KILL, BABY…KILL! – The Blu Review

Review by Roger Carpenter

During the first half of the 60’s Mario Bava created several genuine horror classics that remain high-water marks in the genre over a half century later.  Films such as Black Sunday (1960), Black Sabbath (1963), The Whip and the Body (1963), and Blood and Black Lace (1964) either pushed the boundaries of horror or helped to establish cinematic tropes still used in modern horror.  Always saddled with shoestring budgets and bad deals, Bava nevertheless remained optimistic in the face of his cinematic struggles.  A case in point is the troubled production of Kill, Baby…Kill! which ran out of money midway through the shoot.  The cast and crew were so loyal to Bava they worked for free to finish the film—a film, by the way, which only had a 30-page script with no dialogue when filming commenced.  Bava had the actors make up their own lines, preferring to resolve the dilemma during the dubbing process rather than spend expensive time writing dialogue for each character.  Remarkably, through all these trials, Bava was able to make a highly entertaining and extremely atmospheric film.

Kill, Baby…Kill! (the U.S. title, which isn’t any more appropriate than the Italian title of Operation Fear) opens with the mysterious death of a girl who falls from on high and is impaled by a wrought-iron fence.  Dr. Eswai (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) is summoned to the ancient village by Inspector Kruger (Piero Lulli) to perform an autopsy on the corpse.  But his arrival is met with suspicion by the villagers and, soon enough, he learns about a decades-long curse the villagers believe is the reason for the girl’s death—along with several other deaths.  It seems a little girl met with an accidental death many years ago.  Her ghost will appear to any who speak of the incident or invoke her name or the name of her family and, whomever sees the ghost is doomed to die. Along the way Dr. Eswai meets Monica (Erika Blanc), a beautiful young woman who is attempting to reconnect with her familial roots, as well as another pretty woman, Ruth (Fabienne Dali), who practices witchcraft and is trying to free the town from the curse. Together the doctor and the two women must solve this riddle before more villagers die.

Italian fright-fests of the late 50’s and early 60’s are essentially “old dark house” films.  They are gothic period pieces filled with cobwebbed castles, eerie graveyards, and all manner of ghosts and ghouls.  And Bava cut his teeth working with the likes of Riccardo Freda (I Vampiri; The Horrible Dr. Hichcock; The Ghost) and Antonio Margheriti (Horror Castle; Castle of Blood; The Long Hair of Death), some of the best in the business.  Bava wrote screenplays, acted as assistant director, was cinematographer, and created special effects for these filmmakers and many others as well, so he certainly was no stranger to the cinematic tropes of the time.  Kill, Baby…Kill! uses all of those tropes, but with the flair that only Bava could create.

While there are a few location shots of a series of crumbling buildings, the vast majority of the film was shot on a sound stage which allowed Bava to create all the mood and tension he wanted—and the film has plenty to spare.  Whether an actual location or a soundstage, there is plenty of low-lying fog.  The wind whips around, carrying disconcerting sounds throughout the village…is that the cry of a wounded little girl?  Is that the ringing of the village bell, noting again the imminent death of another villager?  Is that a shriek from the latest victim?  The few actual locations, decrepit and deteriorating, evoke an ancient and otherworldly time.  One can imagine this village has been around for a millennium or more…there is no telling how much history these crumbling walls have witnessed.  The graveyard is a perfect location for ghouls and spooks of every variety, with crooked crosses, tilted gravestones, and bony branches that look like monstrous claws.  Things don’t fare much better when indoors, either.  The village pub looks like it was created from the original dust of the Earth and Villa Graps, the imposing and unspeakably old castle which is connected to the curse, looks even more ancient.  It is a dank, dusty, moldy castle, full of cobwebs, rusted suits of armor, and underground crypts.  While we never see a dungeon or torture chamber, we know it’s there.  It’s just not part of this story.

