Minty’s Monthly Movie Masterclass – Mario Bava
Given recent releases and the fun I’ve had with research in the more gruesome catacombs of the internet I thought I’d retain the vague horror thread running through the blog and focus on four movies by the Italian godfather of the macabre, Mario Bava.
OK, full disclosure of something I’m deeply ashamed to admit – <big breath> – I only saw my first Mario Bava film last year. Yes I know, for a self confessed horror film fan this is a glaring omission but I’m sure you can forgive me? I’m not sure why, but I always mentally categorised Bava in the same vein as notorious Italian splatter meister’s such as Lucio Fulci, Lamberto Bava (Bava’s son) and Umberto Lenzi whose films have certain dubious merits but never appealed to me in the same way as American or UK horror films from the 1950’s onward. These Italian efforts always seemed even tackier than some of the Hammer efforts and were usually so inept and amateurishly produced that something like ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ would appear to be a masterpiece of style and subtlety in comparison.
I was wrong, I admit it. He’s certainly made enough forgettable exploitation films in many different genres but his fantastical films, his horror and SF genre pieces reveal a talent that is able to transcend the genre and its inherent budgetary limitations in order to produce some memorable and vivid imagery that clearly has gone on to influence the likes of Scorsese and Lynch as well as paving the way for the likes of Dario Argento, Sergio Martino and early Peter Jackson.
So, I kicked off with ‘The Mask of Satan‘, also known as ‘Black Sunday’. The plot is nothing new – in the 17th century Princess Asa is declared a Witch and executed in a most gruesome fashion – a spiked mask with the spikes on the inside is nailed to her face. Cursing her killers, Asa swears a terrible retribution and revenge on her killers and their ancestors. 200 years later some doctors, lost in the Prussian wilderness inadvertently stumble across the Asa family tomb and its decaying crypt, fortuitously as the anniversary of her death approaches….
This is a great place to start with Bava with its wonderful baroque atmosphere of cobweb choked castle ruins, mist shrouded graveyards and all the other visual trappings of gothic horror. It was released in 1960 and the Hammer film comparisons are inevitable I guess but I think they complement each other nicely with Bava going for the atmosphere rather than cleavage and vivid stage blood. It’s also notable for being the first major appearance of the great Barbara Steele who became something of a real cult actress in the 1960’s and beyond, with her proto-goth demeanour I’m not surprised.
‘Black Sabbath‘ – This film is reminiscent of those old Hammer triumvirate anthologies in which a selection of short tales are strung together with obligatory spooky commentary, in this case from the legendary Boris Karloff who also appears in a couple of the stories.
Films composed of different tales are rarely pulled off I think, for every ‘Dead of Night’ or ‘Tales of Terror’ there are dozens of ‘The House that Dripped Blood’, ‘Asylum’ and its ilk released by the like of Amicus. This has its moments, mostly due to Bava’s colour palette and moody lighting, the second instalment ‘The Wurdulak’ actually has a freaky moment but most memorable is the opening tale ‘The Telephone’ which I suspect Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson ripped off wholesale for the opening movement of the first ‘Scream‘ – in both attractive women are terrorised by a sequence of chilling phone calls which inevitably escalate into murder. Oh and yes, this is the film that Ozzy used as the inspiration for his new satanic metal band, changing their name from the hippyish ‘Earth’.
‘The Girl Who Knew Too Much‘ – The first giallo film ever made. Holidaying in Rome, beautiful young Nora Davis is assaulted and begins to see hallucinatory images and events that may or may not be real, and may be related to the gruesome alphabet murders a decade ago. The giallo films, at least the successful ones are clearly hybrids of Hitchcockian suspense, lurid mystery and murder derived plots with a healthy dose of nudity and bloody violence. The usually have a displaced central protagonist, a foreigner abroad (the result of casting US actors in leading roles I suspect for foreign market sales – think John Saxon in this film, David Hemmings in ‘Profondo Rosso‘, Karl Malden in ‘Cat o’ Nine Tails‘ etc), decadent middles class surroundings and deceptive characters who are not what they seem.
This was OK, it’s interesting to see the faltering steps of an influential genre but to be honest giallo movies leave me a little cold. They are a little too misogynistic and lurid for even my perverted tastes, give me a good old fashioned homicidal maniac butchering sexually promiscuous teens any day, even if they both employ generous portions of black gloved lunatic POV shots, discordant soundtracks and twist endings.
‘Kill Baby Kill‘ – Ah, that old horror staple – the fear of children – think of ‘The Others’, ‘The Omen’, ‘Village of the Damned’ and the upcoming ‘The Orphanage’ spring to mind, this ankle biter is set in the staple Transylvanian village where a certain Dr. Eswai arrives to undertake an autopsy on a young woman. The suspicious locals (aren’t they always?) interfere with curious Eswai’s investigations as he unearths an ancient curse afflicting the village, the pallid apparition of a child that appears prior to a growing number of ‘unusual’ suicides leads him to believe that something is amiss…
Speaking as someone who can’t stand children, (they can’t hold a conversation, they talk nonsense about imaginary people, they have no edifying frames of reference and their preferred cultural artefacts – films, music, literature, art, well they’re frankly juvenile) this isn’t exactly scary but certainly has its creepy moments (That bouncing ball reminds me of ‘The Shining‘ as well….)
If like me you’re a fan of the sixties Roger Corman Edgar Allen Poe adaptations then I’m sure you’ll find much to enjoy in certain Bava movies. It would be criminal of me to close the post without referencing another one of Bava’s better known pictures, the lurid ‘Planet of the Vampires‘ which it is claimed was a major influence on the first ‘Alien’ and it appears the costume design on the first ‘X-Men’ picture.
Finally you must admire the dedication of Tim Lucas in finally producing this, a book thirty two years in gestation. Yes, you read that right – 32 years. Can’t say I’ll be picking it up, I don’t have the space or inclination to spend £200 on a film book that I would never read in its entirety. Still, 10/10 for obsessive compulsion…
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