorcism, in an interview in 1976, Bava said, ‘It’s a long story, similar to that of a cuckolded father who’s got a child that he knows is not his own son. But the child bears his name and the father can’t do anything about it’.

Verdict

An ingenious but crass film, House of Exorcism may have been more financially successful that its basis, but rather like Bruce Lee’s Game of Death (1979), or other projects constructed from bits of other films, it’s of most interest today viewed alongside the original.

Shock (1977) IT

Orig: Schock – transfert.suspence.hypnos

Aka: Beyond the Door II (US title)

Dir: Mario Bava

93 mins

Daria Nicolodi (Dora Baldini), John Steiner (Bruno Baldini), David Colin Jr. (Marco), Ivan Rassimov (Dr Aldo Spidini), Nicola Salerno (Carlo), Paul Costello (man at party), Fred Bava (boy at ‘Punch & Judy’ show), Lamberto Bava (removal man)

Story

After an absence of seven years, Dora returns to the coastal villa where she had lived with her husband Carlo. She has not resided there since Carlo, a drug addict, went missing at sea, in what is presumed to have been a suicide. Dora and Carlo had a son, Marco, who is now seven-years-old, and Dora – after a period of mental breakdown and a six-month spell in a sanatorium – has now full recovered and is married to airline pilot Bruno Baldini. Marco is intrigued by a brick wall in the basement and during Bruno’s absences at work, Dora is threatened by strange occurrences in the house and by Marco’s strangely threatening, incestuous behaviour towards her, which includes spying on her in the shower. It seems that Marco has been possessed by the spirit of his father and is seeking retribution for an atrocious injustice in the past. As Marco tells his mother: ‘Mama, I have to kill you’. Each time Bruno returns he reassures Dora that it’s all in her imagination, but in his absence Dora has visions of Carlo’s corpse, knives strike at her from the dark, a hand clutches at her ankle on the lawn and other odd happenings. Her worst fears and nightmares become reality the night she finds Bruno using a pickaxe to demolish the brick wall in the basement. She discovers that she killed Carlo and Bruno walled the corpse up behind the brickwork. Bruno pushed Carlo’s boat out to sea and the basement’s terrible secret has ensured the house remained unsaleable. Dora kills Bruno with the pick and hides the corpse behind the wall. Back in the house, Dora is terrified by visions of Carlo, his thirst for vengeance not yet slaked.

Background

When The Exorcist (1973) made a fortune, the expected cluster of Italian derivatives appeared, including Alfred Leone’s The House of Exorcism. Mario Gariazzo made The Devil’s Obsession (1974 – aka The Sexorcist, Enter the Devil and Obsessed), with Ivan Rassimov as Satan. Daniela (Stella Carnacina) restores a carved wooden statue of Christ with unexpected results and Luigi Pistilli played the exorcising priest. Edmondo Amati produced Alberto De Martino’s scarily effective The Tempter (1974), which featured Carla Gravina as the possessed, an Ennio Morricone score and an international roster of talent (George Coulouris, Mel Ferrer, Arthur Kennedy, Alida Valli, Umberto Orsini and Anita Strindberg). ‘Oliver Hellman’/ Ovidio Assonitis’ Chi sei? (1974 – The Devil Within Her and Who?), starring Juliet Mills as possessed Jessica, ripped-off both The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Despite a lawsuit for copyright infringement from Warner Bros (The Exorcist’s studio), it was a massive success, to the tune of $15 million in the USA, under the title Beyond the Door.

Bava’s Shock was another of these ‘possession’ type movies, with a creepy kid, a creepy house, unexplained events and a cobwebbed basement representing ‘the past’, to the modern house’s ‘present’. In France it was called Les Démons de le Nuit. Shock was picked up by US distributor Film Ventures International (which had released Beyond the Door) and retitled and marketed it in the US as Beyond the Door II, though it more closely resembles The Omen (1976), Repulsion (1965) and Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’. Behind the opening titles, we see the sea and rocks at Tor Caldara, an iron gate and the overgrown garden of an old deserted villa. As the camera prowls around the deserted house and comes to rest on a tap dripping into a sink – a reference to ‘The Drop of Water’ in Black Sabbath – it seems entirely superfluous to add the credit ‘Directed by Mario Bava’.

Shock was the last feature film to be directed by Bava. Following the debacle over Bava’s kidnap road movie Rabid Dogs (1974), which remained unreleased until after his death (see Appendix 1), Bava tired of directing and retired from the industry. He emerged from this self-imposed retirement to work on Shock with his son, Lamberto, who co-scripted the film and had an onscreen cameo as one of the removal men shifting the Baldinis’ furniture into the villa. Mario Bava’s grandson Fred also appeared onscreen, in the crowd watching a ‘Punch & Judy’ show in a park. Though on initial viewing Shock appears to be yet another grainy, low-budget 1970s horror rip-off, it is made with pinches of the trademark Bava style. Following the titles, the first shot of the film is of a cobweb being wiped from in front of the camera, as the Baldinis return to the refurbished villa Dora shared with her drug-addicted husband. Marco’s garden swing recalls Melissa’s in Kill, Baby…Kill! while the name Carlo is the same name as the ambiguous dead/undead dummy in Lisa and the Devil. The film was lensed by Alberto Spagnoli in Eastmancolor, but Bava’s hand is easily identifiable in many travelling shots and camera movements. For Dora’s visions there are the expected stretched image distortions and the rippling waterglass visual effect. Shock was shot in June 1977. The house exteriors were filmed at actor Enrico Maria Salerno’s russet-coloured villa in Rome, with interiors at Vides S.p.A (Rome). The beach and headland exteriors were filmed, one last time, at Tor Caldara, Anzio Cape. David Colin Jr. was cast as Marco, after his appearance in Chi Sei? He’s very good in this difficult role, but after his two ‘possession’ movies he retired from the screen, aged seven. John Steiner played shifty Bruno, who knows the basement’s secret, and Ivan Rassimov (the brother of Rada Rassimov, from Baron Blood) was Dora’s sympathetic psychologist. Both were regulars in Euro genre features. Nicola Salerno, who was also the film’s assistant director, is very effective as Dora’s tormenting ex-husband, Carlo. Bruno and Dora haven’t moved back to the villa for seven years, because that is the period allowed by law until is it official to pronounce a missing person legally dead. The film’s best performance was given by Dario Argento’s partner Daria Nicolodi, the star of his Deep Red (1975). It’s a brilliant performance, as Dora loses her sanity and finally her life.

Though the ‘real’ modern world setting is prosaic and lacks the vivid colour schemes of Bava’s 1960s work, Shock is a film rich in unsettling atmosphere and springs some genuinely terrifying scares. The POV camera skulks around the villa and its sunny grounds malevolently. The nightmarish imagery of the tormenting supernatural forces include Dora discovering her bedroom window walled up and finding a razor blade between the keys on her piano. She’s sent flowers by a secret admirer from beyond the grave and trips on a garden rake, as a hand clutches her ankle from beneath the lawn. Blood seeps through a wall and across a piano keyboard, a floating Stanley knife strikes at Dora, a ‘Slinky spring’ toy menacingly descends a staircase, Dora finds her underwear shredded and an oversized porcelain hand sculpture reaches through a sofa. In one scene, a white ghostly figure in the cellar is revealed to be a primitive Bavaesque effect, of Marco shining a torch through a photograph that has had the image of Bruno cut out of it. In a scene which owes a debt to Bava’s horror successor, Dario Argento, Marco draws a picture that graphically depicts Dora’s murder of Carlo. In a jump-out-of-your seat moment, Marco runs down a corridor towards Dora, but by the time he reaches her, the boy has become the threatening corpse of Carlo. In the finest special effect, Nicolodi’s snaked hair swirls, Medusa-like, as she lies on a bed during a visitation from Carlo, an effect that was achieved by strapping Nicolodi to a revolving table contraption with a fixed mounted camera filming her, as the table was revolved and her hair moved unnervingly. These are relatively simple visual effects, but their cumulative effect is to create mounting terror. Emotional, anxious Dora teeters close to madness, like Catherine Deneuve delusional Carol in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), as her hallucinations intensify. When she finds Bruno pickaxing the brick wall down, we wonder if this is another illusion – an ‘illusion’ which turns out to be all too real.

The finale in the cellar recalls the climax of Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’, with a walled-up victim exhumed. Bricklayers will note the sloppy, smeared pointing of the mortar in the brickwork, a nice touch and obviously the work of a hurried amateur craftsman. Dora kills Bruno with a pickaxe and is then attacked by a rat, as she tries to escape the vengeful phantasm. Dora’s horrible fate replays the self-inflicted demise of Nevenka in Bava’s The Whip and the Body, as Dora is trapped in the basement where even the furniture is trying to kill her. A wardrobe moves towards her, opens and reveals a hand brandishing a Stanley knife, which Dora involuntarily grasps and uses to slit her own throat. With both murderers dead, this ending delivers justice to Marco and his father. Father and son take tea on the lawn, then Marco pushes his (invisible) father on the swing. The film’s edginess is greatly aided by I Libra’s score, which veers from Goblinesque synth rock pounding to poetic piano cues, acoustic guitars and echoing, ghostly voices, aurally uniting Argento’s demented 1970s horrors with Bava’s elegant 1960s work.

In Italy the film was released as Schock – transfert.suspence.hypnos in August 1977, but it was retitled Beyond the Door II for US release. In the UK, Eagle Films released the film as Shock in 1978, rated X. Vampix released a cut 82 minute version of Shock in 1981, which is missing some of the family material between Marco and Dora – for example of them playing ‘chase’ and visiting a Punch & Judy show in a park. Stablecane also released this shortened version and the trailer for Shock and Argento’s The Bird With the Crystal Plumage appeared on Stablecane’s The Horrible Secret of Dr Hichcock release in 1985. The later UK DVD version from Hollywood DVD in 2002 is the Beyond the Door II print and is uncut at 93 minutes.

Verdict

If this isn’t a classic in the same league as Bava’s 1960s work, it’s a serviceable stab at a style of horror that had its moment in the 1970s and paved the way for the excesses of the 1980s. Bava’s last completed film has an authentic haunted house atmosphere, familiar destructive familial themes, a pseudo-Gothic ambiance and most importantly given its title, some good shocks.

APPENDIX 1: FURTHER BAVA FILMOGRAPHY

This appendix covers a selection of key films from Mario Bava’s filmmaking career.  These include films made-for-TV, projects Bava worked on as director of photography or lighting director, as uncredited assistant, second-unit or co-director, or films on which he designed the visual or special effects. It also includes projects he worked on, but didn’t see completed in his lifetime.

Featured Films: Ulysses (1954), Nero’s Weekend (1955), Hercules (1958), The Day the Sky Exploded (1958), Hercules Unchained (1959), Sign of the Gladiator (1959), The White Warrior (1959), The Giant of Marathon (1959), Son of Samson (1960), Esther and the King (1960), The Giants of Thessaly (1961), Last of the Vikings (1961), The Wonders of Aladdin (1961), Rabid Dogs (1974), Moses the Lawgiver (1975), La Venere d’Ille (1978), Inferno (1980)

Ulysses (1954) IT

Orig: Ulisse

Dir: Mario Camerini

101 mins

Kirk Douglas (Ulysses, son of Laertes), Silvana Mangano (Circe and Penelope), Anthony Quinn (Antinous of Cephalonia), Rossana Podesta (Nausicaa), Jacques Dumesnil (King Alcinous, Nausicaa’s father), Daniel Ivernel (Euroloco), Sylvie (Eurycleia, Penelope’s nurse), Franco Interlenghi (Telemachus, Ulysses’ son), Elena Zareschi (Cassandra, prophetess), Evi Malagliati (Anticlea, Ulysses’ mother), Tania Weber (Eucalicanto), Ludmilla Dudarova (Arete), Piero Lulli (Achilles), Ferrucio Stagni (Mentor), Alessando Ferzen (Diomedes), Oscar Andriani (Calops), Umberto Silvestri (Polyphemus the cyclops and Krakos the wrestler), Gualtiero Tumiati (Laertes, Ulysses’ father), Teresa Pellati (Melanto), Mario Feliciani (Eurimaco, suitor), Michele Riccardini (Leodes, suitor), Andrea Bosic (ghost of Agamemnon), Walter Brandi (Agelao), Daniel Dentice (Euriade), Giovanni Di Benedetto (Demolteleno), Piero Ghione (Anfimedonte), Sergio Giovannucci (Polibos), Renato Malavasi (Medonte), Piero Pastore (Leocrito), Vera Molnar (girl), Aldo Pini (Polites), Mimmo Poli (Procio), Goliarda Sapienza (Eurimione), Benito Stefanelli (Elatos), Alberto Lupo (suitor)

This grand Italian epic, released internationally by Paramount Pictures, told of the wanderings of Ulysses in the 10 years following the Trojan War. Ulysses (also referred to in Greece as Odysseus) profaned the Trojan’s god and protector Neptune (aka Poseidon), who determined that he would delay Ulysses’ return to Ithaca, his island home. The basis of the narrative is Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, which was adapted for the screen by Ben Hecht, Irwin Shaw, Hugh Gray, Franco Brusati, Ennio De Concini, Ivo Perelli and the film’s director, Mario Camerini. This Italian production for Lux Films was co-produced by Carlo Ponti and Dino De Laurentiis and is one of the most lavish of the 1950s Italian epics. Kirk Douglas starred as Ulysses, but the story begins with Penelope, his wife, waiting for him on Ithaca. Suitors vie for her hand in marriage, while she delays them, saying she will make her decision when she completes a tapestry, which she unravels nightly. Meanwhile Ulysses has been shipwrecked on the island of Scheria and has completely lost his memory. But on the day he is to marry Nausicaa, the daughter of King Alcinous of the Phaeacians, Ulysses remembers his name and his deeds – how he and his men were shipwrecked and some of them eaten by the giant cyclops Polyphemus on Sicily, how they endured the Sirens’ call and how the sorceress Circe bewitched Ulysses, while his men were drowned in a savage storm. Ulysses builds a raft and returns to Ithaca, on the day Penelope must marry one of her suitors, as they have discovered her delaying trickery with the tapestry.

