KILL BABY KILL

Mario Bava is rightly considered by both critics and fans alike the godfather of Italian horror and fantastic cinema, responsible (along with his mentor Riccardo Freda) for instilling this highly stylistic genre with its basic look, mood, and thematic concerns. Within Bava's cannon of films may be traced an entire aesthetic history of Italian terror, from the supernatural Gothic nightmares of the genre's Golden Period to the psycho-sexual Giallo murder mysteries that he injected with sexual subtext and a delirious violence. These became later templates for the excesses of the American Slasher film (which preserved the exploitative nature of Bava's vision with little of his poetry or understanding of human nature). Bava was at his arguable best when exploring the night-side of the psyche as it grappled with the mysteries of the unknown, which he chose to represent with primal supernatural symbols. His love of folklore and traditional storytelling aesthetics was served marvellously well by a technique and directorial approach anything but traditional, using the camera as a subjective eye long before it became cliché to do so. Bava was devoted to atmosphere and the mechanics of mood, both of which lent sinister life and dark elegance to his operas of decay, death, and desire. The results of his approach are nothing less than visually magnificent in Kill Baby Kill, one of this late master's last forays into the purely Gothic realm which he kicked off with Black Sunday. A fable of sin and culpability wrapped in the narrative puzzle of supernatural conspiracy, this film is one of Bava's most effective occult achievements, marrying a plot devoted to Old Testament-like morality with visuals seeped in fog, mystery, and dread. These elements are brought to the fore by Dark Sky Film's gorgeous release, which makes it apparent just how closely -- and to what depth of effect -- Bava married the psychological conflicts of characters with fantastic themes and imagery.

Dr. Eswe (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart), a young coroner, is summoned to a desolate Eastern European village to investigate a series of mysterious deaths. There he meets the attractive and naive Monica (Erika Blanc), a medically trained native who has recently returned to her home. Forming an autopsy on a young maid against the villager's wishes, Dr. Eswe finds that he's been dragged into a nightmare of ancient curses and spectral revenge. Legend has it that a young child who was left to die on the street during a festival by the town drunkards returns to haunt the village, and that whomever she looks on dies. Discovering a golden coin hidden in a corpse's heart by a local witch Ruth (Fabienne Dali), the good doctor travels to the Villa Graps to see the reclusive Baroness (Gianna Vivaldi), where he descends into a horrifying puzzle of demonic manifestation and the supernatural. Amidst native violence and the mistrust that the doctor must face, the shade of Melissa haunts the town at night, attacking even those who mention her name. Who will be next? And what hope does a man have against such timeless evil?

A fairy tale for adults, Kill Baby Kill feels like a folk tale of old, capturing the essential, primal immediacy of that rustic form in its simplistic yet emotionally satisfying premise of a ghost haunting the instruments of hr demise. A conservative moral sense informs the story and its execution, most evident in the them of 'the sins of the fathers' being visited upon the children, as the malevolent spirit of the abandoned girl wanders the village cursing/murdering innocents and perpetrators alike. Here Bava gives vent to a truly nightmarish universe. Tragic chaos washes away the rules and conventional faith in Good vs. Evil that informed such early works as Black Sunday. Many of the revenants victims played no part in the spirit's death, yet their innocence is of no account, and they fall just as easily as the culpable adults. This uneasy yet undeniably effective interplay between traditional folklore and a nihilistic philosophy helps increase the tension. Bava lets his visual sense drench the cast and the setting. Rolling fog banks, foreboding castles, pale ghosts, and orange sunsets creep across the screen, accompanied by the mournful wail of spirits as Bava draws his profoundly disturbing narrative tight. A great innovator, merging not only genres but various visual and technological styles, here Bava expresses a wonderful sense of the surrealistic. Growing from the supernatural themes of the film, two moments of the absurd stand out as emotionally jarring yet so carefully achieved that they appear as natural growths from the situation: first, the moment that Dr. Eswe discovers that he is, in fact, chasing himself through a series of rooms; second, the exquisite moment that he steps back to find himself enveloped in the landscape of a portrait framed against the wall. Breaking with classical supernatural tradition, which often treats the supernatural as an unnatural invasion of previously established contexts of reality, Bava subverts reality from within, suggesting the disturbing possibility that 'reality' itself is fluid and constantly changeable, and frail human kind in little if any control of either the nature of existence or his tenuous place within it.

Kill Baby Kill receives the respectful treatment that Dark Sky lavishes upon all of its genre titles, the rich depth and baroque flourish of the visual elements making more appreciable the atmospheric beauty of this Bava masterpiece. Yes, it's that good! The 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen print is clean and crisp, and the colors bold and enticing. The audio level is just as satisfying, capturing the original score by Carlo Rustichelli in all of its lurking unease. Sounds, effects, and score are evenly distributed, further wrapping you in its ghostly spell. Extras are surprisingly in depth albeit not as intensive as one would wish. Still, what is here is clearly worth the price of admission, weaving a contextual tapestry which encourages greater appreciation of the film and the efforts behind it. The most exciting feature is the segment with son Lamberto Bava, who in "Skill, Bava, Kill!" discusses several intimate and technical details of his father's career and the film. From this we proceed to the only real Bava authority who matters, Tim Lucas, whose commentary is engaging and informative throughout, examining the film in its historical and aesthetic context, several intimate moments of the production, and some of the most startling passages and themes. Lucas's talks are always invigorating, and this is no exception, encouraging us to view the film in various different lights. The Still Gallery is pleasing if by no means as engaging as what came before, and the trailer does a darkly enchanting job of whetting one's appetite for the feature all over again.

Review by William P. Simmons