Tag Archives: gothic

film, musings

Bravo, Bava: Kill, Baby, Kill

KILL, BABY, KILL one-sheet poster.
Click for one-sheet poster.

Formulaic but highly effective, KILL, BABY, KILL (1966) [aka OPERAZIONE PAURA (OPERATION FEAR)] may very well be Mario Bava’s best movie. While laking the intensity of BLACK SUNDAY and its star, Barbara Steele, there is an unmatched atmosphere of the unworldly in KILL, BABY, KILL. All the trappings of the gothic are there: the outsider called to a mysterious, isolated town in the Carpathian mountains; a decrepit mansion; a curse; secret passages; a family crypt covered in cobwebs; and most gothic of all, a ghost — the ghost of a little girl (played by a boy) whose face at the window is one of the most indelible images one takes away from watching the film. Indeed, it is images, color, and sound that are most impressive in KILL, BABY, KILL, even if the plot is lacking.

Director Mario Bava — whose output in the nineteen fifties and sixties is staggering — considered it among his best work. Its muted but distinctive color palette of blues, greens, and yellow make for a dreamlike spectacle. And while its characters may be underdeveloped (a problem in many of Bava’s films), KILL BABY, KILL is one of the more straightforward ghost stories in Italian horror cinema (a sub-genre known for its surrealism). In many ways, KILL, BABY, KILL unfolds like an M.R. James tale — even Poe.

MODERN MEDICINE MEETS OLD-WORLD SUPERSTITION

In the early twentieth century, a city doctor, Dr. Paul Eswai (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) is dispatched to a small village to perform an autopsy on a woman who died under mysterious circumstances. He is joined by a student, Monica (Erika Blanc) — who, we later learn [as in many gothic tales] has a strong connection to the village and its murderous ghost child. The pair soon find that this is a town of superstitions. They learn that the townsfolk live in fear of a ghostly little girl named Melissa Graps, the daughter of a Baroness. According to legend, anyone who sees Melissa’s spirit soon dies in a horrific “accident.”

The ghost of Melissa
The ghost of Melissa, surrounded by creepy dolls, is part of a nightmare that neither Monica, nor us, will ever forget.

It seems that the little girl, Melissa, was killed years earlier, trampled as she tried to retrieve a ball in a crowd gathered in the town’s square. The grief-stricken Baroness — convinced the townspeople ignored her child as the little girl died — uses supernatural forces to fuel her revenge as Melissa’s ghost begins knocking off villagers left and right. A sorceress (Fabienne Dali) helps our hero and heroine to battle the Baroness. And in a dreamlike climax, Monica learns the secret behind her connection to the town (and Melissa). Eswai has his own “trip.” At one point, he chases a hysterical Monica through the rooms of the decaying mansion, encountering the same room again and again in a nightmarish circle — along with his doppelganger! Ultimately, Eswai saves Monica from falling to her death. The Baroness dies by Ruth’s hand, Melissa’s spirit is freed, and the village curse is broken.

PRAISE FROM SCORSESE

Martin Scorsese thought it Bava’s best work. In his introduction to Tim Lucas’ great All the Colors of the Dark  — which you should track down at a library as secondary market prices for this book are verrrrrryyyyy expensive) — Scorsese writes:

“[Bava] used light, shadow, color, sound (on- and off-screen), movement and texture to lead his viewers down uncharted paths into a kind of collective dream. Critics often compare movie-watching to dreaming but, in Bava’s case, the comparison actually means something…”

“…He places his viewers and his characters in an oddly disquieting state where they’re compelled to keep moving forward—even though they don’t know precisely why, or where they’re going….”

“…The atmosphere itself becomes the principal character, a living organism with a mind and will of its own.”

Scorsese would go on to admit that Satan in the form of the little girl who tempts Jesus in THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST  is directly influenced by Bava’s little girl ghost. Fellini and David Lynch have also said that KILL, BABY, KILL influenced their work.

KILL, BABY, KILL lobby card.
KILL, BABY, KILL lobby card. Note “The SQ Show” usually meant a special presentation of a foreign film, or even sometimes, a double feature.
A ROMANTIC CRAFTSMAN

Towards the end of his life, Bava told L’espresso that, “In my entire career, I made only big bullshits, no doubt about that….I’m just a craftsman. A romantic craftsman,” adding that he made movies “just like making chairs.”

Melissa at the window
Melissa at the window

Romantic craftsman? Chair maker? If Romanticism is understood as a departure from the reason and science of The Enlightenment, and instead places emphasis on emotion and imagination, then Bava is a master craftsman of the Romantic. And KILL, BABY, KILL is among the most romantic of his movies.  A dream of colors. Of images. Even the eerie sound of a child giggling and a ball rolling down the steps of a spiral staircase. And that face. That face.  Pressed against the window.