The Greek hero’s mythical adventures are vividly brought to life in this excellent adaptation. Early flashback scenes (illustrating the tales of a storyteller at Penelope’s palace) depict the Greeks’ ruse with the Trojan Horse, the sacking of Troy and seer Cassandra cursing Ulysses on behalf of Neptune. Later Ulysses and his men are taken prisoner in the cave of the giant cyclops Polyphemus, but they get him drunk on wine before burning his one eye out with a smouldering stake and engineering their escape. There’s a couple of very convincing storms at sea, which toss and eventually destroy Ulysses’ ship, and the Sirens’ rocks are littered with shipwrecks and the bleached bones of the shipwrecked. Ulysses was filmed at Ponti-De Laurentiis Studios and according to the credits: ‘on the Mediterranean coasts and islands described in Homer’s Odyssey’. It was shot in Technicolor by Harold Rosson and Eugene Schüfftan did the striking special effects. But uncredited, Mario Bava also worked on the film as co-cinematographer and also co-directed parts of the movie. There are definite traces of Bava’s visual style, particularly in the sequences featuring Circe and her caverns. She is bathed in green light, as green light would later denote fear in Bava’s colourful horror films. Silvana Mangano looks fabulous in these sequences, her hair made more evil with the addition of decorative octopus tentacles, an ornament which matches her bracelet. Her veiled countenance and shadowy handmaidens enhance the malevolent witchery of Circe’s lair, where Ulysses spends six months spellbound by the sorceress, while his men are transformed into swine and Circe conjures up ghosts to haunt the hero. In a brilliant bit of casting, Mangano also plays Penelope, Ulysses’ beautiful queen, and she’s totally convincing in both roles.

The rest of the casting is similarly excellent. Anthony Quinn is good, as he always was in epics, as Antinous of Cephalonia, the cockiest of the suitors who aims to fulfil Penelope’s destiny and end her loneliness. Quinn also worked with Pietro Francisci in the title role of Attila the Hun (1954), opposite Sophia Loren, and for Federico Fellini in La strada (1954). Umberto Silvestri played both Phaeacian court champion wrestler Krakos and with face makeup and one eye, cyclops Polyphemus. Look out too for several future Italian genre regulars, including Mario Feliciani and Alberto Lupo as two of Penelope’s suitors, Andrea Bosic as the ghost of fallen Greek hero Agamemnon, and Piero Lulli (later of Bava’s Kill, Baby…Kill!) as hero Achilles, plus Walter Brandi, Benito Stefanelli, Andrea Aureli and Mimmo Poli in minor roles. Douglas makes a perfect Ulysses. The literate script gives him plenty of help and the drama improves as the film progresses. Fine in the acrobatic action scenes, Douglas is at his best when raw emotions come to the fore, as when he’s visited by the ghosts of his dead comrades-in-arms and learns that his mother Anticleia has also passed on in his absence. Or when he lashes himself to the ship’s mast and his men plug their ears with wax, but Ulysses hears the Sirens’ call, which sounds like the voices of his wife and son. The wanderer’s homecoming is particularly well handled. Ulysses returns to Ithaca in the guise of a beggar, but no one recognises him except his loyal dog Argus and his son, Telemachus, so the suitors humiliate this ragged interloper. On her wedding day, Penelope has set the suitors the challenge of stringing Ulysses’ mighty war bow and firing an arrow through the shaft holes in 12 axe heads. She will wed the winner. No one can perform the feat until Ulysses steps forward, revealing his identity as he and Telemachus rout the suitors with arrow, sword, dagger and axe. This and several other scenes in the film deliver a powerful emotional tug, which later pepla were keen to emulate amid their comic-book action.

Ulysses was released in Italy in October 1954 and in the US in August 1955. The two films have different title sequences. The Italian title sequence, titled Ulisse, resembles the frieze used in the titles for Pietro Francisci’s Hercules. In fact, elements of Ulysses – the bewitching queen, shipwrecks, action, amnesia and monsters – was a rough formula that reappears in both of Francisci’s ‘Hercules’ outings. In this respect it is very much an early prototype for late-1950s and ‘60s pepla. The English language dub of Ulysses, with Douglas, Mangano and Quinn voicing themselves, begins with the titles over Ulysses’ ship tossed on a stormy sea. It’s available on DVD from Studio Canal/Lionsgate. The massive international box office success of Camerini’s Ulysses (it took $2.2 million in the US and Canada) paved the way for Pietro Francisci to make Hercules (1958).

In an interesting footnote, Bava returned to the cyclops story for the ‘Polyphemus’ episode of the eight-part TV miniseries Odissea (1968), which was released in the US in truncated form at 105 minutes in 1970 as The Adventures of Ulysses. Bava provided the series’ special effects, but also directed this sequence of the story, directly after making Danger: Diabolik. Ulysses (Bekim Fehmiu) and his companions are hunting when they see smoke, a giant footprint and discover an ominous-looking cave (filmed at Tor Caldara, Lazio). They investigate and are trapped by the cannibalistic one-eyed giant, played by Canadian wrestler and minor peplum star Samson Burke, in makeup by Carlo Rambaldi. The sequence is genuinely chilling, as Polyphemus crushes a hapless victim in his palm, dashes him against a rock and then pulls him apart and eats him. The prisoners prune a tree, make a large stake and heat up the point. Having drugged the cyclops with wine, they plunge the spike into his eye, blinding him, and escape. The cavern’s ambiance is pure Bava, while the trick photography insinuating Polyphemus’s size is convincing. Carlo Rustichelli wrote the score, which was conducted by Bruno Nicolai. This Italian-French-West German-Yugoslavian miniseries was presented by Dino De Laurentiis and La RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana. It was shot in Yugoslavia, Italy and at Dino De Laurentiis Studios. Like Camerini’s Ulysses it’s a very good production, with a well-chosen cast: Irene Papas as Penelope, Barbara Bach (billed as ‘Barbara Gregorini’) as Nausicaa, Fausto Tozzi as Menelaus, Marina Berti as Queen Arete and Scilla Gabel as Helena. The miniseries is available in Italian, with Italian subtitles, on DVD.

Nero’s Weekend (1955) IT/FR

Orig: Mio figlio Nerone

Aka: Nero’s Mistress (US title)/ My Son Nero

82 mins

Dir: Steno (Stefano Vanzina)

Alberto Sordi (Nero Caesar Augustus), Vittorio De Sica (Seneca), Gloria Swanson (Augusta Agrippina), Brigitte Bardot (Poppea Sabina), Ciccio Barbi (Aniceto), Mario Carotenuto (Crepereius), Mino Doro (General Corbulone), Enzo Furlai (Segimerus, Germanic general), Agnese Dubini (Ugolilla),  Giorgia Moll (Lidia), Amalia Pellegrini (Acceronis), Mario Mazza (Tacitus), Mimmo Poli (head of Agrippina’s guard), Carlo Tamberlani (senator), Nino Vingelli (builder working on ceiling), Fortunato Arena (guard)

This is a ‘sword and sandal’ send-up, specifically of MGM’s Quo Vadis (1951), which was filmed at Cinecittà Studios in Rome. In times of crisis, Emperor Nero flees Rome for the solitude of his coastal palace villa. His round of orgies and lazing with his mistress Poppea is interrupted by the arrival of his meddlesome mother, Agrippina, who has just survived an assassination attempt staged by her son. The film is wildly farcical in tone, with Nero and Agrippina plotting to poison or otherwise kill each other amid a permanent atmosphere of distrust. Nero is assisted by Vittorio De Sica’s tired philosopher Seneca and sexpot Poppea, as played by a young Brigitte Bardot. Sordi is a madcap Nero, sending up Peter Ustinov in Quo Vadis. He is introduced composing music with his menagerie orchestra, including a pig, a goat, a rabbit and an owl, and later plans to invade Britain with an army of dancing girls. In one scene, he attacks a plumber who he mistakes for an assassin. Nero tries to crush his mother under a marble ceiling ornament and sink her galley by installing a lion’s head spit with a valve that can be opened to flood the hold. Unfortunately for Nero, Agrippina’s a strong swimmer. Nero thinks he is ‘The Canary of Rome’, but when he finds out that everyone – his family, friends and the entire population of Rome – think he ‘sings like a dog’, Nero burns the Eternal City to the ground.

There’s a real one-off cast on show, with Hollywood legend Gloria Swanson, best known for Billy Wilder’s acerbic Sunset Blvd. (1950), on form as scheming Mama Nero, who arrives at the coastal palace in a litter, with a pet mongoose in a cage to catch vipers used in assassination attempts. Patrician De Sica is perfect as silver-tongued Seneca, who can talk his way out of any jam, and elfin Bardot pouted as Poppea, her revealing toga’s as diaphanous as censors would allow. For her bathing scene, Bardot was encouraged by Roger Vadim to demand asses’ milk. Steno tried using chalk and whitewash, then lime and water. Bardot wanted milk, but real cow’s milk went off quickly under the studio lights, so eventually asses’ milk was requisitioned – and several fridges to store the 400 quarts needed to fill the bath. Future Hammer horror star Barbara Shelley and future Fellini favourite Sandra Milo both had small roles among the extras. Steno stages a couple of big production numbers, with one famously depicting Nero driving a chariot pulled by dancing girls.

The music was composed by Angelo Lavagnino and conducted by Carlo Savina, the film’s producer was Franco Cristaldi, Piero Filippone was the art director and the two assistant directors were Luigi Vanzi and Lucio Fulci (both of whom became directors in their own right), so Nero’s pedigree was high. Bava was the film’s director of photography and special effects and the visual style of the film is unmistakably his. It’s easy to see why Bava was asked to photograph Pietro Francisci’s ‘Hercules’ films, as his ravishing cinematography – in CinemaScope and Eastman Color – is perfect for such historical fantasy. The seaside at Tor Caldara is transformed with matte shots into Nero’s coastal rest home – these effect shots, with the shoreline dotted with grand, pillared temples – are typical of Bava. He would return to this beach, headland and nature reserve on Anzio Cape for many of his own films. Beautifully decorated palace interiors were filmed at Titanus Studios, Rome. As Nero eavesdrops and plots on Poppea and Seneca, the moody lighting reflects Nero’s hatred of his friends, when he hears their real opinion of his awful singing voice. The burning of Rome, a model shot with plumes of smoke tinted with floods of red and blue, is trademark Bava, as is the vivid green glow that illuminates Agrippina as she emerges unscathed from the wreckage of another inept assassination attempt. The po-faced Monthly Film Bulletin called Nero’s Weekend ‘a tasteless, vulgar charade, which provokes a certain number of easy laughs during the first few minutes, but soon becomes a pitiable affair’. The film’s title emphasised different characters for different markets: the Italian title (Mio figlio Nerone) emphasised Agrippina, the UK (Nero’s Mistress) Poppea, and the US (Nero’s Weekend) and French (Les Week-ends de Néron), Nero himself. This ‘sword and scandals’ epic is actually a lot of fun and for its visuals is a key entry in Bava’s filmography.

Hercules (1958) IT

Orig: La fatiche di Ercole

Dir: Pietro Francisci

98 mins

Steve Reeves (Hercules of Thebes), Sylva Koscina (Iole), Gianna Maria Canale (Antea, Queen of the Amazons), Fabrizio Mioni (Jason), Mimmo Palmara (Iphitus), Ivo Garrani (King Pelias), Aldo Fiorelli (Argos), Gino Mattera (Orpheus), Fulvio Carrara (Castor), Willi Columbini (Pollux), Gabriele Antonini (Ulysses), Andrea Fantasia (Laertes), Aldo Pini (Tifi the pilot), Arturo Dominici (Eurystheus), Lydia Alfonsi (the Sybil), Luciano Paluzzi (Iole’s handmaiden), Romano Puppo (Argonaut), Afro Poli (Chirone), Gian Paolo Rosmino (Aesculapius), Gina Rovere (woman fording river), Guido Martufi (Iphitus as a child), Paola Quattrini (Iole as a child), Lilli Granado (Amazon)

The most famous Italian sword and sandal epic of all, Hercules is among the best. This is to pepla what A Fistful of Dollars was to spaghetti westerns and The Bird With the Crystal Plumage was to gialli. It both begins and epitomises the genre. The plot, ‘freely adapted’ by Pietro Francisci and collaborators from The Argonauts by Appollonius of Rhodes in the Third Century BC, is a retelling of the ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ tale, with Hercules’s role elevated in the narrative to centre stage. Hercules was the Roman name for the hero, who was known in his native Greece as Heracles or Herakles, meaning ‘Glory of Hera’. He was the immortal son of mortal Alcmene and the god Zeus.

Hercules of Thebes is summoned to the city of Iolcus in Thessaly by King Pelias to teach his braggart layabout heir Iphitus the art of war. En route to Iolcus, Hercules meets and falls for Pelias’s beautiful daughter, Iole. While in Hercules’s care, Iphitus is savaged to death by a lion and as penance, the hero renounces his immortality before the gods. Jason, the rightful heir to Pelias’ throne, who for years has been in hiding, is sent to retrieve the long-lost treasure the Golden Fleece from an oak tree in the faraway land of Colchis. Aboard the Argo, built by Argos, Jason gathers the Argonauts – the musician Orpheus, the Dioscuri (twin heroes) Castor and Pollux, young Ulysses, the son of Laertes, old-timer Aesculapius, pilot Tifi and Hercules himself – for the three-month quest. Pelias’ henchman Eurystheus accompanies them, to sabotage the trip, as Pelias would rather not retrieve the fleece, which may reveal who killed his predecessor, who was also his brother. Landing on Lemnos, the Island of the Women, to gather supplies, Jason and some of the men fall for the alluring Amazons, an all-female tribe ruled by their queen, Antea, where they are wined and dined, peplum-style. Escaping the island, the Argonauts are ambushed by ape men in Colchis and finally Jason defeats a dragon, the guardian of the fleece, before returning to Iolcus to claim his rightful throne.

