For those of you playing Horror Month bingo at home, mark “I’m not really a horror expert” off on your cards. That’s “I’m not really a horror expert.” I’ll be honest—this year, we’re covering a lot of gimmes, many of whom I’m familiar with from their work outside horror. With Mario Bava, you don’t really have an opportunity to know his work outside horror, because first, you need to find work outside horror. He didn’t really do any. As it happens, I’ve seen at least a couple of his movies—though with puppets in the corner.
Actually, with a director like Bava, it’s hard for me to be sure how many of his movies I’ve seen even that way. Diabolik, okay; that’s the final episode of MST3K, in its initial run. But La Ragazza che Sapeva Troppo was released in English as both its literal translation, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, and also The Evil Eye. La Maschera del Demonio is known in most of the English-speaking word as The Mask of Satan—literal enough—but in the US as the not-at-all-literal Black Sunday. Which, I’ll be honest, I can’t remember if I’ve seen or not.
Italian horror can be a lot, even by horror standards. Scantily clad women. Plots that do not reliably make sense. The brightest of blood. And so forth. I’ve seen some that followed something of an internal logic and some that went places you couldn’t have predicted from the outset and everything in between, even though as established I haven’t seen a ton of Italian horror. Honestly the work of his with which I’m most familiar isn’t even on his IMDb page, just his Wikipedia page, because he did special effects on Hercules and Hercules Unchained.
How cheap it was to film in Italy is exemplified by one of Bava’s few non-Italian-language movies. Namely, Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bomb. Which I’m pretty sure I’ve seen. Mike Nelson as Steve Reeves explains in the host segments of Hercules Unchained that he was just getting drunk on Italian wine at about twelve cents a bottle while money people went on, and that’s pretty much what happened for a lot of people. Which did mean that Mario Bava was getting work from those same money people, presumably one of many Italians to do so.
Bava was actually part of an Italian show business dynasty. So, you know, good for him. I’ve said before that I don’t really mind nepotism provided you get talent out of it, and people with more interest in this sort of film than I have all definitely agreed that Bava’s a good example of the sort. Okay, so you couldn’t prove it by me—but given the entire budget of those Hercules movies was clearly about a buck nintety-five, you know, Bava did some pretty good work there, at least. Even if I am not educated enough to have an opinion on his directing.
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