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Simply Perfect

An Exercise In Nonsense

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

We went to see Blood and Black Lace in the theater a few weeks ago and there was a speaker before it. Maybe he's bad at speaking in public, but the guy gave short shift to the film, mumbling out about how it influenced Friday the 13th (I'd say Bay of Blood did more than this movie) and how it had a different title. And that was it. I was incensed. I wanted to get up out of my seat and scream that Mario Bava is the reason why lighting is the way it is and his use of color and how I can site hundreds of films that he influenced. But I sat in my seat and boiled while the movie unspooled, because I'm really passionate about Mario Bava and don't need to make a scene and miss seeing one of his films on the big screen.That said — Shock is Bava's last film. It's called Beyond the Door II here in the U.S., but I like the original title better. It's an ecomonical film — there are only three characters (well, three living characters). Dora (Daria Nicolodi, who should be canonized for giving birth to both Suspiria and Asia Argento, as well as roles in Deep Red, Inferno, Opera and so much more) and Bruno (Yor, Hunter from the Future's Overlord) are a newly married couple who have just moved back into her old home — the home where her drug addicted husband killed himself — with her son, Marco.Dora's had some real issues dealing with her husband's death. And Bruno is never home, as he's a pilot for a major airline. Either she's going crazy again or her son is evil or he's possessed or ever single one of those things at once. You have not seen a kid this creepy perhaps ever — he watched his mother and stepfather make love, declaring them pigs. He tells his mom he wants to kill her. He makes his stepfather's plane nearly crash just by putting an image of the man's face on a swing.While Mario was sick throughout the filming (and his son Lambarto would fill in), you can definitely see his style shine through the simple story. There's one scene of Dora's face and her dead hsubands's and then her face that repeats vertically that will blow your mind up.Read more at https://bandsaboutmovies.com/2017/10/17/shock-1977/

I believe this was the last film from Director Mario Brava, with his son, Lamberto, directing parts of it. While the obvious lack of budget shows this still remains a fine movie from the old master.The plot involves Daria Nicolodi and her 2nd husband moving back into the house she shared with her 1st beau, who we are told died by his own hand and was a depressive drug addict. She has spent some months in a sanitarium recovering from her ordeal but now all the trouble seems well behind her.Of course it's only just beginning. And along for the ride is Creepy Kid number 8765 in horror movies of this period. Only this kid may be, on occasion, psychically inhabited by the ghost of his father - Nicolodi's 1st hubby!Daria N is superb in this movie, taking the viewer away from the fairly stretched out plot and putting it all out there. A very different performance to the one she gave in Deep Red but just as effective. And of course Bava fills the film with superbly-realised fever dreams and some genuinely jumpy moments. The denouement, when it comes, is superbly executed. This is a film that mainly relies on atmosphere and creepiness rather than gore, except for one scene at the end involving a pick axe.If only they'd left out the laughing piano!

Shock (1977) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Dora Baldini (Daria Nicolodi) moves her new husband (John Steiner) and her son (David Colin, Jr.) from a previous marriage into the house that she once lived with the kid's father who committed suicide. It doesn't take long for strange things to start happening and the mother believes that the dead father has possessed the body of his son. SHOCK has a pretty bad reputation, which I think is somewhat unfair for a few different reasons. I think a lot of people automatically hated this picture because it was originally released in America as BEYOND THE DOOR II and many were upset that it had nothing to do with the 1974 picture. Another reason people hate this film is because it's not your typical Italian horror film as there's not any real gore and for the majority of the running time there's not a single thing that happens. I think SHOCK really is the perfect example of a very talented director being able to take a rather lackluster screenplay and a low budget and working some magic with it. There's no doubt that Mario Bava was a genius that could do things with a limited amount of funds and he does a pretty good job here. There are several great scenes that are really brought to life by the director's style and this includes the various hauntings. When the horror elements finally kick in they're pretty effective including a now famous scene involving the little boy running up to his mother. I certainly won't spoil what happens but it's certainly a creepy little sequence. I thought Bava did a pretty good job at covering the psychological elements of the film as we really do seem to get into the mind of Nicolodi as she starts to crack under all the pressure she's under. Speaking of Nicolodi, she turns in a fine performance as all of her emotional states are perfectly captured and I thought she was very believable as the tortured soul. Steiner is also good as the caring husband and Colin, who also appeared in BEYOND THE DOOR, isn't too bad. What really keeps this film from being more is the screenplay, which is pretty mediocre to say the least. I think the entire plot involving the suicide is pretty predictable and there's really not any shocks. If the term "by-the-numbers" means anything to you then this film is the perfect example of it. When you see how bland the screenplay is, it's even more impressive that Bava was able to do so much with it. SHOCK is certainly a flawed movie but the effective moments make it worth sitting through and it certainly deserves a better reputation.

