The Bava Box, Volume 2 (Part 1)

Released by Anchor Bay/Starz Home Entertainment

Color

Running Time: 718 Minutes

Rating: Unrated

Website: Buy it here.

Mario Bava is a legend in Italian horror. Though directors like Dario Argento get all the glory, it’s Bava who drew the blueprint for the genre through beautiful cinematography, glorious widescreen images, and scripts clearly written with Mad Libs templates. Films like Black Sabbath and Black Sunday rivalled England’s Hammer Studios in gothic excess, and even very early in his career, he somehow made a Hercules film worth watching. You still had to mute the dialogue to keep from giggling like a schoolgirl on a nitrous buzz, but nevertheless, the Hercules In The Haunted World is a sight to see.

 
In Anchor Bay/Starz Entertainment’s second Bava collection, eight films from the later half of the filmmaker’s career see him dabbling in other genres, including spaghetti westerns and the every-popular rape comedy, as well as ramping up the gore in more splatter-oriented horror films. Though not all the films show Bava at his best, they all display different facets of the filmmaker, and serves as an excellent release for fans of Bava, and horror in general. In part one of our review, we take a look at four of the lesser-known films in the set. 

Four Times That Night

1972, Italy

Director: Mario Bava

Writers: Mario Moroni, Charles Ross

Producers: Alfredo Leone, Dick Randall

Starring: Daniela Giordano, Brett Halsey, Dick Randall, Valeria Sabel

Genre: Comedy

Rating: R

Running Time: 83 minutes

Very few people find rape as funny as Mario Bava seems to. Four Times That Night takes the premise of the Akira Kurosawa film Rashomon, in which the story of a woman’s violation is recounted four different ways from different points of view, as the basis for a sex farce. It’s an unusual choice, to say the least, like setting up a restaurant in a funeral home, but Bava commits to it fully, casually throwing in a pair of predatory homosexuals as an added tasteless bonus. As a comedy, it doesn’t quite work, and Bava doesn’t have much to play with visually aside from beautiful lead Daniela Giordano, but there’s a certain charm nonetheless. Nowadays, a film like this could never be made without starring Andrew Dice Clay, and while Bava doesn’t completely pull it off, Four Times That Night remains a unique time capsule from a long-lost age of chauvinism and boorishness.

Rating: 7 on 10

Roy Colt And Winchester Jack

1970, Italy

Director: Mario Bava

Writer: Mario di Nardo

Producers: Luigi Alessi

Starring: Brett Halsey, Charles Southwood, Marilu Tolo, Teodoro Corra

Genre: Western, Comedy

Rating: Not Rated

Running Time: 85 minutes

Another attempt by Bava at light comedy is equally interesting. Here, Bava skewers Spaghetti Westerns, playing the clichés of the genre for laughs. Winchester Jack and Roy Colt, played by Four Times That Night co-star Brett Halsey, are outlaws who bicker like an old married couple on a road trip. After one of their frequent tiffs, Roy leaves Jack and decides to go straight, becoming the mayor of a small town, where a local cripple happens to have a treasure map. Naturally, Colt and Jack are soon racing each other for the buried gold, with a sadistic Russian priest and a Native American hooker mixed in. If the word ‘zany’ could be applied to something other than Nickolodeon cartoons, it might be of use here. Bava’s sense of humour is broad, to be sure, to the point where one pines for the subtlety of the Three Stooges. But there are moments where it works, and Marilu Tolo, as the “Native” who isn’t even particularly dark-skinned for a Mediterranean, turns in a performance worth mentioning. It’s not Bava’s best film, but it’s a fascinating curiosity nonetheless.

Rating: 6 on 10

Five Dolls For An August Moon

1970, Italy

Director: Mario Bava

Writer: Mario di Nardo

Producer: Luigi Alessi

Starring: William Berger, Ira von Furstenberg, Edwige Fenech, Howard Ross

Genre: Thriller, Mystery

Rating: Unrated

Running Time: 88 minutes

The biggest mystery in this murder thriller is what the hell the title has to do with anything. It’s followed closely by the enigma of what exactly is going on, and in a distant third is the identity of the killer who’s been murdering the guests at a rich man’s island retreat. Bava’s riff on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None is ultra-stylish, if your sense of fashion is informed by Austin Powers and old photos of Twiggy. A brilliant scientist goes on vacation with three rich industrialists and their wives, only to find that his companions are interested only in buying a formula he's developed. When he refuses to sell, the house boy ends up dead. I’m not sure how that’s intended to convince whom of what, but it doesn’t seem to bother anyone much, or interfere with their Ice Storm-style wife-swapping. Then, everyone else dies in about five minutes and gets hung up in a meat locker. In fact, it seems that more people get killed than are actually on the island, but that might just be a function of the fact that I couldn’t tell anyone in the cast apart. This film is the weakest in the boxed set, hampered by a needlessly complicated ending and an uninteresting mystery. Still, Bava’s inherent sense of visual style informs every frame, from the beautiful women to the ultra-mod furniture, and it’s still a joy to watch.

Rating: 5 on 10

Baron Blood

1972, Italy

Director: Mario Bava

Writer: Vincent Fotre

Producer: Alfredo Leone

Starring: Joseph Cotton, Elke Sommer, Massimo Girotti, Rada Rassimov

Genre: Horror

Rating: PG

Running Time: 98 minutes

Baron Blood is more familiar ground for Bava, and it shows. A Gothic horror film, there’s fog and castles and probably red velvet in nearly every scene, though the film is set in the present. Antonio Cantafora plays Peter, a young man innocently visiting his ancestral home, a castle in Austria once owned by a bloodthirsty aristocrat. He innocently explores his family’s roots, innocently makes friends with a young woman in charge of the estate, and then innocently brings the Baron back from the dead by invoking dark magicks and invocations from beyond life’s veil. Once the Baron has returned, he’s soon up to his old tricks, which involve a lot of impaling. A hideous zombie for most of the movie, the Baron at one point turns into Joseph Cotton, a usually fine actor who doesn’t have much to do here. In fact, no one in the cast give much of an effort, but that’s mainly because they’re dwarfed by the beautiful cinematography. Scenes like one in which Bava regular Elke Sommers is chased through blue and gold fog are breathtaking, and the set design gives the director a lot of room to manoeuvre his camera. While it’s not the best film in Bava’s oeuvre, it’s still a strong entry, though it’s gone unnoticed for some time. Thankfully, Anchor Bay’s DVD transfer brings the film to life, giving fans a chance to see some of Bava’s forgotten visuals in all their glory.

Baron Blood features a commentary track by Bava historian Tim Lucas, as well radio spots, a trailer, and a text bio.

Rating: 8 on 10

Check back soon for the rest of the films in the Bava Box Volume 2.

Box Set Rating: 9 on 10

alkratina@comicbookbin.com