Operazione paura

This colour-drenched Gothic horror film from Italian master Mario Bava is full to the brim with atmosphere and style. A doctor travels to a remote village to perform an autopsy on a woman who has died in mysterious circumstances. He immediately finds himself in the midst of a series of similar unexplained deaths. Everything seems to be connected to an ominous nearby house, the Villa Graps. While the malevolent ghost of little girl terrorises the vicinity...

Kill, Baby...Kill! May sport a title that makes it sound like it should be a Russ Meyer sexploitation flick but to all intents and purposes this is pure Bava. It contains most of the elements that are associated with the great man's work: terrific fluid cinematography, beautiful use of colour and light, and strong atmospherics. It benefits too from a pretty good cast. Giacomo Rossi-Stuart is solid as the doctor while there is strong support from the beautiful and very Gothic Fabienne Dali as the local sorceress. Carlo Rustichelli pipes in too with a good score that sounds very like his soundtrack to Blood and Black Lace. But it also has an eerie section that accompanies the ghostly girl. This latter presence is well used throughout the picture. She appears in the night looking through windows, while her bouncing ball follows her around and adds splendid macabre detail - the ball led to the girl's death in the first place.

Like all Bava films, this one is an exercise in cinematic style. Mostly, visual style. Many of the compositions are beautifully conceived and lit. Bava's camera gracefully captures it all and the sets are awash with striking colour and lit to perfection. In a couple of standout scenes the director puts together sequences of surreal splendour. One features a spiral staircase and the other has a man chase a figure through a maze of identical rooms until he finally catches him only to discover it is himself he has been chasing.

Like many of Bava's films the story isn't really very great. Its serviceable and no more. But this is ultimately only a minor point as it's the style in which the story is told that is the main draw. And this is a great film from a master of visual cinematic style.

I see a lot of people complaining about the silly title "Kill, Baby, Kill", but the original title, "Operation Fear", is no better. But don't be deceived, this is a first-rate Bava shocker with plenty to look at.

Here we have an isolated Transylvanian village haunted by the spirit of a dead little girl intent on collecting the souls of the inhabitants. The plot finds a young doctor summoned to the town to perform an autopsy in the investigation of a girl's mysterious death. The simultaneous arrival of a damsel-in-distress "assistant" completes the formula, and soon there is danger galore for everyone.

The imagery gets the emphasis here, and I found some of these sets to be absolutely unreal. Spooky-movie cobwebs and mist abounds, and the movie takes place in a series of oddly-shaped buildings, labyrinthine walkways, and even an ultra-campy graveyard. One of the most astonishing sets is that of the ominous "haunted villa", inhabited by Gianna Vivaldi, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Alida Valli (Ironically, the town's burgomaster is played by Luciano Catenacci, who looks more than a little bit like Telly Savalas. Alida Valli and Telly Savalas would both star in Mario Bava's seminal "Lisa and the Devil" years later).

The film's influence on many genre classics will be obvious to horror film buffs, particularly the resemblance of several sequences to Dario Argento's "Suspiria". Even the soundtrack features a number of sighs and musical cues that seem to have been borrowed by Goblin for "Suspiria"'s score. The most obvious similarity is the use of gratuitous red and green lights (which makes you wonder where these villagers got those colored bulbs-this is a period piece, after all!), and one dizzying sequence makes ingenious use of a spiral staircase.

The film also has a level of violence that must have been quite shocking in 1966, with a throat-slashing, temple-piercing, and even an impalement on an iron fence. I am so glad I finally made the time to sit down & watch this great movie. I'm really surprised the film doesn't get more recognition; it is that good. Now why couldn't anyone think of a better title for it???

In a small town in Transylvanian, police detective Kruger calls upon Doctor Paul Eswai to perform an autopsy on a woman who died a violent death, but the unusual thing is that a coin was embedded in her heart. When Dr Eswai arrives in town he discovers that the town is paralysed by fear of a dreaded curse of a spirit of a young girl who died 20 years earlier and the towns folk aren't all to happy about doctor interfering in their business.

Breathtaking! Yes, breathtaking indeed. It's only my third viewing of a Mario Bava film and what a talented and versatile director he is. This film breathes Gothic atmosphere and chills, with air of mystery to keep you glued to this subtle nightmare. The remote nature of the film adds to the spooky sets with dark shadowy pathways, creepy graveyard, a misty town with its eerie ruins and a downright unnerving Villa Graps, where the locals fear to tread! The whole surroundings come across as rather forbiddingly stark and very alienating. With a colour scheme that jumps out at you and that only Bava can create. What compensates the visual flair is the horrifyingly tense, but mystical score and effectively jittery sound effects. Damn that hissing wind! Also profound camera work that's incredibly vivid and swirling panning all over the place helps convey such a brood mood. There always seemed to be lurking danger even if it wasn't evident on screen. With all that, we are put into a whirlwind of such unease, which bleeds with a high amount of tension and frights.