Francisci cast American Mr Universe winner Steve Reeves as Hercules, with Yugoslavian starlet Sylva Koscina as Iole. Bava was credited with ‘lighting and special effects’, while one of the assistant cameramen was Ubaldo Terzano. Future Bava actors Sylva Koscina, Arturo Dominici and Ivo Garrani had key roles, while Riccardo Freda’s mistress, Gianna Maria Canale, played a prominent part too. Lidia Alfonsi played oracle ‘the Sybil’ and future 007 girl Luciana Paluzzi was Iole’s handmaiden. This was an Italian production, from O.S.C.A.R. Film and Galatea. Bava’s artistic contribution is a major factor in the film’s success. Hercules is one of the most picturesque fantasy films of the 1950s. Its visual splendour (and consequently its reputation with filmgoers) is severely compromised by the many shoddy ‘public domain’ panned-and-scanned, cropped and faded prints that have been in circulation on videotape and DVD for many years. Hercules was shot in Eastmancolor and French widescreen process Dyaliscope. Exteriors were lensed at Tor Caldara, Anzio Cape, including all the Argo landing scenes, Hercules and Iole’s first meeting, the Sybil’s temple and the attack by the ape men of Colchis. Valley exteriors and city exteriors were filmed in the stone quarries of Grottarossa and the verdant Lazio countryside, with its dusty roads and pretty woodland, stood in for Thessaly. Palace interiors were filmed on grand sets at Titanus Studios, Rome. Hercules’ farewell to Iole was filmed at the arching fountains in Rome’s E.U.R. district and the athletes’ games, where Hercules humiliates boastful Iphitus, were also staged in E.U.R and on the Via Appia Antica. Bava’s compositions are impressive and vivid, memorable settings include the volcanic Island of Lemnos, which is a tropical paradise of palm trees, parrots and floral splendour, populated by throngs of young, budding Italian starlets. The tiered waterfall at Monte Gelato in the Treja Valley, Lazio has rarely looked so exotic. Antea’s glittering grotto is festooned with stalactites, flowers (courtesy of Sgaravatti of Rome) and shimmering hangings, while Amazonian court dancers flit in diaphanous outfits. By night, outside the palace window is Bava’s trademark dark blue sky and the Sybil and the Amazons caverns feature some artful ‘supernatural’ colour effects that would later appear in Bava’s horror films, with reds and greens predominant. Matte shots created the city of Iolcus atop Tor Caldara’s headland, in scenes which look familiar from Nero’s Weekend.  For Iole’s nightmare flashbacks to the night of murder and the theft of the fleece, and for the scheming villains, Pelias and Eurystheus, Bava reserves shadowy horror stylings.

The Italian title, Le fatiche di Ercole, translates as ‘The Labours of Hercules’, though only two of the Twelve Labours are depicted: the strangling of the Nemean lion and the capture of the Cretan Bull (represented by a bison). The film’s most embarrassing moment is the Godzilla-like monster Jason takes on to retrieve the fleece. Hercules is sidelined for the Amazons portion of the story, but takes centre stage for the finale, as he swings his chains to destroy the palace of Iolcus and crush a cavalry charge. These scenes of combat and destruction became signatures of the peplum genre. The film also has a memorable score, composed by Enzo Masetti and conducted by Carlo Savina. It is Masetti’s most famous score and like Bava’s cinematographic effects, gives the story an epic lift. Highlights include the lush title theme, the jaunty ‘Atleti’ theme (as the athletes train), the lusty ‘Coro dei marinai’ sailors’ choir led by Mario Lanza-like Orpheus (singing in Italian, even in the English language print), the eerie theramin-led Amazons’ theme and love themes for Hercules and Iole, and Jason and Antea. It’s a score as magical as the film it accompanies.

Hercules was a massive hit in Italy when it was unleashed in February 1958 and also travelled well. In the US it was released in 1959, where it grossed $20 million. Independent Boston producer Joseph E. Levine (later of Embassy Pictures) bought the US rights for $120,000 and spent $1.2 million on advertising. This included the innovative use of TV ads, in what William Goldman called ‘the most aggressive campaign any film ever had’. Distributed by Warner Bros, Hercules was one of the year’s success stories. In the UK, the film was passed a U certificate in February 1959, for Archway Film Distribution. It was issued on pre-cert video by Intervision in 1982 and later rated U in 1986 for release by Video Gems. Two different English language dubs of the film exist: the UK release print (shown on BBC TV in the UK) opens with the titles over a Greek frieze depicting Hercules’s mighty feats, while the US Levine release substitutes an animated starfield title sequence, featuring constellations, and alternative English language dubbed dialogue. This release took a colossal $4.7 million in the US and Canada. Its success guaranteed Reeves’ place as a popular box office star for the next five years and began the peplum craze that would thrive until 1965.

The Day the Sky Exploded (1958) IT/FR

Orig: La morte viene dello spazio

Aka: Death Comes from Outer Space (UK title)

Dir: Paolo Heusch

78 mins

Paul Hubschmid (Professor John McLaren), Fiorella Mari (Mary McLaren), Madeline Fischer (Katy Dandridge), Ivo Garrani (Professor Herbert Weisse), Dario Michaelis (Peter Leduq), Peter Meersman (General Van Dorff), Jean-Jacques Delbo (Sergei Boetnikov), Massimo Zeppieri (Dennis McLaren), Sam Galter (Randowsky), Annie Bernal (Sanders, lab assistant), Gerard Landry (Landowsky), Livio Lorenzon (General Krazov), Franco Fantasia (British scientist), Giacomo Rossi-Stuart (Stuart), Gianni Solaro (French general), S. Louis Casta (doctor)

Not counting the spoof Totò on the Moon (1958 – co-starring Sylva Koscina), Paolo Heusch’s The Day the Sky Exploded (1958) was the first significant Italian sci-fi movie. Produced by Lux Film, it was filmed in black-and-white by Mario Bava, billed as ‘Mario Baja’, who also provided the special effect shots. US professor John McLaren pilots the atomic powered X-Z rocket on a six-day mission from Cape Shark in Australia, to rendezvous with Russian satellite Sputnik Beta. During the mission, McLaren loses control of the rocket, which veers off course. McLaren is forced to bail out and can’t disconnect the craft’s atomic motor. The rocket, effectively a missile ‘loaded full of potential death’, detonates in the Zone of the Delta Asteroids, sending a shower of asteroids, which bond together into a single mass, towards Earth. Panic ensues, as animals sense danger and stampede away from coastal regions, strange lights appear over cities, tidal waves sweep in and storms rage, and the Earth heats up, causing wildfires and chaos. Much of this mayhem is archive footage of bombed cities and fleeing refuges during World War II. Eventually the UN convenes and fires a salvo of missiles at the meteor (this is a barrage of interesting stock footage of missile and rocket tests). The cluster of rockets blow up the meteor and Earth is saved. The Day the Sky Exploded is helped by Bava’s low-key monochrome cinematography, which gives the action a docu-drama look. There are some special effects shots – such as the crashed capsule (filmed at Tor Caldara, Lazio), the Mount Hula observatory telescope, a weightless pencil, the X-Z coursing through space and the missile cluster which destroys the asteroid – which are on the level you’d expect from 1950s B-sci-fi. Bava’s trademark ‘dark-ink-in-water’ effect as swirling clouds appears when the asteroid causes storms on Earth. Subplots detail McLaren’s strained relationship with his wife Mary and son Dennis, and one of the scientists, Randowsky, loses his sanity and runs amok with a pistol at the command station – he’s eventually electrocuted. The Cape Shark control rooms, the setting for much of the action, are filled with blipping, humming, beeping technology. Carlo Rustichelli provided the score. The cast is less than dynamic, with two future Bava leading men – Ivo Garrani and Giacomo Rossi-Stuart – among the scientific personnel at Cape Shark. This film seems to be ‘public domain’ in the US and appears in such DVD sets as Mill Creek’s Nightmare Worlds 50-movie collection.

Hercules Unchained (1959) IT/FR

Orig: Ercole e la Regina di Lidia

Dir: Pietro Francisci

92 mins

Steve Reeves (Hercules), Sylva Koscina (Iole), Sylvia Lopez (Omphale, Queen of Lydia), Gabriele Antonini (Ulysses), Primo Carnera (Antaeus), Patrizia Della Rovere (Penelope), Sergio Fantoni (Eteocles), Mimmo Palmara (Polyneices), Fulvia Franco (Anticlea, Ulysses’ mother), Carlo D’Angelo (Creon, high priest of Thebes), Aldo Fiorelli (Argos), Gino Mattera (Orpheus), Fulvio Carrara (Castor), Willi Columbini (Pollux), Aldo Pini (Tifi the pilot), Gian Paolo Rosmino (Aesculapius), Cesare Fantoni (King Oedipus of Thebes), Daniele Vargas (Argive general), Andrea Fantasia (Laertes, Ulysses’ father), Gianni Loti (Sandone, captain of the Lydia guard), Colleen Bennet (Lydian dance soloist), Nino Marchetti (gravedigger), Angelo Zanolli (Admeo), Marisa Valenti (blonde slave girl), Sergio Ciani (Argives officer), Giuliano Gemma (Berenipo, Theban officer), Fabrizio Mioni (Omphale’s suitor)

The first Hercules film ended with Hercules and Iole sailing away with their new companions, including Ulysses. This immediate sequel, Hercules Unchained, takes up the story where ‘part one’ left off, with Hercules and Iole now married and arriving to start life in Hercules’ homeland, Attica. The story was a loose adaptation of Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles (a dramatisation of the last hours of King Oedipus), The Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus (recounting the Theban Wars) and The Legends of Hercules and Omphale, all ‘freely adapted’ by Francisci and Ennio De Concini. This sequel is also a partial remake of Hercules, with the title hero, not Jason, now bewitched by an exotic seductress and drawn into her web of love.

En route to the city of Thebes, Hercules, Iole and Ulysses discover that the land is riven by civil war and ailing King Oedipus is at odds with his sons, Eteocles and Polyneices. Oedipus has renounced the throne and decreed that each son will rule Thebes for a year, but Eteocles’ refuses to cede power. Polyneices has laid siege to the city with his hired army of mercenary Argives. Hercules is slipped into the narrative as a peace envoy, with Hercules and Ulysses embarking on a mission to take a peace treaty from Eteocles to Polyneices. But when they make camp at a spring, Hercules is brainwashed by ‘the waters of forgetfulness’ and he and Ulysses are taken prisoner by Lydian soldiers. They sail across the Aegean Sea to the faraway land of Lydia, where Hercules becomes the love slave of Omphale, the sensuous Lydian queen. In the myth of Hercules, the hero was sold into slavery and purchased by Omphale, where he lived (some writers say effeminately wearing Omphale’s clothes) for between one and three years, as penance for having slain Iole’s brother Iphitus. In Francisci’s narrative, as Omphale tires of her lovers they are transformed into human statues by her Egyptian henchmen, in a steamy vitrification process. Eventually Ulysses, who pretends to be Hercules’ deaf-mute manservant, discovers the fate that awaits and manages to send a distress message back to Thebes, via carrier pigeon. Soon a rescue party led by King Laertes arrives to save them. The heroes then rush back to Thebes, where Polyneices is preparing to storm the city and Iole, who has been held hostage by Eteocles, is to be put to death by tigers in the arena. Hercules’s family has already been slain by despot Eteocles, to show he means business, by throwing them from Thebes’ battlements.

An Italian-French co-production from Lux Film, Galatea and Lux Companie Cinematographique De France and produced by Bruno Vailati, Hercules Unchained is superior to its predecessor in every way. Reeves by now had settled into the role and his performance is perfectly pitched to the material. The moments when he finds his family dead and his giddy ‘brainwashing’ are very well played. Koscina has less to do in this sequel, but looks as beautiful as ever. Some of Enzo Masetti’s score (again conducted by Carlo Savina) was recycled for this sequel, with new themes (including the stately title music) based on the love song ‘Evening Star’, with lyrics by Mitchell Parrish. In the film, Iole plucks Orpheus’ lyre (called a ‘lute’ in the English dub) and Koscina serenades Hercules by miming to June Valli’s rendition of the song: ‘Last night, love was in those eyes, was in those glances, by that evening star’. Mimmo Palmara and Sergio Fantoni were excellent villains, the warring brothers Polyneices and Eteocles. Fantoni would be again cast opposite Reeves in The Giant of Marathon. The supporting cast included Daniele Vargas as an Argive general who kidnaps Iole when she attempts to escape Thebes, Carlo D’Angelo as Theban High Priest Creon, Gianni Loti was Sandone, the captain of Omphale’s red-cloaked guard of honour, and future stars Sergio Ciani/‘Alan Steel’ and Giuliano Gemma appeared in small roles as officers. Patrizia Della Rovere played Ulysses’ girl Penelope. Many familiar faces return from Hercules, with Andrea Fantasia, Gabriele Antonini, Aldo Fiorelli, Gino Mattera, Fulvio Carrara, Willi Columbini and Aldo Pini reprising their roles. Ballerina Colleen Bennet was the Lydian court dance soloist in a magnificently-photographed routine, choreographed by Johnny Blysdael and enacted by the ballet troupe ‘Florence and Frederick’.

Mario Bava was again in charge of lighting and special effects and the Dyaliscope cinematography in 2.35:1 widescreen and crisp Eastmancolor is its major asset. Ubaldo Terzano was his camera operator. Hercules Unchained was shot on sets at Titanus Appia Studios and the walls of Thebes were constructed in the Grottarossa quarry for the siege exteriors. The finale has Eteocles and Polyneices killing each other in single combat and Hercules driving a four-horsed chariot to lead the Theban counterattack. The Argives attack and wheel their mighty siege towers and battering rams to the gates of Thebes and Hercules lassoes them with a grappling hook, toppling the siege engines. This huge engagement has the Theban infantry in battle wagons and many extras. The Italian exteriors – beaches, cliffs, valleys and woodland – were filmed in Lazio, including the Treja Valley and on the Anzio coast. The ‘gates of the Inferno’, a cavern and staircase that later appeared in Caltiki, is atmospherically misty and Omphale’s ‘grotto of the dead’ gallery of statues is moodily lit. When Hercules and his companions arrive in the land of Attica, it’s the beach at Tor Caldara. When Hercules, Iole and Ulysses are ambushed in their covered wagon by giant brigand Antaeus, the son of the earth goddess, the scenes were filmed at Tor Caldara’s sandy nature reserve. Antaeus, who marshals his forces whenever he makes contact with the ground, was played by Italian world champion boxer and wrestler Primo Carnera. Known as ‘The Ambling Alp’, Carnera fancied his chances against ‘Mr Universe’ Reeves and had to be convinced that for the sake of the story Antaeus couldn’t win the wrestling bout against ‘that Yankee’.

