The Friday Night Horror Movie: Baron Blood (1972)

baron blood

Apologies for getting this out late. My daughter had a sleepover last night, and I decided to stay up late watching a French adaptation of an Agatha Christie story with my wife rather than write this. I think you will understand.

Baron Blood was directed by the great Italian genre director Mario Bava. It was made late in his career (he’d only direct three more films before his death) when he was having trouble getting financing for any film. Beloved as he is now, Bava’s films rarely made much money when they were released.

As such, the film has plenty of style and looks amazing, but falls fairly flat in the storytelling department.

Peter Kleist (Antonio Cantafora), an American university student, comes to Austria to visit his ancestral castle. While there, he learns that his Great-Grandfather was a notorious sadist who tortured and killed hundreds of villagers, earning him the nickname Baron Blood. Legend says that the Baron burned a witch at the stake, but before she died, she cursed him with a spell that would allow him to rise again from the grave only to be eternally tortured by her.

Naturally, our hero, along with his friend Eva Arnold (Elke Sommer) enacts the curse and raises the baron from the grave.

But first, Joseph Cotton.

Although he is top billed, the legendary actor doesn’t appear until at least half an hour into this 90-minute film. He plays Alfred Becker, an eccentric millionaire who buys the castle at auction.

Actually, no, my timeline is off. Peter and Eve do use an incantation to raise the Baron from the grave before Becker shows up. They do it at midnight, but the clock strikes 2 ( the exact time when the Baron was murdered), and blood runs under the door, but they don’t actually see the Baron. Before they can read the recantation, a wind knocks the scroll into a fire, and it is lost.

Although they do not know it, the Baron has risen, and he kills the previous owner of the castle, hence the auction, hence the showing up of Alfred Becker.

He kills a few more people, and our heroes try to find a way to lift the curse. Etc. The plot follows a pretty standard path from there.

Cotton feels out of place here, like he’s not quite sure what he’s doing in this film. He was in his late 60s at the time, making a string of low-budget horror movies, which I can only assume was a low point in his career. Sommer seems to be the only one having any real fun, and she’s a delight.

What makes it worth watching is the setting and Bava’s usual fantastic use of color, light, and shadow. Shot on the grounds of a real castle, he makes great use of the gothic setting, complete with a tower, torture chamber, and lots of enormous chambers that give the director plenty of interesting angles to shoot from.

It is far from Bava’s best work, but even average films from him are well worth watching.

Bring Out the Perverts: The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963)

the girl who knew too much poster

The general consensus is that Mario Bava’s 1963 film The Girl Who Knew Too Much (also known as The Evil Eye) was the very first Giallo. This is strange because it doesn’t actually seem like a Giallo at all.

It was filmed in black and white and Gialli is known for its bold use of color. The killer is neither black-masked nor black-gloved. There is little to no gore and the killer’s motivations don’t stem from some psycho-sexual need. The camera does linger on the main actress’s bikini-clad body in one scene. In another, she’s wearing a short nighty and the photograph of an old man (played by Bava himself) ogles her. But it has none of the sleaze later Gilli would contain.

It is a murder mystery and Bava does deploy some imaginative camera setups and interesting visuals, but it seems more like an inventive thriller than anything you’d dub a Giallo.

Truth be told I don’t know where that idea that it is the first Giallo comes from. Wikipedia says it’s true so maybe it is, but most of the other online articles I’ve read both note that it is the first Giallo and then in the same breath note that it doesn’t really feel like one. So who knows.

To make all this even more strange is the fact that Bava directed Blood and Black Lace just one year later and it has all the hallmarks of a Giallo.

Whether or not The Girl Who Knew Too Much deserves that Giallo recognition or not it is a fine film and deserves to be seen.

Letícia Román stars as Nora, an American tourist visiting her aunt in Rome. The aunt is very sick and dies that first night. When Nora leaves to find help she is immediately attacked by a robber. When she awakes she sees a woman run out of a house with a knife sticking out of her back. A man approaches the corpse and grabs the knife. She then faints. When she wakes up the street is clean and no one will believe her story.

Later she’ll read some old newspaper clippings about a woman who was murdered in the exact spot ten years prior. And then there were other murders, meaning a serial killer might be on the loose.

She’s aided by Dr. Marcello Bassi (John Saxon) who both believes her story and rather fancies her. They will investigate. I suppose that is another way in which this film meets the Giallo standard – non-police investigating the crime.

They’ll run into lots of interesting people and there will be a few more corpses. It is all pretty standard murder mystery stuff. But Bava infuses it with some remarkable images. It doesn’t hurt that it is set in Rome and Bava apparently had free reign of many of its incredible landmarks. Norah winds up staying in a house located right on the Spanish Steps and the film makes great use of that location.

I don’t know that I would really consider it a Giallo but it is an interesting starting point for the genre, call it proto-Giallo. Or don’t, but I recommend it anyway because it is well worth watching whatever genre you want to put it in.

