Shock - Mario Bava

Seen for the first time in September 2012.

This movie is pretty damn good. It starts off seemingly like a rather pedestrian Italian giallo, distinguished only by a notable oedipal creepiness. A woman and her son and his stepfather (her second husband) move back into the house she lived in with her first husband (his father) who died by suicide seven years prior. The house may be haunted, but also the woman may be crazy. She isrecovering from a breakdown of her own tied to her husband’s death. Also the boy may be possessed by demons or the ghosts that haunt the house or whatever.

The boy subtly at first and then more manifestly begins to terrorize his mother. There is a blatant eroticism to this haunting. At one point, he appears to dry hump her. He caresses her in her sleep. He steals a pair of her underwear and then tears it to shreds. But then again the mother may also just be crazy. Again, the movie seems like a rather pedestrian giallo at this point, slowly building in tension and atmosphere.

But then shit goes nuts with a big twist, and we climax with a frenzy. The last twenty minutes are pretty damn bad ass. It’s maybe not quite as gripping as the end of “Vertigo,” but it’s not crazy to draw parallels. This is the second Mario Bava giallo I’ve seen, along with “Blood and Black Lace,” and I’m hugely impressed with both movies. Based on this, I place him above Argento, and with Lucio Fulci and Umberto Lenzi as the top tier directors of giallo. Grade A-.