black sunday lisa hatchet

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 40 years ahead of his time. Well, Kino Classics has done most of the work for you in the form of The Mario Bava Collection, three titles (with more presumably to come) including one of Bava’s most notable and celebrated works: Black Sunday. The director’s most complete vision, Black Sunday (1960) was relatively uncompromised by creative interference or budget troubles, something that would wreak havoc on later productions. And the film’s gothic setting, still in favor at the time by rival filmmakers at Hammer and Universal, is used to such great effect by Bava’s brilliant cinematography, the film trumps anything those more respected studios put out during the same 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. Hatchet for the Honeymoon comes a full decade later, 1970, and finds the director caught between the conventions of the traditional Italian gialli (murder-mysteries) he helped to create, post-Hitchcock psycho-thrillers and a gimmicky ghost story not unlike his own superior film Kill Baby, Kill. Set in the world of high fashion much like his previous Blood and Black Lace (I promise, no more name dropping), John Harrington is a self-confessed madman who dresses up in wedding gowns and murders any bride-to-be that catches his eye. That would be enough of a narrative hook for most films, but Hatchet spins off into a Sixth Sense-style haunting in which Harrington is tortured by the ghost of his victims no one else can see. Caught between genres and popular fads, Hatchet is still full of signature Bava visuals. Just not enough of them to put the entire production over the top. Lisa and the Devil (1974) is an even more interesting case. Perhaps in protest against the predictable plots he was forced to work with, Bava created a film in which the plot is entirely unnecessary. In fact, trying to figure out exactly why Lisa (playmate Elke Sommer) is being lured to a decaying family estate by its sinister manservant (Telly Savalas) is an exercise in futility. Which might explain why producer Alfredo Leone re-shot, re-edited and re-released the film as House of Exorcism, in order to salvage his investment and take advantage of the public’s fascination with all things demonic. The two versions couldn’t be more different. But ironically, both have some cinematic value. With Lisa, Bava is obviously attempting to shape a more subtle view of the supernatural. His film adheres to a sort of dream logic, subject to multiple interpretations not unlike an Ingmar Bergman film with more blood. House of Exorcism retells Lisa’s story in flashback and provides much more surface-level entertainment. Both films are provided on the same disc. Each title has been mastered in HD, and - while they fall short of a full-scale restoration - they all benefit from the upgrade. Extras include a commentary from Bava expert Tim Lucas on each disc, along with various trailers and interviews.