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#351 Danger: Diabolik

Watched: January 5 2023

Director: Mario Bava

Starring: John Phillip Law, Marisa Mell, Michel Piccoli, Adolfo Celi, Claudio Gora, Terry-Thomas, Mario Donen

Year: 1968

Runtime: 1h 45min

Diabolik: a criminal mastermind! Think 1960s Batman villain/dark James Bond. He has a suave underground lair, fast cars and even faster dames, revealing showers, infinite tricks up his (immaculately tailored) sleeves, and a lust for adventure and danger surpassing even Rick O’Connell. He also has A Dame of His Own; Eva – a trusted sidekick and confidant as well as Secret-Lover-in-the-Night-Time (or really any time, it seems). Like her man, the Dame has expensive taste and her only wish for her birthday is an emerald necklace owned by a powerful politician’s wife. Cue heist!

“I think, for this heist, I shall wear my BLACK leather daddy mask.”
“No! Wait! This calls for my sad beige mask for sad beige röbberies!”

Now, being a Criminal Mastermind™, Diabolik has managed to piss off both law inforcement, represented by inspector Ginko, and a mafia-like crime syndicate, led by the ruthless Valmont. They’re both after his hide, and throughout the movie our anti-hero and Eva must thwart their plots and avoid capture, traps and certain death.

Not to mention avoid papercuts in unmentionable places

Danger: Diabolik is the epitome of the 1960s in our minds (of course, as we are very young and nubile, we didn’t experience the decade ourselves); it’s colourful, cool, sexy and sleek. At first, Diabolik himself was presented like a clear hero – his first heist was immaculately planned with no loss of life. However, as the film progressed, he started killing people left, right and centre. Still, he is much more humane with more of a moral compass than say crime boss Valmont, and we loved how we ende up rooting for both Diabolik and Inspector Ginko. Diabolik and Eva seem very much in love and in a surprisingly healthy relationship. You know, apart from the crime of it all.

And the aforementioned papercuts.

We loved the art/graphics of this, the fact that we learn nothing about the backstory of this gentleman criminal (we guess there might be more meat on that bone in the original comic, but we enjoyed the mystery of it all), the Morricone score and the drama queen that is Diabolik himself. It’s a funny, cool, stylish and thoroughly entertaining watch, and we recommend it to basically everyone. Enjoy!

“I told you this would happen, Diabolik! Look at this! Pick me up some ointment on the way home..?”

What we learned: Clearly, there’s a universe out there where cars and guns come cheap, but fabric for women’s clothing is out of everyone’s price range. Also, it is impossible NOT to pronounce Diabolik as “diabolique.”

Next time: Dark of the Sun (1968)

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#275 Kill, Baby… Kill!/Operazione paura

Watched: August 20 2016

Director: Mario Bava

Starring: Giacomo Rossi Stuart, Erika Blanc, Fabienne Dali, Piero Lulli, Luciano Catenacci/Max Lawrence

Year: 1966

Runtime: 1h 26min

August, 2016. Two Norwegian sisters drunkenly come up with the idea to skip ahead a bit on the list they recently started. A die is cast. The fates have decided. The choice is Mario Bava’s 1966 horror Kill, Baby… Kill!

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Four years later, the same sisters dig out their notes from that fateful day, ready to write an insightful and witty blog entry based on the impeccable and detailed notes they always keep. However, what they find proves not to be decipherable by the sober mind. Thus, we present them here in their entirety, paired with pictures that may or may not refer to the notes.

“Good dress.”

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Picture this, but in tartan.

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“Dracula, carriage, inn, suspicious locals”

“Remember: suspicious death of good-dress-girl”

“Pronunciation of autopsy”

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It’s an autopsy-turvy world!

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“Burgermeister [sic] + witch = plot thickens. Love us some witches.”

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Magica De Spell never seemed to get the love spells quite right

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“Yul Brynner. He dead.”

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Ok, we admit that referring to this guy as Yul Brynner might make us a bit baldist… We’re sorry…

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“Good colours”

“#Creepydoll”

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We have no idea which one we’re referring to…

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“Twin Peaks dude”

“Set in past but 60s pointy boobs”

“So much cobweb! Nothing changed for 20 years.”

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Terrors of the Carpathian Mountains. A list: 1. Dracula. 2. Mutant spiders. 3. Ghostly girls. 4. Endless rooms. 5. Evil doppelgangers.

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“Love the mad woman.”

“Cool shots. Spiral staircase.”

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Wow. That is cool! Well spotted, drunk us!

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Perhaps astute readers will make sense of our ramblings. Or the notes could be the basis for a new, fun drinking game. The possibilities are endless!

What we learned: Who knows? We enjoyed it immensely though.