Though the action is colourfully staged, it is in the land of Lydia where Bava’s expertise and artistry is most evident. Hercules drinks from a bewitched woodland spring, a gnarly tree root shaped like a grotesque troll, with water pouring from its eye and the moss glistens magically, anticipating what otherworldly Lydia holds in store. The entrance to the Lydian palace is a magnificent gateway matte from Bava, amid tropical palms. The Monte Gelato waterfall on the River Treja in Lazio is bedecked with flowers for Hercules and Omphale’s tranquil idyll, and during a love scene between Hercules and the queen in her grotto beneath a waterfall, the floral backdrop shifts colours as the seductive mood changes, from disinterest and bemusement to love and lust. Omphale was played by red-haired French actress Sylvia Lopez. A vivacious beauty, Omphale sashays across the screen in a variety of diaphanous dresses and mini-togas, gossamer and silk as her wake, while Bava bathes the fantasy sets in her radiated sensuality. She presides over her court from a shell-adorned throne, or relaxes with Hercules on a chez long, in a land where relaxation and pleasure are the most strenuous activities. When Hercules deserts her, the doomed queen commits suicide by throwing herself into the vitrification pool. Lopez’s career was short-lived and she died tragically from leukaemia in November 1959, aged just 28.

Omphale’s importance to the story is echoed in the film’s Italian title, Ercole e la Regina di Lidia (‘Hercules and the Queen of Lydia’). It was released in Italy on 14 February 1959 and was another massive success for Francisci and Reeves. For international markets, there are again two different English language versions of the film. The US release version begins with yellow title credits, while in the UK print there are more numerous credits and the text is white. In the US version, Bava is ‘director of special effects’, while in the UK he was billed as ‘special lighting and effects director’. Carnera and Lopez are billed higher in the US version, while UK prints are missing a brief shot of the bodies of Polyneices and Eteocles burning on a funeral pyre. Lopez was dubbed in the English language version by Carolyn De Fonseca and Reeves by George Gonneau. Levine once again bought the rights, distributing through Warners in the US in 1960. It was rated U in the UK through Warner Pathé in June 1960 and has since been released on videotape by Intervision in 1982 and Video Gems in 1986. Hercules Unchained is freely available on DVD in a ‘public domain’ print, which is cropped (as are all UK videotape prints) and does this wonderful film no favours. It has been shown in widescreen on UK TV. On its initial release, Hercules Unchained made a fortune, taking some $2.5 million in the US and Canada, through an intense TV advertising campaign that led to record-breaking takings. Francisci made a third ‘Hercules’ film, Hercules, Samson and Ulysses (1963), without Reeves, but with Kirk Morris as Hercules. On a mission to kill the Great Sea Monster, Hercules and his party, including Ulysses, are shipwrecked in Judea, where Francisci wedges them into the story of Samson and Delilah (played by Iloosh Khoshabe, aka ‘Richard Lloyd’, and Liana Orfei). Regulars from the earlier movies, including Andrea Fantasia as King Laertes, appeared in this threequel. Hercules Unchained is not only the best film of the trio, it is also along with Sons of Thunder, Hercules Conquers Atlantis, Hercules in the Centre of the Earth, Perseus the Invincible, Ursus in the Land of Fire, The Trojan War and The Son of Spartacus, one of the great pepla.

Sign of the Gladiator (1959) IT/FR/WG

Orig: Nel segno di Roma

Aka: Sheba and the Gladiator

Dir: Guido Brignone

98 mins

Anita Ekberg (Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra), Georges Marchal (Marcus Valerius, Roman Consul), Folco Lulli (Semantius), Chelo Alonaso (Erika), Gino Cervi (Emperor Aurelian), Jacques Sernas (Decurion Julian), Lorella De Luca (Bathsheba, vestal virgin), Albert Farnese (Marcello), Paul Muller (high priest), Arturo Dominici (mill overseer), Mimmo Palmara (Lator), Alfredo Varelli (Vithos), Sergio Sauro (Flavio), Remo De Angelis (Julian’s friend), Giulio Maculani (Roman herald)

There’s no gladiators to be found in the original Italian dub of this peplum which tells of Rome’s fight with Syrian queen, Zenobia, the ruler of Palmyra, the City of Palms. The Roman commander, Marcus Valerius, is captured following defeat by the Zenobian army and put to work in the grist mills. He escapes, but decides to return to the city and seduce the queen. He inveigles his way into her confidence and becomes her valued advisor – not to mention her lover. Within her court, Semantius, Zenobia’s councillor, plans to overthrow his queen with help from neighbouring Persian, King Shapur. But the Roman legions defeat Zenobia’s forces at the Battle of Jaffa Gorge and capture the queen. In her fury at being betrayed, Zenobia spears Marcus. In defeat, her life is spared by Emperor Aurelian and she is reunited with her recovering lover for the fadeout, amid picturesque Italian stone pines. Sign of the Gladiator was filmed on location in Italy and Yugoslavia, with interiors and city gate exteriors filmed variously at Dabrava Film (Zagreb), Filmiski Studio (Sarajevo) and Incir De Paolis (Rome). The Syria milieu of palms and camels adds local colour and the film feels rather more authentically ‘epic’ than many pepla. The assistant director was Michele Lupo, Sergio Leone worked on the script and Angelo Francesco Lavagnino wrote the score. The film is largely about tactics and manipulation, as all the main protagonists seek to gain the upper hand, either on the battlefield or in the boudoir. Queen Zenobia, the warrior queen of Palmyra, was a historical figure. She was depicted here by former Miss Malmö, bombshell Anita Ekberg, who dons a variety of costumes devised to accentuate her bosom, from flowing gowns to golden battle armour. Ekberg is given a run for her money in terms of screen presence by Chelo Alonso, the ‘Cuban H-Bomb’, as court dancer Erika, who twizzles her waist-length hair through an explosive, hip-swivelling dance routine as court entertainment. Peplum regular Jacques Sernas appeared in a subplot that details Roman agents operating undercover in Syria. Decurion Julian (Sernas) saves his lover, Vestal Virgin Bathsheba (Lorella De Luca), a Christian, from human sacrifice at the hands of the high priest. Lator, the Christians’ leader, was a rare sympathetic role for Mimmo Palmara and Folco Lulli was in fine villainous mode as treacherous Semantius.  Though credited to Brignone, the film was completed by the film’s assistant director, Michelangelo Antonioni (later of L’avventura, Blowup and The Passenger fame), when Brignone fell ill. Bava’s involvement lies with second unit director Riccardo Freda, who shot the film’s impressive battle scenes. In the Jaffa Gorge (actually Yugoslavia), the outnumbered Romans ambush the Palmyran cavalry, with catapults that launch fireballs and flaming spears, and the cavalry is swallowed by hidden, bobby-trapped pits. This footage reappeared in low-budget pepla, such as Nick Nostro’s Spartacus and the Ten Gladiators (1964). The film was distributed in the US by AIP as Sign of the Gladiator and is also known as Sheba and the Gladiator, a reference to the Yul Brynner-Gina Lollobrigida Spanish-shot peplum romance, Solomon and Sheba (1959). This straightforward peplum features romance, brutality, action, treachery and plenty of ‘The Iceberg’, as Ekberg was known in the press.

The White Warrior (1959) IT/YUG

Orig: Agi Murad, il diavolo bianco

Dir: ‘Richard Freda’/Riccardo Freda

86 mins

Steve Reeves (Hadji Murad, the White Warrior), Giorgia Moll (Sultanet, Haslem Bey’s daughter), Scilla Gabel (Princess Maria Vorontov), Renato Baldini (Akmed Khan), Gerard Herter (Prince Sergei), Milivoje Zivanovic (Tsar Nicholas I), Nikola Popovic (King Shamyl), Jovan Gec (Ibram Bey), Niksa Stefanini (Ganzolo), Milivoje Popovic-Mavid (doctor), Antun Nalis (Eldur, Murad’s lieutenant), Massimo Righi (Tsar’s orderly)

Bava was the credited director of photography on this costume adventure that had impressive costumes but not enough adventure. Scored in sweeping style by Roberto Nicolosi and directed by Riccardo Freda, this 19th century drama was based on a novel by Leo Tolstoy. Steve Reeves starred as Hadji Murad, a rebel who in 1850 led the mountain tribes of the Caucuses in the Steppes against the tyrannical rule of Tsar Nicholas I. The film was shot on location in Yugoslavia and the exteriors are impressive. Unfortunately much of the action takes place indoors or at the rebel’s fort. The White Warrior is essentially a peplum, crossed with a western, in period costume. Hadji is torn between his true love and betrothed, Sultanet, and Russian princess Maria, the wife of Hadji’s chief nemesis Prince Sergei. Maria is dispatched from St Petersburg with a message from the Tsar to broker peace with the rebels – her stagecoach is ambushed by rebels in a sequence straight out of a Hollywood western. As the rebel tribes bond together under their leader, King Shamyl, renegade Akmed Khan sees the opportunity to seize power, causing Hadji to lose face and allowing Akmed to steal his girl, Sultanet, and kidnap his son Yusaf. As in so many of these drama’s Reeves is betrayed and captured by his enemy and flogged – here in the torture chamber of the Russian’s lakeside HQ – before escaping. Hadji arrived with his loyal mountain tribesmen just in time to interrupt the wedding ceremony between Akmed and Sultanet. The two fight an acrobatic duel (Reeves is doubled in this energetic action sequence by peplum star Sergio Ciani/‘Alan Steel’) from which Hadji emerges victorious. The film’s big problem is some glaring continuity errors, in which the lighting changes from broad daylight to darkest night in the blink of an eye. The film has some rousing action sequences – notably an attack on a rebel peasant village, a massive rebel cavalry charge against the artillery of Fort Tabarasan in the Black Mountains, and Hadji’s escape from the Russian HQ by riding his horse through a packed ballroom. There are also some recognisably Bavaesque touches – the lighting in Maria’s bedchamber, the close-up shots of the coachmen driving Maria’s carriage  and most notably a picturesque scene when Hadji and Sultanet enjoy a quiet moment in a wood, amid falling leaves, until Russian soldiers emerge from the mist (which is riven with shafts of light). Released internationally by Warner Bros in the US in 1961, it had the tagline: ‘Make Way For Steve ‘Hercules’ Reeves!’

The Giant of Marathon (1959) IT/FR

Orig: La battaglia di Maratona

Aka: The Battle of Marathon

Dir: Jacques Tourneur

84 mins

Steve Reeves (Philippides of Athens), Mylene Demongeot (Andromeda), Sergio Fantoni (Theocrates), Daniela Rocca (Karis), Philippe Hersent (Callimacus), Alberto Lupo (Miltiades), Daniele Vargas (King Darius of Persia), Gianni Loto (Teucrus), Miranda Campa (Andromeda’s handmaiden), Anita Todesco (Andromeda’s friend), Ivo Garrani (Cruses), Sergio Ciani (Euros of Sparta), Gerard Herter (Hypias), Nazzareno Zamperla, Giovanni Cianfriglia, Franco Fantasia (warriors)

Direction of this great example of epic escapism was begun by Jacques Tourneur but completed uncredited by Mario Bava, who is billed in the release version as ‘director or photography and special effects’. A Franco-Italian co-production between Lux and Galatea, The Giant of Marathon is the closest of Steve Reeves’ films to his ‘Hercules’ outings with Pietro Francisci. The film was shot on location in Italy and Yugoslavia, in sumptuous Dyaliscope and Eastmancolor, with sets and interiors at Titanus Studios, Rome. It looks as though this is a made-to-order ‘Steve Reeves movie’, with all the requisite ingredients. It opens with ripped Reeves winning every event at the Olympic Games. Sergio Fantoni, from Hercules Unchained, reappears as the sly villain, traitorous Theocrates, and Mylene Demongeot is part-Brigitte Bardot, part-Sylva Koscina, as Hercules’ ravishingly beautiful blonde love match Andromeda. As per peplum convention, the bad girl is Daniela Rocca, as seducer Karis, and the cast includes Ivo Garrani (who would work on Bava’s The Mask of Satan) as Andromeda’s father, Cruces, who blindly becomes part of Theocrates’ betrayal, and Gerard Herter (from Caltiki) as Greek turncoat Hypias. Peplum regulars Alberto Lupo and Sergio Ciani appeared and Reeves was doubled in the fight scenes by Giovanni Cianfriglia. The score was by Roberto Nicolosi, who worked with Bava on The Mask of Satan, The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Black Sabbath.

Set in 490 BC, the story featured Reeves as Greek hero Philippides the Athenian, the ‘Hero of Olympia’, whose feats inspired the Marathon race. Philippides courts both Andromeda and Karis, but the latter is working for Theocrates, who is in league with the Persians. King Darius and his Persian army invade Greece, with guidance from exiled Greek traitor Hypias. As in the ‘Hercules’ films, there’s a sense of scale here that is absent from many pepla. Bava’s effects shots create grand architectural structures and the lighting effects include Bava’s trademark vivid blue night sky and crisp and colourful Eastmancolor cinematography. The cities of Athens and Sparta are matte effects on the landscape at Tor Caldara. Familiar Italian locations include the stone pines and cypresses on the Via Appia (where Andromeda and her frolicking handmaidens play catch) and the beach and headland at Tor Caldara, which is used for many scenes, from Philippides and Andromeda’s tryst at a temple to the Persians’ invasion fleet landing. The inlet and bluffs at Tor Caldara are also used for several scenes, including when Philippides is ambushed by Theocrates’ henchmen. Philippides fords a torrent and loses his mount in the fast-flowing River Treja in Lazio. When the supreme athlete performs his mercy dash marathon run, to get help from Sparta, the passing foliage recalls the branches brandished by stagehands in the final ‘joke’ from the Italian version of Black Sabbath – and was almost certainly achieved the same way. According to a 1979 interview, Bava claimed that 10 days before The Giant of Marathon’s Rome premiere the Battle of Marathon sequence was still being lensed ineptly in Yugoslavia. Reputedly the footage was awful, with charioteers smoking cigarettes. It was a complete waste of the 4,000 extras from the Yugoslavian Army. Bava reshot the sequence in the quarry at Grottarossa near Rome, with only 100 extras. Through camera trickery, he made them look much more numerous, by using multiple exposures. The effect is magnificent. The battle is one of the finest in pepla, as Bava filmed the sequence at five frames-per-second instead of 24, speeding up the action into a mêlée of hacking swords and raining arrows. The engagement begins with the Persians beating a mighty animal skin war drum and firing a human skull from a catapult. Battle is joined, as the Persia cavalry charge and their chariots slam into the Athenian phalanx of shields and pikes, with great stunt work and frantic action. Later Philippides and his hundred-strong Sacred Guard swim underwater to install studded stakes, to hole the hulls of the Persian fleet. On Theocrates’ galley, he ties kidnapped Andromeda to the prow, like a living figurehead, and smashes into the Greek ships with his mashing crocodile-toothed prow. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks emerge victorious – rather like Bava – through their ingenuity. It was released in Italy in December 1959 and in the USA in May 1960, by MGM, who also released it in the UK, where it was rated U in June 1960. It’s one of relatively few pepla to have been shown on UK TV and prints on DVD vary in quality.

