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Dis­cov­er the trip­py, trans­gres­sive plea­sures of Mario Bava’s swansong

17 Jan 2022

Words by Anton Bitel

A woman with blonde hair covering her face, appearing distressed or upset.
A woman with blonde hair covering her face, appearing distressed or upset.
The Ital­ian genre maestro’s final film, 1977’s Shock, is a haunt­ed house hor­ror quite unlike any other.

Shock opens with hand­held footage of a house that has clear­ly been long unin­hab­it­ed, even as removals men arrive with a family’s crates of belong­ings. This pre­vi­ous­ly emp­ty house is about to become a home again, at least tem­porar­i­ly, for Dora (Daria Nicolo­di, nev­er bet­ter), who had been liv­ing there sev­en years ear­li­er until one day her junkie hus­band Car­lo (an uncred­it­ed Nico­la Saler­no) van­ished in a pre­sumed sui­cide, leav­ing behind an aban­doned boat, his preg­nant wife and their unborn child.

Now for the first time Dora has come back to the place with sev­en-year-old son Mar­co (David Col­in Jr), and with her sec­ond hus­band the com­mer­cial pilot Bruno Bal­di­ni (John Stein­er). Dora appears to have recov­ered ful­ly from the men­tal break­down, amne­sia and insti­tu­tion­al­i­sa­tion that fol­lowed Carlo’s dis­ap­pear­ance. Yet there are signs that her adjust­ment to the expect­ed rôle of house­wife and moth­er remains incomplete.

For Dora burns their first din­ner back in the new house, and acci­den­tal­ly knocks over the pot in which she is mak­ing Bruno’s morn­ing brew – and as Bruno half-jok­ing­ly com­ments, There’s noth­ing worse for a mar­riage than send­ing a hus­band off with­out his cof­fee”. Dora had suf­fered unspeak­able trau­ma in this house, and her return is also a regres­sion, imme­di­ate­ly trig­ger­ing night­mares and anx­i­eties about a past that is not quite buried.

Mar­co? Mar­co?”, Dora calls out, as she looks for her young son short­ly after the fam­i­ly has arrived at the house. In his first appear­ance (and words) in Shock, the lit­tle boy play­ing in the yard will respond, Mar­co – that’s my name.” It is a straight­for­ward asser­tion of iden­ti­ty that the rest of the film will grad­u­al­ly com­pli­cate, as Mar­co proves very much his miss­ing father’s son, with an emerg­ing antipa­thy to his step­fa­ther and a deeply trou­bling attrac­tion to his mother.

When Bruno makes love to Dora on the couch down­stairs, Mar­co is revealed declar­ing jeal­ous­ly from his bed upstairs, Pigs! Pigs! Pigs!”. Lat­er, when the next sequence shows Mar­co and Dora play­ing togeth­er in the gar­den and Dora falling supine to the ground, Mar­co hurls him­self on top of her in a taboo imi­ta­tion of Bruno’s pre­vi­ous sex­u­al posi­tion (even if moth­er and son are ful­ly clothed). Pre­dictably, when Bruno is away for work, Mar­co also wants to take his stepfather’s place in the bed with Mama.

Explain­ing death to Mar­co, Dora says, One goes away for­ev­er, but we’ll keep Dad­dy alive with­in us.” While Dora increas­ing­ly comes to believe that Mar­co has been pos­sessed by the revenant Car­lo, the film main­tains the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Marco’s Oedi­pal behav­iour is of a more straight­for­ward­ly Freudi­an vari­ety, in a house­hold fraught with unspo­ken guilt and psy­cho­log­i­cal tension.

In fact Dora, whose own visions of Car­lo come eroti­cised with an alarm­ing necrophil­i­ac edge, has an actu­al psy­chi­a­trist on hand to ratio­nalise her expe­ri­ences. In the face of Dora’s para­noid rav­ings about the house being haunt­ed and the ever more unruly Mar­co being pos­sessed, Dr Aldo Spi­di­ni (Ivan Ras­si­mov) presents an alter­na­tive read­ing of events, more ground­ed in real­i­ty: Dora, ghosts are mere fig­ments of our imag­i­na­tion – we our­selves cre­ate them, to jus­ti­fy our actions and behaviour.”

Bloodied hand holding a weapon, dark environment

Shock gets to have it both ways, let­ting psy­cho­log­i­cal and super­nat­ur­al frames vie to explain all the domes­tic dys­func­tion. Are the unnat­ur­al events mere­ly man­i­fes­ta­tions of Dora’s PTSD-induced hal­lu­ci­na­tions, as she becomes haunt­ed by her own con­science? Is sen­si­tive, lone­ly, mis­chie­vous Mar­co con­jur­ing an imag­i­nary play­mate in the house, or just pick­ing up the bad vibes from the adults around him – or might he even have inher­it­ed the delu­sions of his moth­er and half-mad” father? Or is Car­lo real­ly wreak­ing revenge through Mar­co from beyond the grave?

Cer­tain­ly Amer­i­can dis­trib­u­tors cap­i­talised on that last inter­pre­ta­tion by renam­ing the film Beyond The Door II as though it were a sequel to Ovidio G Assoni­tis and Robert Barrett’s 1974 pos­ses­sion hor­ror (which was the only oth­er act­ing cred­it for young David Col­in Jr, but is oth­er­wise an entire­ly unre­lat­ed film). In fact, though, Shock gives us cause to enter­tain any or all of these pos­si­bil­i­ties. In its uncan­ny ambi­gu­i­ties, this is more mod­ern goth­ic than ripoff of The Exorcist.

Shock is per­haps best known for being the last the­atri­cal fea­ture from Ital­ian jack-of-all-gen­res and mas­ter styl­ist Mario Bava before his death in 1980. Bava had orig­i­nal­ly worked pre-pro­duc­tion on the script by Dar­d­ana Sac­chet­ti and Francesco Bar­bi­eri (who had both also helped with the sto­ry of Bava’s 1971 pro­to-slash­er A Bay of Blood) as ear­ly as 1973, with neu­ro­sis queen Mim­sy Farmer lined up for the rôle of Dora.

That project was even­tu­al­ly shelved, but after a series of failed pro­duc­tions, Bava was encour­aged to return to the screen­play by his son Lam­ber­to, who helped him direct. It also fea­tured the last sound­track to be com­posed and played by the band Libra, before they broke up – a puls­ing, pro­gres­sive elec­tro-acoustic score care­ful­ly cal­i­brat­ing all the men­ace and mad­ness. The film’s sta­tus as swan­song brings with it a cer­tain weight of expec­ta­tion that might leave fol­low­ers of Bava’s long career feel­ing disappointed.

Shock hard­ly seems a sum­ma­tion of the maestro’s exten­sive oeu­vre, let alone some kind of final state­ment. Yet viewed on its own terms, this is a creep­i­ly trans­gres­sive update of the haunt­ed house movie, full of psy­cho­sex­u­al thrills, trip­py dream sequences and sus­tained dread, all plung­ing a curi­ous young child into a game of very adult pre­oc­cu­pa­tions and perversions.

Shock is released on Blu-ray, in a brand new 2K restora­tion from the orig­i­nal 35mm cam­era neg­a­tive, on 17 Jan­u­ary via Arrow Home Video.

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