Next time: Persona (1966)

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#253 Planet of the Vampires/Terrore nello spazio

Watched: January 15 2020

Director: Mario Bava

Starring: Barry Sullivan, Norma Bengell, Ángel Aranda, Evi Marandi, Stelio Candelli, Franco Andrei, Fernando Villena

Year: 1965

Runtime: 1h 28min

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Back to civilization after winter break, we dive into the magical and stylish world of Mario Bava with Planet of the Vampires (pronounced vampyres, like Andrew’s documentary in the Buffy episode “Storyteller“. At least in our minds).

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Unfortunately, despite a good start, the female heroes in this this movie tend to scream, faint, and/or run away at the first sign of the undead. Buffy would not approve.

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Argos, a spaceship filled with beautiful people in fabulous leather outfits, approaches an unexplored planet together with its sister ship Galliott. Both ships are sucked into the planet’s atmosphere and go in for a rough landing, and then the crew members try to kill each other once they wake up from the crash.

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“I’m sure glad someone designed these high necked and traditionally vampire proof outfits for our space journey. Their reliance on perfect peripheral vision is exactly what has gone wrong with earlier expeditions.”

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A knock on the head is enough to bring them back to themselves, and the Argonauts go out onto the new planet to see if they can find and rescue the crew of the Galliott. However, strange things start to happen – voices are heard, dead and living bodies both disappear, and massive skeletons are discovered. What is going on?

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“I wonder how these giants died…” “Isn’t it obvious? No high necked, sexy leather outfits anywhere! It was only a matter of time before they perished.”

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Bava always hits the spot for us, although we have never seen this particular movie before. The costumes are amazing, the concept is great (and clearly an influence on later works in the genre), the sets are awesome and there are some very cool shots and visual effects.

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The planet looks eerie and fantastic

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It’s a fun and slightly campy sci-fi-space-adventure which will make you develop trust issues on par with The Thing (1982). Loved it!

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“Plastic is not good for the ENVIRONMEEEENT!!!”

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What we learned: We’re so cosplaying this later. Peripheral vision and ability to turn our heads be damned!

Next time: Repulsion (1965)

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#237 Blood and Black Lace

Watched: August 19 2019

Director: Mario Bava

Starring: Eva Bartok, Cameron Mitchell, Thomas Reiner, Arianna Gorini, Dante DiPaolo, Mary Arden, Franco Ressel, Claude Dantes

Year: 1964

Runtime: 1h 28min

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Isabella, a model at a large fashion house, is brutally murdered and her body hidden in a closet. As the investigation gets on, it soon becomes apparent that a serial killer is on the loose. No gorgeous lady is safe!

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“Christ! He even killed the mannequin!”

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Isabella’s diary, where she had detailed every vice and sin of everyone connected to the fashion house, soon surfaces, which is not popular among her friends and colleagues. As the diary is passed around from model to model, the killer starts going after each one in turn, disposing of them in various brutal (and lurid) ways.

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Remind us never to buy from that fashion house. Every stitch of clothing rips apart the second a psycho tries to murder you. #notimpressed

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But who could be behind the murders? You’ll have a blast trying to figure that out in this atmospheric and stylish Italian masterpiece.

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Trust no one! Not even the creepy red child-but-with-boobs-dummy

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This movie was tailor made for us (no pun intended). Serial killers and gorgeous dresses? Those are our top two areas of interest and expertise! As always in Bava movies, we loved the colours and the lighting. We were completely in love with the red mannequins and all the curtains, and the scene where they prepped for the show was pure perfection.

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The killer’s mask is simple but amazingly unsettling

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For giallo and/or horror fans, if you have the opportunity (and the inclination), we would recommend you watch both the English and the Italian versions. You’ll get two slightly different stories and it’s very fascinating!

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But seriously: do not buy from “Christian’s Haute Couture.” Especially not tops. V low quality

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What we learned: “Must be a sex maniac in a homicidal rage” – our theory about everything from now on.

Next time: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

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#223 Black Sabbath/I tre volti della paura/The Three Faces of Terror

Watched: February 12 2019

Director: Mario Bava

Starring: Michèle Mercier, Boris Karloff, Lidia Alfonsi, Mark Damon, Susy Andersen, Massimo Righi, Rika Dialyna, Glauco Onorato, Jacqueline Pierreux, Milly

Year: 1963

Runtime: 1h 32min

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After a two week hiatus (been busy being fabulous in New York!), we’re finally back with Mario Bava’s fantastic horror anthology Black Sabbath.

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We’re so excited right now!

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Black Sabbath consists of three separate stories, all tied together by host Boris Karloff, which are freely adapted from classic tales by Tolstoy, Maupassant and Chekhov. The order they appear in depends on which version of the movie you watch (there are at least two), so we will present them according to the version we watched.

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We’re currently working on a plan on how to manage to live in all houses featured in this gorgeous movie

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The first story, “The Drop of Water,” is by Anton Chekhov. An elderly medium has died while in a trance during a seance, and when preparing her body for burial, nurse Helen Chester (Pierreux) steals a ring from the deceased. Big mistake.

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Given the scepticism with which she views the dead woman, we suspect she knew she would be haunted anyway so she just went for it.