Son of Samson (1960) IT/FR/YUG

Orig: Maciste nella valle dei Re

Aka: Maciste the Mighty

Dir: Carlo Campogalliani

87 mins

Mark Forest (Maciste, the Son of Samson), Chelo Alonso (Queen Smedes), Carlo Tamberlani (Pharaoh Armitee), Angelo Zanolli (Pharaoh Kenamun), Federica Ranchi (Nofret), Nino Musco (Senneka), Petar Dobric (Grand Vizier), Andrea Fantasia (blacksmith), Vira Silenti (Tekaet), Ignazio Dolce (minister), Zvonimoir Rogoz (high priest)

This Egyptian-set peplum starred ‘Mark Forest’, who was born in Brooklyn New York as Lou Degni. Forest, occasionally spelled Forrest, was one of the top muscleman stars (he was known as ‘The Adonis with the Perfect Physique’) and his outings included Goliath and the Dragon, Colossus of the Arena (both of which are contenders for his best film), Maciste Gladiator of Sparta, Hercules against the Sons of the Sun, Goliath and the Sins of Babylon, The Lion of Thebes and the immortal Mole Men against the Son of Hercules. Son of Samson was originally a Maciste movie (the Italian title translates as ‘Maciste in the Valley of the Kings’), which was rated A in January 1963 for release in the UK as Maciste the Mighty. In the US, it was released in 1962 as Son of Samson as ‘A Samuel Schneider Presentation’ and it is under that title that it’s most readily available in English, either as a poor ‘public domain’ cropped print (on Mill Creek’s ‘Warriors’ 50 movie DVD set), or as the good 2.35:1 ‘Totalscope’ DVD presentation from Retromedia (double-billed with Son of Cleopatra starring Mark Damon), which billed the duo as ‘Mightier than the Sons of Hercules!’ As Forest explains in the film, Maciste means ‘I was born from the rock’. In Son of Samson, Maciste travels to the ancient Egyptian city of Tanis, where the Persians’ oppressive regime is enslaving the Egyptians in the 11th Century BC. Nefarious Persian queen Smedes and her Grand Vizier assassinate incumbent pharaoh Armitee and take over his court at Tanis. The pharaoh’s son Kenamun, brainwashed by Smedes’ Necklace of Forgetfulness, marries the bewitching Smedes, until Maciste infiltrates the city and rouses a slave revolt.

Maciste does some typical peplum feats, including wrestling lions and crocodiles, and in a very impressive scene involving many extras, helps the shaven-headed slaves erect a giant obelisk in the city. Maciste survives the closing-in walls of the ‘Cell of Death’ and later destroys a bridge to derail a Persian cavalry charge. There are some exquisite costumes and lavish sets for the court scenes, which look as though they were shot at a Yugoslavian studio (probably Dubrava Film in Zagreb). Chelo Alonso is excellent, as she usually was in pepla, as the evil queen. When she’s defeated, Smedes endures suicidal death-by-crocodile. Alonso’s dance routines in pepla were always sensual and her showcase in Son of Samson was no exception, emphasising her amazing swivelling hips and hypnotic abdomen. The film was shot in the Egyptian desert (the Sphinx and Pyramids at Giza make an appearance) and in the more verdant climes of Yugoslavia. The cinematographer was Riccardo Pallottini and Carlo Innocenzi contributed an atmospheric score. Bava worked for director Carlo Campogalliani on the film’s second unit, as he had on The Giant of Marathon, taking care of the action scenes, which are among the bloodiest in pepla and ensure this is a memorable outing. In the opening sequence, the Persians attack an Egyptian settlement and lead the women away into slavery, while the men are executed in a variety of unsavoury ways – they are burned at the stake, or buried up to the necks in sand to be attacked by serpents, or even buried head first, with only their feet visible. This opening salvo of action reappeared in Bava’s own work as director, such as the waterfall ambush in Hercules in the Centre of the Earth and the raid on the Viking village in Erik the Conqueror. For a torture scene, a group of blindfolded slaves including women and old men are scythed down by a chariot with rotating knives on the wheels, and the final battle – an engagement involving dozens of extras in Yugoslavia – features surprisingly gory moments, with death by axe, arrow and pitchfork, which are staged via primitive-yet-effective bloody special effects. It was released in Italy in November 1960.

Esther and the King (1960) IT/US

Orig: Ester ed il re

Dir: Raoul Walsh

109 mins

Joan Collins (Esther), Richard Egan (King Ahasuerus of Persia), Daniella Rocca (Queen Vashti), Denis O’Dea (Lord Mordecai), Sergio Fantoni (Prince Haman), Rik Battaglia (Simon), Renato Baldini (General Klidrates), Folco Lulli (Tobiah, blacksmith), Gabriele Tinti (Samuel), Rosalba Neri (Keresh), Robert Buchanan (Hegai, eunuch), Aldo Pini (captain of the guard), Italo Tancredi (Gisco), Ombretta Ostenda (concubine), Loredana Nusciak (suitor), Renato Rossini (bodyguard trumpeter), Pietro Ceccarelli (Nuriak, wrestler), Bruno Arie (guard), Alan Steel (reveller), Attilio Severini (servant)

This minor peplum was a Twentieth Century-Fox production filmed in Italy. International releases of Esther and the King bill it as a Raoul Walsh Production, produced by Galatea Productions (Rome) and released through Fox. The film’s uncredited producer was Lionello Santi at Galatea. Esther was lensed in CinemaScope (Fox’s copyrighted widescreen process) and Technicolor, with Bava billed as director of photography in international prints. Ubaldo Terzano was his credited camera operator, but Bava is credited as co-director on Italian prints. Walsh took sole directing credit on US and UK prints, and also co-wrote the talky screenplay with Michael Elkins.

Returning to the city of Shushan from his war with the Egyptians, King Ahasuerus of Persia – and conqueror of everywhere, from Ethiopia to India – discovers his wife Queen Vashti has been unfaithful with Prince Haman. Haman has also been persecuting the Judeans living in Persia in the king’s absence. His position in court threatened, Haman orders Vashti murdered by his strong-arm henchman Gisco, and the king becomes withdrawn and self-obsessively bitter. Haman hopes to control the king and instigates a search for a new wife, knowing that his pawn, sultry temptress Keresh, will easily seduce the king. Local women are rounded up as prospective suitors. Among them is Jewess Esther, the fiancée of Simon, Ahasuerus’ comrade in arms who once saved the king’s life. Brought to the palace, Esther is advised by her uncle, the king’s councillor Mordecai, to marry the king, to be a sympathetic ear for the Jewish cause in court. Meanwhile Haman and army commander General Klidrates plot. They will engineer the extermination of the Judeans and concoct false evidence against Mordecai, implicating him as a traitor. Simon foils an ambush by Klidrates to assassinate the king and joins his old friend to return to Shushan to save Esther and Mordicai, who is about to be strung up. The Judeans and others opposed to Haman’s scheming rise up. In the ensuing battle for the city, Haman is caught and hanged high. Simon is wounded and Esther tends her one-time lover. The king takes this as a sign that Esther still loves Simon. He soon embarks on a campaign against the Greeks, but is defeated. On his return with his battered army, he is reunited with Esther.

Esther and the King was filmed in July and August 1960, in Italy, at Titanus Appia Studios, Rome, and on location in Lazio, including the seaside at Tor Caldara. It’s a typical Old Testament saga in the Hollywood tradition. Ahasuerus is known to history as King Xerxes and the narrative is based on the Book of Esther. The Jews’ deliverance from massacre was celebrated thereafter in the Jewish holiday of Purim. Like Francisci’s

‘Hercules’ films, Bava’s hand is readily apparent. Interiors were shot at Titanus and the opulent palace interiors have a familiar look, with their columns, wide spaces and floral decoration. The towering gates of Shushan too should ring bells to anyone who’s seen a few pepla. Of the Lazio exteriors, the ancient ruins of the City of the Dead, which is used by Simon as a hideout and where Klidrates plans to ambush the king, is most distinctive, with its crumbing stonework and statuary and littered with distinctive trees, the Italian cypresses and stone pines on Via Appia Antica. Bava’s colourful atmospherics are most apparent in moments of lust or violence. When Haman’s burly henchman Gisco misidentifies which of the king’s prospective suitors to kill, and accidentally throttles Keresh rather than Esther, Haman punished his minion with a flogging, in a scene bathed in red light. Bava’s style is also obvious in a scene in the Persian court when Ahasuerus is entertained by a singer, musicians and dancing girls – the performance is accompanied by a tribal composition from Angelo Francisco Lavagnino and Roberto Nicolosi (who collaborated on the score, which was conducted by Carlo Savina) with a primal vocal from Gianna Spagnolo (later the vocalist on the theme to Navajo Joe). It is for the sequences foregrounding Vashti that Bava saves his best work in the film however, bathing her in lustful light and menacing shadow. Her erotic revelatory dance of the seven veils is a highlight, while her murder, smothered with a cushion by Gisco, could have appeared in Blood and Black Lace. Though the story’s pacing could have been livened up a bit – it’s rather more sedate than livelier pepla – there‘s an attractive cast. Among some good villains, Sergio Fantoni is his usual wicked self and his cohorts (General Klidrates, henchman Gisco) are memorable. Gabriele Tinti shows up as Simon’s friend, Samuel, Robert Buchanan makes a convincing eunuch and Rik Battaglia offers beefy support. Even the imported star, Richard Egan, isn’t bad and his love story that develops with Esther is tenderly played. Rocca and Neri are suitably wicked and Collins has never looked more beautiful than here, arrayed in peplum fashion as Esther. The picture obviously had some cash behind it and there are many extras in the scenes that bookend the film (the return of the massive, all-conquering Persian army from Egypt, with Ahasuerus at their head, following a successful campaign, and their later return from Greece after a failed one) and throngs of revellers, handmaidens and concubines in the palace scenes. It was released in Italy and the UK in February 1961 and in the US in December of that year. Available in awful ‘public domain’ prints, the best DVD release of this hails from Germany.

The Giants of Thessaly (The Argonauts) (1961) IT/FR

Orig: I giganti della Tessaglia (Gli argonauti)

Dir: Riccardo Freda

88 mins

Roland Carey (King Jason), Ziva Rodann (Creusa), Massimo Girotti (Orpheus, Prince of Sparta), Luciano Marin (Euresteus), Alberto Farnese (Adrastes), Nadine Sanders (Queen Gaia), Cathia Caro (Atalanta), Alfredo Varelli (Argus), Gil Delamare (Alceus), Maria Teresa Vianello (Gaia’s sister), Nando Tamberlani (ruler, Atalanta’s father),  Alberto Sorrentino (Leocrates), Massimo Pianforini (Ephantes, Argus’s father), Paolo Gozlino (Laertes), Raf Baldassarre (Antius), Alice Clements (lead dancer), Pietro Tordi (Telamone), Fortunato Arena (Argonaut), Salvatore Furnari (Ephantes’s companion), Nazzareno Zamperla (revolting peasant), Piero Pastore (citizens of Iolcus)

Another peplum inspired by the legend of the Golden Fleece, this entry oddly went against peplum fashion, omitting Hercules from proceedings rather than crow-barring him into an unrelated story. In 1250 BC King Jason of Thessaly has been away for 12 months on a quest to find the Golden Fleece – if he fails, Zeus will destroy the city of Iolcus with a volcanic eruption. Ziva Rodann played Jason’s wife, Queen Creusa, Massimo Girotti was Orpheus (who is speared to death in the finale, but in the source myth lived on to further adventures) and Luciano Marin was Eurystheus (this time the love interest, not the villain) who falls for beautiful Atalanta, during their adventures en route to Colchis.

This lively peplum is interesting for the different tack it took from Francisci’s Hercules. Freda tells two parallel stories, following both Jason on his quest and wicked Adrastes back in Iolcus, who covets Creusa and forces her to marry him by kidnapping Jason’s son Iphis. His lust for her is conveyed in one of the great lines in peplum cinema: ‘Her loveliness is ablaze in me like an open furnace’. The Argonauts land on an island of witches, where their sorceress queen Gaia transforms Jason’s crew into talking sheep. Nadine Saunders, as glamorous Gaia, is a graduate of the Zsa Zsa Gabor school of chintzy costumery. When she can’t seduce Jason, this centuries-old enchantress who envied her more beautiful sister, reverts to her true persona – a wizened old woman – as Giselle Du Grand does in Freda’s own I Vampiri. The Argonauts escape, docking at another island, where they save a city from the ravages of a giant rock-hurling one-eyed gorilla (animation effects were by Carlo Rambaldi) that emerges on a midsummer full moon to seek out victims. Jason and his men enter the furry fiend’s cavern lair and Jason spears it bloodily in the eye. Reaching Colchis, Jason scales a colossus to retrieve the fleece, before returning home to interrupt Adrastes’ wedding to Creusa. Gatecrashing the ceremony, the Argonauts spring out of hollow statues amid impressive plumes of fire. Thessaly was shot on interiors at Cinecittà and the Instituto Nazionale Luce, with exteriors on Italy’s Mediterranean coastline and on the steps of Palazzo Della Civilta, E.U.R. in Rome. In seafaring long shots, the Argo looks suspiciously like a Viking long ship, complete with dragon prow. During a musical interlude, Thessalonian dancing girls perform a routine to a throbbing, percussive Carlo Rustichelli composition, which showcases prima ballerina Alice Clements. Paolo Gozlino and Fortunato Arena were among the Argonauts, Alberto Farnese was wicked Adrastes (voiced in the English language version by Richard McNamara, who oversaw the English dub) and Raf Baldassarre played Adrastes’ henchman Antius. The mattes – including a huge statue –  are competently staged, but overall this is inferior to Francisci’s version. Look out for the scene in a grotto on the witches’ island when Queen Gaia and Jason traverse a bubbling pool on a floating throne. This appears to be another film Freda didn’t finish. Derek Elley in his book The Epic Film notes that Freda disowned the production, so Bava probably picked up the slack and completed it.

