Kill, Baby...Kill! (1966)

"(Don't) Follow the Bouncing Ball"

With its slightly silly, albeit very 'swinging' 1960s title (and the alternative - OPERAZIONE PAURA - makes it sound like a spy film) what some claim to be Italian genre stylist Mario Bava’s greatest film gets a 2k restoration dual format release from Arrow Films.

Carpathia 1907. Dr Paul Eswai (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) is called to a remote village to perform an autopsy on a girl who has thrown herself from a great height onto something spikey before the credits have rolled. 

It turns out she is not the first to have died under mysterious circumstances. The locals believe their village to be cursed. Is there a serial killer bumping people off? Or is that creepy little girl we keep seeing anything to do with it?

The path of investigation eventually leads to a crumbling villa that looks suspiciously like the house from Riccardo Freda's TERROR OF DR HICHCOCK (1962), and the old lady who lives within & harbours a terrible secret.

Whereas Vincent Price was the star of Roger Corman's gothics, and Cushing and Lee were the stars of Hammer, the star of a Mario Bava film was always the director himself, and this one is no exception. Like so much Italian horror cinema of the period, KILL BABY KILL is not so much about plot as it as about ravishing visuals, disorientating nightmare sequences and genuine scary bits. 

If you love this sort of thing then you'll easily forgive some of the stilted acting (especially between leads Stuart and Erika Blanc) and a music score from Carlo Rustichelli that plays as if it's trying to wake the dead all by itself. 

Arrow's disc comes with a brief introduction by Erika Blanc, Italian and English dialogue tracks, the usual fact-packed and erudite commentary by Tim Lucas that's an education in Bava's cinema in itself, but don't miss Kat Ellinger's excellent video essay on Bava as well. There's also an interview with the director's son Lamberto Bava and YELLOW, a short film homage to the director.

Mario Bava's KILL, BABY... KILL! is out on dual format from Arrow on Monday 11th September 2017