Bring Out the Perverts: Blood and Black Lace (1964)

poster

Mario Bava’s 1963 film The Girl Who Knew Too Much is generally considered the first Giallo ever made. While it does contain many of the hallmarks of that genre, it is missing one important ingredient: color. It was filmed totally in black and white.

As if correcting his own mistake Bava’s next turn into the genre would be absolutely exploding with color. Blood and Black Lace is one of the most colorful films I’ve ever seen. The genre forevermore would make great use of bold color schemes.

Bava was an artist and cinematographer before he became a director and it certainly shows with this film. Every scene is a painting. Every shot is beautiful. Even the violent ones.

He constantly uses different colored spotlights (red, blue, green, etc.) and will shine them on a specific object in his scene so that in any given shot, multiple things will shine bright in specific colors. One set is filled with mannequins, all of which have their own colored lights, and billowing curtains, again with different colored lights shining on them. It gives the entire thing this beautiful, yet eerie look.

His use of shadow and light is entrancing. Everything truly is astonishing-looking.

It is the story that lets me down. A black-gloved, masked killer is murdering beautiful women at a modeling agency. A police detective tries to solve the case. Everyone is a suspect. Everyone has an opinion on who the real killer is. A secret diary, red herrings galore, and all sorts of backstabbings and skeletons are in the closet. That sounds good, but something about its execution just doesn’t do it for me.

I think the lack of a real protagonist, or at least someone to root for causes my interest to lag. We wander from character to character, learning their dark secrets and thus their potential to be the murderer without ever really caring for them.

But Giallo has never been a genre that was all that concerned with telling a good story. It is about style, and Blood and Black Lace has that in spades.

What’s amazing is how this film, the second-ever Giallo, has pretty much every hallmark of the genre. This is the gold standard by which every other Gialli came into existence.

The killer has a black trenchcoat, a black hat, and black gloves. Here he wears a faceless mask that obscures everything about him, even his gender. He prefers blades over guns. The motives are psychosexual (presumably), and the victims are beautiful women. The camera is all gaze, objectifying the women as they become victims. Implicating us as it thrills us. And as I say it has style for days.

If you are interested in Giallo this is where you begin.

I previously wrote a review of Blood and Black Lace for Cinema Sentries, you can read it here.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Whip and the Body (1963)

the whip and the body

At an isolated castle in the 19th Century, on some isolated European coast, Kurt (Christopher Lee), the prodigal son returns. There is no fatted calf for this son though, as his father (Gustavo De Nardo) is unwilling to forgive his many trespasses. The most treacherous of which was seducing the maid’s daughter and then leaving her, causing her to commit suicide in his wake.

The maid, Giorgia (Harriet Medin) has vowed her revenge a hundred times over, and there is no lost blood between him and his younger brother Cristiano (Tony Kendall). Thus when Kurt turns up murdered, there are plenty of suspects.

Nevenka (Daliah Lavi) who had been engaged to Kurt before the whole maid’s daughter incident occurred, and is now married to Cristiano, begins seeing visions of Kurt whenever she turns. When more bodies start to drop the rest of the family begins to wonder if he hasn’t returned from the grave to seek his revenge.

Mario Bava was one of the great Italian horror directors. He was a pioneer of gothic horror and his film Blood and Black Lace (1964) is often credited as the first Giallo film ever made. Bava began his career in special effects, working his way into cinematography before finally directing. His films are noted for their visual beauty and style. When not shooting in stark black and white he made bold use of color.

The Whip and the Body makes great use of its gothic setting and tropes. The design of the castle in which most of the film takes place is as haunting as it is beautiful. The film is simply bathed in purples. It makes use of greens and reds, but bold purple permeates every shot.

As the title implies the sex gets a bit kinky, surprisingly so for a film made in 1963. Nevenka, who in most aspects of her life has to be subservient to the men in her life, takes control of her own sexuality. She hands Kurt a whip more than once and writhes in passion as he uses it on her. She married Christiano, because that’s what she was suppossed to do, but it is Kurt she truly loves. It is Kurt she continues to long for and envision even after his death (Or did he fake that? Or has his ghost returned from the dead? The film has fun toying with those ideas).

I’m making it sound more exciting than it is. The Whip and the Body is more of a gothic romance/drama than a horror. There is a lot of talking and passionate declarations. Too much for my taste, if I’m being honest. But it is so beautiful to look at, I never much minded.

Planet of the Vampires (1965)

planet of the vampires bluray

Mario Bava is one of the all-time great horror directors. He basically created the Giallo subgenre and was a master visualist. He also directed lots of other genres, including sword and sandals movies and science fiction. Planet of the Vampires is a bit of a genre blend including both sci-fi and horror. Kino Lorber recently released a nice copy of it on Blu-ray and I wrote a review which you can read here.