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.
Last weekend I took my girlfriend down to our local drive-in theatre, the good ol' Puget Park Drive-in, to catch a delightfully moody double feature of sci fi scares. Die, Monster, Die and Planet of the Vampires are perfect drive-in fodder. Both films offer atmospheric adventures accentuated with dread and tension, presented in vivid color that adds to the fear created in each scene. We were surprised by how much we enjoyed both of these flicks and I hope I can persuade you to catch them when they come to your town.
The Puget Park Drive-in. It doesn't look like much, but it's brought plenty of thrills over the last few years.
Die Monster Die!
The first movie on our double bill was Die Monster Die! This flick, released by our good friends at American International Pictures, is apparently a loose adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story "The Color Out of Space" and co- stars a cadaverous Boris Karloff along with Nick Adams and Suzan Farmer in a thoroughly entertaining, moody tale that has some powerful moments influenced by the horror master of Arkham, Massachusetts.
When American Stephen Reinhart (Adams) travels to Arkham, England to visit his fiancée Susan Witley at her family's strange mansion, he clearly has no idea the kind of bizarre adventure he will find there. From the moment Reinhart leaves the train, he meets surprising resistance to his getting to the Witley home. A taxi driver refuses to take his fare, a bike shop owner refuses to rent him a bike, and Reinhart is snubbed by villagers for even suggesting he wants to travel to visit his fiancée's family. The countryside around Arkham is scorched with a deep crater, and it's pretty clear the crater has left scars in the villagers' minds along with their town. Is the crater related to the fear of the pariah Witley family? As we'll soon discover, there is ample reason for the villagers' fears.
Stephen marches to the Whitley mansion on foot. When the intrepid American finally arrives at the house, he begins to understand why the villagers think him crazy for wanting to spend time there. The once-stately home has fallen into a state of deep disrepair. Its gate is rusted, plants grow wild in the yard, and the whole place seems to need a new coat of paint. This slow unfolding of deepening confusion transitions the viewer into a sense of dread about what Stephen will find at the house, and makes the viewer concerned about the people living there.
Meandering quietly into the house, Reinhart nearly stumbles over the wheelchair-bound patriarch Nahum Witley (Karloff), who tries desperately to frighten our American hero away. Karloff is wonderful here, with a deep sense of gravitas, but he also carries some real sadness, as his advanced age and significant medical problems are clearly on display. Nahum keeps his reasons vague, but his words make it clear that there are true horrors there, including dread creatures that imperil everyone. Just as it seems Nahum is ready to literally push Stephen out of his house, his lovely daughter intervenes. Susan Witley (Farmer) is the opposite of her father: welcoming, kind and optimistic.
It's obvious from the first moment we meet Susan that she and Stephen will soon find themselves in opposition to Nahum. Less obvious is the looming presence of Susan's mother Letitia (Freda Jackson), a woman seemingly at death's door who speaks to Stephen in foreboding murmurs about meteors and monsters, bewildering descriptions of seemingly indescribable objects and events that leave our hero deeply confused. Letitia's body also appears to be rotting away, and perhaps Stephen wonders if her mind is rotting as well. To show her physical rot, we get a few weird glimpses of Letitia's body, including a hand that seems to lose its flesh the longer we watch it.
Good ol' Boris Karloff, trying to scare Stephen away from his house. Run away, Stephen!
The movie cuts from Letitia to Nahum and his trusty aide Merwyn (Terence De Marney) as they wander into the basement of the mansion — and it is in this scene that the horror starts to become clear. Amidst smart set decorations of distended faces and glowing neon colors, it's clear that Nahum and Merwyn have a deep and dreadful secret, tied to the strange glowing thing locked in that basement, the thing that alternately scares and interests Nahum.
From there, the movie begins to really take off into its own creepy territory, a smart mix of Lovecraft with the darkest work of Edgar Allan Poe along with a few AIP stylistic flares. If you've seen the trailer for Die Monster Die!, you've seen the wonderfully strange monster below which indeed seems to come right from the typewriter of the great Mr. Lovecraft.
