Kill, Baby, Killaka... lots of titles (1966) Italian
I love any movie that thinks it actually needs lots of titles to be interesting. Most of the time that means the movie is REALLY going to suck, but this is a Mario Bava movie and unless they messed with it overmuch, you can expect what you see with most Bava movies: A solid story, usually involving witches, ghosts or what have you, a young ingenue and a handsome hero to save the day. Oh and lots and lots of castles or stone villas and gloomy dark weather. Always dark, all the time.
This might also have had the distinction of the most titles, as well as touted as being Bava's greatest movie. It is also known as Curse Of The Dead, Curse Of The Living Dead (Night Of The Living Dead didn't come out until 1968 so not a rip-off, how about that!), Don't Walk In The Park (?!?), Kill, Baby... Kill! (love all the punctuation) and Operation Fear (?!?).
This is one of your typical ghost stories with some non-typical elements that make it unique. It's set in the Carpathian mountains so you know the people are ruled by, as the movie states, 'Poverty, ignorance and superstition'. And stone-made everything. Whole towns of nothing but stone buildings, streets, etc. - except for the beams. Those are always thick wood and ALWAYS covered in tons of cob webs. If there was a common decorating element in this town, it was that even if the building was occupied, or even a business, cobwebs were absolutely EVERYWHERE. Apparently spiders are very welcome in Romania. At least in this movie. Either that or housekeepers hadn't been invented yet.
We start our gothic tale of woe with the arrival in town of a new, young and handsome coroner in a carriage that refuses to take him into the town he's travelling to (Darn those 18th century cabbies!). He walks the rest of the way and meets with the Inspector and town Burgermeister (No, not a fast food restaurant owner, it's just a German word for Mayor). A woman has been found impaled on something sharp (no, she wasn't staked). As he does an autopsy with a natural medicine student as a witness (only person in town with an education) he notices that shoved into the body's heart is a silver coin. They had tried to bury her before he could do the autopsy and he is attacked for not allowing her to be buried quick. His death is on his own head they yell.
What are they afraid of? Apparently the town is cursed by the ghost of a child of all things, and if you see her, you die mysteriously (being impaled wasn't that mysterious) of bleeding to death soon afterward. The silver coin is inserted by the town witch to ward off the nasties and keep the body down and not add to the ghost army I guess. So since this coroner is massively nosy he decides to 'solve' this mystery... having no Scooby gang to drag along with him, his only choice is the student who helped him (her being a beautiful redhead helped I'm sure).
At the heart of the mystery and a name repeated every few minutes or so is the Villa Graps, where people go in and do not come out (kind of a roach, err, I mean Carpathian motel). Living there is old lady Baroness Graps (Why do all these people have to have titles anyway?), a bitter old troll happy that the town is dying one by one, hoping the rest follow soon. She has a major stick up her... anyway, she's an unhappy wretch who also claims to be a medium (If you're old or mysterious looking in Romania, you're supernatural. It's the law.).
Back to the Graps house we go and we get the story from the old crone: Twenty years ago (Wait, this kid would only be 27 and mommy looks over 80? Ick.) the town had a festival and Melissa wanted to play. They were all drunk and apparently due to a tragic drunk horse riding accident (Guns don't kill people, drunk drivers do - apparently no matter what they happen to be driving.) Melissa was trampled and bled to death. She clung to the town church's bell, trying to ring it but not being strong enough, died holding it.
It now rings to show somebody's gonna die (I thought she had to... never mind). So old lady Graps, being the supernatural crone movies like this require cursed the town, raising her girl as a vengeful ghost. Now the witch of the town, the one with the silver coins, had struck a bargain with her - don't bug her or her loved ones and she'll let the kid kill whomever she wants. Nice.
Both the hero and redhead try to find their way out of this spiderweb covered place. It seems to trap them. The redhead is somehow transported to the family crypt while the hero runs through a room with a door at both ends. We get a rather inventive scene of him running through this same room over and over again. As he runs faster and faster, he actually starts to catch up to himself running ahead of him over and... well, after a while of this he does catch himself, which makes him faint (?!?). When he wakes he's outside somehow. He has to go back to save the redhead but Melissa is on a tear now and she's gonna clean house. That's when we find out that the redhead, who thought she was the child of Grap's now-dead servants, is actually Grap's other daughter, Melissa being her older sister. Ookay. That doesn't prevent Melissa from wanting to kill her though. Sibling rivalry and all that.
This is one of your typical ghost stories with some non-typical elements that make it unique. It's set in the Carpathian mountains so you know the people are ruled by, as the movie states, 'Poverty, ignorance and superstition'. And stone-made everything. Whole towns of nothing but stone buildings, streets, etc. - except for the beams. Those are always thick wood and ALWAYS covered in tons of cob webs. If there was a common decorating element in this town, it was that even if the building was occupied, or even a business, cobwebs were absolutely EVERYWHERE. Apparently spiders are very welcome in Romania. At least in this movie. Either that or housekeepers hadn't been invented yet.
