As a young pup in training to be a fully-fledged gorehound my interest and consumption of Italian horror films was a bit close minded. Sure I knew the name Mario Bava and appreciated the fact that he was considered the granddaddy of the genre but he had died whilst I was just 12 and it was the excesses of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci who were the masters as far as I was concerned. They were the ones that delivered the goods even if their available films that one could legally see had been truncated somewhat at the behest of our guardians of classification, in our best interest of course. Besides Mario Bava was never going to have that shock value thought someone who had never probably heard of Shock itself at the time or realised that if it were not for his Bay Of Blood aka Twitch Of The Death Nerve films like Friday The 13th, currently the best thing since bread sliced with a chainsaw, simply would not have existed.
Well no doubt I was too young to appreciate the auteur and that is just as well as back then no doubt a film like ‘Baron Blood which was made in 1972 would have bored me and the superior Lisa And The Devil (1972) would have confused the bejesus out me. Now of course I can fully appreciate these (dare I say) works of art for what they are.
The story features a distant relative of the nefarious Baron Blood (think along the lines of Elizabeth Bathory, Gilles De Rais) Peter (Antonio Cantafora) visiting his ancestral home which is a big old fairy-tale castle in Vienna to research his familial ties. There he meets Eva (played by popular Eurobabe Elke Sommer) who is overseeing restoration of the castle as it is turned into a hotel. As Eva shows Peter around the castle and down to its bowels attention is taken away from her miniskirt to the fantastic attention to detail of the authentic set. A massive staircase sweeps down to a huge array of things to focus on from medieval torture instruments, weapons and armour and the ornate castle itself. The attention to detail and cinematography are all part of the visual flair that makes Bava’s films so captivating.
We discover that a witch Elizabeth Holle was burned at the stake by the Baron and had cursed him to suffer torture 100 times greater than he had inflicted upon his victims. His body was never found but there is a parchment that shows how to resurrect him. Our two sleuthing investigators taking on the atypical giallo role decide to cleverly go and do just that at midnight! As they go back the fantastic shadowy shots in cold blue and the gothic architecture of the castle leave you practically gasping and for a second you even forget just how bloody stupid our bumbling duo are. Of corpse the brown stuff is bound to hit the fast spinning thing as something stirs from the outside tombs and the parchment with instructions on how to send back to the grave are destroyed in true Evil Dead style in a conveniently burning fire. Lurid blood seeps under the door and the cast expands merely placed for dispatch in true AA Certificate glory. Well it was 1972 and another unfortunate thing about this pre-feminist movie is just how bloody annoying Elke is with her over exaggerated blubbering and wailing leaving the ‘superior’ man to be the strong silent one (thank goodness times have changed).
A somewhat ludicrous sense of play pervades the Gothic pot-boiler atmosphere and it owes a lot to the old Hunchback and Rue Morgue type murder films of yesteryear, that is until you are jolted back to the present (of the time) by the dire product placement of a bloody coke machine! All is forgiven somewhat as after all there is an Iron Maiden in the basement. The castle is auctioned off as the hotel developer is one of the victims and a Mr Becker in a wheelchair played by veteran actor Joseph Cotton is the winner. The plot thickens and as Eva states “who knows what will happen next” which of course gives me the perfect opportunity to say in grimly fiendish voice, “that much I will not share with you,” as I open another can and settle down for the second half of the film.
So the plot is a bit on the throwaway side and it is not that unique either and to be honest this is far from Bava’s greatest film. Having said that, he does do a sterling job introducing different ideas to the narrative and keeps it from being one dimensional. We have the obvious supernatural element, we have a bit of stalk and slash with giallo conventions even if we do not have to guess the murderer. Magic and witchcraft are brought into play and some psychedelic nuances very much in the spirit of the age and of course if you look deeper there are fairy story allegories to be found too.
It is the attention to detail that makes this so worth watching. The lighting shots as the camera pursues its prey down small labyrinth sleepy streets and alleys, ducking into door-ways in fog shrouded glory are fantastic and there is a sense of magic and brilliant atmosphere to these scenes that we would go on to see in great films like Suspiria from Dario Argento who obviously studiously viewed Bava’s work and techniques. In fact Bava is acknowledged for his involvement in Argento’s follow up Inferno (1980)
Naturally Arrow have again surpassed themselves. I upgraded my Redemption video of this not that long ago to an Australian DVD on Control Productions but this way trumps this and US Anchor Bay and Image Entertainment versions. There are no less than three versions of the movie to watch here. The original has a score done by Stelvio Cipriani which is very much in style with the Euro horror films of the time but the American market got it re-scored and re-edited in a far creepier fashion by Les Baxter so you can watch either version here along with Bava’s original version ‘Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga’ with Italian audio.
There are various extras including an introduction by Alan Jones which tells us that Bava was afraid of travelling and locating to Vienna was one of the few times he left Italy. I enjoyed the 11 minute chat from Ruggero Deodato who although renowned for rougher cannibal fare was around through the time of the golden age of Italian horror and worked with many directors of the era although never Bava himself. There are many interesting anecdotes from him about meeting Mario when he was playing tennis with son Lamberto and it is a bit of an Italian cinema geeks dream hearing him talk about Argento, Fulci, Freda, and Margheriti. Add to this rare photos of Bava at work, trailers, audio commentary and some of the most lurid artwork yet on an Arrow release and you have a great all round package.
This was meant to be released with Bava’s seminal work ‘Black Sabbath’ but the company are doing a bit more work on the restoration to get it just right so this will be out May 13th and should be reviewed here when available. I do have a real soft spot for Lisa And The Devil too which really has Elke Sommer at her best as well as Telly Savalas (still sucking them lollipops) as that is also out on Arrow it is well worth looking at. There are plenty of other great films by Mario Bava to discover and another couple well worth tracking down are Barbara Steele’s excellent witch burning curse film The Mask Of Satan aka Black Sunday 1960 (available on Arrow Blu Ray) and the excellent long lost violent heist drama Rabid Dogs / Kidnapped 1974 (not yet available in UK.)
Pete Woods
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