This definitely looks like something out of Lovecraft
I was legitimately creeped out by that otherworldly monstrosity and the eerie keening noise it made. As the secrets of Nahum's home become more and more evident, this monster proves to be just one of the many horrors living there. We encounter living plants, see a shockingly dark end to Letitia's life and eventually get another chance to see the great Mr. Karloff made up to be a frightening killer. By the time we witness a strongly Poe-influenced ending to the film, viewers have witnessed some real strangeness on screen.
My girlfriend and I both really enjoyed this flick. Karloff is at his classic best here, providing his character with real depth and pathos. Despite his obvious illnesses, Karloff frankly thoroughly out-acts his counterparts on the screen. Adams and Farmer are an attractive couple, but they are two-dimensional. We learn little or nothing about either one of them, and Stephen mostly exists in this film as a plot device rather than a real character. Similarly, Susan was a character with great potential as a woman with one foot in the supernatural world and the other in our human world, but she is never given much to do beyond being Stephen's sidekick.
Karloff showing his inner glow
I also would have loved to see more about the villagers' fears, and explore the meteor's impact more, but all of my complaints about depth are kind of moot here. As the front half of a double-bill, Die Monster Die! had to be about an hour and fifteen minutes long. And as a movie of that length, it triumphs. The photography is excellent, Karloff is loads of fun, and the monsters are spooky.
Planet of the Vampires
After grabbing some popcorn and jujubes, we got back in the front seat of my Mustang for the second film of the evening. Planet of the Vampires was the perfect film companion to Die Monster Die. Both movies are spooky, atmospheric tales with lovely colors and intriguing acting.
Nothing on this poster matches the movie but I didn't mind!
In fact, most everything I enjoyed about Die Monster Die! is done even better in Planet of the Vampires. The great Italian director Mario Bava (maybe best known in the US for his brilliant and terrifying debut film Black Sunday) journeys into space to deliver one of the most deeply upsetting movies I've seen in a while.
Two ships, the Argos and the Galliot, are exploring deep space together. When the rockets receive a distress signal from a nearby planet, they must land on that planet to investigate. On the way down to the planet, the ships' crews begin to go crazy, as if possessed by an alien force, and try to kill each other. The captain of the Argos, Captain Markary (Barry Sullivan), keeps his wits about himself and is able to force sanity and stop the fighting on his ship. The other ship… well, we shall soon see their fate.
The Argos lands on a strange planet. Dig that colorful sky!
Both ships land on the surface of the planet, and what a strange surface it is. Eternally shrouded in fog, with glowing rocks and mysterious sounds, the planet seems wrapped in deep mystery, and as the crew investigates the planet and the fate of the Galliot, terrible horrors begin to bedevil both crews in their ships and on the planet itself. We soon discover the bodies of the Galliot's crew, shredded and bloodied. But despite their seemingly life threatening damage, the bodies rise again and begin walking around. The bodies even go outside the spaceship and spread their terror to both crews.
Bava does a brilliant job with many elements of this movie, elements which add smartly to the viewer's deep feeling of disquiet. The astronauts' uniforms are beautiful. The cast wears well-fitting leather jumpsuits with high collars that seem practical but also strange. The cockpits of the ships are surprisingly spacious, with a lot of open space on them, which gives a strange sense of alienness to anyone used to cramped rocket capsules. The film is also deeply, eerily quiet, with just a few electronic noises to accentuate the horror. The deep silence seems to accentuate the tension, making viewers feel a deep sense of unease.
I think these uniforms are about the most beautiful in sci fi.
There's one sequence in which Bava's artistry really shines. In one intriguing set-piece, Captain Markary and his right-hand assistant Sanya (Norma Bengell) discover an enormous spacecraft which appears to have been trapped on the planet for seemingly thousands of years. Bava does brilliant work with perspective in these scenes, emphasizing the miniscule size of the humans in the midst of this bizarre alien craft. And as befits a master of horror films, Bava presents the craft as looking incredibly strange and dislocating for both the viewers and the crew. It's old and looks decayed, with paint peeling and nature taking over the edges of the ship. Their exploration leads to a fascinating deathtrap unlike any I've seen before in film. It also makes the viewer wonder, profoundly, that if creatures this large can be killed by the residents of this planet, what chance do humans have?
