Believe In What You Think You See

Mario Bava fans, does this place look familiar?

During my audio commentary for Bava's LISA AND THE DEVIL, to be released on October 23 as part of the MARIO BAVA COLLECTION VOLUME 2, I note -- as Lisa (Elke Sommer) exits the antiques shop and gets lost in a series of backstreets -- that some of the locations recall the labyrinthine passages of Karmingen, the fictional village where KILL, BABY... KILL! (1966) takes place. In his audio commentary for THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM, producer Alfredo Leone remarks that all of these early scenes were filmed in Toledo, Spain, where the mural of the Devil carrying away the dead is seen by Lisa's tour group.

On the basis of Alfredo's remarks, I scrapped from my book manuscript (to the best of my knowledge) any reference I had once made to the possibility that some of these set-ups might have been filmed in Faleria, the ancient Italian village where KILL, BABY... KILL! was made. As I recorded my commentary, I couldn't resist adding a mention of the similarity, and after watching the film again on my preview disc, I was driven to pull out the two films and look for shared points of compass.

The above shot is a frame grab of one such supposedly Spanish location from LISA that has always jogged a little KILL, BABY... KILL! muscle in my brain. Now, compare it with the following shot:

This is a fairly famous image from KILL, BABY... KILL! featuring Giacomo Rossi-Stuart and Erika Blanc. The location is obviously the same, albeit with Bava's peerless knack for atmosphere applied to it, making every shadow pregnant with the unseen presence of the ball-bouncing spectre Melissa Graps. We know for a fact that KILL, BABY... KILL! was not shot in Spain.

Here is Elke Sommer, passing through the same location in LISA AND THE DEVIL, filmed seven years later. Not in the nearly 30 years I've been acquainted with both films have I ever consciously matched the location shared by these two shots.

And here is Lamberto Bava revisiting Faleria more than 30 years after LISA AND THE DEVIL, in David Gregory's "Kill, Bava, Kill!" featurette -- intended for release on Dark Sky Films' regrettably withdrawn KILL, BABY... KILL! DVD. I rather prefer that stone wall with the green moss clinging to it, don't you?

Also in LISA AND THE DEVIL I found this shot, which is another setting I felt I had seen more recently. It turns out it was also photographed in Faleria, on the street outside their San Giuliano L'Ospitaliero Church. This particular set-up doesn't appear in KILL, BABY... KILL!, at least to the best of my notice, but the church's bell tower memorably does.

Finally, here's Lamberto Bava again, rediscovering the location in the David Gregory featurette. He notes, a few moments later, that the crew of KILL, BABY... KILL! used to take their meals on the steps outside that church on the very cold evenings of the production.

Certainly, I'm not blaming Alfredo for not remembering a little side trip to Faleria during the making of LISA AND THE DEVIL thirty-some years ago. How could I, when these shared locations weren't obvious to me after countless viewings of both films over a period of decades? Also, as you can see, there's a world of difference in how these locations can look in different times of day and also over the years.

The confirmation of recurring Faleria settings in LISA AND THE DEVIL is actually significant, because the film originated from a screenplay co-authored by Roberto Natale and Romano Migliorini, the authors of KILL, BABY... KILL! After finally confirming the logistical connection I long intuited between the two films with these screen grabs, my imagination began to accelerate and still more connections between the two films began to suggest themselves. The Baroness Graps (played by Giovanna Galletti) dies at the end of KILL, BABY... KILL! and the Contessa (played by Alida Valli) in LISA AND THE DEVIL is blind and dies differently... but are they not, in some inexplicable way, the same character? They look and dress much the same, and both are noblewomen who never leave their morbid, secluded villas. Is the Contessa's "shrine of death" villa not an echo of Villa Graps? Are not both women doomed by their unhealthy attachment to their children? And, as I ask in my LISA commentary -- in the movie's closing minutes, as Lisa emerges as a ghost from the ruins of the villa with a ball in her hand -- might not Lisa be short for... Melissa?

