The Mario Bava Collection -
Volume 1
(Black Sunday/Black Sabbath/The Girl Who
Knew Too Much/Knives of the Avenger/
Kill Baby...Kill)
(Anchor Bay Region  0  NTSC DVD)
(1963-1968)
review by Head Cheeze

One of the most influential Italian filmmakers of all-time finally gets his due with a very classy boxed set from the fine folks over at Anchor Bay. The Mario Bava Collection – Volume 1 offers five of the maestro’s early (and best) films, including the classics “Black Sunday”, “Kill Baby…Kill”, and the anthology masterpiece, “Black Sabbath”. The films are presented in their original European forms, with all-new transfers, and exclusive featurettes.

Black Sunday (aka; Mask of Satan) is the gothic horror masterpiece that made Barbara Steele a horror icon, playing the dual roles of long-dead evil princess Asa and her descendent Katja. As Asa, Steele portrays a sort of female Vlad the Impaler who is executed by her family for her nefarious deeds. Just as she is forced to don the spiked “mask of Satan”, Asa unleashes a curse upon the family. Centuries later, when a pair of men stumbles upon her grave, Asa is reawakened by a single drop of blood. Soon she discovers that she has a virtual twin in her descendent, Katja, and plots to possess the girl in order to carry out her threats against the family.

In the anthology film, Black Sabbath (aka; The Three Faces of Fear), Bava gives us a trio of terrifying tales, including the suspenseful “The Telephone”, in which a woman is tormented by calls from a mysterious stranger, and “A Drop in the Water”, which features a truly horrific apparition of a psychic who haunts a woman who has stolen a ring from her. While both of those short tales are fantastic in their own right, it’s the tragic vampire tale, “The Wurdalak” (starring Boris Karloff) that has come to define the film. The centerpiece of Black Sabbath, The Wurdalak tells the tale of a family whose patriarch becomes “wurdalak” – a sort of vampire that feeds on the blood of his loved ones. The longest of the three tales, The Wurdalak is amongst Bava’s most atmospheric and beautiful creations.

With “The Girl Who Knew Too Much” (aka; The Evil Eye), we see a different side of Bava, as well as the blueprint for the dozens of giallos that would be inspired by the film.
Leticia Roman stars as Nora Davis, a young woman who comes to Rome to care for a dying friend, only to find herself the sole witness to a murder no one believes was committed. In true Hitchcockian fashion, Nora takes the investigation into her own hands, leading to her becoming the killer’s next target.

While not nearly as violent or sexually charged as the genre of films it would inspire, The Girl Who Knew Too Much is an undeniably effective and entertaining film and essential viewing for giallo fans.

In the Viking epic, “Knives of the Avenger”, Cameron Mitchell stars as a dagger slinging Viking assigned to protect the daughter and grandson of a dead king from a man with designs on both the woman and the crown. I’ve never really been a fan of the genre, but I have a feeling that even the staunchest supporter of Viking cinema would find themselves confused and a bit bored by this slow-moving film. While it certainly looks fantastic, the story didn’t hold my interest in the least, and I can only assume its inclusion here is meant as a means of showing yet another side of Bava.

While the title “Kill Baby…Kill” (aka; Operazione paura) may sound more like a swinging sixties murder orgy than a gothic ghost story, rest assured that this is the latter. Dr. Paul Eswai is called to the town of Carnecea to perform an autopsy on a woman who has died under suspicious circumstances. The locals are less than friendly to Eswai, save for Monica, a woman who has only recently returned to her hometown, and feels just as isolated as the good doctor. The two soon discover that several of the townsfolk have passed on just as mysteriously, and all signs point to the ghost of a young girl named Melissa.

A lush, atmospheric, and beautifully filmed horror classic, I can’t think of a better film to cap off this collection of Mario Bava’s early works.

With the exception of Knives of the Avenger (a curious choice for the collection), the films included here aren’t just great examples of Bava’s movies; these are great examples of cinema, period. The gorgeous new transfers and original subtitled European versions make this set an essential purchase for Bava enthusiasts and Italian horror aficionados, but casual viewers, completists, and subtitle-hating purists be warned; this set does not feature English audio tracks, so don’t go throwing away those old DVD’s on the shelves just yet.