Dario Argento

Blood and Bava

Along with Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava is often considered to be part of the holy trinity of Italian horror cinema. In 1963, he wrote and directed The Girl Who Knew Too Much, which is widely considered to be the first ever giallo film, and his influence can be felt in virtually every American slasher film of the 1980s, with his Bay of Blood (also known as Twitch of the Death Nerve) having been ripped off wholesale by Sean S. Cunningham with Friday the 13th.

Despite this, however, I’ve never really been able to get into Bava’s films in the way that I have with Argento, Fulci and other less immediately memorable giallo directors like Massimo Dallamano, Aldo Lado, Luciano Ercoli and Paolo Cavara. Bava is one of the finest visual craftsmen ever to have lived - that much, I think, is undeniable - and the minuscule budgets he had to work with only serves to make his achievements all the more remarkable. I think that he is often let down by his scripts, though. Bava was very much a “director for hire” in the traditional sense: he would turn his hand to anything in order to put food on the table, and, as such, he never claimed a genre as his own in the way that Argento did with giallo and Sergio Leone did with the Western. A lot of Bava’s films, therefore, fail to engage me, because I often get the feeling that he wasn’t truly invested in what he was doing. As visually awe-inspiring as his work is, he often seems to have found himself working with rather generic scripts, and while I don’t think that an amazing screenplay is by any means the be-all and end-all of a film, most of the time I struggle to understand the big deal with his films.

If The Girl Who Knew Too Much was the film that started the giallo phenomenon, it was Blood and Black Lace, made a year later, that solidified many of the archetypes that would be adopted wholesale during the boom of the early 1970s: the masked, black-attired killer; the cast of nubile women being offed; the psychosexual nature of the murders; the parade of shifty suspects, all with something to hide. The narrative, as such, seems a bit derivative, although it must be remembered that this is the one that set the stage for what was to come. It’s not a particularly remarkable plot, though, even taking into account its position as a forerunner to the genre: a series of murders are taking place, the victims all models from a prestigious agency. The usual shifty-looking characters are on the prowl, and, despite dropping like flies, none of the women are particularly eager to divulge what they know. I doubt that this would have been considered original stuff even at the time of its release. Rightly or wrongly, however, it has been retroactively identified as the first ever “body count movie”.

What does stand out as remarkable, though, is the photography. Even by Bava’s already high standards, this is one incredible-looking piece of work. He originally trained as a painter, and it shows: every frame is expertly composed, with a level of three-dimensionality that sucks you into the world, despite its obviously artificial appearance. It’s obvious that Argento was heavily influenced by this when he did Suspiria 13 years later, and yet the comparisons are somewhat unjust. Whereas Suspiria’s setting could never be mistaken for that of the real world, Blood and Black Lace’s feels authentic despite its deliberate artifice.

In the final analysis, therefore, I can’t claim to be as enamoured by Blood and Black Lace as some, but I appreciate it as a key film partially responsible for spawning one of the Italian film industry’s most lucrative filoni, and as an outstanding achievement in a technical sense. This is definitely a film that deserves to be seen by a wider audience, so that people can appreciate not only where the giallo genre came from, but also the American slasher movement of the 1970s and 80s. Bava definitely doesn’t get the recognition he deserves as a trendsetter.

PS. I’m incredibly grateful to Lee for his copy of the German DVD release of the film, which is vastly preferable to either of the two releases put out by VCI in the US.

Mother of Tears news

Loads of new information has emerged over the last couple of days regarding Dario Argento’s upcoming Mother of Tears, so I’m going to list it in the form of some handy bullet points:

• The cinematographer is Frederic Fasano (Do You Like Hitchcock?). The film is being shot in Super35 for a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and the outrageous colours will be achieved via a digital grade.
• Contrary to rumours, Myriad Pictures is still involved in the project, and the budget is apparently adequate for everything required by the script.
• Yesterday was the last day of principal photography in Rome, which now moves to Turin for six weeks.
• The visual effects, both practical and digital, are being handled by the same people responsible for the effects of the Masters of Horror series.
• The UK premiere will be at FrightFest 2007, and Dario and Asia Argento will hopefully both be present.

Sources: Mobius and Dark Discussion

Halloween: the countdown begins

I’ve now finalised the list of reviews that will be going live this Halloween at DVD Times. Unfortunately, I’ve had to cut back a little on my original projected list of titles due to a lack of time and, in some instances, motivation, but you should still be seeing six horror-themed reviews from me (plus a few from other contributors), so you shouldn’t want for lack of reading. The schedule looks like this:

• October 30th, 6 AM: Plot of Fear (R0 Italy, SD DVD)
• October 30th, 12 PM: Constantine (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• October 30th, 6 PM: Seven Notes in Black: Collector’s Edition (R2 France, SD DVD)
• October 31st, 12 AM: Corpse Bride (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• October 31st, 12 PM: The Machinist (R0 Japan, HD DVD)
• October 31st, 6 PM: Death Laid an Egg (R2 Japan, SD DVD)

Of these, all but Corpse Bride are written and ready to go.