I don't know, maybe it's just me. But it seems as though a lot of viewers may have confused their sentiment for Mario Bava with effect. I adore Bava, he was the visual master of classic Italian horror who's movies all seem to have a surreal quality to them suggesting he was somewhat more than just another man with a gift for vision. Nobody can touch his efforts in Italian genre cinema 1960 - 1980. (Though I personally prefer the workmanlike films of Antonio Margheriti and Riccardo Freda.) There is no denying that Mario Bava knew how to construct a shot, from the camera angle to the lighting to the color schemes to having the characters do bizarre, unexpected things that are riveting to witness, and then turn 90 minutes of such shots into what usually end up being amazing little movies. Just watch the guy pry the spiked mask off his face in MASK OF THE DEMON and tell me that isn't the coolest thing ever. Even if you don't care for the film it's an arresting, diverting image that sticks with you.SCHOCK is a comparative mess. It's a great looking mess, but I am just going to refuse to go along with the party here. I hated every simpering, mealy-moused, over-rated minute of it. Expecting a twisted, nauseating, Freudian EXORCIST/OMEN ripoff about a creepy kid possessed by the spirit of his murdered father in a haunted house, instead I found myself waiting with growing impatience through a nonstop parade of every low-budget Italian horror shortcut ever conjured up, including a fake near disaster on an airplane staged just like they did it on "Star Trek": shaking the camera and having people gyrate in their chairs like Sulu recoiling to a photon torpedo blast.Another reviewer here gets it right when he says not to bother with the plot and just concentrate on the images. Usually with a Mario Bava film that's not a problem. The issue here is that there actually was a story being told, it catches up with the imagery in the final few minutes and the payoff didn't equal the investment of attention that led up to the film's gloriously gruesome concluding moments. There were two great gore sequences, a fantastic little sleight of hand freak-out moment where the annoying little kid transforms into something else without the use of off-camera editing, but the other 93 minutes of the film were dead in the water, and the kid was incredibly annoying (or maybe just poorly cast: I never believed for one minute he was really the child of the protagonist). The film does boast another great John Steiner faux method performance, but then again he's great in everything. Even CALIGULA.I think there are two things going on with the film. First and most important, the enthusiasm for it having finally been restored to it's uncensored widescreen glory: After years of muddled, cut, overly dark fullscreen transfers, we can finally see what the maestro was getting at. The second point is more problematic and this might annoy others, but I think a lot fans are overcome by the very human sentiment of SCHOCK literally being Mario Bava's final movie (though much of it us alleged to have been directed by his son, Lamberto Bava, credited here as assistant director), and their sincere wish that it was a better movie than it finally turned out to be. All of his films are special and I'm pretty sure that after another viewing or two I'll warm up to it. But it lacks the unrelenting power of BLOOD & BLACK LACE, the cheeky perversity of TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE, CALTIKI's playfully morbid reckless invention, the poetic resonance of KILL BABY KILL, the guile of BLACK SABBATH, and the overwhelming pioneering artiness of MASK OF THE DEMON, which are ultimately the films that Bava will be remembered for.4/10, and all apologies to anybody who is annoyed by my comments. Art is signified by its ability to generate different reactions in people, and believe it or not I find it refreshing to say that I've finally met a Mario Bava movie that I disliked intensely. He was a human being after all.