 

music, musings

Exquisite Corpse: Another Resurrection of Bauhaus

1982’s The Sky’s Gone Out ended with Bauhaus’ first “Exquisite Corpse.”

As their first new music since 2008, Bauhaus — the seminal early eigthies Goth band that blessed the world (or cursed it, depending on your point-of-view) with the immortal “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” — have returned to a method of songwriting not seen since the last track on their third album, 1982’s The Sky’s Gone Out. That song, “Exquisite Corpse,” takes its name, and method of composition, from a word (and illustration) game played in or around 1925 by dadaists (cum surrealists) André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Prévert and Yves Tanguy. It’s now 2022, and — using that same cadavre exquis style of writing — Bauhaus has released “Drink the New Wine.”

The  song’s title refers to that very first exquisite corpse endeavor by Breton and company that, when collected, included the phrase: “Le cadavre exquis boiara le vin nouveau” (“The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine”). True to its inspiration (and form), Bauhaus’ “Drink the New Wine” is a set of pieces each separately created by the band’s four members  — frontman Peter Murphy, guitarist Daniel Ash, and bassist David J, backed by his brother Kevin Haskins on drums. With their parts remotely recorded during the pandemic, none had heard what the others had done initially. Not until the song finally came together.

From a press release comes more details: “For the recording, the four musicians each had one minute and eight tracks at their disposal plus a shared sixty seconds plus four tracks for a composite at the end.” It continues to note that “the only common link being a prerecorded beat courtesy of Kevin.”

By no means a toe-tapper, “Drink the New Wine” is a tough tune to like upon first listen. Disjointed by design — but bound in (non)sense by our very need to make meaning out of words strung together — the song’s distinct sections would seem to reflect (as they should) the personalities of each band member. Daniel Ash’s semi-psychedlic Marc Bolan-esque playfulness starts the track. “Off to the funny farm,” he sings, strumming a twelve-string guitar. Then Peter Murphy’s commanding baritone breaks that melody with a rather stark repetition of “dreaming of a perfect world” (reminiscent of “life is but a dream” from “Exquisite corpse, forty years earlier). Next up is David J’s wistful acoustic hum, a refrain of “the roulettista rolls the dice” (a reference most likely to modern illusionist Derek DelGaudio’s act where a man gets rich playing a sort of Russian Roulette until, one day, he is ironically shot by a burglar). That section of the song ends with what sounds very much like a muffled gun shot.

All is underscroed by Kevin Haskins’ steady beat of backmasking and reverb-ladden fills. Then parts comes together, with a return to the center that is Peter Murphy — whose beautiful “you’re the cooling shadow of my cloud” — leads once again to the stuff of dreams (“we talk in dreams”) as he and his bandmates alternate among the musical and lyrical themes from all parts of the song.

The final minute suggests what this cadavre exquis ends up, in effect, becoming: “not building a wall, but making a brick.” These pieces do not divide and confine. Instead, they come together, and make something out of what otherwise would be fragements. Musicians very familiar with being apart, then coming together.

Peter Murphy, back in true form, during a one-off gig in 2019. 2022 will see Bauhaus on the road for an extended tour. (Photo credit: Rolling Stone)

First famously reunited for a short “Resurrection Tour” in 1998, Bauhaus has come together one other time since their initial split in 1983. That reunion (from 2005 to 2008) led to their last official studio album, Go Away White — a solid outing that contains the standout Too Much 21st Century. A one-off show in 2019 would follow. But 2022 and 2023 promises an extensive tour.

Still, no album is planned. Unlike Sky’s Gone Out, no theatrically grand “Spirit, creeping rock of “Silent Hedges,” or manic fun of a cover of Brian Eno’s “Third Unlce” may come to accompany this single exquisite corpse. And that’s a shame. Because Bauhaus are capable of great theatricality and pulse-pounding rock.

In advance of the upcoming shows, what we are left with to judge this particular return is only “Drink the New Wine.”

Is it pop? No. Is it rock? Probably not. Is it art? That’s in the eye, or ear, of the beholder.

But it’s certainly got my attention.

And that’s why the song — as divisive as it may be among old fans and new — is more of an annoucement of resurrection of Bauhaus — one of Goth rock’s most theatrical acts ever — than it is a song you or I will be blaring on the car stereo. It’s a call to attention that this band is back from the (un)dead.

And that there’s never been anyone quite like them.