Italian filmmaker Mario Bava influenced countless directors and cinematographers with his unique style, set design, and camera angles. The essence of Bava can be easily identified in films as diverse as “Alien,” “Austin Powers,” and “Friday the 13th.” With the film “Blood and Black Lace,” Bava single-handedly created the “giallo” film genre that overtook Italian cinema in the late sixties, dubbed “giallo” (Italian for yellow) in reference to the yellow-covered crime novels that were popular at the time.
The “giallo” genre focused more on the violent deaths of the victims rather than on the investigation that lead to the killer’s eventual capture, which was unusual at the time but commonplace in today’s cinema. Bava was one of the first directors to adapt a comic book into a movie. With “Diabolik” he predated today’s trend of turning any four-color hero (Spider-Man, Batman) into a silver-screen icon. While Bava set the standard for experimental and exploitative Italian cinema, his work is virtually unknown to the masses. Although many of the directors that he inspired–Tarantino, Lynch, Fellini, Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, and Italy’s own Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento–have become well known and discussed icons, Bava himself was pushed to the background. But with Anchor Bay’s release of “The Mario Bava Collection: Volume One,” featuring five films that showcase the esoteric genius that Bava possessed behind the lens, perhaps the master is finally going to get his due.
The cases for the five-disc set are lovingly adorned with multiple international posters and lobby cards for the five films and further encased in a beautiful slip cover featuring a striking image of Bava on the spine. “Black Sunday” (1960), “Black Sabbath” (1963), “The Girl Who Knew Too Much” (1963), “Knives of the Avenger” (1966), and “Kill, Baby…Kill!” (1966) are all films that would be at the top of any Bava fan’s wish list and are a great example of the diverse genres Bava handled expertly. While “Sunday,” “Sabbath,” and “Kill” follow in the footsteps of the gothic British Hammer films, “The Girl” was written as a slight parody of Hitchcock, and “Knives” is a unique Viking action flick that is far better than it has any right to be. Perhaps it was Bava’s inability to stick with one genre that lead him to never find the successes he looked for in life; his own death in 1980 was overshadowed by Hitchcock himself who passed on a mere four days later.
Bava’s films have played all over the world and have been presented under multiple titles with a wide variety of edits, score changes, and dubbing. Volume one of “The Mario Bava Collection” attempts to do the maestro justice by including the international, uncut versions when available. Most of the five films feature only the original Italian language tracks, while a couple include the badly dubbed English tracks. Thankfully, only “Black Sunday” forces the terribly dubbed track on us without any other option. One of the causes for Bava’s films not gaining the acceptance they deserve rests largely in the way the audio for Italian films was created in the sixties and seventies. Most Italian films of the time featured actors from multiple countries. Rather than have everyone speak in a language they were unfamiliar with, most were filmed without sound and later had their dialogue dubbed for whatever country the film was being shown in. Even when watched with the original Italian dialogue track, a Bava film still has the notoriously hard-to-deal-with lack of synchronicity between the dialogue and lips. In movies made by lesser filmmakers, this can be frustratingly distracting, but in a Bava film, it’s just something worth overlooking.
“Sunday,” “Sabbath,” and “The Girl” all feature commentary by Tim Lucas, author of the definitive Bava biography “All the Colors of the Dark,” a book thirty years in the making that will finally be released this summer. While the commentary for “Sunday” was included on a previous release by Image Entertainment, the other two commentaries are entirely new to this box set. Also new is a twenty-minute interview with actor/producer Mark Damon included on the “Sabbath” disc, as well as ten minutes with an animated John Saxon on “The Girl” disc. The well-written Barbara Steele and Boris Karloff bios that are included on “Sunday” and “Sabbath” respectively, are welcome additions to their discs. However, the inclusion of the same Bava bio on all five discs seems redundant, especially since the films aren’t being sold separately from this set. While all five films feature their own trailers, “Sunday,” “Sabbath,” and “The Girl” go the extra mile with the inclusion of poster and still galleries.
Also worth noting are the versions of the five films Anchor Bay chose to include on these discs. This “Black Sunday” is the uncut and uncensored international version known as “The Mask of Satan,” thankfully featuring the original Italian score and sadly the English dubbing. The “Black Sabbath” included in the set is also the original, uncut, international version entitled “The Three Faces of Fear,” featuring the original score and Italian language track. “The Girl Who Knew Too Much” contains the first-ever presentation of Bava’s original, uncut, Italian-language international version. And “Knives of the Avenger” has been remastered and features the first DVD release with the original Italian language audio track and the poorly dubbed English one. Finally, “Kill, Baby Kill” contains a remastered print that has never been released in North America.
A great many of the themes and story lines might seem a bit too dated for today’s music-video-fed theatergoers, yet all five of these films are prime examples of the legitimate brilliance of Mario Bava. The opening scene of “Black Sunday” alone has become one of the most iconic moments in horror history. It’s the image of Barbara Steele’s beautiful face twisted in terror as the spike-coated mask gets lowered onto her head, as a shirtless muscle-bound giant swings towards it with a hammer. And that’s just the first five minutes of Bava’s official first film as a director! The additional four hundred and twenty-five minutes spread across these five discs are just as delightful.
Although Anchor Bay hit the nail on the head by including fan-favorite films like “Black Sabbath” and “Black Sunday” in volume one, I hope they follow through with an equally well-put-together volume two. My five film Bava wish list is “The Body and the Whip,” “Blood and Black Lace,” “Planet of the Vampires,” “Danger: Diabolik,” and “Five Dolls for an August Moon.” Hopefully, the success of this set will lead to additional collections for other Italian-horror directors like Fulci and Argento, who definitely deserve the excellent treatment Anchor Bay has shown Mr. Bava.
“Black Sunday” 9/10, “Black Sabbath” 8/10, “The Girl Who Knew Too Much” 7/10, “Knives of the Avenger” 6/10, and “Kill, Baby…Kill” 7/10.
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