Positively Shocking

Normally, a movie that makes me covet the death of its child character in the first reel is a painful slog. Thankfully, someone like Mario Bava has earned himself enough cred to allow me to power through with decent success.

Quick Plot: Dora is recovering from a nervous breakdown in the countryside estate she once shared with her late husband. Now remarried to a pilot named Bruno, Dora finds herself and her young, obnoxious son Marco changing in their new/old home.

Statues come to life, razors fly, and little Marco begins developing some peculiar habits. Is he possessed by the spirit of his late father, or did Dora's doctors move a little too fast with her release?

Shock is the great Mario Bava's last film, made in 1977 with some assistance from his son, Lamberto. While it's far from the top tier of the Italian genre master's output, it has a fair share of strengths that make it interesting enough.

Frequent giallo muse Daria Nicolodi gets one of her meatiest parts, and she makes the most of it. The score blends every popular element of its time into a gloriously bizarre mix of frantic jazz, electronic beats, and classical piano used to randomly spooky effect. Even the isolated country setting works to Shock's favor.

The downside comes with the pacing, which makes the impossible 110 minute run time feeling even longer. The climax seems to ramble on for decades, a sort of clumsy Repulsion-esque mania that just doesn't end. In fairness, when it does, it does so with a generous, eerie bang.

High Points

It's always hard to truly judge a dubbed performance, but Daria Nicolodi manages to do some genuinely deep work with the troubled Dora

Low Points

Dubbed giallo is fairly infamous for its weird/obnoxious children, but Marco is particularly grating, possibly because he reminds me far too much of my current most hated television character, Noah Brat Benson

Lessons Learned

Name your son Marco and life is a constant game of wanting to shout "Polo!"

There's nothing worse for an Italian marriage than sending the husband off without  his coffee

Living with an abusive drug addict, spending half a year in a sanitarium, and getting '70s style electro-shock treatment just might affect your parenting skills slightly

Rent/Bury/Buy

I stumbled upon Shock via a random TCM Underground airing, which worked for a lazy kind of Sunday viewing. It's enjoyable as a relic of Bava's last years and as a showcase for Nicolodi, but probably isn't worth a large investment in your own energy.

Are We There Yet? The Super Sweaty Italian Edition

Sometimes you just need a little sleaze for your morning commute.

Sometimes Netflix Instant is better than coffee.

Even sleazy coffee.

(Obviously, Google Image Search is incredibly literal when it comes to sleazy coffee)

Quick Plot: A band of nogoodniks rob a factory of its workers' wages (which is seriously NOT COOL) but run into some police trouble on their way out of the parking garage. To ease their escape, they kidnap an attractive young woman named Maria and quickly ditch their escape vehicle for one with a full gas tank and, a little less conveniently, a driver hellbent on getting his sick but tranquilized son to the hospital. 

Can we say road trip?

Before you can argue the rules of I Spy, let's pause to introduce our villains:

The leader, most levelheaded, and somewhat sweaty Doc

Blade, the stabby and fairly sweaty one 

And 32, a man who oozes so much perspiration that he might very well be a supervillain named Dehydration

Although '32' is fun in itself, once you do the metric conversion.

Also, he's played by George Eastman, aka Gigi Montefiori, aka George Histman, Luigi Montefiori, aka (in this movie) Gabriele Duma, aka the Sultan of Sweat and Inappropriate Glee

Unless in Italy circa 1974, it was normal for a grown man to enjoy making a terrified woman pee under a long skirt in the middle of nowhere.

We've all been there, right?

Primarily filmed in 1974, Rabid Dogs hit some financial skids and remained unfinished and unreleased until 1997, with Alfredo Leone and Lamberto Bava adding some scenes for completion Either I'm not that observant or I was just REALLY into the movie, because never once did I find myself noticing anything odd. 

Well, odder than George Eastman's maniacally dubbed cackling.

This is, lest you be worried, a sleazy, sweaty, trashy, and darn fun little slice of '70s Italy. It will not change your life for any reason, but it will give you 90 solid minutes of colorful villains doing terrible things with extreme volume. A satisfying twist brings it all together and at the end of the day, you can live forever knowing you'll never experience a road trip quite as painful as one that puts you smack center of highly perspiring Italian men in a station wagon without air conditioning.

Lessons Learned

Snoring implies that you are sleeping

One of the hidden benefits of a leather car interior is that it's ideal for sharpening your blade

The first thing you do with a lot of money is screw some broad with big boobs

Just a suggestion: before committing a violent burglary, make sure you've checked that your getaway car has a full gas tank

Rent/Bury/Bury

Anyone with an love of Italian style sleaze will find little to not like in Rabid Dogs. It's a seedy, sweaty little film packed with memorable villains, ridiculous dialogue, and surprisingly satisfying twists. Stream it today with a few extra absorbent paper towels by your side. 

