Mario Bava's films comprise some of the finest work rediscovered during the 1990s British love affair with Euro horror, as spearheaded by magazines like Flesh and Blood and video labels such as Redemption/Salvation. Some of his films had been popular with the British public before, of course - A Bay of Blood aka Twitch of the Death Nerve was even caught up in the mid-1980s video nasty furore. But for this reviewer at least it took the Redemption video releases of Mask of Satan and Lisa and the Devil to have a first chance to appreciate this remarkable filmmaker, years after I first gawped over the images conjured up by titles like Five Dolls for an August Moon (actually one of his worst films) in tatty genre publications.
As with Dario Argento, who has worn the mantle of master of Italian horror more recently, and to whose popularity is owed some of the resurgent interest in Bava, the latter's work was given a critical nod by the British film establishment with a 1998 NFT retrospective encompassing his entire career. And Bava was a prolific filmmaker, with 25 feature films to his credit.
The FAB Argento book, reviewed elsewhere on this site, takes a more critical stance than this title, exploring that director's thematic preoccupations in a series of relatively heavyweight essays that stand separate from the descriptions of individual films. Such a treatment is lacking here, perhaps fittingly - Bava considered himself an entertainer first and foremost, and doesn't revel in the auteur status of a director like Argento. In an interview reproduced here Bava is asked the rather desperate question, isn't there at least one of your films that doesn't look like bullshit to you?
Well, there are certainly a few of them that don't look like bullshit to me. Audacious, stylish, entertaining and massively influential, Bava's best films are among the finest of their genres. And often the first - A Bay of Blood unleashed a slew of teen bodycount movies on the world, creating a template still used today; and Danger Diabolik combined 60s pop art and superhero fantasies to create one of the first successful film realisations of a comic-book world.
But they aren't all great. Some of the films are 'remarkably bad', as acknowledged in the introduction - no fanboy slavering here - and Bava's work bears comparison in this respect to that of writer PK Dick. Both produced a prodigious amount of genre material which included a handful of gems; their work never appeared on the critical radar when it was released, but is now acknowledged as having a merit beyond mere genre fodder; both espoused a kind of aesthetic of cheap inventiveness; and even their worst work is still interesting. In a sense they were both (and I don't think this overstates the case) alchemists, turning shit into gold - taking what was often poor subject matter and managing to work a cut-price magic on it.
While Bava may not consider himself an auteur, protesting How could [cinema] be art, when there's 60 people working on a single film?, the book treats him as one, exploring an artistic vision most consistently seen in what the director himself terms all that horror nonsense.
When one interviewer points out that Nowadays [your] films are well regarded, Bava replies, Nowadays people lack culture. It's a difficult criticism to level at the good people of FAB Press, if entertainingly self-deprecating. This book is as beautifully designed and presented as the publishers' other 'directors' books (Deodato, Fulci and Argento to date), full of stills, ad mats, and posters, many in glorious colour. It's also impeccably researched, making this - again like the other books in the series - the last word on the subject.
Unlike the Argento book, which features essays written by a number of critics, this is written entirely by Troy Howarth, and while we lose out on the variety of voices so welcome there, here the thematic consistency works well, steering a middle path between the fanboyish rants and academic theorising that marked the two poles of Art of Darkness.
It's unlikely that any but the most devout fan would want to read the book straight through - this review (shock!) is based on a reading of the film essays that were most interesting to me (ie those of films I've seen), endless poring over the eye-popping visuals, and a read of the interviews, which are fascinating.
My only criticism of this lavish production is that the filmography doesn't include full details of UK/US video and DVD releases, a curious oversight given the exhaustive nature of the rest of the book. Who can tell me where to get the best version of Lisa and the Devil? Answers on a postcard …
And who's next for the FAB treatment?
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