The giant alien on the strange abandoned ship
The creatures on this planet aren't vampires in our usual sense of the word (perhaps they're energy vampires or body possessors or something else slightly ineffable). But that lack of definition makes the creatures more frightening. These vampires are a constant, eerie threat that both viewers and crew can't quite understand. We all know a cross and stake will kill Dracula, but we have no idea how to kill these vampires. That uncertainty makes the film more frightening. There seems to be no easy way out, and the ending helps reinforce that concept.
In fact, Bava and his crew also do something delightful in this movie: they deliver a twist ending, then another twist, and then yet another twist. Each of the twists feel earned because they are well foreshadowed and yet completely surprising. I want you to be surprised, too, so I won't ruin the fun. I will say this, though. For my money the best twists are the ones that leave the viewers giggling, and my girlfriend and I laughed our heads off at the twists.
The alien planet looks spookier because of all the fog
It seems the budget for this movie was incredibly small (a piece in last month's Famous Monsters reports it cost roughly $200,000 in American dollars to film this movie in Italy). It's intriguing how director Bava worked with his international cast. There are actors from Brazil, Italy, the US and Spain, and each spoke their native languages on set. Bava's team then dubbed their lines in the local language for prints distributed around the world. Brazilians heard Portuguese, Spaniards hear the movie in Spanish and Americans in English. Because everyone spoke a different language on set, the movie has an often dreamlike feel, as if the actors are speaking around each other. That feel helps give this film its unique and wonderful energy.
And though Bava didn't spend a lot on the sets or ships, he gets real value for his lira. Maybe it's the eternal fog that makes the planet surface so compelling, or maybe the colored lights, but the planet of the vampires looked way better than it should have. I felt pulled into the mystery of this movie because of its low budget. Now I want to see more Bava films!
Driving Home
On our way to her home from the drive-in, my girlfriend and I couldn't stop laughing about all the fun we had watching these movies. There's a certain thrill to finding out a movie is way better than you expect it to be. In fact, we had that excitement with both movies last weekend and I think you will, too.
I don't care how popular they are. I love my Mustang!
Hop in your Chev, Plymouth or Pontiac and catch these flicks at your local drive-in while you still can.
I’ll be the first to admit that my tastes do not run toward mysteries. I much prefer modern science fiction with its hopefulness and cautious approach to new realms of science. Horror, either written or filmed, has likewise fascinated me. But unlike science fiction's surety that logic can always triumph, horror focuses on the deep human fear of things unknown and mysterious.
Thrillers are a territory that I'm developing a growing appreciation for due to their usually modern setting with heavy horror elements. As such, when I heard about the new Mario Bava film "Blood and Black Lace" I thought I would give it a look. Not being one to pay much heed to what magazine or newspaper critics have to say about horror films, I thought I would go ahead and check it out. Now having seen it, I wonder if I should have taken the critics more seriously.
"Blood and Black Lace"
The film opens upon the glamorous life of the people working within a successful avant garde Italian fashion house. In short order one of the models is strangled by a faceless masked killer. Upon her death one of her coworkers discovers the victim's diary. In short order the killer returns to take out one model after another as the diary switches hands and the knowledge held within it comes to light.
Despite leading charmed lives, each victim of the killer is revealed to have been involved in one way or another with drug addictions, infidelity, scandal and extortion. All of which ties back to the records within the diary. Ultimately the identity of the killer is revealed upon completion of their grisly work. But it soon becomes apparent that in order to cover their tracks the killer's work is not done yet. At the end the final murder proves to be their undoing when the most jealously guarded manipulation comes to light.
Initial Thoughts
"Blood and Black Lace" is a windy road of secrets and twisted loyalties. The mystery element of the plot is very entertaining to watch as it unfolds, but unfortunately there are a few things that made the film nearly impossible to finish. Put simply, the acting is so good and cinematography so dramatic that it makes the violence very disturbing to take in.
