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.
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 
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.
A colorful pop art feast for the eyes, Four Times That Night 
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.