Last of the Vikings (1961) IT/FR

Orig: L’ultimo dei Vikinghi

Dir: Giacomo Gentilomo

103 mins

Cameron Mitchell (Harald), Edmund Purdom (King Sveno), Princess Hilde (Isabelle Corey), Helene Remy (Elga), George Ardisson (Guntag), Mario Feliciani (Simon), Andrea Aureli (Aakon), Carlo Calo (Herta, Aakon’s wife), Aldo Buffo Landi (Longborg), Piero Lulli (Hardak), Benito Stefanelli (Lorik), Nando Tamberlani (Gultred), Corrado Annicelli (Gudruno), Giulio Maculani (Lars, Viking), Nello Pazzafini, Veriano Ginesi (Vikings),

Inspired by the success of the Kirk Douglas-Tony Curtis vehicle The Vikings (1958), there was a minor cycle of Italian Viking sagas, of which this is the best. The credited director was Gentilomo, but Bava carried out uncredited re-shoots of several scenes.

Viking leader Harald returns to Norway after years raiding, to find his father Sighurd murdered and his village of Viken razed by Sveno, the King of Norway. Harald poses as Danish ambassador ‘Prince Ragmar’ to kidnap Sveno’s daughter Princess Hilda. While Harald’s away, ambitious Aakon usurps control of Viken until Harald returns once more to take his revenge. Having dispatched the traitor, Harald leads his men in a mass attack on Sveno’s fortified castle with siege engine contraptions that fire burning logs. Strongly cast and with an absorbing narrative, Last of the Vikings is effective in its primitive storytelling. Giorgio Ardisson is good as Harald’s ill-fated brother Guntag, who is nailed to an X-shaped cross by Sveno, and support includes Nello Pazzafini, Piero Lulli, Andrea Aureli and fencing master Benito Stefanelli. Best of all is the film’s brilliant villain, power-mad Sveno, a scheming, scowling, sneering hand-wringer, as played with evident relish and associated Shakespeare histrionics by Edmund Purdom. The film takes itself entirely seriously, with leanings towards the great bard’s tragedies. There’s even a falconer called Yorick. The production was big enough to boast full-sized dragon-prowed ships, built at Nettuno Navy Yard, for its naval battles and the land battle scenes were shot in the quarry at Grottarossa. Interiors were lensed at Cinecittà and Titanus Studios, and Sveno’s labyrinthine stone castle is memorable. Roberto Nicolosi’s atmospheric score sets the scene and costumes and set design are well above par in recreating the epic’s broad canvas. Bava worked uncredited as co-director of photography and also on the special visual effects. When the Vikings return to Viken, they find a crow-pecked, arrow-riddled ruin wreathed in mist, and there’s such expected ‘Viking’ clichés as fiery funeral pyre send-offs to Valhalla, hearty feasting and vats of ale. The film is notable for its graphic action, with the frequency of spurting blood wounds and brutality unusual for the period. Released internationally by Medallion Pictures, this was another Galatea production. Mitchell and Purdom both dubbed themselves for the English language version. It is available on DVD with The Giants of Thessaly and others, in the ‘Warriors 50 Movie’ pack from Mill Creek.

The Wonders of Aladdin (1961) IT/FR/US

Orig: La mereviglie di Aladino

Dir: Henry Levin

93 mins

Donald O’Connor (Aladdin), Noëlle Adam (Djalma and the female doll), Terence Hill (Prince Moluk and the male doll), Fausto Tozzi (His Excellency the Grand Vizier of Bassora), Raymond Bussieres (the grand vizier’s magician), Alberto Farnese (bandit chief), Milton Reid (Omar, Aladdin’s servant), Marco Tulli (fakir), Giovanni Galletti (midwife), Franco Ressel (vizier’s henchman), Adriana Facchetti (Mama Benhai, Aladdin’s mother), Vittorio De Sica (genie), Aldo Fabrizi (The Sultan), Michele Mercier (Princess Zaina), Vittorio Bonos (lamp merchant), Omero Capanna (Muzda, acrobatic sketch artist), Tom Felleghy (doctor), Angelo Iacono (Arabic man)

This is one of a minor cycle of Italian Arabian adventures – others include The Thief of Baghdad (1961) starring Steve Reeves and The Golden Arrow (1962) with Tab Hunter. Bava is not mentioned at all by name on the international print, distributed by MGM and Joseph E. Levine’s Embassy International Pictures, which has Henry Levin as sole director. The film’s two credited assistant directors are Alberto Cardone and Franco Prosperi. Bava doesn’t even get a lighting, special effects or cinematography credit – but he’s billed as director on Italian and French prints, which are presented as ‘A film by Henry Levin’. The film’s European backers were Lux Film Rome and Lux Film Paris, and this charming light comedy, from a story co-written by Stefano Strucchi and Duccio Tessari, is aimed squarely at the kiddies. Aladdin’s mother buys her layabout son a lamp, which turns out to have magic powers. When the lamp is rubbed, a genie appears and offers to grant Aladdin three wishes. Aladdin and his servant Omar travel with a caravan across the desert to visit Bassora to see the royal wedding between Prince Moluk and Princess Zaina. But the evil Grand Vizier of Bassora has designs on the throne and has the prince kidnapped en route. Aladdin, Omar, and Aladdin’s girl Djalma become embroiled in the scheme, as the Grand Vizier also plans to switch the sultan’s newborn son and heir for a daughter.

Aiming for the comedic, Donald O’Connor is an appealing hero. He’s his usual energetic, bumbling self and carries much of the action, but the supporting cast is good too. British wrestler Milton Reid, who appeared in several pepla and a couple of James Bond films, has one of his more prominent roles as Aladdin’s beefy, moustachioed sidekick. Famed film director Vittorio De Sica (The Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D, Two Women, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) clearly enjoys himself in a guest spot as the hovering, red robed genial Genie. Fausto Tozzi makes a despicable villain, Aldo Fabrizi is the corpulent sultan and Michele Mercier is beautiful as Princess Zaina. Noëlle Adam is Aladdin’s resourceful girlfriend and young Mario Girotti (who later became a star as ‘Terence Hill’ in spaghetti westerns) is good as the dashing prince. In Aladdin both Adam and Girotti also played life-sized mechanical dolls, created by the Grand Vizier’s scheming magician. The scenes in the magician’s lair are recognisably Bavaesque, with the shadowy chamber, including the humanoid dolls, lit with blues and reds. Prince Moluk gains access to the city of Bassora with help from a fakir who directs him through a secret passage (such passages appeared in many pepla and also Bava’s Gothics). The fast pace and some good gags make this endurable. Lost in the desert, Aladdin and Omar see mirages of a cascade of water and are captured by a tribe of Amazons straight out of the ‘Hercules’ movies, where they are to be killed after their night of passion. The Wonders of Aladdin was photographed in Techniscope and CinemaScope (though video versions are cropped) by Tonino Delli Colli at Kairouan in Tunisia, with interiors at Titanus Studios, Rome. Filming began in December 1960. The flavoursome score was composed by Lavagnino and conducted by Mario Ammonini. For the entertaining finale, the Grand Vizier and his army attack Bassora but Aladdin and the Genie save the day. The Grand Vizier’s cavalry is halted by a wall of fire and cliffs, which suddenly appear in the desert, while Aladdin engages in a comical duel with the villain during which the Grand Vizier’s mighty steed is magically transformed into a donkey and his sword into a bunch of flowers. The Wonders of Aladdin premiered in Italy in October 1961, December 1961 in the US, February 1962 in France and December 1962 in the UK. This is an old fashioned, entertaining enough adventure, enlivened by its interesting, eclectic cast and occasional Bava signature flourishes, amid a vivid Arabian milieu of bazaars, slave girls and fakirs.

Rabid Dogs (1974/1998/) IT

Orig: Semaforo Rosso/Cani arrabbiati

Aka: Kidnapped

Dir: Mario Bava

96 mins

Riccardo Cucciolla (Riccardo), Aldo Caponi (Blade), Luigi Montefiori (Thirty-two), Lea Lander (Maria, christened ‘Greta Garbo’), Maurice Poli (Doc), Erika Dario (Maria, hitchhiker whose broken down), Marisa Fabbri (Marisa, Riccardo’s friend at Area Di Servizio), Gustavo De Nardo (armed filling station attendant), Luigi Antonio Guerra (service station employee), Francesco Ferrini (filling station attendant), Emilio Bonucci (angry motorist in accident), Pino Manzari (toll booth attendant)

Later in his directorial career, Bava made Rabid Dogs, his only attempt at a straightforward crime thriller. Between the making of Lisa and the Devil and the release of The House of Exorcism, Bava shot the film, under the working title ‘A Man and a Boy’.

Four robbers steal a Friday payroll from the Pharmacological Institute Bulgredi, killing the company treasurer and a guard. During the getaway in a green Fiat-125, their driver Faggio is shot dead and their car, its fuel tank punctured, runs out of petrol. The remaining three thieves – Blade, Thirty-two and Doc – flee to a car park, where during a stand-off with police they kill another cop and a woman bystander, and take her friend, Maria, hostage. Fleeing in a purloined car, the thieves hijack another car driven by Riccardo, who is driving his sick son Agostino to hospital for an operation. The boy is sedated and wrapped in a blanket. The robbers tell Riccardo that they want him to drive them out of Rome into the countryside. Their horrific roadtrip, avoiding police roadblocks en route to a vehicle they have hidden near a secluded ruined church, turns into a nightmare for all concerned. In the 1970s, there was some stiff competition in the crime movie psycho stakes, in such sadistic kidnap fare as Redneck (1973), with Telly Savalas and Franco Nero, Almost Human (1974) starring Tomas Milian, Raymond Lovelock and Henry Silva, and Pasquale Festa Campanile’s Hitch-hike (1976), with Nero and Corrine Clery taken hostage by a lunatic played by David Hess. These film’s violent excesses overstepped the mark in some instances, particularly in their close-up bloodletting, sadistic glee and sexual degradation. Rabid Dogs is no exception and the robbers’ sexual and physical torment of Greta is repulsive. Rabid Dogs may be Bava’s most realistic film, but it is also his most dislikeable.

As with so many of Bava’s films, Rabid Dogs exists in two different versions. The difference this time is that Bava didn’t live long enough to see either of them released.

Dogged by bad luck throughout its making, the film was originally to have starred Al Lantieri, but he fell ill after one week’s shooting. Stars touted for the role of Riccardo included Ernest Borgnine and Martin Balsam, but Bava wanted Riccardo Cucciolla for the part. The film was shot on location in Rome and on the Rome-Naples highway, for four weeks in late-August, early-September 1973 – a sign for Firenze (Florence) can be seen at one point. The sunny Italian landscapes contrast with the dark heart of this story. The actual locations, including an ‘Automatica Riscossione’ toll plaza and ‘Area Di Servizio’ services, add to the film’s realism. At the services, Thirty-two buys a picnic of bread rolls and that Italian thriller staple, a bottle of yellow and red labelled J&B Whisky. But most of the claustrophobic story takes place within the pressure-cooker confines of Riccardo’s light blue Opel Rekord estate car. To facilitate filming, the crew used two vehicles – one a normal car (for the driving and frontal shots on the road) and one a car body mounted on a flatbed (that could be used for close-ups and dialogue scenes with the actors). The film is brilliantly shot and there’s a Bava trademark shot of Riccardo’s fearful eyes in the vehicle’s rear-view mirror. The robbers were played by the reliable trio of Maurice Poli, as the slightly calmer Doc, and towering Luigi Montefiori and singer Don Backy (billed as Aldo Caponi) as the truly psychopathic, uncontrollable duo of rapacious Thirty-two and grinning knifeman Blade (called Bisturi in the Italian print). The end credits mention Ettore Manni in the role of ‘bank director’, though his scenes have been deleted from all versions of the film. The thieves’ tormented victim throughout the roadtrip was played by Lea Lander, who is likened by the robbers to actress Greta Garbo – Lander was named ‘Greta’ in Bava’s Blood and Black Lace. Bava regular Gustavo De Nardo appeared as a wary, armed gas station attendant and Erika Dario played an irritatingly chatty tourist whose car has broken down and makes the worst decision of her life when she hitches a lift in the Opel. During the production, the film’s Italian financiers – Loviola Productions or Roberto Loyola Cinematografica, sources differ – went bankrupt and the movie was shut down during editing. As part of the bankruptcy, Bava’s film was confiscated by the Guardia Di Finanza and locked away. It sat there until the late 1990s.

Stelvio Cipriani’s incessant, omnipresent ebbing score drives the action forward. His frantic harpsichord, brass and percussion cue was cut to a rotoscoped title sequence of action from the film. What partially redeems Bava’s outing is the terrific twist ending, which reveals how brilliantly conceived the story is. Doc kills Thirty-two as he attempts to assault Maria and Blade stabs the hitchhiker, so they dump both bodies. Arriving at the ruined church, where the robbers’ car is hidden, Riccardo has a pistol hidden in his son’s blanket. He kills Doc and Blade, and Maria is killed in the crossfire. But Riccardo is no innocent victim. He takes the robbers’ getaway vehicle – a red Alpha Romeo Alfetta saloon car – and their 100 million lira payroll haul, and drives off with Agostino. In the film’s last scene he rings Agostino’s mother, Mrs Derotta, and demands a three million lira ransom for her kidnapped son, to be paid in three days. The boy is now revealed to be locked in the Alpha’s trunk.

