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I love this movie so much

The acting in this movie is really good.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

RELEASED IN 1966 and directed by Mario Bava, "Kill, Baby, Kill" takes place in a Carpathian village in 1907 where Dr. Paul Eswai (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) arrives to perform an autopsy at the request of the inspector (Piero Lulli). The evidence points to the hamlet being cursed with a mysterious ghost girl that compels those who see her to kill themselves, which the doctor thinks is rubbish; at first anyway. Erika Blanc plays a visiting medical student who assists Eswai while Fabienne Dali appears as the village witch and Giovanna Galletti as a bitter baroness. Luciano Catenacci is on hand as the burgomaster (mayor) and the witch's lover.The movie has a colorful and haunting Gothic/Horror ambiance, which can be traced to earlier films like the B&W "The City of the Dead" (aka "Horror Hotel") (1960) and, more so, "The Terror" (1963), which was one of Francis Ford Coppola's early works, although he only directed part of it. Like those flicks, "Kill, Baby, Kill" features mysterious manors, dilapidated churches, ghosts, cobwebs, witches and bell towers in the mold of Hammer flicks of the era, such as the contemporaneous "Dracula, Prince of Darkness" (1966). As far as spooky MOOD goes, "Kill, Baby, Kill" is superb, but the story isn't as compelling as "The Terror," except for the last act. Nevertheless, the movie has influenced many artists and their works.Rossi-Stuart makes for a stalwart protagonist in the mold of James Bond (looks-wise) while Erika Blanc and Fabienne Dali work well on the other side of the gender spectrum, both striking in different ways.The title of the film is cheesy and recalls Russ Meyer's "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" from the year before. It was obviously used to give the film a "hip" edge and sell as many tickets as possible. In 1971 it was retitled "Curse of the Living Dead" in the US, which was a 100% improvement. Here are several other sample titles that would be an upgrade, as well as more accurate: "Village of the Laughing Dead"; "Night of the Laughing Dead"; "Child of Vengeance"; "The Ghost at the Window"; "Child Cursed Village"; "Forgotten Daughter"; "Make them Pay"; "Sorceress' Regret"; "Melissa"; and "Melissa's Curse."Okay, now for a few joke titles: "Melissa and her Sissa"; "The Graps of Wrath"; "That Damn Ball" and "Ghost Boy in Drag." That last one is due to the fact that the ghost girl was played by a boy, one-shot actor Valerio Valeri.THE MOVIE RUNS 1 hour, 23 minutes and was shot entirely in Rome, Lazio, Italy. WRITERS: Romano Migliorini, Roberto Natale and Bava.GRADE: B

Mario Bava's wonderful Gothic horror - known as Kill Baby Kill in the UK - is a gorgeous-looking ghostly tale par excellence. From it's opening sequence, in which we see a woman throw herself onto spiked railings, to its final denouement, this is a beautiful haunting tale of revenge.While looking much like a Hammer film, Bava does so much more with his camera than your average Hammer director from this period (1966), pulling back from a ball bouncing towards, and over, a corpse, and capturing the spectral village with its misty doom-laden cemetery with spooky aplomb. I was mesmerised by it. And of course, there is the chilling apparition herself.Or I should say himself, for the dead girl at the heart of the story was actually played by a boy! Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, who had form in the genre (previously menacing Vincent Price, no less, in The Last Man On Earth) plays a coroner called in to perform an autopsy on the first victim. It isn't long before the doctor, aided by Erica Blanc, discovers the town is under a curse...What a great little film this is! With its stunning cinematography it's hard to believe the movie cost only 50k. I watched this after seeing IT in the cinema a couple of days earlier, and personally I thought Kill Baby Kill (terrible title - probably one stuck on it by AIP!) put the modern horror blockbuster to shame. The bouncing ball has been stolen by quite a few films - notably The Changeling - as, of course, has the ghostly child so effectively used here. Originality will always breed imitators!I haven't seen all the Italian Gothic horrors of the 60s, but I have seen a lot of them. And this is best I've come across so far. Great stuff.

