Discover the classic Gothic chills of this Mario… | Little White Lies

Home Ents

Dis­cov­er the clas­sic Goth­ic chills of this Mario Bava masterpiece

18 Sep 2017

Words by Anton Bitel

Blonde woman with hands covering her face, peering through a glass window.
Blonde woman with hands covering her face, peering through a glass window.
Kill, Baby… Kill! con­tains one of cinema’s ear­li­est evil children.

If the title Kill, Baby… Kill! sug­gests the sort of hyper­bol­ic exploita­tion (pos­si­bly involv­ing kick­ass go-go girls) found in Russ Meyer’s sim­i­lar­ly over-punc­tu­at­ed Faster, Pussy­cat! Kill! Kill! from the pre­vi­ous year, in fact Mario Bava’s film – called Oper­azione Pau­ra (Oper­a­tion Fear) in its native Italy, and released in dif­fer­ent mar­kets at dif­fer­ent times as Don’t Walk in the Park, Curse of the Dead, Curse of the Liv­ing Dead and even Die toten Augen des Dr Drac­u­la (The Dead Eyes of Dr Drac­u­la) – is more akin to Bava’s ear­li­er ven­tures into Goth­ic like Black Sun­day and Black Sabbath.

The year is 1907. While the rest of Europe is tak­ing its first con­fi­dent strides into the 20th Cen­tu­ry, fin-de-siè­cle enlight­en­ment appears to have bypassed alto­geth­er a small vil­lage in the Carpathi­an moun­tains, ruled as it is by pover­ty and igno­rance, com­bined with super­sti­tion.” Yet when a young woman work­ing as a maid at the Vil­la Graps dies in sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances short­ly after plead­ing for help in a let­ter sent to the police, two out­siders – Inspec­tor Kruger (Piero Lul­li) and the coro­ner Dr Paul Eswai (Gia­co­mo Rossi-Stu­art) – arrive to deter­mine the cause of her death: sui­cide, acci­dent, mur­der, or, as the local burg­er­meis­ter Karl (Luciano Cate­nac­ci) insists, some­thing more supernatural.

The locals, bound in a sort of pan­icky omertà, will not talk to Kruger, and try to bury the woman’s corpse (and its secrets) before Eswai can per­form an autop­sy. When Kruger goes miss­ing, Eswai – a straight-jawed man of curios­i­ty and sci­ence – finds his only allies are Karl, the local sor­cer­ess Ruth (Fabi­enne Dali), and Mon­i­ca (Eri­ca Blanc), a nat­ur­al sci­ence stu­dent who has not been back to the vil­lage since she left aged two. There, Eswai is inex­orably drawn to the dilap­i­dat­ed Vil­la Graps, its elder­ly Baroness (Giana Vival­di), and a blonde girl named Melis­sa who died two decades ear­li­er and whose appear­ances, laugh­ter and bounc­ing ball are har­bin­gers of impend­ing doom.

Kill, Baby… Kill! is not mere­ly set at the turn of the cen­tu­ry, but traces the clash of rea­son and the irra­tional, as a back­ward-look­ing curse that plagues the vil­lage is pit­ted against the for­ward momen­tum of Eswai’s pro­gres­sive think­ing. This is a sto­ry of col­lec­tive guilt and implaca­ble vin­dic­tive­ness, as the past keeps return­ing to prey vam­pir­i­cal­ly on the present – but it is also a sto­ry that trav­els through dark­ness to the dawn, ush­er­ing in a new epoch, exor­cised of all dia­bol­i­cal vestiges.

As such, one might regard Kill, Baby… Kill not only as a piece of high Goth­ic, but also as mark­ing that subgenre’s end – and look­ing for­ward to the mod­ern era of hor­ror, inau­gu­rat­ed two years lat­er with films like The Night if the Liv­ing Dead and Rosemary’s Baby that would leave behind Gothic’s creaky old cas­tles for anx­i­eties more root­ed in the 20th century.

Shot in the medieval town of Cal­ca­ta in Italy’s Latium region, the film makes full use of its semi-ruined set­tings, while adding fur­ther atmos­phere with mias­mic mists, ubiq­ui­tous cob­webs and stylised light­ing (which bathes every­thing in unnat­ur­al colours). Yet Bava is most strik­ing in the way that he trans­forms real loca­tions, through edit­ing and in-cam­era trick­ery, into Esch­er-like spaces and night­mar­ish labyrinths that sur­re­al­ly entrap his char­ac­ters. Locked inside one of the villa’s rooms after para­dox­i­cal­ly run­ning through it sev­er­al times in a wrap­around loop (and even, impos­si­bly, chas­ing him­self), Paul stum­bles back­wards into a large paint­ing of the vil­la, only to mate­ri­alise, mag­i­cal­ly, in front of the build­ing itself.

Such dis­ori­ent­ing use of the film’s geog­ra­phy, where real­i­ty behaves like a dream and art lit­er­al­ly imi­tates life, would go on to influ­ence the para­dox­i­cal inte­ri­ors of, for exam­ple, the hotel in The Shin­ing, the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and even the office cor­ri­dors in the open­ing of I Heart Huck­abees. Mean­while, the cast­ing of a boy (Vale­rio Valeri) as the ghost­ly Melis­sa serves to make her haunt­ing pres­ence seem even more per­verse­ly uncan­ny. She is one of cinema’s very first evil child phan­toms, though she would cer­tain­ly not be its last, ensur­ing that Bava’s film, com­ing at the end of horror’s clas­sic Goth­ic phase, would cast its long shad­ow over the genre fare that followed.

Kill, Baby… Kill! is avail­able now as a Dual-For­mat Blu-ray/D­VD cour­tesy of Arrow Video.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.