Birthday, Baby Bugg…Birthday!

Though I typically avoid all things ventriloquism due to the art form’s innate sense of PURE EVIL, it felt fitting to bestow some upon my blogging brother in arms, Zach T.L. Bugg Kelly. You see kids, this month marks the five year anniversary of The Lightning Bugg’s Lair, one of the Internet’s most splendifically splendiferous sources for genre movie writing.

And that same Internet tells me one celebrates a five year anniversary with wood.

 

Shudder

Zach is not only a great writer, but also, a true friend. I can assure the world that no man rocks a smoking jacket quite like this southern gentleman, and rarely is there a better movie swapper than the same South Carolina stud. Hence the return of the Deadly DollBugg’s Lair Crossover!, wherein Zach and I assign each other a film to watch and review. This being a celebration, I of course had to dig into Netflix Instant’s top shelf output for what I would deem the very best:

Tony Curtis dressed like a wizard, a muscular little person Native American born through a neck tumor , AND lasers?

All I got for my fifth birthday was a lot of Care Bear stuff.

On my end, Zach also went benevolent with Mario Bava’s 1966 ghost story, Kill, Baby…Kill! Overly punctuated title aside, it’s a good one.

Quick Plot: In the early 20^th century, an Italian village is cursed by the vengeful spirit of a bitter 8-year-old girl who died during a drunken town festival. The spooked locals know that anyone who catches a glance of the eerily blond Melissa Graps will inevitably meet their own bloody end, though visiting out-of-town coroner Paul Eswai brings the typical man-of-science doubts. As bodies begin to pile up, Paul and the lovely Monica Schuftan—a long-lost daughter of the area who’s returned at exactly the wrong time—must defeat or escape the evil haunting.

As stories go, Kill, Baby…Kill! is quite straightforward. There are a few mysteries thrown around the narrative (Monica’s secret past, Mama Graps ambiguous place in the mechanics of the haunting) but very simply, this is the tale of a ghost. A creeeeeeeeepy girl ghost who giggles incessantly, throws her ball around like she’s auditioning for The Changeling kickball team, and telepathically convinces otherwise normal (if extremely anxious) townies to stab themselves or impale their bodies upon strategically placed spiked fences. Throw in a few dizzying spiral staircases and a whole lot of very thick spider webs and you’ve essentially got the perfect ghost story for a dark stormy night.

A film like this requires the proper design and atmosphere, and Bava nails it with his camera. From winding overhead shots of carefully colored stairs to the slow suicidal terror that manifests in an ill-fated tavern girl’s wide eyes, Kill, Baby…Kill! is clearly devoted to being a good old fashioned scary story.

And it succeeds.

High Points

Considering so much of Italian horror can stumble when it comes to handling female characters, it’s incredibly refreshing to see how Bava portrays his women. They’re both the chief instigators of the horror AND the only ones fully equipped to fight it. There’s also some intriguing subtext to how Paul, your typical leading man, can’t seem to quite comprehend some of the power inherent in the good and evil woman around him, and it’s the men in authority that seem to pay the highest price

Also, dolls. Lots of freaky ass dolls

Low Points

There’s a rather glaring plot/character hole regarding the character of Monica, primarily in how the town’s burgomaster assigns her to assist in an autopsy despite her secret past (that only HE knows of) rendering such a move quite dangerous to all concerned

Lessons Learned

Touching the dead is against nature. Also, kind of icky

Poverty and ignorance + superstition = something sorta like the devil 

The best way to expel an evil ghost child is to beat yourself a little with a birch branch, Russian banya style

Rent/Bury/Buy

Kill, Baby…Kill! is streaming on Instant, and at just under 90 minutes, it’s the perfect answer to a quiet night at home. The film has some flaws (dubbing that nibbles at the tone, an oddly paced ending that mishandles its tension) but overall, it’s an outstanding exercise in atmosphere, from the period setting to the grandly conspicuous instrumental score. It may be the Lightning Bugg’s Lair’s birthday, but this was a true gift.

I mean, it didn’t have LASERS, but still…

Ear This!

It's a double whammy of podcast punching this week. First up, my 7-episode old show, The Feminine Critique, Christine and I don our glittery synchronized swimming caps and head to the water.

Literally...

And figuratively.

Download us with your podcast ap thingamajig or head here to stream.

Also in podcastland, I guest star on this week's episode of Outside the Cinema, where host Bill By Force and I discuss Mario Bava's pre-giallo giallo The Girl Who Knew Too Much and, far more excitingly, the Mario Lopez star vehicle form 1999, Outta Time.

I don't know how else to say it: Outta Time is the greatest 90 minutes you never knew existed.

Head here  for the full experience. Hurry up! Dive in!