These are discoveries and ideas that didn't occur to me until long after finishing my book, so I am evidently still learning about my subject, even after writing close to 800,000 words. I can assure you that you'll learn some new things about LISA AND THE DEVIL from my audio commentary for the DVD, even if you've read my chapter on the film in MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK... and vice versa. But it's only now that I have confirmed for myself this spatial relationship between the two films, and I'm glad to have an additional venue like Video WatchBlog, where I can share these eurekas with like-minded folk immediately.

First Look: ABE's LISA AND THE DEVIL

Because I worked as a commentator for a number of the movies included in Anchor Bay Entertainment's forthcoming MARIO BAVA COLLECTION VOLUME 2, I've been sent a set of preview test discs for the new remasters included in this compendium, as well as ERIK THE CONQUEROR, which will be released separately at the same time. I've already watched a few of the movies and I'm here to tell you that the movies have indeed been conspicuously improved over their previous issues. If you're already excited about this incredible bargain of a set, prepare to get more excited.

My breath was taken away by Post Logic Studios' restorative work on Bava's baroque masterpiece LISA AND THE DEVIL (1973). I've never seen this film on video in a presentation that didn't look like a poor cousin to HOUSE OF EXORCISM (1975, which is largely composed of footage from LISA) -- which makes sense because the original negative of LISA was lost or destroyed as it was being used to create 16mm TV prints at Allied Artists. Only once did I see the film as it was meant to look, at a showing of a restored 35mm print supervised by the late Carlos Sylva at the American Cinematheque in the early 1990s. That version, I recall, was sharper and more boldly colored than any other I had seen... and that stunning viewing experience is pretty much perfectly replicated by ABE's newly remastered version.

The heightened detailing is evident from the very first shots of the animated titles sequence, with new textures evident in the red table surface and the white glove turning over the cards of the Tarot deck.

Even when Cecilio Paniagua's nostalgic-looking cinematography turns misty-eyed, in closeups of Elke Sommer and in faintly sun-dazzled shots like this, the mistiness never softens the essential sharpness of the picture.

In this shot of Alida Valli familiarizing herself with Sommer's face, as Telly Savalas rhapsodically describes the coloring of her hair, you can see how the colors have a certain Technicolor strength without losing the naturalistic subtlety of their coloring. The blue of Valli's eyes manage to pop while the purple of her dress remains muted and not overpowering.

This closeup of Savalas, as Leandro, is one of the shots I remember best from the American Cinematheque screening. I remember Alfredo Leone being annoyed by the pale quality of the color in past home video presentations, which diminished the ruddiness of Savalas' skin and god knows what else. On the big screen, Savalas looked distinctly redder than the other cast members, betokening his devilish caste, and this was something always lost on video. The effect has now been fairly well reinstated.

And here you can see how lovely are the presentations of skin tones, hair gloss, even the honeyed warmth of Sommer's hair color. All of these improvements help to make a very sensual film play more sensually, and to better delineate the fascinating components of its rococo set decoration. LISA AND THE DEVIL finally arrives on disc as ravishing as it was always intended to be, and it actually looks better to me than the glimpses I stole of HOUSE OF EXORCISM, which is featured on the same disc. But the LISA footage has always looked good in that heretofore prevailing context.

The only drawback: Sylva Koscina's bludgeoning death (intact in HOUSE OF EXORCISM) remains unintegrated, a problem that I hope can be corrected at some point in the future. Otherwise, Bava fans can rejoice because LISA AND THE DEVIL has finally triumphed in pictorial beauty over its more financially successful, frog-barfing twin.

And, in the "if I do say so myself" department, I was very pleased with how my audio commentary for the film plays. This is partly the work of disc producer Perry Martin, who edited my talk, eliminating some "um's" and "uh's" and sometimes shifting bits around for heightened effect -- a very happy collaboration. Together, I think we've done a very good job of shedding a bit of light on one of Bava's most mysterious and beckoning works.

I'll be continuing with previews of other titles in the BAVA COLLECTION 2 set in the days ahead.