Why your favourite direc­tors love Mario Bava

Mario Bava is among the most impor­tant fig­ures in both Ital­ian cin­e­ma and genre film­mak­ing. And yet you’ll rarely find him men­tioned in the same breath as Anto­nioni, Felli­ni, Pasoli­ni, Vis­con­ti or oth­er greats of 1960s and ​’70s. Bava achieved con­sid­er­able crit­i­cal acclaim in his life­time and has since cul­ti­vat­ed a major cult fol­low­ing. His work across a range of often ground-break­ing and trend-set­ting sub­gen­res is packed with an ele­gance and cre­ative verve, tran­scend­ing schlocky mate­r­i­al, stingy bud­gets and some­times atro­cious re-edit­ing by inter­na­tion­al dis­trib­u­tors. Even when his films were butchered by cen­sors or re-edit­ed for dri­ve-in audi­ences and grind­house the­atres, their mer­its and qual­i­ties still shone through.

Bava was a ​‘mend and make do’ kind of guy – less an artist, more magi­cian by neces­si­ty. Years of train­ing at Rome’s Isti­tu­to LUCE, in just about every facet of the pic­ture busi­ness, allowed him to craft inge­nious solu­tions to per­nick­ety issues on set, whether due to bud­getary lim­i­ta­tions or poor­ly writ­ten scripts. Dario Argen­to, John Car­pen­ter, Nico­las Wind­ing Refn, Mar­tin Scors­ese, Tim Bur­ton, Joe Dante, John Lan­dis, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, Roger Cor­man and Quentin Taran­ti­no are just some promi­nent mem­bers of the Mario Bava Fan Club. Ryan Gosling even went so far as to cast Bar­bara Steele, star of the incred­i­ble Black Sun­day from 1960, Bava’s offi­cial­ly cred­it­ed debut, in his 2015 direc­to­r­i­al debut, Lost Riv­er. Like Bava, Gosling let her icon­ic face do all the talking.

Argen­to might be the father of gial­lo cin­e­ma, but it’s Bava who laid the ground work with his 1963 film The Girl Who Knew Too Much and 1964’s Blood and Black Lace, traces of which can even be found in Nico­las Wind­ing Refn’s The Neon Demon. Refn recent­ly co-financed a dig­i­tal 4k restora­tion of 1965’s Plan­et of the Vam­pires, pre­sent­ed in the Cannes Clas­sics strand at this year’s fes­ti­val. Why would any­one spend so much time and mon­ey on a film many dis­miss as corny trash? While it def­i­nite­ly qual­i­fies as such, the film had a size­able impact on sci­ence-fic­tion cin­e­ma. Putting goth­ic hor­ror into a space­suit and blast­ing it off into the depths of out­er space, Plan­et of the Vam­pires paved the way for every­thing from Alien to Event Hori­zon and beyond.

The Neon Demon clear­ly bears the influ­ence of sev­er­al Bava flicks. Though offi­cial­ly cred­it­ed to Ric­car­do Fre­da, 1957’s The Vam­pires is a Bava film in all but name. As cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er he com­plet­ed film­ing after Fre­da walked off set, shot new scenes and restruc­tured vir­tu­al­ly the entire plot. Both spring from the leg­end of Count­ess Eliz­a­beth Batho­ry and how beau­ty, van­i­ty and fear can lead to psy­cho­log­i­cal derange­ment and mur­der. Blood and Black Lace – a pro­to-slash­er burst­ing with pri­ma­ry colours set in the fash­ion world – is anoth­er movie Refn almost cer­tain­ly watched and took notes on.

Bava was a mas­ter styl­ist with a taste for dream­like atmos­pheres, mem­o­rable com­po­si­tions and deli­cious colour pho­tog­ra­phy burst­ing from the screen with a pop art, com­ic-book vibran­cy. That’s the main rea­son he’s been praised by Mar­tin Scors­ese: for his abil­i­ty to cre­ate pure cin­e­mat­ic images and moods. Ones that left an indeli­ble impres­sion. Scors­ese remem­bered 1966’s Kill Baby, Kill when mak­ing The Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ. The use of a ghost­ly young girl as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of evil was lift­ed from Bava’s goth­ic masterpiece.

Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la could have been reti­tled ​‘Mario Bava’s Drac­u­la’, for Cop­po­la and his son, Roman, who worked on the film as a sec­ond unit direc­tor and was in charge over­see­ing spe­cial effects, were so tak­en with one scene in Black Sun­day – a slow motion horse-drawn car­riage rid­ing through fog – they lift­ed it whole­sale for Dracula’s arrival at the Bor­go Pass. That scene sim­ply screams Bava; with its use of in-cam­era effects, minia­tures and glass plate trick­ery, Cop­po­la made his grand baroque lit­er­ary adap­ta­tion in the spir­it of the Ital­ian maestro.

Quentin Tarantino’s Reser­voir Dogs and Pulp Fic­tion are pro­found­ly indebt­ed to Bava. Ref­er­enc­ing direct shots from movies he loves is an unmis­tak­able Taran­ti­no traits, and there are sev­er­al pur­loined from 1974’s Rabid Dogs. But it’s also to be gleaned in the dog-eat-dog nihilism, sweaty pho­tog­ra­phy and a sto­ry unfold­ing over a mat­ter of hours in the after­math of a crime. And when decid­ing upon his fol­low-up to Reser­voir Dogs, Taran­ti­no decid­ed to make the gang­ster pic­ture ver­sion of 1963’s trip­tych of ter­ror, Black Sab­bath.