bava

THE FLICKS: Directors like Mario Bava are the reason cult movie fans exist. Working under miniscule budgets with fly-by-night foreign producers who distributed the final product under a seemingly endless amount of alternative titles, often just tracking down the muddy lineage of Bava’s work is a genealogical case study unto itself. But it’s the thrill of the chase that fans enjoy most, sifting through the pseudonyms and cinematic dead-ends to unearth something truly special from a man who was 30 years ahead of his time. Well, Anchor Bay has done most of the work for you in the form of The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1, a 5-disc set that includes two of the director’s most notable and celebrated works (Black Sunday and Black Sabbath), an early giallo comedy (The Girl Who Knew Too Much), a Viking action-movie (Knives of the Avenger) and supernatural thriller (Kill, Baby, Kill), not to mention the heist-gone-wrong exploitation entry, Kidnapped (aka Rabid Dogs), sold as a separate release entirely. There’s much debate about which film is Bava’s finest hour, but I think Black Sunday is the clear front-runner. It’s the director’s most complete vision, relatively uncompromised by creative interference or budget troubles. And the film’s gothic setting, still in favor by rival filmmakers at Hammer and Universal, is used to such great effect by Bava’s brilliant cinematography Black Sunday trumps anything those more respected studios put out in the entire era. Ostensibly a vampire story without any fangs, Euro-horror legend Barbara Steele plays Princess Asa, a devil-worshipping she-witch who rises from the grave to possess the body of her distant relative (also played by Steele). Full of the typical cobwebs and crypts, Bava’s camerawork is anything but old-fashioned; constantly in motion with playfully inventive angles that wouldn’t show up in cinemas again until the era of Scorsese and Spielberg. Black Sabbath features Boris Karloff as not only an undead wundalak (sort of a vampiric zombie that kill only those they love) but as the Rod Serling-style host of a trio of horror tales. The first segment, The Telephone, is the weakest entry while both The Wundalak and A Drop of Water are brilliant realized nightmares of oversaturated colors and E.C. Comics storylines. It showcases a director in full control of every aspect of the medium, but also with a wicked sense of humor. That humor is much more evident in The Girl Who Knew Too Much, which is Bava’s first foray in the Italian genre he was credited with inventing: the gialli, mystery-thrillers that in later years became famous for mixing sex, blood and perversity. Girl however is much more innocent in its execution and leans more toward classic whodunits with a sarcastic spin as an American tourist is witness to a murder while vacationing in Rome. Bava’s staging of that attack is truly inspired – as is the eerie moment of a cat bouncing on the bed of a corpse just moments earlier – filmed in B & W shadows so dark they almost slither off the screen. But it’s also refreshing to see the director handle comedy with such a light touch, something he was given very little opportunity to do. Working outside his comfort zone, Bava also helmed Knives of the Avenger, a not-so-subtle spin-off of the very popular peplum films of Italy that found huge success with titles likes Hercules. The story follows a Viking drifter whose past catches up to him in the form of a mother-son pair on the run from a power-hungry warlord. For all his directorial skill, Bava never showed much promise as an action director and most of the fight scenes are rather uninteresting master shots. And it doesn’t help that the hero’s weapon of choice are a beltful of throwing knives that keep him out of direct combat. Still, there is one truly impressive sequence set in a pitch-black tavern that illustrates Bava’s mastery of the language of cinema. Kill, Baby, Kill has been rumored to be the director’s own personal choice among his films, and it’s a strong competitor for fan favorite as well. A psychological ghost-story along the lines of Henry James or Shirley Jackson, a cast of recognizable Italian faces are besieged by the malicious spirit of a murdered young girl who wreaks her vengeance on the superstitious populace of a crumbling backwater community. Preceded by a bouncing ball and an innocent giggle, Bava turns this blond-tressed figure of supernatural evil into one of the most iconic images of his career. Kill, Baby, Kill is also a perfect example of the director’s penchant for unjustified light sources and Technicolor streetscapes as red, green and blue gels bleed across the nighttime exteriors. Not part of the box-set but released on the same day and date is Kidnapped, the director’s final film as a solo director which was locked in a vault for more than 20 years when its producers went bankrupt. Released direct-to-DVD in the ‘90s as Rabid Dogs (its original title), Lamberto Bava (the director’s son) later bought the rights, recut, reshot and rescored the film and released it under the current title. Essentially Bava’s tip of the hat to Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, the film is set almost entirely inside a moving vehicle as a trio of thieves lead a group of hostages across the Italian countryside. It’s a much more raw, brutal and ugly work than the usual Bava fare, but that’s exactly why Lamerbto says his father was attracted to it. And the director does show some great instincts for the material, bringing out the best (or worst as the case may be) in his vicious cast of street thugs. THE FEATURES: Although his book on the director has been advertised as “Coming Soon” for going on five-plus year now, Tim Lucas is without a doubt the world’s most renowned Bava expert. And most of the films get the full commentary treatment from the Video Watchdog owner/editor (except for Knives of the Avenger and Kill, Baby, Kill), whose welll-prepared dialogues make him one of the best in the business. (I’d be negligent not to point out that Kill, Baby, Kill was supposed to be released by Dark Sky Films with a featurette and Lucas commentary, neither of which are included in the Anchor Bay release.) Each film also comes with a variety of trailers, radio spots and Bava bio notes. The language tracks are all in the original Italian with English subs, except for Black Sunday which only features the English dubbing. The Girl Who Knew Too Much also comes with a featurette, Remembering the Girl with John Saxon, in which the American co-star relates his on-set Italian experiences. Black Sabbath includes an interview with actor Mark Damon and Kidnapped comes with both versions of the film and a “Making Of” that tells its remarkable history. The transfers are all unbelievably crisp, clean and anamorphically enhanced. Considering Bava’s films quite often fell into public domain purgatory, The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1 should qualify from some sort of humanitarian award as well as best DVD package of the year!