I also intend to watch several horror-themed films over the next few days, including some old favourites, like Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, Suspiria and Inferno. Time will tell, of course, whether I actually manage to keep to that, but I live in hope. At any rate, the TV schedules look as piss-poor as usual for October 31st, so it looks as if I’m going to have to provide my own playlist, as usual.

My latest little project

I knocked this one together this evening, once again proving what Anchor Bay could easily have done if they’d invested a little effort, instead of cobbling the missing material together as a bunch of VHS-sourced “deleted scenes”. The Italian print has much nicer colours too, which I’m led to believe are an accurate representation of how the film should look, so that’s a nice bonus.

The results are fine overall, with the film playing in as seamless a manner as possible when taking into account the language switching (I wish I had the work print available so I could get the original English dialogue for the affected material), although I’ve had a lot of trouble fitting this one on a single layer disc without major artefacting. The Italian transfer wasn’t the best compression job in the first place (it too was crammed on to a single layer disc), and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from these projects, it’s that, since the material is effectively going to be encoded twice, you’ll need to give your version a higher bit rate than that of the source file, otherwise you essentially get double the artefacts. One of these days, I’d love to get a dual layer burner - maybe I’ll wait till HD DVD-compatible drives become available and/or affordable.

Mother of Tears: it has begun

Source: Dark Discussion

Apparently, filming of Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears, the long-overdue conclusion to the Three Mothers trilogy begun with Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980), began yesterday at the Bocca della Verità in the centre of Rome.

And at the moment, that’s all we know. The only other news is that Myriad Pictures, which was to be the production’s USA partner, is no longer involved with the project. The reason, apparently, is disagreements over casting decisions. (My guess? Myriad wanted Sienna Miller to play the lead, Argento wanted Asia Argento.) While I’m personally glad that Argento has stuck to his guns rather than caving into the demands of a studio whose output so far has been comprised of the likes of Jeepers Creepers II and The Good Girl, I can’t help thinking that this must have lowered the budget considerably and scuppered pretty much any chance of an English-language theatrical release. Ah, well.

Mother of Tears production begins soon

Source: Dark Discussion

Dario Argento : effettuati i sopralluoghi a Torino nell’ultima settimana di agosto, partiranno il 23 ottobre, e proseguiranno per sei settimane, le riprese del suo nuovo film, La terza madre , protagonista Asia Argento; cast tecnico locale: 30 unità.
Produzione Opera Film tel. 06/80691277

Hi everybody

it seems the locations in Turin were surveyed at the end of August and a tunnel for the final horrific scene was chosen. The shooting will start on October 23rd with a local crew of 30 people and it’ll last for six weeks.

Even though Turin has always proved visually magnificent in Argento’s films, I still hope the movie will be partly set in the Italian capital. Just imagine Dario’s visionary flair in the catacombs of Ancient Rome…

Ciao
Carlo

This is most excellent news, although the news that the production is to take place in Turin rather than Rome (which I believe I read before) is rather surprising. Given that we know from Inferno that Mater Lachrymarum holds rule over Rome, I’m assuming Turin will be standing in for the capital city in much the same way that it did in Profondo Rosso. Still, I’m slightly disappointed that we won’t be seeing any of the landmarks - I’d love to have seen the exterior of the library from Inferno again, for example. Ah well, perhaps there will be some location shooting.

Update, October 12, 2006 10:36 PM: Fangoria has a piece on the news as well. Apparently Udo Kier will be playing “a priest/exorcist”.

So who’s really in Mother of Tears?

There’s been a lot of speculation regarding the cast of Dario Argento’s upcoming conclusion to the Three Mothers trilogy, Mother of Tears. Back when it was originally announced, an Italian film news site ran a bogus story featuring a made-up synopsis and attaching several actors who, as it turns out, have nothing to do with the film. The real story has since emerged (and been pulled, presumably because US producer Myriad Pictures doesn’t want people to look forward to the movie), and several actors have come forward to confirm that they are appearing in it. Therefore, without further ado, the full list of attached names and whether or not they’re really attached:

• Asia Argento - Yes
• Chiara Caselli - No
• Ennio Fantastichini - No
• Valeria Golino - No
• Udo Kier - Yes
• Sienna Miller - No
• Daria Nicolodi - Yes
• Giordano Petri* - No
• Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni - Yes
• Max von Sydow - No

There you go. The cast of Non Ho Sonno ain’t in this one, people, so I strongly recommend ignoring anything in the film’s IMDB profile, as some fool keeps adding those erroneous names to it almost as quickly as I can delete them.

* This person doesn’t even seem to exist, given that Mother of Tears is the only film in his IMDB profile.