Written by: Romano Migliorini, Roberto Natale, & Mario Bava, John Hart (dialogue)
Directed by: Mario Bava
Starring: Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, Erika Blanc and Fabienne Dali
Say what you want about Mario Bava, but his films were almost always up to something, and they often skirted around the edges of innovation. By 1966, he’d already mixed up vampires with witchcraft, redefined space-horror, planted the seeds for both the giallo and the slasher, and crafted one of the finest anthology films of all time. During that time, you can argue that Bava was the pivotal Charon that ferried us from the classic gothic spook shows to more delirious and visceral horrors. As such, his 60s work often had a foot firmly planted in each mode, and never was this more evident than it was in the unfortunately titled Kill, Baby, Kill, a film that’s easy to relegate as a footnote when it falls between slasher landmarks like The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Bay of Blood. However, it may actually be the director’s most unsung masterwork in haunting sublimity, and to watch it is to witness Bava ripping 70s Euro-horror from the cobwebby womb of its screaming mother--four years before its time.
Another pastoral campfire tale, Kill, Baby, Kill opens with a call-back to one of Universal’s earliest classics in Dracula, as Dr. Paul Eswai (Giacomo Ross-Stuart) has been summoned to a rural village. His coachman suddenly drops him off in hasty fashion, insisting that he never goes this far into the countryside. Upon his arrival, Eswai is greeted by the locals, including Kruger (Piero Lulli), the inspector who needs assistance with a series of bizarre murders that have recently occurred. Both men are met with resistance by the superstitious locals that insist these corpses should not be defiled by an examination.
Eventually, they begin to uncover a sinister local legend that’s haunted the region for generations, and it’d be easy to say that Bava took the formula from Black Sunday and gave it a more painterly makeover. However, there’s more to it than that, as Kill, Baby, Kill is also more rough around the edges, almost intentionally so; gone is the refined, almost geometric black and white compositions of his earlier work, replaced here with cluttered mise en scene and jarring dramatic zooms. Bava’s photography is far from his more silken and garish British counterparts, too, which is not to say that this isn’t a gorgeous film, and that’s the catch: Kill, Baby, Kill is bizarrely alluring in the exact same way Italian films would be over the course of the next two decades. Armed with so much illogical, dreamy weirdness between the bizarre S&M-style exorcism rituals and fever dreams, Kill, Baby, Kill is an exercise in style and mood.
If Black Sunday is like a half-remembered dream, then this is a ghost story as it’s played back in your nightmares. It doesn’t so much unfold as much as it glides and bounces back and forth between various threads that don’t seem to connect until they need to. While it is beholden to the clunky mechanics that would come to define these films (there’s a couple of late movie exposition dumps to untangle everything), it still manages to be tightly wound in its simplicity. The mystery at the center is a cool one, as all of the “murder” victims have actually been manipulated into committing their own deaths; for example, the film’s opening scene, devoid of all context, sees a girl fall to her death when she’s impaled by spikes. At the scene of each crime (so to speak) is a little Melissa Graps, who has some connection to the Villa Graps, the haunted estate that’s whispered about but rarely visited by the locals.
The Villa itself is a triumph in haunted house film-making; conceived 14 years before Kurbrick would erect the Overlook, Bava created this abode that’s somewhere between the haunts in The Haunting and The Changeling (Melissa is even accompanied by a bouncing ball): it feels huge and baroque, but it’s also decrepit and creaky, full of cobwebs and muddled interiors that invite you to get lost in a labyrinthine pile of junk and decorations. The exteriors are similarly suffocating, shrouded by an over-cranked fog machine, giving one the feeling that they’ve been transported to a purgatorial hamlet. Some of the best scenes Bava ever shot take place within the walls, especially during the frantic, nightmarish climax that wreaks havoc with spatial and temporal recognition. Characters loop around themselves and get caught in dizzying, vertigo-inducing staircases as Kill, Baby, Kill becomes a delirious slideshow of bizarre sights and sounds.
This is Bava’s show, and, as such, it’s not exactly an actor’s showcase. However, the Bava and his cast carve out some memorable characters and themes; Ross-Stuart’s protagonist anticipates the ineffectual male leads that would sprout up in some giallo films. Almost immediately, he’s rendered impotent since the Villa Graps is no place for modern science, and he actually all but disappears during the climax, where the film suddenly becomes Erika Blanc’s story. A young medical student who grew up in the area, she’s conveniently called back to uncover an even deeper connection to the story’s events. Bava routinely sublimates male authority and presence like this, as both Lulli’s inspector and Luciano Catenacci’s burgomeister are rendered as non-entities. The latter is especially curious; a creepy bald-headed Uncle Fester-looking brute, he’s a prime suspect as the film’s weirdo; however, as it turns out, he’s probably not even the fourth creepiest guy in the line-up.
Instead, Bava as assembled quite an array of women here. Catenacci seems to be working in concert with Fabienne Dali’s raven-haired witch, and one might assume the two are cooking up something sinister. After all, they’re providing some of the resistance against the ongoing investigation, and it’s difficult to trust a lady who flogs a topless teenage girl in an attempt to exorcise a demon. But Bava and his screenwriters do manage to contort this story in such a way that roles are reversed and nothing is quite as it seems, as yet another memorable woman ultimately steals the show. Giovanna Gilleti is the Baroness Graps, and she can best be described as the grandmother to Argento’s Three Mothers--a deranged, disheveled lunatic, albeit not one without an underlying hint of tragedy. She’s what Mrs. Voorhees would have been like if Pam had been wicked enough to conjure up demons to do her bidding.
And of course there’s Melissa herself, one of horror’s all-time great creepy kids; before we see her in full, she’s felt in a deeply unsettling shot where Bava’s camera dollies back and forth, a technique that’s revealed to mimic the little girl’s movement in a swing. It’s a fantastically unreal shot and beautifully encapsulates Kill, Baby, Kill, a disorienting masterpiece that’s not only among Bava’s best, but among the best Euro horrors, period. Nearly each frame is a visual treat that’s matched up with a score that’s been cobbled together from previous films; the Frankenstein pastiche works since Bava’s film is so steeped in those gothic roots, and the score often warbles along like it would in a more vintage film. A lot of Bava’s films manage to feel embryonic, as it’s hard to argue that the likes of Argento and Carpenter didn’t refine the giallo and slasher films; not so with Kill, Baby Kill, which has few rivals in the Euro-horror canon.
Its most obvious descendant is Suspiria, but Kill Baby Kill manages to outclass it, if only because it’s consistently oppressive and overbearing in its atmosphere. Argento’s film is more polished and operatic, but Bava faithfully replicates a nightmare with an impenetrable haze--there is no coming up for air in this film. It is arguably Bava’s last great film, as he would soon move into the 70s, where his work would be shorn of the gothic layer that enriches Kill, Baby, Kill. Even something like Baron Blood, which is ostensibly the same type of film, suffers from a lack of style and otherworld dreaminess, and his later films would buy too much into 70s schlock. This film has been released several times on public domain releases, but the best available version is found in Anchor Bay’s first Bava box set, which features the Italian version of the film and a restored presentation that looks and sounds fantastic. The only extras are an international trailer, TV spots, and a Bava bio, but it’s a set that features all of Bava’s best films, so you’ll naturally want it for your collection. Kill, Baby, Kill earns its place in the set, easily. Essential!