23 years after Rabid Dogs’ completion, it was actress Lea Lander who finally saved Rabid Dogs from obscurity. With help from journalist friends in Germany, she ensured any creditors associated with the enterprise were paid. This allowed access to Bava’s initial cut, which ran 96 minutes. This premiered at the 14th Festival of Fantastic Film, Science Fiction and Thriller in Brussels in 1996. The film’s Italian release title, from Spera Cinematografia in 1996, was Semafora Rosso, which means ‘Red Light’. In the story, Doc jumps a red light during their getaway and Riccardo is waiting patiently at a red traffic light when the thieves hijack his car. Alfred Leone and Lamberto Bava then became involved in perpetuating the film’s legacy and shot some more footage. This version of the film was titled Kidnapped. Their version plays more like a traditional thriller, with much more detail of the police operation to capture the crooks – with helicopters, roadblocks and several scenes set in a control room, coordinating the search – rather than the white-knuckle ride of Rabid Dogs. Kidnapped, as you’d suspect from the title, also alludes to the ‘kidnapping’ twist ending much earlier, with scenes of Agostino’s mother (played by Fabrizia Sacchi) worriedly on the phone to the police commissioner. Rabid Dogs opens with Riccardo driving hurriedly through traffic, while Kidnapped goes straight into the payroll robbery. In Kidnapped, Blade is called Stiletto, the pharmaceutical company is called Giboni, the dead getaway driver is named Ace, and Agostino’s mother is called Mrs Giannotto. Riccardo’s ransom demand, showing inflation, is now three billion lira and the film ends with a freeze-frame of Agostino’s mother, in despair, receiving a ransom demand from Riccardo. Kidnapped’s end titles play out to an MOR karaoke ballad, ‘Hold on to Me’, sung by Simona Patitucci, with lyrics by Myriann D’Antine. The Lamberto Bava/Leone version (which Lamberto’s son Roy also worked on) had new Italian language dubbing, sound effects, editing and an entirely new, more ‘modern’ sounding threatening score from Cipriani. It ran 95 minutes. Kidnapped was premiered in May 2002 at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles. Both Rabid Dogs and Kidnapped were included in Anchor Bay’s 8-film DVD boxed set, The Mario Bava Collection Volume 2, which also includes the short documentary End of the Road: Making Rabid Dogs and Kidnapped. Both films are only available to English language audiences in Italian with English subtitles. Rabid Dogs is the superior, more intense film, but both cuts are too sadistically excessive – and too uncharacteristically un-Bava – to be truly enjoyable.

Moses the Lawgiver (1975) IT/UK TV miniseries

Moses (1975) cinema release

Orig: Mosè

Dir: Gianfranco De Bosio

281 mins (Moses the Lawgiver), 136 mins (Moses)

Burt Lancaster (Moses), Antony Quayle (Aaron), Ingrid Thulin (Miriam), Irene Papas (Zipporah, Moses’ wife), Joseph Shiloach (Dathan), Marina Berti (Eliseba, Aaron’s wife), Shmuel Rodensky (Jethro), Mariangela Melato (Princess Bithia),  Laurent Terzieff (Pharaoh Mernefta), William Lancaster (Young Moses), Jacques Herlin (High Priest/magician), Mario Ferrari (Pharaoh Ramses II), Simonetta Stefanelli (Cotbi), Melba Englander (Mernefta's wife), Antonio Piovanelli (Koreh, strategist), Paul Muller (Mernefta's tutor), José Quaglio, Umberto Raho (Egyptian ministers), John Francis Lane (Egyptian consul), Dina Doron (Yokebed), Yossi Warjansky (Eleazer, Moses’ nephew), Amos Talshir, Haim Bashi, Haim Banai (Dathan’s henchmen), Andrea Aureli (Israelite in bloody river), Mosko Alkalai (Amram), Anthony Dawson (slave master), John Bartha (Egyptian), Michele Placido (Caleb), Paul Smith (Israelite casting gold idol), Osiride Pevarello (Israelite stirring pot)

Gianfranco De Bosio’s depiction of the life of Moses, who led the Israelite Hebrews to the Promised Land of Canaan, was released in two versions. It was originally made as a six-part TV miniseries, a UK-Italian co-production between RAI in Italy and Sir Lew Grade’s ATV-ITC consortium. Titled Moses the Lawgiver, it was filmed in Israel, Italy (including Tor Caldara) and at Cinecitta Studios, Rome, beginning in the fall of 1973. Budgeted at $5 million, it gained the largest ever TV audience when broadcast in Italy. It premiered on CBS in the US in the summer of 1975 to mixed reviews, on 21 and 28 June, 5, 12 and 16 July and 2 August. Moses the Lawgiver was later edited into a 136 minute feature, called simply Moses and released to cinemas later in 1975. Both the miniseries and the film had voiceover narration by Richard Johnson. With ads, the TV series played for 6 hours, but each instalment was 47 minutes long. Each episode had a slightly different title sequence, highlighting different actors for that particular instalment, and each episode ended with a potted resume of what was coming in next week’s episode. It had a stately pace and good production values, while the abridged movie version retained the focus on Moses and the big set pieces, cutting much of the human interest stories of the saga’s many other characters, for example Moses’ brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam.

The Israelites live happily in Egypt, but as they go forth and multiply Pharaoh Ramses II decides they are becoming too numerous. The entire people are enslaved and their infant sons cast into the river to be drowned. Amram and Yokebed avoid losing their new-born son when their daughter Miriam manages to help the child escape in a basket on the Nile. The baby is found by Egyptian princess Bithia, who is unable to have children, and is named Moses to be raised and educated in the Egyptian court. But when Moses accidentally kills an Egyptian who is flogging an Israelite, he has to flee into the Sinai Desert, where he is taken in by shepherd Jethro and marries Zipporah. With the death of Ramses, his successor Mernefta invites Moses to return to Egypt. Moses is now on a mission from God (who visited Moses via a burning bush) to deliver God’s people, the People of Israel, out of bondage. The Israelites request that they be allowed to travel into the desert for three days, to carry out sacrifices to their God, but the pharaoh refuses. Egypt suffers the 10  plagues, including frogs, locusts, the water turning to blood, sandstorms, boils and the death of all firstborn, until the pharaoh relents. The Israelites take all their possessions and stock with them and don’t return. The Egyptian army follow, but the Red Sea parts, allowing the Israelites to escape and the incoming waters engulf the pharaoh’s army. En route to the Promised Land, the people begin to worship false idols and when Moses returns from Mount Sinai with God’s Law, the 10 Commandments, he finds that his people have fallen into sinful activity, infidelity and murder. He and his Levi law enforcers restore order, rigorously ensuring the ‘punctilious observance of Sabbath rest’. Now an old man, Moses wearily leads his people into the land of Canaan, where the Tribes of Abraham establish their home and Moses’ task is done.

Of its type, this biblical epic is excellent. The film’s huge plusses are Burt Lancaster and his international supporting cast, the splendid desert locations in the Negev Desert, and the score composed by Ennio Morricone. Lancaster ages convincingly as the Hebrew patriarch and gives a consummate, measured performance, while his son William played Moses as a younger man. Lancaster Snr prepared for the role by reading the Old Testament and the 40-page entry on Moses in Encyclopedia Britannica. Lancaster also provided the voice of God for the burning bush. Lancaster and the other non-Israeli members of the cast had to flee Jerusalem in December 1973, when the Yom Kippur War broke out and they had to sit it out in Rome. Morricone’s majestic, hymnal main themes feature haunting solo vocals by Gianna Spagnolo, while percussive, celebratory tracks resemble cues from Gillo Pontecorvo’s Burn! (1968). The orchestra and chorus was directed by Bruno Nicolai, Dino Asciolla was the viola soloist and Nicola Samale played the flute. The additional traditional music, songs and dances were by Dov Seltzer and the production’s choreographer was Oshra El Kayam. The literate script was adapted from the Old Testament books of ‘Exodus’ and ‘Numbers’ by Anthony Burgess, Vittorio Bonicelli and director De Bosio. In 1975, publishers Harper & Row released a tie-in hardback book in the US, written by Thomas Keneally and illustrated with many colour and black-and-white images (from on-set stills photographer Pierluigi), which tells Moses’ story.

Both miniseries and movie are adult in tone, with some fair moments of violence and the murder of the sons of Israel near the beginning of the story is distressing. Both TV and film versions are certificate 15 in the UK and the film was an A certificate in 1975. The plagues of Egypt are also well staged with effects and library footage (such as sandstorms and swarms of locusts). Marcello Gatti was De Bosio’s director of photography and Mario Bava was director of special effects. The story’s action set pieces and special effects are included in both edits of the story and Bava’s contributions are convincing. When Moses converses with the burning bush in the desert, his staff transforms into a serpent – Bava uses his waterglass effect here. The production’s big set piece is the parting of the Red Sea, which Bava stages in grand style. The actual parting could be attributed to an extraordinarily well-timed earthquake and tsunami and the towering waves here closely resemble a wall of water, which separate to leave a corridor of dry land. The effects include scale model work, with raging waves like a peplum storm at sea, and superimpositions and multiple exposures, as pharaoh’s cavalry are engulfed in the incoming torrent. The film’s epic tone and sense of scale make it an engrossing outing. The script includes the wonderful moment when Moses observes: ‘A miracle, I suppose, is something you need, happening when you need it’. The scenes of the plagues and the Exodus from Egypt through the desert (accompanied by Morricone’s theme) are particularly powerful. Both versions are available on home videotape and DVD – the film edit was released in the UK on tape as a ‘WH Smith Exclusive’ in 1986 and Moses the Lawgiver is available as a two-tape set from Carlton (three episodes per cassette), or on two-disk DVD.

La Venere d’Ille (1978) IT

Aka: The Venus of Ille

Dir: Mario and Lamberto Bava

61 mins

Daria Nicolodi (Clara De Peyhorrade), Marc Porel (Mathew), Fausto De Bella (Alfonso De Peyhorrade), Adriana Innocenti (Mrs De Peyhorrade), Diana De Curtis (Maria, housemaid), Francesco Di Federico (guide), Mario Maranzana (Mr De Peyhorrade)

Workmen toiling on the De Peyhorrade estate near Ille unearth what they think is a corpse, but actually turns out to be a life-sized antique bronze statue of Venus. The De Peyhorrades’ invite Mathew, an expert in antiquities, to evaluate the find, and as their son Alfonso is to be married, ask him to stay on for the festivities. The statue is put on display in the estate grounds, near the De Peyhorrade villa and Mathew becomes beguiled by the bronze goddess’s beauty and by her resemblance to Clara, Alfonso’s bride-to-be. Mathew sketches the statue’s face, but in his interpretation, it more closely resembles Clara. Meanwhile, Alfonso is having a secret dalliance with the housemaid, Maria. During a game of the four-a-side tennis variant paume (also called pelota), Alfonso slips the wedding ring intended for Clara on the finger of the statue, but later when he returns to collect it, the statue pushes him away, so he is unable to reclaim it. During the ceremony, Alfonso substitutes an inferior wedding ring. Later Mathew encounters Clara in the garden and they kiss, but the woman is in fact the animated Venus. When ‘Clara’ vanishes suddenly, Mathew is surprised to find her back at the wedding feast. On their wedding night, Clara waits in her room for Alfonso, but while he drunkenly carouses, something unseen (to the audience) and hideous stalks the corridors and enters the room, frightening Clara into shock. When Alfonso arrives later, the Venus has taken Clara’s place and all we hear of his demise is a hideous crunching noise. The next morning the household is awoken by Clara’s screams and the household discover Alfonso’s bloody remains on the bed, where he has been crushed by a formidable embrace. At the murder scene, Mathew picks up the wedding ring, indicating the statue was present. The distraught De Peyhorrades send the statue away on a cart, to be melted down into a bell.

La Venere d’Ille was Mario Bava’s last directorial work. He co-directed with his son, Lamberto, who also co-wrote the teleplay with Cesare Garboli. It is based on a story published in 1837 by Prosper Mérimée, the French dramatist whose most famous work is Carmen. The episode was made for Italian television as part of a six-part series, titled I giochi del diavolo: Storie fantastiche dell’ottocento – ‘Games of the Devil: Fantastic Tales of the 1800s’. Other entries adapted works by Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Gérard De Nerval and H.G. Wells. This supernatural period drama is ideal Bava fodder and the co-directors succeed in creating subtle, unsettling horror. Porel is good as a familiar, handsome Bava hero, while Nicolodi is excellent and at her most beautiful, as Clara and her statuesque alter ego. It is only the wedding ring that identifies ‘Clara’ to be the animated Venus and such subtle touches are indicative of Bava’s mastery of low-key melodrama. The workmen excavating in the grounds uncover a hand, clutching from the earth, which as per horror movie convention, they take to be a corpse. When they are hoisting the statue upright, using oxen and ropes, the statue falls and breaks one of the labourers’ legs and later when a little boy throws a stone at the Venus, the missile rebounds and hits the boy. Such details establish the statue’s threatening presence, in contrast to the sculpture’s serene beauty and Mathew’s infatuation with it.

The Venere d’Ille episode was filmed from late September 1978 and was picturesquely photographed by Nino Celeste on sunny Italian locations. The music, by Ubaldo Continiello, is for the most part romantic piano and strings compositions, until the finale when the cues become incessant and urgent, as Clara and Alfonso are both threatened by the Venus. There’s a fine sense of the class divide between ‘upstairs’ and ‘downstairs’ in the villa, with preparations being shown for the feast by the servants below stairs and the sumptuous spread being consumed by the De Peyhorrades’ guests as part of the wedding celebrations. Alfonso’s lust for maid Maria bridges the class divide, but also contributes to his demise. Rather like Iphitus in Francisci’s Hercules, Alfonso is a braggart playboy who favours vino and the ladies, while the theme of someone from the past encroaching on the present appears in several Bava films. There are some trademark prowling POV camera moves, as something wicked stalks the villa, and the episode closes on a signature Mario Bava shot, of all-consuming flames, which also occurs in such films as The Mask of Satan and The Whip and the Body. The bronze statue of Venus ‘dies’ by sinking slowly into the flaming melting pot. Though this episode is an interesting curio, there’s little of the two Bavas’ flair for horror on display. Die-hard fans of Bava junior’s gore, or of Bava senior’s elegant style, will be disappointed. La Venere d’Ille was first broadcast on Italian TV channel RAI Uno (now rebranded Rai 1) on 27 May 1981, a year after Mario Bava’s death.

