Color, 1971, 82 mins. Directed by Mario Bava
Starring Claudine Auger, Luigi Pistilli, Laura Betti, Claudio Camaso, Anna Maria Rosati, Brigitte Skay, Leopoldo Trieste, Isa Miranda, Nicoletta Elmi / Music by Stelvio Cipriani / Produced by Giuseppe Zaccariello
Format: DVD - Image (MSRP $24.99)
Letterboxed (1.85:1) (16x9 enhanced) / Dolby Digital Mono
Though rarely acknowledged by the mainstream press, Twitch has gradually received credit as the progenitor of the slasher wave from the '80s (with Steve Miner's Friday the 13th Part II suffering the most direct and justified accusations of plagiarism). However, Bava's film is a more clever, subtle, and visually sumptuous affair than your standard stalk and kill yarn; even with limited means, he conjures up a swirling symphony of poetic images, from the rippling textures of the bay waters (even when strewen with corpses) to the macabre ochre glow behind a glass door during Renata's standout victim scene. The cheeky gore effects still shock today, including an unforgettable facial machete application, a unique shish-kebab variation, and a startling beheading, all laced with some '70s-styled helpings of nudity and sex. Stelvio Cipriani's deft score wavers between beautifully sustained and creepy beat rhythms (the main titles in particular) to the hilarious upbeat pop pastorale of the end credits, while the actors all seem to be having a ball before turning up as lambs to the slaughter. (Genre fans, look for an appearance by little Nicoletta Elmi, who also turned up in Deep Red, Flesh for Frankenstein, and Bava's Baron Blood, among many others.)
Color, 1969, 84 mins. Directed by Mario Bava
Starring Brett Halsey, Daniela Giordano, Pascale Petit, Dick Randall, Michael Hinz, Brigitte Skay / Music by Coriolano Gori / Produced by Alfredo Leone
Format: DVD - Image (MSRP $24.99)
Letterboxed (1.78:1) (16x9 enhanced) / Dolby Digital Mono
Pretty young Tina (Daniela Giordano) finds her afternoon dog walk disturbed by sports car driving lothario Gianni (Return of the Fly's Brett Halsey), who asks her on a date. Despite her convent breeding, Tina agrees to see him that night but returns home much later than planned with her dress torn. In flashback, Tina frantically tells her mother about the evening, which begin with a trip to a
A colorful pop art feast for the eyes, Four Times That Night Color, 1964, 93 mins. Directed by Mario Bava
Starring Boris Karloff, Mark Damon, Michele Mercier, Jacqueline Pierreux, Susy Andersen, Lidia Alfonsi, Harriet Medin White / Music by Roberto Nicolosi / Produced by Paolo Mercuri
Format: DVD - Image (MSRP $24.99)
Letterboxed (1.85:1) (16x9 enhanced) / Dolby Digital Mono
Our first episode is "The Telephone," an early giallo (or Italian thriller) in which a voluptuous high class escort girl, Rosy (Michelle Mercier), is terrorized by threatening phone calls. Her vicious pimp, Frank, has just been released from prison and may be responsible, so she calls her former lover, Mary (Lidia Alfonsi), for comfort. Obviously, not everyone survives to see the morning. In "The Wurdulak," young journeyman Vladimire (Mark Damon) stumbles upon a decapitated corpse along a mountainous road. Eventually he arrives at a desolate home where a frightened family awaits the return of its patriarch, Gorca (Karloff). That night the head of the household shows up, looking quite
A pure exercise in style that almost makes Black Sunday look anemic, Black Sabbath is one of Bava's greatest achievements and a perfect introduction to his style of filmmaking. Originally shown in Europe as The Three Faces of Fear, the film was released in the U.S. by AIP under its most famous title in a drastically toned down, altered edition which featured new intros and segues with Karloff, a massive overhaul on "The Telephone"
The Image DVD, part of their "Mario Bava Collection," looks infinitely better than any past video edition. The U.S. version has turned up in various incarnations, including a U.S. laserdisc double bill with Black Sunday, while Japan and Italy have seen letterboxed editions of the Italian cut. The anamorphically enhanced DVD looks beautiful, with only a few mild age blemishes detracting from an otherwise full bodied and enchanting presentation. Colors are strong and vivid, while countless bits of background detail are now completely visible. For some reason the original source material contains some mild jittering during the final moments of "The Drop of Water" (which also contain virtually no dialogue, unlike the U.S. version: "...something too terrifying to live through!"). "The Telephone" in particular benefits from the added clarity, with some of Bava's candy colored lighting schemes now vividly brought to life throughout the entire story. The optional yellow English subtitles are well rendered and appear to be accurate. The disc also includes an amusing Italian theatrical trailer, which cheerfully reveals all of the film's scariest moments and contains the unique pitch line: "Mercy! Scary!" How true, how true.
