Italian filmmaker Mario Bava influenced countless directors and cinematographers with his unique style, set design, and camera angles. The essence of Bava can be easily identified in films as diverse as "Alien," "Austin Powers," and "Friday the 13th." With the film "Blood and Black Lace," Bava single-handedly created the "giallo" film genre that overtook Italian cinema in the late sixties, dubbed "giallo" (Italian for yellow) in reference to the yellow-covered crime novels that were popular at the time. The "giallo" genre focused more on the violent deaths of the victims rather than on the investigation that lead to the killer's eventual capture, which was unusual at the time but commonplace in today's cinema. Bava was one of the first directors to adapt a comic book into a movie. With "Diabolik" he predated today's trend of turning any four-color hero (Spider-Man, Batman) into a silver-screen icon. While Bava set the standard for experimental and exploitative Italian cinema, his work is virtually unknown to the masses. Although many of the directors that he inspired--Tarantino, Lynch, Fellini, Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, and Italy's own Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento--have become well known and discussed icons, Bava himself was pushed to the background. But with Anchor Bay's release of "The Mario Bava Collection: Volume One," featuring five films that showcase the esoteric genius that Bava possessed behind the lens, perhaps the master is finally going to get his due.
The cases for the five-disc set are lovingly adorned with multiple international posters and lobby cards for the five films and further encased in a beautiful slip cover featuring a striking image of Bava on the spine. "Black Sunday" (1960), "Black Sabbath" (1963), "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" (1963), "Knives of the Avenger" (1966), and "Kill, Baby…Kill!" (1966) are all films that would be at the top of any Bava fan´s wish list and are a great example of the diverse genres Bava handled expertly. While "Sunday," "Sabbath," and "Kill" follow in the footsteps of the gothic British Hammer films, "The Girl" was written as a slight parody of Hitchcock, and "Knives" is a unique Viking action flick that is far better than it has any right to be. Perhaps it was Bava's inability to stick with one genre that lead him to never find the successes he looked for in life; his own death in 1980 was overshadowed by Hitchcock himself who passed on a mere four days later.
Bava's films have played all over the world and have been presented under multiple titles with a wide variety of edits, score changes, and dubbing. Volume one of "The Mario Bava Collection" attempts to do the maestro justice by including the international, uncut versions when available. Most of the five films feature only the original Italian language tracks, while a couple include the badly dubbed English tracks. Thankfully, only "Black Sunday" forces the terribly dubbed track on us without any other option. One of the causes for Bava's films not gaining the acceptance they deserve rests largely in the way the audio for Italian films was created in the sixties and seventies. Most Italian films of the time featured actors from multiple countries. Rather than have everyone speak in a language they were unfamiliar with, most were filmed without sound and later had their dialogue dubbed for whatever country the film was being shown in. Even when watched with the original Italian dialogue track, a Bava film still has the notoriously hard-to-deal-with lack of synchronicity between the dialogue and lips. In movies made by lesser filmmakers, this can be frustratingly distracting, but in a Bava film, it's just something worth overlooking.
The cases for the five-disc set are lovingly adorned with multiple international posters and lobby cards for the five films and further encased in a beautiful slip cover featuring a striking image of Bava on the spine. "Black Sunday" (1960), "Black Sabbath" (1963), "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" (1963), "Knives of the Avenger" (1966), and "Kill, Baby…Kill!" (1966) are all films that would be at the top of any Bava fan´s wish list and are a great example of the diverse genres Bava handled expertly. While "Sunday," "Sabbath," and "Kill" follow in the footsteps of the gothic British Hammer films, "The Girl" was written as a slight parody of Hitchcock, and "Knives" is a unique Viking action flick that is far better than it has any right to be. Perhaps it was Bava's inability to stick with one genre that lead him to never find the successes he looked for in life; his own death in 1980 was overshadowed by Hitchcock himself who passed on a mere four days later.
Bava's films have played all over the world and have been presented under multiple titles with a wide variety of edits, score changes, and dubbing. Volume one of "The Mario Bava Collection" attempts to do the maestro justice by including the international, uncut versions when available. Most of the five films feature only the original Italian language tracks, while a couple include the badly dubbed English tracks. Thankfully, only "Black Sunday" forces the terribly dubbed track on us without any other option. One of the causes for Bava's films not gaining the acceptance they deserve rests largely in the way the audio for Italian films was created in the sixties and seventies. Most Italian films of the time featured actors from multiple countries. Rather than have everyone speak in a language they were unfamiliar with, most were filmed without sound and later had their dialogue dubbed for whatever country the film was being shown in. Even when watched with the original Italian dialogue track, a Bava film still has the notoriously hard-to-deal-with lack of synchronicity between the dialogue and lips. In movies made by lesser filmmakers, this can be frustratingly distracting, but in a Bava film, it's just something worth overlooking.
