A town petrified by ghostly revenge, shadowy alleyways driping with fog, radiant lighting billowing through cobwebs, and Bava’s exquisite use of color framed with hallucinogenic cinematography—all climaxing together to create one of the best displays of gothic atmosphere I’ve ever seen. Chilling, unsettling, and damn beautiful.

I watched this a few years back for the first time and I liked it just fine, but with each revisit I’ve fallen in love with so many different aspects of Kill Baby, Kill, especially after purchasing the new Kino Lorber blu Last fall—it was a total game changer, jolting my system into orgasmic ecstasy with a gothic horror meets acid trip atmosphere so perfectly controlled by Bava as he ratchets up the tension... slowly…

84/100

Bellowing, screeching winds and suspicious residents wander within luscious, radiant spaces; a town crumbling under the weight of curses and paranoia. Color paints and sings its way across a lonely town with secrets, practically engulfing its own atmosphere through multicolored mazes of exterior tunnels, interior passages and foggy, vividly textural cemeteries. Set design and camera movement each embody the aura of a restless specter, roaming and gliding across an environment which is representative of the last town on the face of the Earth. Nothing is even remotely familiar, even the genre cliches, because of Mario Bava's spin on the world of Gothic horror. It's all trickery, an arresting cinematic painting oozing with scare tactics and indescribably lucid images. Bava…

i still think of Black Sunday as one of the best lit films of all time. perhaps my favorite black and white aesthetic next to kurosawa. but this was a revelation: bava has a supreme magic in how he can make darkness overflow with color, too. this is perhaps the most perfect wedding of virtuoso chiaroscuro lighting and brilliant color i've ever seen. the striking shots are countless. and the locations are brilliant. there's this pervading sense that they're hanging right at the edge of the world.

the long zoom out from a distant sun as night falls, until it is nothing but a glowing dot over the horizon. or the arms clutching candles (a nod to Cocteau?) in the…

Film 9/15 for BB and BC Podcast Movie Challenge November 2017

1 movie that English is not the native language

Oh, how I love this movie! I have seen it before (but never enough) but this challenge gave me the perfect opportunity to revisit it.

The plot involves a murderous young girl ghost who is terrorizing a village. Basically, if a townsperson sees her, they will die. So...she’s the OG Sadako, y’all! This movie is pretty much the perfect 60’s gothic horror film. I mean, if someone wanted me to recommend that type of film I’d almost definitely suggest this one. I’m not entirely sure why Black Sunday is the more well-known of Bava’s works. I mean, I love that…

January Horror Hunt, Day 14, challenge #13 - get impulsive! pick any horror you hadn't thought of watching before today

Well, I had been meaning to watch more Bava. Sometimes I make good life choices.

This town is like, 3/4 crumbling cobwebby crypts and 1/4 buildings that look like crumbling cobwebby crypts, it's amazing. Every once in a while it's lit like there might be a nightclub around the corner, because Bava. But this ain't no party, this ain't no disco, and I'm pretty sure the only nightlife in town is in the cemetery.

Fog-shrouded candlelit catacombs! Decrepit old mansions! Suddenly appearing witches! Ghost girl laughing on a (ghost?) swing! Trippy ass staircases! Random bell tower cat (my favourite character)!…

Hooptober Fest 5.0
Film 21/46
Six films from before 1970 (4/6)
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Shout-out to BAKA's review for turning me on to this flick. If you're a genre fan who's not already reading his succinct and wonderfully worded horror reviews, I highly recommend 'em!

The ghost of a young girl named Melissa (Valerio Valeri) is holding a small Carpathian village captive and punishing them for past sins. Will dapper brown-suited doctor Paul Eswai (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) and his mighty blonde swoop of hair be able to stop her before she kills again?

Mario Bava gives me just about everything I'd hoped (and expected) of a mid-60's Italian Gothic horror directed by one of the founding fathers of giallo: dark rich atmosphere, memorable…

The recurring vision of the staring blonde child comes from Flemish painting, the early image of sundry crucifixes like mushrooms on a mossy boulder comes from Mario Bava and no mistake. The small village "forgotten by God" has a crumbling Gothic palace and a slew of corpses with silver coins in their hearts, the square-jawed coroner (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) steps off the stagecoach and is promptly stonewalled by superstition. "I know, it's difficult for a man of science to understand..." Feudal dread rules the land, the Bürgomeister (Luciano Catenacci) confers in private with the local sorceress (Fabienne Dali), through it all drifts the spectral moppet with flaxen tresses and a baleful bouncing ball. (Bava combines a zoom with a rising…

Mario Bava made a lot of movies and wore multiple hats on any given production. He rarely had a big budget, but when the fates aligned, like they did on 'Kill, Baby...Kill!' the results are singularly creepy and hugely influential.

The film has the flavor of Hammer, as a Carpathian village is haunted by the spirit of a small girl. A visiting coroner and his assistant, a former resident of the village, struggle to uncover the secret of the girl's tragic death, as one by one the villagers fall victim to her vengeful spirit. The story is all gothic spookiness and mystery (and witches for good measure).

Bava illuminates the crumbling edifices of the town with a colorful array of…

This is Bava in Gothic ghost story mode, and it’s one of his very best films.

Here, none of the budgetary compromises of Bay of Blood are present. The camera is in constant motion, and the colours and lighting are nothing shot of rapturous. The imagery is nightmarish, particularly the recurring use of what must surely be among the most definitive uses of the face at the window in all of cinema. Images, too, of mazes dominate the film. They are there in the geography of the haunted town, which looks the the fever-dream collaboration of Escher and Piranesi. They are there in the mystery through which our protagonists stumble, and they reach a climax in the haunted Villa Graps,…