B&W, 1963, 83 mins. Directed by Mario Bava
Starring Leticia Roman, John Saxon, Robert Buchanan, Valentina Cortese, Dante DiPaolo / Music by Roberto Nicolosi / Cinematography by Mario Bava
Format: DVD - Image (MSRP $24.99)
Letterboxed (1.85:1) (16x9 enhanced) / Dolby Digital Mono
Widely regarded as the first feature film to lay down the ground rules of the Italian giallo (mysteries with horrific elements), The Girl Who Knew Too Much is a lightweight and enjoyable concoction despite its grim subject matter. The murderer's modus operandi, an obvious homage to Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders, is basically a Since the film was partially financed by American money (AIP), the studio mandated that Bava shoot some alternate comic scenes to make the film more palatable for general audiences; the result, The Evil Eye, plays like an entirely different film. The opening twenty minutes in particular are radically different, with Nora introduced after a series of voiceovers revealing the thoughts of each plane passenger. Nora also undergoes a headbutting incident with another visitor at the airport and spends her first night evading the watchful eyes of her uncle (a cameo by Bava himself) - in a portrait hanging on her bedroom wall. The original Italian cut, presented here with subtitles for the first time, is a much more streamlined and taut affair, not to mention a more appropriate installment in Bava's progression as a filmmaker. The AIP version also substituted the jazzy, amusing score by Roberto Nicolosi with a more straightforward one by Les Baxter, a fate which befell quite a few Bava titles over the years.
Apart from the ragged looking opening credits, the DVD of The Girl Who Knew Too Much looks extremely good, with the anamorphically enhanced widescreen image accurately framed and pleasingly detailed. The moody black and white cinematography looks sharp as a tack, while the mono audio is clean if limited somewhat by its age. The optional yellow English subtitles are easy to read and seem to be accurately translated and timed. Also included is the engaging Italian trailer (without subtitles, alas), accompanied by the swinging main title song, and a plethora of Bava stills, poster art, and factual tidbits.
Thanks to his orgiastic feasts of gothic horror and comic book pop art, no one ever described Mario Bava as a restrained director. However, few could have anticipated 
the unbridled ferocity of his trendsetting 1971 shocker, Reazione a catena (Chain Reaction), which turned up in Europe under such titles as Antefatto, A Bay of Blood, and Ecologia del Delitto before terrorizing U.S. drive-ins for years as Last House - Part II and, most unforgettably, Twitch of the Death Nerve. Here Bava essentially tears the horror genre apart from the ground up, dispensing with linear plotting or realistic characterization in favor of a mechanical, devious catalog of murders, all served up with the tricky, sumptuous photography which gives his films their unforgettable artistic stamp. Even more than his earlier Blood and Black Lace, this is the body count movie par excellence.
In the haunting and darkly funny opening, an elderly countess (Isa Miranda) stares sadly through a rain-dappled window at her property surrounding a remote bay. Suddenly her wheelchair-bound body is seized up by a lariat, hoisting her back and choking the life from her throat. Her assailant nonchalantly steps outside and surveys his handiwork, then returns inside... only to receive a knife in the back for his trouble. Thus begins a mad, scurrying patchwork of fragmented storylines in which various residents and visitors become victim or predator, or sometimes both at once, in order to claim this valuable chunk of property. Watch and learn the fates of four partying youths, a Medusa-haired tarot freak (A Hatchet for the Honeymoon's Laura Betti), the sinister squid-hunting local Simon (Claudio Camoso), and visiting married couple Renata (Thunderball's Claudine Auger) and Albert (Luigi Pistilli). The solution to this bloody tangle of lives and motives will certainly surprise you and probably provoke a sick chuckle as well.
Image's DVD of this film (packaged as Twitch of the Death Nerve but containing the onscreen title of A Bay of Blood) obviously outclasses the notoriously bad earlier disc from Simitar. This widescreen version contains all of the gore scissored from the earlier letterboxed Redemption version, but most importantly, the colors and detail are strong enough to easily peg this as a Bava film. The compositions cleverly utilize every inch of the frame, and this presentation, stunningly enhanced for 16x9 displays, finally allows enough breathing room to allow Bava to work his spell. Just watch the opening sequence, in which the delicately color-gelled lighting spills onto the ceiling and reflects off the furniture, becoming as vital a player in the murders as the actors themselves. The mono soundtrack fares less successfully, given the ravages of age and the limitations of the original mix, but it's intelligible enough and gets the job done. The disc also includes the theatrical trailer under the alternate title of Carnage (in noticeably better shape than its earlier appearance on Mad Ron's Prevues from Hell), along with the standard Bava bio and photo gallery, a special tongue-in-cheek "Murder Menu" leading to each death scene, some outrageous radio spots, and the usual thorough, illuminating liner notes from Tim Lucas, whose long anticipated Bava book due next year should provide an even more enlightening view of this crafty, often misunderstood, and essential chapter in the development of the horror genre.