Bava is a master at lighting, whether it be the chiaroscuro of Black Sunday or the garish colors of Blood and Black Lace.  Considering his films were completed sometimes in two weeks it is a wonder any lighting was done at all.  But what might take hours for lesser directors was simply innate for Bava.  As characters look down a spiral staircase the colors change from amber to green to purple the deeper into the castle you go, while the same character will look up to see blue on the stairs above.  Characters wander through cobwebbed rooms lit variously from yellow to green to purple.  What does it all mean?  Perhaps nothing.  Perhaps Bava was just giving texture to the film.  Or perhaps it was Bava’s way of announcing to the audience they have entered a world of supernatural beings, another dimension that has a different set of rules than the mortal world.  Regardless, it is a spooky and surreal, yet beautiful, world.

A film such as this deserves a quality score.  Yet Bava had neither time nor money for this, so the film is filled with library music, much of which was borrowed from the director’s earlier films.  Yet each theme fits perfectly, as if the music was created especially for this film.  There is a creepy lullaby tune matched with the little girl’s ghost, plenty of music for the mysterious goings-on in Villa Graps, and even brief romantic interludes for Dr. Eswai and Monica.

Rossi Stuart seems to have been a favorite of Bava, having been involved with The Day the Sky Exploded (1958), which Bava filmed, as well as 1959’s Caltiki, the Immortal Monster.  He had a part in the Vincent Price vehicle The Last Man on Earth, and went on to play in Bava’s Knives of the Avenger immediately preceding his star turn in Kill, Baby…Kill! He was a blue-collar actor who had a very long and varied career, and he does an excellent job as the pragmatic doctor embroiled in this mysterious curse.  Likewise, Erika Blanc, as beautiful and innocent Monica, is excellent.  Early on I was afraid she would be relegated to creeping around dark corners and being menaced by all sorts of spooks but soon enough she joins forces with Dr. Eswai to resolve the curse once and for all.  She also had a long and varied career starring in plenty of spaghetti westerns, erotic features, and gialli.  She would work again with Rossi Stuart in The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave in 1971.  Blanc is beautiful and, while never nude, shows enough skin in a couple of scenes that probably caused a minor scandal in 1966 Italy.  The film is populated with European character actors, all of whom had long careers and did solid work, including Luciano Catenacci as the burgomaster (In the Folds of the Flesh; Short Night of Glass Dolls; Almost Human; Syndicate Sadists; The Tough Ones), Piero Lulli (Django Kill…If You Live, Shoot!; My Name is Nobody), and Giovanna Galletti (Rome, Open City; Last Tango in Paris; The Big Red One) as the aging Baroness Graps .  Other high points include Micaela Esdra as the innkeepers daughter who sees the ghostly Melissa, as well as Melissa herself—actually a young boy, Valerio Valeri.

Some viewers will find the film too clunky, slow-moving, and old fashioned.  I think it is uproarious fun, creepy, and atmospheric, beautifully filmed, and well-acted.  It’s not Bava’s best (for my money it’s Blood and Black Lace), but its spooky fun, with a splash of surprisingly bloody violence.  Kino Lorber has again beaten everyone to the punch by releasing this film in America on Blu-Ray.  This disc is a 2K restoration from 35 MM elements and will likely never look any better, though there is a great deal of grain. I suspect that’s simply due to the quality of the film stock Bava had available.  The disc includes both English and Italian language versions, with optional English subtitles for the Italian language version.  Kino Lorber has included several wonderful extra features, including the German title sequence with alternate footage (as opposed to the American title sequence which is quite different), the international theatrical trailer, and three American TV spots.  There is also a very nice, 25-minute interview with Bava’s son, Lamberto, who acted as assistant director on the film.  He reminisces about his father as well as the film and takes us on a tour of the original locations.  The disc also includes an 11-minute interview with Erika Blanc, who is personable and funny as she describes her time on the set of the film.  And finally, there is an excellent audio commentary by Tim Lucas, Bava biographer, which is very entertaining.

This is a great disc and an excellent film, with some very nice features, all at a reasonable price.  The film can be purchased through Kino Lorber at kinolorber.com or through Amazon.