Behind the Couch

Mario Bava with Jacqueline Pierreux ( Black Sabbath ) The undisputed Master of Italian horror cinema, Mario Bava, would have turned 98 years old today. Sadly, Mr Bava passed away in 1980 at the age of 65, but he left behind an astonishing body of work. Specialising in darkly beautiful Gothic Horror, Bava also dabbled in genres as eclectic as sword and sandal peplums, science fiction ( Planet of the Vampires ), comic book adaptations, psychological thrillers and is generally heralded as the filmmaker responsible for kick starting the giallo (later popularised by Dario Argento), with his morbidly exquisite films The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace . He also had a tremendous influence on the contemporary slasher movie, with his wickedly humorous whodunit, Bay of Blood . Taking the body-count template of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None , Bava created a staggeringly violent, though elegantly lensed shocker that would have an overwhelming impact on the likes ...

2009 Dir. Dario Argento Beautiful model Celine (Elsa Pataky) is abducted in Turin by a deformed and deranged serial killer nicknamed Yellow, due to his lurid skin colour – the result of a rare liver disease. Celine’s sister, flight attendant Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner), reports her disappearance to the police and joins the somewhat odd and secretive detective Enzo (Adrien Brody) in his investigation to try and find Celine before she becomes Yellow’s latest victim. Enzo explains that Yellow is obsessed with the destruction of beauty and that a number of women have been found, their faces and throats horribly slashed and mutilated. The race is on to save Celine’s life and put a stop to Yellow’s reign of terror and bloodshed once and for all… Dario Argento’s latest film Giallo premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival this week. Unfortunately Argento was conspicuous by his absence at the premiere and it is rumoured that he is unhappy with the final cut of the film and ...

1960 Dir. Mario Bava Aka The Mask of Satan With Black Sunday , Mario Bava not only directed his first film (if you don’t count Riccardo Freda’s The Vampires , which Bava photographed and finished directing when Freda left the production), he also made what many consider to be the definitive Euro-Gothic horror film. Adapted from a short story by Nicolaj Gogal, Black Sunday was banned in Britain for eight years, due in large to the brutal opening sequence where Barbara Steele has a mask with spikes inside it forcably fixed to her face. The diabolical Princess Asa (Steele) and her fiendish servant, are put to death as punishment for witchcraft and vampirism, and interned in the crypt of her ancestors; but not before she vows to inflict vengeance on the future generations of her family. Two centuries later, the wheel of the coach carrying the doctors Andre Gorobec and Thomas Kruvajan to a convention buckles, and they are temporarily stranded outside an ancient crypt. Which of c...

1987 Dir. Michele Soavi AKA Bloody Bird Sound Stage Massacre Deliria StageFright: Aquarius A group of actors are trapped inside a theatre while rehearsing a production based on the life of a nasty serial killer – who is also lurking inside the theatre and begins to pick off the actors one by one in a series of increasingly grisly ways… Argento protégé Michele Soavi directed this, his debut film, as something of a homage to Dario Argento. The film is laced with outlandish implausibility and forehead-smacking irrationality, but it is shot through with such unflinching intensity and flair, it manages to retain one’s attention and even immerse the viewer in a dark and claustrophobic world in which a violent psychopath lurks behind every corner. Argento’s influence on Soavi is apparent in the film’s visual department: creepy sets and lurid lighting abound in Stage Fright , and while it might arguably be all style over substance – what style it is! The film begins with what a...

1962 Dir. Riccardo Freda This slice of quintessential Italian Gothic horror is a darkly beautiful and disturbing rumination on the most forbidden of desires… the love for the dead… Robert Flemyng stars as the tormented titular doctor, a respected surgeon with a morbid secret. Dr Hichcock has a pathological fascination with dead bodies, and harbours a deep desire to engage with them in sexual activities. He and his wife Margaretha (Maria Teresa Vianello), indulge in dark and sordid sexual encounters together: he sedates her with an anaesthetic he created, and as she slips into unconsciousness, he copulates with her deathly-still body. Margaretha eventually slips into unconsciousness, seemingly for the last time, when her husband administers too much anaesthetic during one of their macabre liaisons. Inconsolable, the doctor is unable to continue living in the house with ‘too many memories’ of his beloved wife, so he moves away. Cut to twelve years later and Hichcock returns wit...