Inferno (1980) IT

Dir: Dario Argento

106 mins

Leigh McClosky (Mark Elliot), Irene Miracle (Rose Elliot, Mark’s sister), Eleonora Giorgi (Sarah, Mark’s friend), Daria Nicolodi (Countess Elise Delon Van Alder), Sacha Pitoeff (Mr Kazanian, antiquarian), Alida Valli (Carol, apartment building caretaker), Veronica Lazar (Varelli’s nurse and Mater Tenebrarum), Gabriele Lavia (Carlo, sports writer), Feodor Chaliapin (Dr E. Varelli, aka ‘Professor Arnold’), Leopoldo Mastelloni (John, Elise’s butler), Ania Pieroni (music student with cat/ Mater Lachrymarum), James Fleetwood (cook), Rosario Rigutini (man), Ryan Hilliard (Shadow), Paolo Paoloni (music lecturer), Fulvio Mingozzi (first cab driver), Luigi Lodoli (bookbinder), Rodolfo Lodi (old librarian)

Dario Argento’s Inferno continued the story of The Three Mothers, a fictional book by architect E. Varelli, who designed houses for three all-powerful witches. It’s the sequel to Argento’s masterpiece of the supernatural, Suspiria (1977), which also demonstrates a strong sense of Bava’s colour-flooded nightmares. In Inferno (which is Italian for Hell), Rose Elliot buys a copy of The Three Mothers from antiquarian bookseller Mr Kazanian, in the shop next to her apartment building in New York. The book reveals that the Three Mothers reside in Freiburg (‘Mater Suspirorum’, the Mother of Sighs from Suspiria), Rome (‘Mater Lachrymarum’ the Mother of Tears) and New York (‘Mater Tenebrarum’ the Mother of Darkness). Rose later finds to her cost that the latter lives in her apartment building. She writes to her brother Mark, an American musicology student studying in Rome, but when he arrives in New York, Rose is missing. Eventually, after a litany of murderous set pieces which slaughter various characters in imaginative, savage ways, Mark confronts Varelli (whom he finds is resident in the apartment block) and Mater Tenebrarum, who is presented as Varelli’s nurse, but who transforms herself into skeletal ‘Death’, while the apartment block burns and Mark escapes.

Argento filmed Inferno over 14 weeks, from April 1979, on a $3 million budget. He shot for a week in New York and Central Park, then moved to Rome (including Mincio Square, from Bava’s The Girl Who Kew Too Much). Interiors were shot at Elios and De Paolis Studios. In New York, Argento staged the film’s most bizarre murder. Antiquarian Kazanian collects bothersome cats that infest his shop. He puts them in a sack to drown them and takes them to Central Park during a lunar eclipse, but in the process is attacked by a swarm of rats and then, for no apparent reason, is stabbed to death by a manic hotdog seller. The score by Keith Emerson, formerly of The Nice and the showman keyboardist in Emerson, Lake and Palmer, is a mix of conventional orchestrations (by Godfrey Salmon) and rock operatic, Goblin-like head-bangers. Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘Va Pensiero’ from Nabucco plays fitfully on a turntable, during a stuttering supernatural power cut, which sees Sarah and Carlo both killed. Leigh McCloskey was a bit lifeless as Mark, in a role originally slated for James Woods. Irene Miracle and Eleonora Giorgi are unremarkable, but the supporting cast bails them out. Alida Valli, back from Suspiria, is ideal as the apartment’s caretaker, despite being lumbered with the dubbed voice of Carolyn De Fonseca in the English language edition. Daria Nicolodi (who was dubbed by De Fonseca in Argento’s Deep Red) is good as the aristocratic Countess Von Adler, a resident of the apartment block. Stunningly beautiful Ania Pieroni, with her tempting lips and devilish eyebrows, is a memorable presence as the cat-stroking Mater Lachrymarum, who appears in a vision before Mark in a lecture theatre. Feodor Chaliapin played architect Varelli, a wheelchair user who is cared for by his nurse, while there‘s definitely something of Bela Lugosi about Sacha Pitoeff, as antiquarian Kazanian.

Considering the budget and Suspiria’s massive global success, Inferno is surprisingly Hellish, but perhaps not in the way the director intended. His masterful, episodic style of murder has rarely equalled his earlier work on Suspiria and Deed Red. The film’s problem is that it’s visually rich and literally amazing, but snail’s paced and some of the acting is stagy and exaggerated. An underwater scene, when Rose dives into an ornate sunken ballroom and is surprised by a floating corpse, is very effective (it was lensed on an underwater set by Lorenzo Battaglia). Mark’s friend Sarah and her companion, sports writer Carlo (played by Gabriele Lavia from Deep Red) are both stabbed during a power failure in her apartment; Rose is guillotined by a sheet of glass which descends repeatedly onto the back of her neck; the countess dies in a frenzied attack by a dozen cats; her butler John has his eyes plucked out; and the apartment’s caretaker Carol is set alight and plummets through a glass skylight. The violence is bloody and imaginative, but the plot is virtually non-existent and its tempo lethargic. Bava’s thinnest plot threads at least attempted to weave a slim narrative. Only in the final confrontation between Mark and the Mother of Darkness, as fire licks through the apartment building, does tension take hold, and this is partially diluted by the ghoul of ‘Death’ resembling a fancy dress shop Grim Reaper, in cape and skeleton mask.

The photography by Romano Albini is brilliantly Bavaesque in style, with glowing blues and reds. There’s good reason for this. Germano Natali was credited with the film’s special effects and was in charge of staging pyrotechnics, such fires and explosions for the finale. Mario Bava was uncredited on the film, but his son Lamberto is billed as assistant director. Mario actually worked as the film’s second-unit director and provided the visual effects (in some prints he receives a ‘special thanks’ credit). Mario created some maquettes (small scale models used to visualise and test shapes, sets and ideas without incurring the expense of producing them full-size), plus glass mattes and photographing some effects shots, whilst also directing some second-unit material. The blues and reds that seep across the screen, throughout buildings via corridors and even out into the street, add a supernatural splendour to the proceedings, a delight of composition and juxtaposition. The red Hell literally seeps up the exterior walls of Rose’s old apartment building and Sarah’s cab ride in Inferno is lit with vivid colours, as was Susy Banyon’s in Argento’s Suspiria – in both cases the cabbie was played by Argento regular Fulvio Mingozzi. Bava signatures such as cats, cobwebs, colours, nighttime and storms appear, though like most of Argento’s films, there’s little mist. There’s even a Bava waterglass effect, as unconscious Mark looks up at some concerned onlookers. His contribution is readily apparent and Inferno is Argento’s most Bavaesque movie.

Inferno was poorly distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox outside Italy and as a result fared badly at the box office. It didn’t make it to the US until 1986. It was rated X in the UK in 1980 and DVDs include shots of a cat eating a live mouse, as Mark enters the realm of the damned in the finale, which are missing from some early prints. Argento belatedly rounded off the ‘Three Mothers’ trilogy with the long-awaited and even more disappointing Mother of Tears: The Third Mother in 2007. If you’ve never seen an Argento or Bava movie, there’s every chance Inferno will blow your mind. I know Argento’s movies aren’t supposed to be like real life, but I find this one (and much of his post-Suspiria work) overtly contrived, even for Italian horror movies. This was Mario Bava’s last work in cinema, before his premature death of natural causes, aged 65, on 27 April 1980.

APPENDIX 2: BAVA BOOKS & FILMS

BAVA BOOKS

All the Colors of the Dark by Tim Lucas (Video Watchdog, 2007)

Amazon UK

Amazon US

The Haunted World of Mario Bava by Troy Howarth (FAB Press, 2002)

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Mario Bava’s work is also discussed in the following books:

The Aurum Encyclopedia: Horror by Phil Hardy (ed.) (Aurum Press, 1996)

The Aurum Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies by Phil Hardy (ed.) (Aurum Press, 1984)

The Psychotronic Video Guide by Michael J. Weldon (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996)

The Incredibly Strange Film Book by Jonathan Ross (Simon & Schuster, 1993)

Bébé: The Films of Brigitte Bardot by Tony Crawley (BCA, 1979)

The Epic Film: Myth & History by Derek Elley (Routledge & Kegan,1984)

Cult Science Fiction Films by Welch Everman (Citadel Press, 1995)

Art of Darkness: The Cinema of Dario Argento by Chris Gallant (ed.) (FAB Press, 2000)

Nightmare Movies: A Critical History of the Horror Film, 1968-88 by Kim Newman (Bloomsbury, 1988) (revised edition published 2011)

Spaghetti Nightmares by Luca M. Palmerini and Gaetano Mistretta, (Fantasma, 1996)

Italian Film: A Who’s Who by John Stewart (McFarland, 1994)

Cinema Italiano: The Complete Films from Classics to Cult by Howard Hughes (I.B. Tauris, 2011)

Feature-length DVD commentaries by Bava’s biographer Tim Lucas for Erik the Conqueror, The Mask of Satan, The Girl Who Knew too Much, Black Sabbath, The Whip and the Body, A Bay of Blood, Baron Blood, Lisa and the Devil and Danger: Diabolik (with Lucas and John Phillip Law) are all essential listening.

Online sources of information on Mario Bava include Amazon US, Amazon UK, the Internet Movie Database, Wikipedia, YouTube; Pre-cert video is useful for rare UK videotape releases and the BBFC website includes all UK film releases and their ratings.

BAVA FILMS

Bava’s filmography is very well represented on home media, with all his films available. Outlined below are the best editions of his work. Language tracks are English if not stated.

I Vampiri

The Italian language version (with English subtitles) is included as an extra on Arrow’s Black Sunday release.

Caltiki, The Immortal Monster

This is available on a double-bill with a ‘Gamera the giant turtle’ movie.

The Mask of Satan/Black Sunday

Arrow has released this as a DVD and Blu-ray combo which includes both the original version of the film (in English and Italian) and the US AIP cut as Black Sunday.

The Mask of Satan is also available in the Mario Bava 5-film boxed set.

Hercules in the Centre of the Earth/Hercules in the Haunted World

The Fantoma DVD is a wonderful European print in 2.35:1 widescreen and includes both the English and Italian versions.

Erik the Conqueror is also available on a great DVD, with both English and Italian language tracks.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much/Evil Eye

This is available in Italian as part of the Mario Bava 5-DVD boxed set.

Black Sabbath

Available on Blu-ray and DVD in both the original Italian cut and also the alternative AIP version.

The Italian version is also available as part of the 5-DVD Mario Bava boxed set.

The Whip and the Body

Blood and Black Lace

The Road to Fort Alamo

This is on DVD in German or Italian, with English subtitles

Planet of the Vampires

Savage Gringo

This DVD is in Italian, with English subtitles

Kill, Baby…Kill!

There are both the English language and Italian language versions included in the Mario Bava 5-DVD box.

Knives of the Avenger

A very nice 2.35:1 print (English and Italian) is included in the Mario Bava box.

Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs

This is available with its sister film, Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, on DVD.

The alternative Italian version is also available on DVD, in Italian.

Danger: Diabolik

Hatchet for the Honeymoon

Four Times that Night

This is included in the Mario Bava 8-DVD boxed set Volume 2, in Italian.

Five Dolls for an August Moon

This is also included in the above boxed set, in English and Italian.

Roy Colt & Winchester Jack

Also in the above Bava set, in Italian with English subtitles.

A Bay of Blood/Twitch of the Death Nerve

This is also in the Bava 8-film set, uncut.

It has also been released on Blu-ray:

This is the cut UK version:

Baron Blood

Available on Blu-ray and DVD in English and Italian, plus the shorter AIP cut, which features Les Baxter’s substitute score:

Lisa and the Devil

This has also been released on Blu-ray and DVD, in English and Italian

The House of Exorcism

This is included in the 8-film Bava set, as are DVD versions of Baron Blood and Lisa and the Devil, and two versions of Bava’s uncompleted Rabid Dogs/Kidnapped

Shock (as Beyond the Door II)

BEST OF BAVA:

My favourite Mario Bava films, in order of preference, in their best versions are:

Danger: Diabolik in English, on the Paramount DVD.

Hercules in the Centre of the Earth, the European cut, in English.

Kill, Baby…Kill! in Italian with English subtitles.

Black Sabbath, the English-language AIP cut.

Blood and Black Lace in English.

The Mask of Satan (the English-language international cut).

Black Sunday (the US AIP cut of Mask of Satan).

The Whip and Body in English.

Lisa and the Devil in English.

A Bay of Blood, the uncut version, in English.

Planet of the Vampires, in English, with Kendall Schmidt’s theme music.

Erik the Conqueror in English.

Baron Blood in English, the European (as opposed to AIP) release.

Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, in its Italian version as Le spie vengono dal semifreddo.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Aimee Jones, who designed this book’s cover. Thank you also to Phil Hardcastle and Tom Betts, who have been a great help with background information on Bava’s westerns. Thanks too to Andy Hanratty, who has helped source many films and rare Bava research materials, including the original soundtrack to Danger: Diabolik. I’d also like to thank the following people who have contributed in various ways to the writing, research and production of Mario Bava: Destination Terror: Lee Pfeifer, Dave Worrall, Philippa Brewster, Paul Duncan, Tom Betts, Kevin Wilkinson, Jamie Russell, Peter Jones, Belinda Skinner, William Connolly, Mike Eustace, Francesco Simeoni, Sir Christopher Frayling, Rene Hogguer and Team Zebra. Thanks too to my parents, John and Carol, and of course Clara, who have been very helpful with research and proofreading.

Table of Contents

- Also by Howard Hughes:
- ABRACADAVER: The Magic of Mario Bava
- Modest Ambitions: The Early Years
- Epic Heroes and Mythmakers
- Out of the Shadows: A Director is Born
- Deadly Nightshades: The Darkness of Light
- Smoke, Mirrors and Tricks of the Light
- Cutting Edge: The Bava Legacy
- MARIO BAVA FILMOGRAPHY
- I Vampiri (1957) IT
- Caltiki, The Immortal Monster (1959) IT/US
- The Mask of Satan (1960) IT

- Hercules in the Centre of the Earth (1961) IT/WG

- Erik the Conqueror (1961) IT/FR
- The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) IT/US
- Black Sabbath (1963) IT/FR/US
- The Whip and the Body (1963) IT/FR
- Blood and Black Lace (1964) IT/FR/WG
- The Road to Fort Alamo (1964) IT/FR
- Planet of the Vampires (1965) IT/SP/US
- Savage Gringo (1966) IT/SP
- Kill, Baby…Kill! (1966) IT
- Knives of the Avenger (1966) IT

- Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966) IT/US

- Danger: Diabolik (1968) IT/FR
- Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1969) SP/IT
- Four Times that Night (1968/72) IT/WG/US
- Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970) IT
- Roy Colt & Winchester Jack (1970) IT
- A Bay of Blood (1971) IT
- Baron Blood (1972) IT/WG/US
- Lisa and the Devil (1973) IT/SP/WG
- The House of Exorcism (1975) IT/SP/WG
- Shock (1977) IT
- APPENDIX 1: FURTHER BAVA FILMOGRAPHY
- APPENDIX 2: BAVA BOOKS & FILMS