In all honesty, I know just about nothing about Mario Bava’s life. At least, not the way that I know about Dario Argento, or that I’ve read about Lucio Fulci. A quick glance at Wikipedia’s first paragraph tells me that he was literally too shy and self-deprecating to take jobs that would have advanced his career multiple times. He had opportunities to work in Hollywood and turned them down because he was afraid of failure.
Who can’t relate to that?
The thing is that he wasn’t a failure. He was a great filmmaker. So good, in fact, that his influence can be found in the works of Argento and Fulci. It doesn’t stop there - just about every director that ever touched the horror genre in some capacity has pulled from Bava’s playbook.
Argento and Fulci ran with it, but Bava actually kicked off the giallo trend. His movies are bold and tend to have a touch of elegance that somehow makes the grotesque violence seem even more shocking - like a slap to the face with a silk-gloved hand.
So, where should you start?
The Girl Who Knew Too Much a.k.a. The Evil Eye (1963)
You should start at the beginning. This film isn’t the most jarring in Bava’s catalogue, but it’s the first - the one that is widely credited with starting the giallo trend. It’s smart, sleek and easily digested while maintaining a tight suspense.
Nora (Letícia Román) takes a dream trip to Rome with unfortunate pretenses - she’s visiting her sick aunt. It turns out to be the last time, as her aunt dies pretty much as soon as she gets there. As if that wasn’t bad enough, when she’s on her way to the hospital, she gets attacked and passes out. Rotten trip, right? Maybe she can salvage it with her aunt’s hot doctor, Marcello Bassi (John Saxon)! Or…maybe she’ll witness a murder, put up with no one but Bassi believing her, and spend the duration of her vacation caught up in a game of cat-and-mouse with a serial killer.
Known in America as The Evil Eye, this movie is very early 60s in style and aesthetic. If you don’t have patience for black & white films or a protagonist’s inner monologue being made into a voiceover, maybe you should avoid this. But for those of you who love old mysteries and quirky protagonists, definitely dive in. Nora is a smart, funny woman, elevating her past the sex appeal that women were mostly used for in horror at the time. It also shows the gaslighting of women reporting violent crime, although I’m not 100% sure that was Bava’s political intention.
Gore Meter: 1 out of 5, in black & white
Streaming on: Shudder
![Daily Grindhouse | [DOIN' THE NASTIES] A BAY OF BLOOD (1971) - Daily Grindhouse](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!3Ykr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff1d5eebb-8cc0-4107-9194-418f7df6760e_512x288.jpeg "Daily Grindhouse | [DOIN' THE NASTIES] A BAY OF BLOOD (1971) - Daily Grindhouse")
A Bay of Blood (1971)
Yes, this eyeball is the only still I could find from this movie that doesn’t involve blood or at least one nipple. Some films of this era would use the word “blood” in the title to entice viewers in and never actually delivered on the gore, but hoo boy, does this one deliver! It’s a far cry from The Evil Eye, both in style and content, but it’s got a lot of merits in it’s own right - SHLOCK.
A countess is murdered by her husband in a bayside mansion. It would be a perfect crime, if another unknown attacker didn’t murder him next. A real estate agent named Frank (Chris Avram) was behind the murder of the countess and gets more than he bargained for when he attempts to take over the property. It comes with a lot of twists and turns, and a little extra murder!
A Bay of Blood is pretty corny in some ways. It has the plot integrity of a soap opera and the eroticism of a late-night Cinemax program. It’s also fairly misogynistic and women are mostly just objects of sexualization, something Bava didn’t have lot of in his filmography. But it’s a fun gorefest that heavily influenced the slashers of the 80s. Bava wouldn’t live to see it, since he died a mere nine years after this film was made, but it helped change the landscape of horror and still affects what we consume to this day.
Gore Meter: 4 out of 5 (it’s that 70s red paint blood)
Streaming on: Shudder
Blood and Black Lace (1964)
This is definitely my favorite Bava film, and I doubt I’m alone in that. Nicolas Winding Refn has cited it as his biggest influence for The Neon Demon (a movie that I loved in theory but disliked in practice). It’s an absolute banger of 60s style and fashion, made one year after The Girl Who Knew Too Much, but light years ahead in vision and form.
A model named Isabella, living at fashion house Christian Haute Couture, is murdered by a masked assailant late at night while walking home. At first, the other models are ready and willing to cooperate with the police to make sure Isabella’s murder is solved. That is, until they discover that Isabella kept a detailed diary spilling all of their secrets. Turns out that’s what the killer is after as well and one by one, the models are murdered in a mad quest for the diary.
Awash in vivid colors and gorgeous fashion, Blood and Black Lace is a spectacle of elegant macabre. Similarly to A Bay of Blood, the plot is thick with twists and shocks likened to that of a soap opera, but this feels less shtick in execution. That’s probably due to its sophistication in how it handles the sexualization of women, and the fashion world in general. It’s every bit as posh as it is genuinely disturbing. SLIGHT SPOILER, but a scene in which one of the models is murdered in a bathtub has been stylistically ripped in several different subsequent films. It’s a must-watch!
Gore Meter: 3 out of 5 (red paint blood)
Streaming on: Amazon Prime, Tubi
Shock (1977)
Okay, so this one, like some of the Argento films I covered, isn’t giallo in the strictest sense of the term. We’re going to include this under the American definition of giallo which, to review, has just become an umbrella term for Italian horror made between the 60s-80s. This one is brilliant, and even features Daria Nicolodi: a callback to the Argento issue - sheesh, I’m just full of attention checks today!
Dora Baldini (Nicolodi) suffered a severe trauma when her abusive first husband Carlo committed suicide during her pregnancy. Seven years later, she is moving back into their former home with her child Marco and her husband Bruno. At first, things seem to be calm, but Dora’s nerves are shredded when she starts noticing strange behaviors from Marco, and other inexplicable events start happening. Could the home be haunted by the ghost of Carlo?
Yes, I am sneaking pure paranormal into a giallo letter. This film is a gosh-darned masterpiece with several layers of terror. It has some of the best effects of the era. The scene pictured above is especially as awe-inspiring as it is horrifying (don’t look it up, just watch). Nicolodi turns out (yet another) amazing performance as a woman who has never quite recovered from the PTSD of a severely abusive relationship, and the film takes care of the character as much as it can. Your empathy is the ultimate card in Bava’s hand here and he continually plays it, striking against your compassion as well as your fear.
Gore Meter: 3. out of 5
Streaming on: Shudder, Prime, and Tubi! You’ve got a lotta options and no excuses!
Next week, we’re gettin’ gory with Lucio Fulci! Get ready!
A book that has been sitting on my shelf for a long time, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, is getting a movie adaptation. Time to bump it up the queue!
The final film in The Purge franchise, The Forever Purge, has been bumped into the Independence Day release slot. Take that, Tom Cruise!
If you didn’t know, Stephen King actually sells the rights to his short stories (that haven’t had adaptations yet) to film students for $1. This year is the first ever Stephen King Rules Dollar Baby Film Festival, and it will be streaming for free online!
On April 14th, American Psycho turns 21!
Iconic film The Blood on Satan’s Claw turns 50 on April 14th as well!
On April 15th, say happy tenth birthday to UNDERRATED CLASSIC (and no I will not field any comments) Scream 4!
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