Schock

The other night, an excellent documentary was on tv about Mario Bava. I had never seen a film of his before, but I had heard of him. After the doco, they played 'Shock'. The guy who introduced the film said that it wasn't Bava's best film but that it was a film that gets better every year.

Bava's films are hard to get in Australia so I watched this one without any expectation.

I wasn't more than pleasantly surprised. I felt that it was probably the best haunted house flick that I had seen. I enjoyed the twists and the turns of the plot, and the economy of the size of the cast,(3 principals). The whole film left me with a very creepy feeling and for that I feel that the film worked completely.

I could see the influence on other films such as 'The Sixth Sense', 'Stir Of Echoes', and 'What Lies Beneath', and I can safely say that I enjoyed 'Shock' more than all these others. I suppose it's because Mario Bava's direction was not flashy and concentrated more on telling his story and keeping us guessing.

Finally, my enjoyment of this film has encouraged me to seek out Bava's other films and that can only be a good thing.

Mario Bava's final movie 'Schock' may be far from his finest work, and will never gain the cult following of his classics 'Black Sunday' or 'Planet Of The Vampires', but it is still a very strong and effective thriller.

Dario Argento's former lover and leading lady Daria Nicolodi ('Profondo Rosso', 'Tenebre',etc.) plays Dora, a young woman getting over a breakdown and the aftermath of the suicide of her first husband. With her young son Marco (David Colin, Jr the only tenuous link to 'Beyond The Door' which this movie was sold as a sequel to in the US), and her new husband airline pilot Bruno (Euro-horror regular John Steiner) she returns to live in her old house. Despite the bad memories that surround it, she attempts to get on with her new life, and make a fresh start. Sadly, this is not to be. Odd things start to happen, the normally cheerful Marco begins to act out, and Dora becomes increasingly disturbed by her surroundings, believing an evil force is lurking around and attempting to drive her insane. She isn't exactly wrong!

Bava manages to create a disturbing atmosphere throughout, which escalates as young Marco goes from disobedient to downright scary. We may have seen many basic elements of 'Schock' before but they are approached freshly and originally, and the incestuous undercurrents in Dora and Marco's relationship is very rarely seen in Hollywood horror. I wouldn't argue that this movie is flawless, but it has more than enough interesting touches and genuine scares to make it worth watching. Bava's reputation is increasing with every year, and 'Schock' deserves another look!

Dora Baldini (Daria Nicolodi), her husband Bruno Baldini (John Steiner) and her son Marco (David Colin Jr.) move to a huge house that belongs to her. Dora lived in this house with Marco and her former husband, who was drug addicted and committed suicide. The house is empty since them and Bruno, who is a pilot, has decided to move to the place claiming it is close to the airport. Soon Marco is possessed by the ghost of his father and Dora is haunted by the house. She tells to Bruno that they need to leave the house and she is afraid of her son, but he believes Dora relapsed since she had a breakdown when he husband died. Why the vengeful spirit is seeking revenge?

"Schock" is a scary and creepy story of possession and haunted house. The direction of Mario Bava is capable to make a great low-budget film with a simple storyline. Daria Nicolodi has a convincing performance in the role of a traumatized woman that is haunted by the ghost of her former husband and discovers the motive in the end. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Schock"

A woman on the brink of insanity , Daria Nicolodi , his child : David Colin Jr and her new husband, John Steiner , move back to her old house , after the gruesome death of her previous hubby . Then things go wrong when the couple on the edge of breakdown is terrorized by a cycle of evil that is about to occur again at the old memory-ridden mansion . As an avengeful spectre possesses the young son with fateful consequences . A new look at the face of Evil !.