The brutal beatings rained down on the female victims are all uncomfortably real looking (with the exception of one suffocation death that is acted and shot in a way that makes the victim’s writhing weirdly sexual). One expects there to be struggling as the masked killer corners each of the models and proceeds to dispatch them in different ways, but the camera time given to each death is obscene.
The sexualization of each victim before and after their death is likewise unsettling. Clothing is ripped open to expose undergarments, and bodies are dragged away with lingering looks at long legs and breasts. Worst of all is the suspenseful buildup in several deathblows. During the murders of house models Nicole and Peggy the camera zooms in on the slow approach of the murder instrument before the frightened victim is killed.
It's effective, but even I, horror film connoisseur that I am, thought that this was a bit much. It's frightening, but that kind of violence taken with so much anticipation and pleasure by the killer slides well into the realm of just being gross.
Why? Why is any of this necessary artistically or plot-wise? Extremely violent eroticism with dramatic execution was my conclusion. Is this something new in horror? Well, not really. It's new to see Italian filmmakers taking a crack at the thriller film category, but Germany has long been producing adaptations of mysteries and pulp thrillers.
The works of Edgar Wallace, Agatha Christie, and Erle Stanley Gardner all contain a potent mix of scandal, sex, drugs and murder. Understandably, this scintillating content could very easily be adapted to film. Although virtually unknown in the U.S, the studio Rialto Film has been churning out film adaptations of Edgar Wallace's works for years now.
"Blood and Black Lace" is no mere sleazy mystery/thriller story, however. Mario Bava, perhaps looking to outdo himself following "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" (1963), really stepped up the psychologically twisted elements in this film. With each new movie of his, the thrill of seeing beautiful guilty women "pay" for their misdeeds with a kind of vigilante justice seems to be a common element. It’s an element that, I hope, has a limited appeal.
The Mario Bava Method
What did Mario Bava hope to achieve in this film? The deep dive Bava takes into the psychological camera work is admittedly astounding. His experience as a cinematographer is undeniable. The panoramas of beautiful architecture and the creative closeups and camera angles show far more suspense than mere dialogue could ever achieve. The vibrant neon lighting and clever placement of artwork and statues helps the audience to really feel the fear and anxiety of the characters.
Bava has shown a distinct flair as a writer, director and cinematographer who can bring new life to a project that either due to budget or well-trodden story, could be mired in mediocrity. In his directorial debut "Black Sunday" (1960), his ability to bring together his experience as a cinematographer and writer resulted in a unique gothic vampire story. Despite its critical success, the special effect and violence of the film actually got it banned in several countries. Clearly Bava's controversial love affair with gore is not anything new.
I hesitate to describe "Blood and Black Lace" as a revolutionary addition to the horror genre because the violence that advances it in the genre unfortunately also works against it. Thankfully "Blood and Black Lace" has more than that to offer as an example of modern horror film. Its modern setting, contemporary high fashion aesthetic, and refreshingly riveting musical score all speak to progress away from the stale hallmarks of recent horror films. It is a stark departure from the horror themes which have dominated theaters in the last half century.
In Conclusion
"Blood and Black Lace" demonstrates an advanced approach to camera work and lighting that push it beyond the flat panoramas and muted colors of most other horror films that have made their way to American theaters. This movie is certainly not your grandparent's book-to-film adaptation of a Victorian melodrama. As a sensory experience Mario Bava's "Blood and Black Lace" is exceptional. It grips its audience and pulls them along until the very end. The escalation of Bava's focus of violence against women is deeply troubling though. Is it cheap thrills or thoughtful social commentary that spur someone like Bava on? Only continued analysis of Bava's future films will tell.
We had so much success with our first episode of The Journey Show (you can watch the kinescope rerun; check local listings for details) that we're going to have another one on April 11 at 1PM PDT with The Young Traveler as the special musical guest. As the kids say, be there or be square!
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