by Jason Sacks

Danger: Diabolik is the epitome of a comic book movie: it has a wild, often surreal plot. It features outlandish lead characters who could never exist in real life. It includes absurd twists and turns. It has a surreal visual style.

And yeah, Danger: Diabolik is an absolutely wild groovy gas of a film.

It seems appropriate for this to feel like a comic book movie because Danger: Diabolik is adapted from an Italian comic strip which has been running since 1962. One of my favorite comics zines, the Rocket's Blast Comicollector, recently ran an article that talks about how Diabolik is massively popular for its wild spy hijinks, its beautiful lead characters, and for its convenient small size that makes it easy to carry on a train or bus.

Diabolik was created by a woman named Angela Guissani, a former fashion model turned founder and editor at the Astorina publishing house. Astorina started with board and card games, but Guissani hit the jackpot when she invented an idea for a magazine that commuters to Milan could read on their way to work. With insipration from the French character Fantômas, Angela invented a masked criminal who always seemed to escape the law, an anti-hero who could be embraced by the average middle class reader.

And so Diabolik was born, chased by Inspector Ginko, monthly. Within seven issues, the comic was a smash hit as readers fell in love with the masked rogue who could do almost anything, wearing his black suit or special masks as he robbed from the rich, loved his beautiful girlfriends, and traveled between his own secret lairs. He and his women also dressed in gorgeous, of-the-moment fashion, which seemed to sparkle off the page.

All of which makes it a natural to adapt Danger Diabolik to the big screen, especially under the direction of Mario Bava, a man who loves to use color and fashion to tell a story.

And what a wild, wonderful, groovy story this is.

Diabolik the film is true to its comic book roots. Diabolik himself, played with gusto by John Philip Law, is a lover and a fighter. He's a man who clearly can't do anything halfway: during the film we watch him commit not one, not two, but three different heists–plus he blows up a tax building. After one of the heists we watch him make love to his partner Eva Kant, played by the glorious Marisa Mell, on a bed covered with $20 bills, and it's hard to tell if their orgasmic ecstacy is due to Diabolik's superhuman lovemaking or because the couple's lust for cash is satiated at last.

But any satiation only lasts until the next opportunity comes their way, and Diabolik soon is on the trail of the most valuable emerald necklace in the world, stored high in a tower. This set of scenes allows us to watch Diabolik scale high towers, smartly elude guards with diversions and sleight-of-hand, and bring home the jewels to a loving girlfriend.

Even that isn't enough, and in the film's wild and wonderful ending set piece, Diabolik goes from underwater scuba craft to train to steal a giant gold ingot worth more than many small countries which he can use for his own reasons which might involve more sexual relations or might involve building even more elaborate structures for him to live in.

Of course Diabolik is a zillionaire, so that means he has all kinds of gadgets even James Bond would envy – Ferraris and Maseratis of course, the aforementioned scuba craft, fog jets and knockout pills, white action suits and black action suits, groovy showers and an amazing Batcave-like place and wow really doesn't this all sound a little like a world even Bond's nemesis Blofeld would envy?

Honestly, it's all a bit over-the-top at times, like drinking three Italian droppio shots all at once. Diabolik is hyperkinetic, absurdly colorful, ridiculously dynamic and wonderfully silly. Of course it is; with famed British comedian Terry-Thomas as one of the Diabolik's nemesis, it's no suprise this film sometimes veers close to Batman style camp, and even goes over it.

Director Mario Bava does his best to keep this movie on some kind of even ground. He's one of the finest action/horror directors working right now in Italy. I had high praise for Bava's'65 flick Planet of the Vampires, which was spookier and weirder than it had any right to be, and Danger: Diabolik is sillier and wackier than it has any right to be.

The film seems saturated with primary colors, so saturated at times that it almost seems to glow from the brilliant color pallette. The sets, too, seem selected not for their utiliarian use but for their garish weirdness. The chairs and tables in this movie look great, and that's all we need as viewers to suspend our disbelief and glory in the near neon glow of Bava's wild creation.

I should mention that the music in this film is composed by the great Ennio Morricone, whose unprecedented score for 1967's grand epic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was one of the greatest media events of last year. His work here doesn't match those unbelievable heights, but it's charming how, for instance, we get a little guitar riff every time Diabolik's car appears on screen, or how occassionally the soundtrack would riff on 1960s surf music.

The spy genre seems a little played out in 1968, with Sean Connery walking away from the Bond role after You Only Live Twice, the Matt Helm movies playing as NBC network movies, and TV shows Man from UNCLE and I Spy soon to be off the air. But if Danger: Diabolik is one of the last of a dying genre, spy films are going out with a kiss kiss bang bang.

3.5 stars

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