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Guy de Maupassant’s contribution is “The Telephone” (or is it? There is some debate as to whether Maupassant ever wrote anything like this). Rosy (Mercier) is at home in her apartment (another place we’re moving into as soon as the payment goes through) when she starts receiving strange phone calls from her former pimp. Instead of calling the police (who she probably doesn’t trust given her profession), she calls old friend Mary (Alfonsi) for help. Big mistake.

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“Darling! Calm your nerves with this drink I mixed you with my gloved hands, leave the phone off the hook and let’s pretend we never had a falling out in the past.”

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The third and final story, “The Wurdulak,” is credited to Aleksei Tolstoy (not Leo, mind you). In 19th century Russia, rider Vladimir D’Urfe (Damon) finds a backstabbed body on a horse. He brings him to the nearest house to find that the body belongs to a Turkish bandit believed to be a Wurdulak. A Wurdulak, the farmers explain, is a vampire who feeds on his or her loved ones.

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Farmer or not, Sdenka takes the time to put on a full face of make-up every day. You know, just in case a single nobleman happens to stop by the house with a body he found on the way, only to fall madly in love with her.

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The father of the family, Gorca (Karloff), has been in pursuit of the Wurdulak and has given strict orders not to let him in the house if he is gone for too long as he will have been turned. When he returns too late, with a significant personality change, the family naturally lock him out and take every precaution to stay safe while plotting how to kill him.

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“Leeet me iiiiiin”

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Just kidding! They let him in, let him play with his grandchild, follow his commands, go to bed without locking any doors and are then flabbergasted when it turns out he tries to drink their blood. Then again, this is a family who implicitly trusts an unknown Eastern European Count called Vlad while in the middle of a vampire crisis.

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Not to victim blame, but is it really a good idea to drink yourself to sleep in the living room when you suspect your dad, roaming the same house, is a vampire..?

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We’re suckers for horror anthologies and Mario Bava, so there’s really nothing here we didn’t love. The humour between segments is silly and fun, and the entire film is very aesthetically pleasing, as giallo movies tend to be. A lot of this also feels oddly modern, as if it could have been made today but by someone trying to make it look older (think Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace or “The Devil of Christmas” episode of Inside No. 9). We loved all the apartments (as stated, we’re moving into all of them), the colours, the creepy child and the ghost. Love, love, love this!

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Boris Karloff wants YOU to join us in celebrating Black Sabbath

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What we learned: Don’t steal from the dead. And don’t let your emotions make your decisions for you when you intellectually know better.

Next time: Charade (1963)

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#188 Black Sunday

Watched: July 19 2018

Director: Mario Bava

Starring: Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Andrea Checchi, Ivo Garrani, Arturo Dominici, Enrico Olivieri

Year: 1960

Runtime: 1h 27min

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In 17th century Moldavia, Princess Asa Vajda (Steele) is sentenced as a witch by her brother and executed after having the “mask of Satan” nailed to her face. But before she dies, she curses her brother and all his descendants.

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To be fair, if someone tried to nail this thing to our faces, we’d probably curse them too

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Fast forward 200 years and two travelling doctors stumble upon her grave. One of them, Kruvajan (Checchi), is attacked by a bat which he kills over Asa’s tomb smashing the cross guarding it in the process. He then proceeds to remove her mask and spill blood on her.

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“Let’s open this tomb with the strangely preserved corpse and drip some blood on it” – a man who has never seen a horror film

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Kruvajan and his young companion Andre Gorobec (Richardson) then run into a mysterious young woman who bears a striking resemblance to the dead witch, Katia (Steele again) and Andre is smitten.

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It’s hard to resist a woman with two massive dogs

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After the meddling with the dead witch’s grave, the surviving members of the Vajda family start to experience strange phenomena, and it becomes clear that Asa and her companion Javuto (Dominici) are back for revenge.

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“Grrr rawr, I’m coming to get you, Barbara!”

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We’re back in our favourite genre with this horror film, and we have a bit of a thing for Mario Bava (especially Sister the Oldest), so naturally we loved Black Sunday. It’s an unsettling and atmospheric Gothic horror with gorgeous lighting and some very good effects. We loved Asa’s resurrection and Katia’s transformation, Barbara Steele’s eyes (emphasized by intense make-up) and the creepy castle.

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Not what most people associate with a “come hither look,” but strangely effective nonetheless

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Sure, there are some issues with this movie, such as the slightly iffy dialogue and the fact that everyone keeps treating Katia like an idiot child (even with everything going on and several corpses piled up, the men don’t really believe her when she claims to have seen someone in her room), but we still love it.

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In the men’s defence, Katia does tend to act a bit like an idiot child, so they may be justified

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Absolutely a must-see if you’re into Italian cult horrors. Which of course is everyone’s favourite genre, so why wouldn’t you watch it?

What we learned: Don’t remove all protective elements and then spill blood on cursed graves. Just don’t.

Next time: Breathless/À bout de souffle (1960)