The odd plot builds on the superstition and the dialogue was rather interesting. Performances were so-so, no one really stood out, but they fit the buck. Really, Bava was the real star here and it shows. Even the special effects were well used, but the make-up of child spirit was damn freaky. Especially those scenes with those hands going pitta padder at the window seal. Shivers ran down my spine! Although, saying that it does have some weak spots in the continuity of the plot and I thought ending was all a bit too convenient. Anyhow, this didn't damaged my experience of this menacing chiller that grows on atmosphere, not violence. The story might be your standard run of the mill, but it's Bava's direction that makes it visually impressive and immensely spooky. Also, what a great title!

Highly recommended!

This is a surprisingly effective horror film, since I got it on a collection of 10 old horror movies for $15. I have three or four other ten horror movie collections and have only seen one or two films from them. I wonder how many more are actually worth watching? I have a love of really old and even really bad horror movies, For some reason terrible old horror movies can be a ton of fun to watch, while terrible new horror movies just come off as exploitative and stupid (Cabin Fever, Wrong Turn, House of the Dead, etc.).

In Mario Bava's 1966 horror classic, Kill, Baby, Kill, there have been some mysterious deaths in a small village, the isolation and pure strangeness of which reminds me of the town from The Wicker Man. Evidently a seven year old girl burned to death 20 years earlier and continues to haunt the town. Anybody that she reveals herself to almost immediately dies a terrible death which will look like suicide to any subsequent investigation. As was also the case in The Wicker Man, the outside detective assigned to the case gradually questions his certainty that it's all just some kind of superstitious hysteria.

He initially explains the phenomena as poverty and ignorance, combined with superstition. A dangerous combination, to be sure. Bava takes this premise and does all kinds of cinematic trickery with it, much more than is common in horror. He makes psychological use of lighting and color, expertly frames his shots within outstanding sets (seriously, even the bad ones are good), and delivers the surprisingly complex story with a level of skill rarely seen in the genre. He makes good use of the quick zoom lens and such ever-effective horror film tools as children and hallways (Kubrick was surely influenced by this film when he made The Shining, we have the ghost of a little girl, the creepy hallways, even the ghostly bouncing ball) and does some great things with a spiral staircase.

I expected the movie to be terrible, at least because of the collection in which it is contained, although I guess I should be careful about assuming that a 10-movie horror collection that comes out to $1.50 per movie will be full of bad ones. One of my other collections has the original House on Haunted Hill and Night of the Living Dead, for example, but I didn't expect many more that would be any good. Kill, Baby, Kill, though, is certainly an overlooked gem.

The American title suggests a serial killer knocking off bouffant-haired go-go dancers in a whiskey bar, but this is really a rather old-fashioned Gothic ghost story. Rossi-Stuart (resembling an auburn-haired Hugh O'Brian at times) plays a coroner, brought to a desolate village where citizens keep killing themselves, apparently against their own will. It seems that the place is cursed because of some long ago wrongdoings and now people are taking their turn at hurling themselves off of walls onto sharp fences or slicing their throats with rusty old weapons. Even more oddly, Rossi-Stuart finds gold and silver coins imbedded in the dead people's hearts! Before the victims commit their acts of suicide, they always see and hear a little girl in a frilly dress who laughs a lot and bounces a ball around. Blanc plays a young woman who has only recently returned to the village following a long tenure at school. She takes a particular interest in the situation and in the doctor when she's assigned to assist him in his autopsies. Also in the mix are a police inspector, a town official, a sorceress, an innkeeper and his daughter and a haunted-looking baroness. The actual plot of this film is pretty simple and straightforward despite the various odd touches and aspects of it. What makes it stand out for many people is the overriding atmosphere and the creativity of the direction. Much attention is paid to setting a mood. There are unnaturally colored lights throughout, heavily detailed sets, creative camera angles and a somewhat hypnotic musical score. These things, to some viewers, help make for a moody and haunting film experience. To other (possibly less patient) viewers, these make for an interminable and boring experience. Regardless of one's acceptance of all the atmospheric elements, the film does offer a few memorable and striking scenes. In one, Rossi-Stuart chases the little girl through room after room until he catches up with himself! Another makes exceptional use of a spiral staircase. It isn't easy, when watching a dubbed version of the film, to accurately gauge the acting, but overall it seems rather solid. This film (along with others by it's director Mario Bava) has influenced and inspired many filmmakers in their own works (amongst them Martin Scorcese and David Lynch.) The deranged baroness (Vivaldi) is clearly a template for Grace Zabriskie in David Lynch's TV series "Twin Peaks". Much of the business of the film has since been cribbed and reworked, so it doesn't always come off as particularly startling now, but that's hardly the fault of the creators, who were among the first to utilize the various ideas. Fans of vintage horror should find themselves entertained for its relatively brief running time.