Still basking in the giddy comic book haze of his sublime Diabolik, director Mario Bava branched out away even further from gothic terrors with Four Times That Night (Quane volte... quella notte), a loose and breezy sex farce which borrows its structure 
from Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. Bava rises to the task quite well and brings his trademark visual skills into play for some dazzling little flourishes throughout the film, making it a diverting little bon bon in a career lined with masterpieces.
nightclub and escalated into Gianni's frantic rape attempt while dressed in leopardskin underwear. However, the next day Gianni, sporting a nasty scratch on his face, tells his buddies a quite different story in which Tina was actually a sex mad panther who demanded hour after hour of satisfaction. Back at Gianni's apartment, the lecherous doorman (Dick Randall) offers yet another variation of the story, in which Gianni, a manipulative homosexual, lured Tina in for an evening of debauched sexual antics (partially involving Bay of Blood's skinnydipper, Brigitte Skay). Of course, the fourth version - the whole story, natch - proves to be an entirely different affair.
allows Bava's camera to run rampant and soak in every detail of the mod clothing and sets. Though working with a miniscule budget, the director turns simple settings like a shower or a bedroom into visual playgrounds of bold primary colors and catchy geometric shapes, while inflatable furniture, rope swings, tinted drinking glasses, and wallpapered photo collages become props for each character's Freudian delights. The sexuality itself is limited by today's standards, with a few bare breasts and coyly concealed fumblings making this a quaint reminder of the innocence of pre-Emmanuelle erotic cinema. More importantly, the film is genuinely funny, alternating hilarious verbal wit (particularly Tina's self-empowering claims while locked in the bathroom during the first episode) with physical comedy in the best tradition of an English bedroom farce. The funky lounge score by Coriolano "Lallo" Gori adds to the fun and foreshadows Piero Umiliani's similar work on Bava's similar cotton candy exercise, Five Dolls for an August Moon in 1970.
Rarely seen in any form, this film has become something of a holy grail for Bava completists. Some video dealers have circulated a smudgy tape version of the barely released English dubbed edition, which dumbs down the dialogue and brutally crops Bava's compositions. Therefore the Image DVD is a welcome restoration of a film few even knew to look for, and the print by and large is in satisfying shape. Only the animated opening credits (an amusing cartoon twist on a Rorsach test, appropriately enough) and the first scene suffer from notable damage, while colors are always vibrant and clearly rendered. The Italian dialogue fares much better than the English version, while the subtitles convey the puckish, rapid fire exchanges surprisingly well. The disc also comes with extensive liner notes from Video Watchdog's Tim Lucas, who provides plenty of historical tidbits to make this an even more cherished and significant release.
The lost art form of the horror anthology doesn't get much creepier than Black Sabbath, a trilogy of chilling tales from Italian horror maestro Mario Bava. American horror star Boris Karloff made a rare overseas appearance 
as host of these tales and provided an unforgettable appearance in the center tale, one of the most haunting vampire yarns ever committed to celluloid.
spooky and brandishing the severed head of a notorious thief and "wurdulak," a vampire who feeds on the blood of his loved ones. As the night passes, the family succumbs one by one to vampirism... And finally in the film's tour de force, "The Drop of Water," nervous Helen (Jacqueline Pierreux) is called in late at night to prepare the corpse of a recently deceased medium who died during a seance. The ghastly expression on the body's face unnerves Helen, but she still musters the courage to pocket a valuable ring from the dead woman's finger. Meanwhile a fly buzzes nervously around the room, and a repetitive drop of water echoes throughout the room. When Jacqueline returns home, she is terrorized by repeated drops of water... a buzzing fly... and much, much more...
which transformed it into an avenging ghost story, and some mild censorship during the more graphic moments of "The Wurdulak." To make matters worse, the stories' order was shuffled in the following order: "The Drop of Water," "The Telephone," then "The Wurdulak." The U.S. version is still undeniably effective and has brought about more than a few nightmares among impressionable viewers, but the unadulterated Italian version has been preserved on this DVD. Apart from the obvious substitution of a dubbed Italian actor instead of Karloff's warm, familiar voice, this edition is entirely satisfying and features the original, restrained music score by Roberto Nicolosi instead of the fun but uneven American music by Les Baxter. And of course, the infamous joke punchline with Karloff at the end is finally back in all its surreal glory.
The great granddaddy of the moody Italian slasher film, The Girl Who Knew Too Much (La Ragazza che Sapeva Troppo)) was a marked departure for director Mario Bava, who had already taken the world by storm with his classic Black Sunday. Here for the first time he turned his camera to modern Rome, where naive American whodunit fan Nora Davis (Leticia Roman) flies in to visit her Aunt Adele. After unknowingly pocketing some hemp-laced cigarettes from a charming man on the plane, Nora reaches her aunt's apartment and meets the handsome Dr. Marcello Bassi (John Saxon), who informs Nora that her aunt is not in the best of health. That night Nora is horrified to witness Adele dying of a heart attack and flees out into the street, where a mugger leaves her unconscious. In a daze Nora awakens to hazily witness the stabbing death of a young woman in the street, then passes out again. At the hospital no one believes Nora's 
story, so she's left with only Marcello to help her uncover the truth. Nora quickly comes to believe that a killer known for a series of gruesome "Alphabet Murders" is still at large in the city and may have targeted our heroine as the next victim.
mechanism to propel the film from one setpiece to the next, with the audience left in the dark as to the killer's identity until the very end.
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