Kill, Baby, Kill — director Mario Bava's return to Gothic horror — is commonly considered to be one of the greatest horror movies of all time. It has provided inspiration and influence for other greats such as David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, and Federico Fellini. It's considered a classic for good reason and I knew I'd love it the moment it opened with a woman impaling herself on a wrought iron fence…The movie begins with Dr. Paul Eswai (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) arriving at a quiet, foggy Transylvanian village wracked with superstition and fear. He has been called upon to perform an autopsy to find out the cause of a girl's mysterious death — the method is unusual enough, but the fact that there is a coin embedded in her heart adds another layer to the confusion. He finds out soon that the village is terrified of the spectral image of a young girl — Melissa Graps — who died 20 years earlier and is said to bring death whenever she is seen by members of the community. The coins are revealed to be talismans placed by the town witch, Ruth (Fabienne Dali), who is trying to protect the village members from Baroness Graps (Giana Vivaldi), who is helping her deceased daughter claim the souls of the innocent.As is standard with Bava's films, the plot takes a back seat to the aesthetics of the movie, the mood. The sets in Kill, Baby, Kill are so ethereal, so decadent, so perfectly spooky… long, foggy alleyways, the most PERFECT cemetery ever, inexplicably colored lights, black cats, and castles abound. There's several memorable camera moves, most notably for me was the camera taking the perspective of the swing itself as the girl swings on it, and the disorienting repetition of Paul walking through the same room over and over — incredible (and said to have influenced David Lynch's similar scene in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me). I also loved the scene of Paul and Monica (Erika Blanc) walking out of the foggy tunnel, with the camera seemingly placed on a hill up above. Just fantastic moodiness all throughout.Though the plot itself IS pretty cool. The fear of the people in the village is palpable, and the whole concept of this girl's spirit being unable to rest and causing people to bleed to death as she once did… creepy as hell. There's several scenes of her peeking through a window or putting her hand up to the glass and there's a definite sense of dread, as we know that anyone who lays eyes on her will die a death similar to her own.There was also a pretty amazing balance of warm and cool tones throughout the movie, sometimes contrasting in one scene, with almost one corner being warmly lit and the other more coolly. Maybe it's the photographer in me noticing that kind of thing but I thought it was well done.The soundtrack is pre-Goblin, but most certainly influenced them in some way. It is the perfect accompaniment for such a trippy, mind-altering movie.When you first see the ghost of little Melissa Graps you know instantly that she is iconic, running around with her dress and her bouncing white ball.Overall just a great, trippy, atmospheric masterpiece. Bava is one of the greats and I look forward to working my way through his body of work!

While the title might suggest this is another fiendish giallo in the line of BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, KILL, BABY...KILL! is more in line with Bava's BLACK Sunday than it is with that early slasher classic. The setting is a frightened village, where superstition runs rife and the local churchyards are full of mist and broken headstones, grave diggers are always at work, and a ghostly bell rings although nobody is pulling the rope.Yep, we're back in familiar Hammer territory, but when the atmosphere is as chilling as it is here then that's no reason to complain. The frightened villagers are familiar to any fan of the Gothic genre, and the fear portrayed here is extremely pervasive, and effectively transforms the viewer, too, into a scared witness of the events that unfold. Bava's famed photography is once again in evidence here, only marred slightly by the graininess of the print, but when a low budget film is over thirty years old, this is what you come to expect.Bava manages to inject a few unique, disturbing images into his film. The first one is a bouncing ball which just by its bounce manages to be both mysterious and frightening, especially when it doesn't really exist. The second image - and the best - is of a man repeatedly running through a room, yet entering the same room over and over again. Sounds familiar, then just wait until he catches up with himself, a sheer moment of genius. The ghost in this case is of a young, angelic-looking girl who brings death to everyone she sees by willing them to murder themselves in a bloody way. The fact that she looks so innocent makes the fact that she's evil all the more horrific, especially the childish giggling noise she makes which here, instead of conveying happiness, conveys terror. It stands as a mark of Bava's skill that he can make something so innocent so scary, just by making the giggle echo a bit.The acting may not be brilliant, and the characters are not very well drawn, apart from the three principal people involved (the old mad woman, the nurse, the doctor). While this could have potentially destroyed the film, it doesn't really matter in this case as the emphasis is on the bleak, cobwebby surroundings, not the people in them. There are plenty of neat touches plot-wise, such as the murder victims all having a coin embedded in their hearts, as protection against evil which stops them themselves coming back to life as ghosts. There are also other neat touches of the villagers' superstition, wreathes lining doors, potential victims getting "leech vines" wrapped around them (disgusting), and frightened people hiding inside locked houses. These elements create an overpowering oppressive atmosphere. While you feel that the script is nothing special (I'm sure it could have been filmed in such a way as to have been terrible), the camera-work and photography are so good that they account for any shortcomings and help to make this film highly effective. It's very rare to find but well worth seeking out, especially to those who like Hammer films (such as THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES), and in many ways it's better than the British and American contemporaries due to a heightened realism.