Nice Mario Bava film including chills , thrills , nail-biting suspense , twisted plot , gory effects, and ghastly happenings about ordinary poltergeister phenomenon with plenty of preternatural evil forces . Terror expert Bava provides his ordinary tricks maintaining interest and intrigue enough. In spite of a few scenarious and its low budget, Bava develops stunning photography, making great use of lighting, set design, and camera positioning to compliment mise-en-scenes bathed in deep primaries . This film was titled Schock, though in some countries pretended to be a sequel titled : ¨Beyond the door II¨ , revolving around the known plot about a haunted house , this time with a revenger ghost who roams here and there, while possessing a little boy, David Colin , who gives a really terrifying acting , despite his short age . Along with the beautiful Daria Nicolodi as the unsettling and at the edge of insanity wife , a plane pilot played by John Steiner as the new husband and brief appearance by Ivan Rassimov as the doctor advising Daria Nicolodi who at the time married Dario Argento , another director especialized in Terror and Giallo.

It displays atmospheric and sinister cinematography from Alberto Spagnoli and Mario Bava himself . As well as eerie synthesizer musical score in Goblin style composed by Libra . Well directed by Mario Bava who is considered to be one of the best Terror filmmakers . His first horror film was ¨Il vampiri¨ (1957) , also known as "The Devil's Commandment" , co-directed by another great filmmaker, Riccardo Freda .While working with Freda in this film , the director left the project after an argument with the producers and the film mostly unfinished . After a similar incident occurred on ¨Freda's Caltiki¨ (1959), and Bava's having been credited with "saving" Tourneur's ¨Battle of Marathon¨ (1959). The following film that emerged, ¨The mask of the demon¨ (1960), is one his most well known as well as one of his best and it inspired a wave of gothic Italian horror films . This widely influential movie also started the horror career of a beautiful but then unknown British actress named Barbara Steele , subsequently become a horror myth . While ¨Black Sunday¨ is a black and white film , it was in the color milieu that the director excelled , as Bava's films took on the look of works of art with the projects which he went on making . Later on , he directed ¨Black Sabbath¨ with the great Boris Karloff and others as ¨Baron Blood¨ with Joseph Cotten , and ¨The whip and the boy¨with Chistopher Lee . Bava along with Riccardo Freda and Dario Argento created Giallo subgenre including films as ¨The girl who knew too much¨ , ¨Five dolls for an August moon¨, ¨A hatchet for honeymoon¨ and ¨Six women for a killer¨ . As Bava created the style and substance of the giallo, a genre which would be perfected in the later films of Dario Argento . But Bava also made other genres as Peplum : ¨Hercules and the haunted world¨ , Western : ¨Roy Colt and Winchester Jack¨ , Viking movie : ¨Knives of the avenger¨, Sci-Fi : ¨Planet of vampires¨, Sex comedy : ¨Four times that night¨, Oriental fantasy : ¨The wonders of Aladdin¨, and the first Slasher movie : ¨Bay of blood¨, among others . Rating : 6.5/10 . Decent terror movie .

When a family moves into a home with a shocking secret, their lives become a nightmare of homicidal hallucinations as their young son begins to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Remodeled in madness and painted in blood, they soon discover that domestic bliss can be murder... when home is where the horror is.

Daria Nicolodi stars in a role where she doesn't just get killed off violently, and with her are John Steiner, David Colin Jr. and Ivan Rassimov. This is director Mario Bava's final film.

I really enjoyed the boy grunting out "Pigs! Pigs! Pigs!" and his weird fetish for shredded underwear. And there is a really cool shot in bed with hair flying every which way.

Howard Maxford calls it "unwatchable", "childish" and "unfortunate", completely in contrast to Luca Palmerini, who thinks it is a "splendid artistic testament" that anticipates "A Nightmare on Elm Street", full of "high tension". I, personally, enjoyed it.

The script was written by Lamberto Bava along with Sacchetti, Lamberto's first script. Lamberto has said the film is more his than his father's, and stylistically that is quite true. Critics comparing this to Mario Bava's other work may be surprised, but I found it was in many ways in the same vein as "Macabre".