#feeling for Bava (you can feel the long tendrils of American new horror cinema beginning to creep into his colourful Italian gothic) and
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Schock (Shock, 1977)
"Ghosts are only a figment of our imagination. We ourselves create them to justify our behaviour."
#schock#shock#beyond the door ii#italian cinema#mario bava#horror film#dardano sacchetti#lamberto bava#gianfranco barberi#alessandro parenzo#daria nicolodi#john steiner#david colin jr.#ivan rassimov#paul costello#nicola salerno#bava snr's final completed film (with a little help from jnr). the holy trinity of Bava‚ Nicolodi and Rassimov couldn't make this quite the#masterpiece I'd hoped for‚ but hell‚ I'd watch Daria paint a bathroom and be grateful. actually this is pretty good; unusually modern#feeling for Bava (you can feel the long tendrils of American new horror cinema beginning to creep into his colourful Italian gothic) and#undeniably slow to develop. more mainstream‚ in some sense‚ or perhaps just less stylistically singular than most of his filmography#but there are flashes of his genius‚ particularly in the nightmarish final act of grand dreamlike horror meeting#slow burn domestic madness. a haunted house story that isn't overly interested in the house: it's more about the haunted‚ the people and#the applied tension which bends and bends until it breaks. Steiner‚ as he always did‚ lends excellent support; I only found out after#watching this that he'd died earlier this year‚ something I missed at the time. his performance in Tenebre is something to behold‚ barely#ten minutes of screentime but he grabs the very bleeding heart of that film. Rassimov hasn't much to do but he's as handsome and as lovely#as he ever was. and Daria. it's nearly two years since we lost her now and it's still difficult to conceive of a world without her. here‚#as in every film she graced (too few)‚ she delivers a performance which is mesmerising for its sheer power and nuance and technical ability#that her work was mostly within the horror genre has predictably seen her often overlooked when discussing the great Italian actors#but if anything it takes even more talent‚ even more courage‚ to carve out a niche for yoirself in such a denigrated and ill respected#field and to still give your whole heart‚ body and soul to your work in a way that demands the highest praise
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