Kill Baby, Kill

1966 ‘Operazione paura’ Directed by Mario Bava

Makes You Shiver & Quiver!

An 18th century European village is haunted by the ghost of a murderous little girl.

Giacomo Rossi-Stuart Erika Blanc Fabienne Dali Piero Lulli Luciano Catenacci Giovanna Galletti Micaela Esdra Franca Dominici Giuseppe Addobbati Mirella Pamphili Valerio Valeri

Alternative Titles

O Ciclo do Pavor, Die toten Augen des Dr. Dracula, Curse of the Dead, Curse of the Living Dead, Don't Walk in the Park, Kill Baby Kill, Kill, Baby... Kill!, Operation Fear

thriller horror mystery

85 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Ian West ★★★★★ 16

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…
Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 4

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…
Review by claire 🗡️💀🕷️ diane ★★★★ 5

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…
Review by Steve Moyle ★★★★ 4

I'm only three Bava films in so i'm no expert with him but Kill Baby, Kill has impressed me the most by quite a lot. With exceptional cinematography and a moody eerie atmosphere this is an essential Gothic horror. I just loved the story and characters in this one and it does creepy dolls and a creepy ghost child better then most, with great nightmarish dream sequences and always inventive scares.
Review by Tony the Terror😼🏳️‍🌈 ★★★★★ 7

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…
Review by DBC ★★★★ 2

Hooptober Fest 5.0
Film 21/46
Six films from before 1970 (4/6)
--
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…

Recent reviews

Review by Chadman

Kill Baby, Kill is a bit of a mindfuck of a movie. Bava doesn't show a particular knack for that type of story (but god bless him for trying). Where his skills lie, and what makes this film work, are the horror elements. The creepy girl is a bit of a shock every time she shows up. Her presence is felt in nearly every scene, whether she appears or not, and the film is very tense because of it.
Recommended
Review by ribblesquat ★★★

From the English title I always assumed this was some sort of gonzo rock n'roll proto-slasher... maybe with some kind of death race? But it's actually a period piece about a witch vs. a ghost. Set in the Carpathians?! I enjoyed this but I suspect it was largely due to my fascination for production values in older films.
Review by duda ★★★★★

adoro filmes góticos e esse tem uma das melhores atmosferas que já vi, um dos melhores usos de cores, ambientação macabra e ótimas atuações. as sequências das escadas e do corredor me impressionaram demais porque não havia visto sequências tão bem feitas num filme de horror. obra-prima italiana.
Review by n0d0yuna ★★★★½

I cannot stress enough how amazingly beautiful the cinematography is, how eerie and creepy the atmosphere is and just how haunting this film is, i would describe this as a classy horror film, one with an intoxicating sense of dread and surrealism throughout it’s whole runtime...
MARIO BAVA IS THE KING OF ATMOSPHERIC HORROR!
Review by Pat ★★★★

Bava is at the top of his game with “kill, baby kill”. Calling Him a horror director seems like an over simplification of what Mario Bava is able to accomplish with color, shadows, and a keen eye for set design. This looks like it was made with a paint brush as much as it was made with a camera. After much deliberation “kill, baby kill” is without question in my top 3 Mario Bava films.
Review by dingdongfootbal ★★★

visual feast, narrative slog. hard to sit through at times but the colors are positively luxurious and the sets and props are a joy to look at.
i do have a definite respect for those artists that seem to value quantity as high or higher than quality.
the unconceited givers of the art world. they provide the raw material for the rest of us.
it’s said that bava invented giallo, popularized gothic horror film, was the progenitor of slashers as we know them, and inspired scorsese, argento, tarantino, carpenter, fellini, etc. etc. etc.

there’s a character in this called “the burghermeister” which made me laugh every time.
Review by Ryan Oliver ★★★½

Lush Technicolor canvas and a haunting atmosphere alone make this a worthwhile endeavor. Never quite hits that next level the way the best Bava outings do (of the ones I’ve seen, anyway), or the best outings of his colleagues, but it’s still a striking mystery full of ghosts, witches, and more otherworldly weirdness.
Review by Jenny Nulf ★★★½

Ruth is a witchy goddess, and Dr. Paul should have been more accepting of her barbed wire technique.
Review by sethbgvt ★★★

An okay horror flick from Mario Bava.