Italian filmmaker Mario Bava influenced countless directors and cinematographers with his unique style, set design, and camera angles. The essence of Bava can be easily identified in films as diverse as "Alien," "Austin Powers," and "Friday the 13th." With the film "Blood and Black Lace," Bava single-handedly created the "giallo" film genre that overtook Italian cinema in the late sixties, dubbed "giallo" (Italian for yellow) in reference to the yellow-covered crime novels that were popular at the time. The "giallo" genre focused more on the violent deaths of the victims rather than on the investigation that lead to the killer's eventual capture, which was unusual at the time but commonplace in today's cinema. Bava was one of the first directors to adapt a comic book into a movie. With "Diabolik" he predated today's trend of turning any four-color hero (Spider-Man, Batman) into a silver-screen icon. While Bava set the standard for experimental and exploitative Italian cinema, his work is virtually unknown to the masses. Although many of the directors that he inspired--Tarantino, Lynch, Fellini, Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, and Italy's own Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento--have become well known and discussed icons, Bava himself was pushed to the background. But with Anchor Bay's release of "The Mario Bava Collection: Volume One," featuring five films that showcase the esoteric genius that Bava possessed behind the lens, perhaps the master is finally going to get his due.
The cases for the five-disc set are lovingly adorned with multiple international posters and lobby cards for the five films and further encased in a beautiful slip cover featuring a striking image of Bava on the spine. "Black Sunday" (1960), "Black Sabbath" (1963), "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" (1963), "Knives of the Avenger" (1966), and "Kill, Baby…Kill!" (1966) are all films that would be at the top of any Bava fan´s wish list and are a great example of the diverse genres Bava handled expertly. While "Sunday," "Sabbath," and "Kill" follow in the footsteps of the gothic British Hammer films, "The Girl" was written as a slight parody of Hitchcock, and "Knives" is a unique Viking action flick that is far better than it has any right to be. Perhaps it was Bava's inability to stick with one genre that lead him to never find the successes he looked for in life; his own death in 1980 was overshadowed by Hitchcock himself who passed on a mere four days later.
Bava's films have played all over the world and have been presented under multiple titles with a wide variety of edits, score changes, and dubbing. Volume one of "The Mario Bava Collection" attempts to do the maestro justice by including the international, uncut versions when available. Most of the five films feature only the original Italian language tracks, while a couple include the badly dubbed English tracks. Thankfully, only "Black Sunday" forces the terribly dubbed track on us without any other option. One of the causes for Bava's films not gaining the acceptance they deserve rests largely in the way the audio for Italian films was created in the sixties and seventies. Most Italian films of the time featured actors from multiple countries. Rather than have everyone speak in a language they were unfamiliar with, most were filmed without sound and later had their dialogue dubbed for whatever country the film was being shown in. Even when watched with the original Italian dialogue track, a Bava film still has the notoriously hard-to-deal-with lack of synchronicity between the dialogue and lips. In movies made by lesser filmmakers, this can be frustratingly distracting, but in a Bava film, it's just something worth overlooking.
The cases for the five-disc set are lovingly adorned with multiple international posters and lobby cards for the five films and further encased in a beautiful slip cover featuring a striking image of Bava on the spine. "Black Sunday" (1960), "Black Sabbath" (1963), "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" (1963), "Knives of the Avenger" (1966), and "Kill, Baby…Kill!" (1966) are all films that would be at the top of any Bava fan´s wish list and are a great example of the diverse genres Bava handled expertly. While "Sunday," "Sabbath," and "Kill" follow in the footsteps of the gothic British Hammer films, "The Girl" was written as a slight parody of Hitchcock, and "Knives" is a unique Viking action flick that is far better than it has any right to be. Perhaps it was Bava's inability to stick with one genre that lead him to never find the successes he looked for in life; his own death in 1980 was overshadowed by Hitchcock himself who passed on a mere four days later.
Bava's films have played all over the world and have been presented under multiple titles with a wide variety of edits, score changes, and dubbing. Volume one of "The Mario Bava Collection" attempts to do the maestro justice by including the international, uncut versions when available. Most of the five films feature only the original Italian language tracks, while a couple include the badly dubbed English tracks. Thankfully, only "Black Sunday" forces the terribly dubbed track on us without any other option. One of the causes for Bava's films not gaining the acceptance they deserve rests largely in the way the audio for Italian films was created in the sixties and seventies. Most Italian films of the time featured actors from multiple countries. Rather than have everyone speak in a language they were unfamiliar with, most were filmed without sound and later had their dialogue dubbed for whatever country the film was being shown in. Even when watched with the original Italian dialogue track, a Bava film still has the notoriously hard-to-deal-with lack of synchronicity between the dialogue and lips. In movies made by lesser filmmakers, this can be frustratingly distracting, but in a Bava film, it's just something worth overlooking.
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