We start our gothic tale of woe with the arrival in town of a new, young and handsome coroner in a carriage that refuses to take him into the town he's travelling to (Darn those 18th century cabbies!). He walks the rest of the way and meets with the Inspector and town Burgermeister (No, not a fast food restaurant owner, it's just a German word for Mayor). A woman has been found impaled on something sharp (no, she wasn't staked). As he does an autopsy with a natural medicine student as a witness (only person in town with an education) he notices that shoved into the body's heart is a silver coin. They had tried to bury her before he could do the autopsy and he is attacked for not allowing her to be buried quick. His death is on his own head they yell.
What are they afraid of? Apparently the town is cursed by the ghost of a child of all things, and if you see her, you die mysteriously (being impaled wasn't that mysterious) of bleeding to death soon afterward. The silver coin is inserted by the town witch to ward off the nasties and keep the body down and not add to the ghost army I guess. So since this coroner is massively nosy he decides to 'solve' this mystery... having no Scooby gang to drag along with him, his only choice is the student who helped him (her being a beautiful redhead helped I'm sure).
At the heart of the mystery and a name repeated every few minutes or so is the Villa Graps, where people go in and do not come out (kind of a roach, err, I mean Carpathian motel). Living there is old lady Baroness Graps (Why do all these people have to have titles anyway?), a bitter old troll happy that the town is dying one by one, hoping the rest follow soon. She has a major stick up her... anyway, she's an unhappy wretch who also claims to be a medium (If you're old or mysterious looking in Romania, you're supernatural. It's the law.).
Soon our handsome hero sees for himself a spooky looking long blond haired child. She says her name is Melissa. She has a magical white bouncing ball that travels wherever she wants it to go. When he tries to follow her, she disappears. He is now doomed - she is the ghost and he's gonna bleed.
Back to the Graps house we go and we get the story from the old crone: Twenty years ago (Wait, this kid would only be 27 and mommy looks over 80? Ick.) the town had a festival and Melissa wanted to play. They were all drunk and apparently due to a tragic drunk horse riding accident (Guns don't kill people, drunk drivers do - apparently no matter what they happen to be driving.) Melissa was trampled and bled to death. She clung to the town church's bell, trying to ring it but not being strong enough, died holding it. It now rings to show somebody's gonna die (I thought she had to... never mind). So old lady Graps, being the supernatural crone movies like this require cursed the town, raising her girl as a vengeful ghost. Now the witch of the town, the one with the silver coins, had struck a bargain with her - don't bug her or her loved ones and she'll let the kid kill whomever she wants. Nice. 
Both the hero and redhead try to find their way out of this spiderweb covered place. It seems to trap them. The redhead is somehow transported to the family crypt while the hero runs through a room with a door at both ends. We get a rather inventive scene of him running through this same room over and over again. As he runs faster and faster, he actually starts to catch up to himself running ahead of him over and... well, after a while of this he does catch himself, which makes him faint (?!?). When he wakes he's outside somehow. He has to go back to save the redhead but Melissa is on a tear now and she's gonna clean house. That's when we find out that the redhead, who thought she was the child of Grap's now-dead servants, is actually Grap's other daughter, Melissa being her older sister. Ookay. That doesn't prevent Melissa from wanting to kill her though. Sibling rivalry and all that.
So we get some kind of neat surreal scenes as they kind of fight against the house (we have a spiral staircase that also seems to get you nowhere) because the spooky Baroness is working her 'magic' against them. One thing I found very disturbing - Melissa was her favorite, that was obvious. But she had a portrait made of her before her death - one of those fancy dresses and hairstyle things - but on the chair beside her is a human skull. Okay mom, that's just sick. Maybe that's why she wanted out of the house so badly.
Graps will be defeated, because Bavo movies go for the good conquering evil themes. Graps had broken her promise and killed the man the witch loved so the witch comes to the house to end the 'curse' she helped her craft in the first place. They both end up killing each other, just in time to save our handsome couple and Melissa disappears.
This movie was considered one of Bavo's finest. I'm not sure if it was because of the sets (which were just incredible) or the story itself. Needless to say I'm not tired of the Bava collection yet and will continue to look them over. A side note that has nothing to do with this movie, just Bava: On Amazon.com they have listed The House Of Exorcism by Telly Savalas (What? What the hell... oh never mind) and they call it 'Mario Bava's insane tale of...' Well, after seeing what he REALLY made and what Leone and American movie makers did to it I couldn't let that go and wrote a review which I hope anyone thinking of watching that trash will check out beforehand. By Telly Savalas? Shows that when you have a huge corporation, editing and keeping track of item descriptions sometimes kind of goes by the wayside...
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