Lisa and the Devil was shelved after a negative reception at the Cannes Market. A Bay of Blood was a box office disappointment. So Mario Bava decided to do something unlike any of his other films — developing a “poliziotteschi” film. According to Roberto Curti’s Italian Crime Filmography, 1968-1980, poliziotteschi films “generally featured graphic and brutal violence, organized crime, car […]
Starting tomorrow, we’ll be spending a week celebrating one of our favorite directors and his remarkable filmography! Here are the movies we’ve picked to share with you: Hatchet for the Honeymoon: Fashion. Oedipal complexes. Murder. Wedding dresses. And even a meta wink to past Bava films. This one truly has it all. Hercules in the […]
Whenever I get down, I just remember that this world produced Mario Bava and his incredibly rich body of work. Who could go from Hercules movies to spy spoofs to gothic horror, then find time to invent both the giallo and the slasher? The son of Eugenio Bava, who worked as a special effects photographer […]
Also known as Ecology of Crime, Chain Reaction, Carnage, Twitch of the Death Nerve and Blood Bath, Last House on the Left – Part II and New House on the Left, this is the most violent and nihilistic of all of Mario Bava’s films. It started as a story idea so that Bava could work with Laura Betti (Hatchet for the […]
By the late 60’s, a series of commercial failures caused Mario Bava to lose his deal with American International Pictures, but the successes of Twitch of the Death Nerve and Baron Blood turned his fortunes around. Now, he was allowed to make movies without studio interference. Bava was allowed to create Lisa and the Devil as a non-commercial film, but […]
Using some of the same sets from Hercules and the Conquest of Atlantis, Mario Bava (Blood and Black Lace, Black Sunday) created a masterpiece with this film. Featuring Reg Park (who appeared in four Hercules films and was considered a mentor to Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Christopher Lee (The Satanic Rites of Dracula, The Wicker Man, everything good and right […]
Do you need to love, trust and care about the hero of the movie? Mario Bava is here with Hatchet for the Honeymoon in an attempt to craft a story where the hero is the absolute worst person in the entire film. Meet John Harrington. He’s 30, runs a bridal dress factory, lives in a gorgeous villa […]
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this on Thursday, January 5 at 7:30 PM at The Little Theatre in Rochester, NY (35mm print with tickets here) and Thursday, January 12 at Central Cinema in Knoxville, TN. For more information, visit Cinematic Void. If you can’t get there, I recommend the Arrow Video UHD edition. Other than […]
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this American giallo on Wednesday, January 4 and Friday, January 7 at 7:00 PM at the Central Cinema in Knoxville, TN along with I Know Who Killed Me. For more information, visit Cinematic Void. Let’s get this out of the way: Brian De Palma, much like giallo, was heavily influenced […]
Most sequels and prequels rely too much on the movie that they gestate from. Yet Ti West’s Pearl does what seems to be impossible: it takes a movie I really liked, X, and makes me love it. Together, these movies become so much more than the sum of their parts, creating a reflection in the same way […]
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