HAUNTED WORLDS: MARIO BAVA, THE DIABOLICAL MAGICIAN OF CINECITTÀ

It wasn’t until he was 46 that Mario Bava (1914–1980) attained his first solo directorial credit with 1960’s Gothic horror classic, Black Sunday; he was, however, already a Cinecittà Studios veteran of 20-plus years who had by then become a brilliant cinematographer (working with Roberto Rossellini, Raoul Walsh and Jacques Tourneur, amongst many others) and a peerlessly creative shoestring special-effects magician. Bava was cinematographer for Riccardo Freda on Italy’s first sound-era horror film, I vampiri (1957), but wound up directing, uncredited, some scenes after Freda fell out with the producers. Bava similarly co-directed Freda’s The Blob-inspired Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959), paving the way for an extraordinary directorial career (throughout which Bava often essayed other roles as well) marked by his exquisite, baroque use of colour and expressionistic black-and-white, discombobulating deployment of the zoom, a perverse eroticism and a wry sense of humour. Not that many people in anglophone territories saw his films as they were meant to be seen until relatively recently – in bygone times, American International Pictures et al. commonly took terrible liberties recutting, refilming and redubbing his films before distributing them. While his name is synonymous with Italian horror – 1971’s A Bay of Blood set the template for every high-body-count slasher to follow – Bava worked in many other genres including the Western, giallo, fantasy, pepla (sword-and-sandal films) and science fiction. While not skimping on the horror, this season pays tribute to Bava’s eclecticism, opening with the 1963 horror anthology classic hosted by Boris Karloff, Black Sabbath, and 1966’s Carpathians-set Gothic horror, Kill, Baby… Kill!, before moving on to the glorious fumetto-inspired crime caper, Danger: Diabolik (1968), and 1974’s gritty, Peckinpah-esque Rabid Dogs. The season closes with The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), the ur-giallo which introduced several of the trademark tropes of the genre (before Bava’s Blood and Black Lace introduced most of the rest in 1964), and 1973’s supernatural art-horror, Lisa and the Devil.

Wednesday 2 September

7:00pm BLACK SABBATH

Mario Bava (1963) 92 mins – M

Allegedly the source of a certain well-known heavy metal band’s name, Bava’s first colour horror film is a vivid anthology of three distinct stories: “The Drop of Water”, “The Telephone” and “The Wurdulak”. Boris Karloff appears intermittently as a kind of genial host introducing each supernatural shocker, one of which stars Jacqueline Pierreux (the mother of Jean-Pierre Leaud), while another features Karloff himself in a grisly lead role. More a mixed bag of Halloween candy than a holy trinity, these are nonetheless a delightful set of genre shorts that display the audacious design and playfulness of Bava’s best work.

8:50pm KILL, BABY… KILL!

Mario Bava (1966) 85 mins – M

In the early 1900s, an evil curse grips a medieval-era Carpathian village as the murderous ghost of a young girl seeks revenge. Her mother (played by Giovanna Galletti) stalks the corridors of a dark and spooky castle, whose mirrors, cobwebs and miasmic mists suggest a poetic and hallucinogenic dreamscape worthy of Jean Cocteau or Georges Franju. Bava’s low budget, inventive and hugely atmospheric Gothic shocker is often considered the last great entry in the “golden era” of Italian horror (Martin Scorsese called it Bava’s best film) and benefitted significantly from a lack of interference by international co-producers.

Wednesday 9 September

7:00pm DANGER: DIABOLIK

Mario Bava (1968) 105 mins – M

A master thief, Diabolik (John Phillip Law), and his beautiful girlfriend (Marisa Mell) are pursued by a police inspector (Michel Piccoli) and gangster (Adolfo Celi) while staging eye-popping, large-scale heists. Based on the popular Italian comic series, the key work in the formation of the fumetti neri subgenre, Bava’s psychedelic and often delirious adaptation provides a model for bringing graphic art to the screen. Featuring a striking score by Ennio Morricone, and produced by Dino De Laurentiis as a companion piece to the same year’s Barbarella, it has gone on to be regarded as one of the key cult movies of its era.

4K DCP.

9:00pm RABID DOGS

Mario Bava (1974/1998) 96 mins – R 18+

A radical departure designed to reboot his career, Bava’s gritty, realist and extraordinarily intense crime thriller was shot in chronological order and follows a gang of thieves who jump from car to car to avoid police pursuit. A world away from his expansive, visually audacious giallo and horror films of the 1960s and 1970s, Bava’s “exceptional work” (Tim Lucas) was shelved for over 20 years when its producer went bankrupt, finally seeing the light of day in multiple cuts and versions released during the DVD era. It remains a singular and crowning achievement in Bava’s career. With Riccardo Cucciolla, Lea Lander and Luigi Montefiori.

Wednesday 16 September

7:00pm THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

Mario Bava (1963) 86 mins – Unclassified 15+

Its mixing of psychological horror and sexploitation with strikingly angular, chiaroscuro cinematography led Bava’s fourth feature to be deemed, retroactively, as the birth of giallo. More deliberately, the film is a creative riff on Alfred Hitchcock, with Letícia Román as Nora, the sole witness to a murder, who seeks out evidence with Dr Bassi (John Saxon) after the authorities refuse to believe her. Partly reshot for its English release as The Evil Eye, this more tonally consistent Italian version remains a major work in Bava’s career and in the wider horror canon. With Valentina Cortese.

8:40pm LISA AND THE DEVIL

Mario Bava (1973) 95 mins – M

Producer Alfredo Leone gave Bava complete creative control for this Gothic horror tale of a young woman (Elke Sommer) who becomes embroiled in a world of debauchery, mannequins and necrophilia when she shelters in a mansion belonging to a blind Countess (Alida Valli) and her son. After a disastrous initial screening, the film was never released theatrically in Italy and was subject to a string of re-edits. Reappraised for its evocative wide-angle colour cinematography and hallucinatory imagery, it is now considered by many to be amongst Bava’s most personal and daring works. With Telly Savalas.