The Girl Who Knew Too Much - Mario Bava

Seen for the first time in February 2013.

"The Girl Who Knew Too Much" is a slow moving but nicely shot black and white thriller. Mario Bava would make more entertaining films in his career. This movie is a run of the mill giallo. Not too exciting or suspenseful, and the ending does nothing to justify what feels like a pedestrian movie experience. There is a really nice scene where bullets puncture the wall of a darkened room and light shines through the holes that prefigures an acclaimed scene from the Coens' "Blood Simple." Interesting to think that that particular bit was such an important part of building their early reputation and it was probably borrowed from Bava. But anyway this is the sort of movie which justifies the lazy's reluctance to watch older movies. Grade C+.

The Sister of Ursula

Seen for the first time in January 2013.

What "The Sister of Ursula" lacks in originality and pacing, it makes up for in tawdriness. Ultimately this film has a nice twist and builds to a solid climax, but one might never make it there without the sordid sleaze and atmospheric suspense of the first half of this solid if undistinguished giallo. Grade B.

Death Walks At Midnight

Seen for the first time in September 2012.

This movie is pretty convoluted in the end. The plot barely holds together, and you might describe the villain’s evil plan as implausible. Nonetheless it’s a pretty engaging and suspenseful giallo. Also apparently in Italy, when you call the police and the specific police officer who you ask for isn’t there, you don’t bother talking to any of the other police officers, no matter how urgently you might need the police. That’s a slight presumption on my part. One can imagine a more urgent police need than the one in the scene to which I’m referring. But I think a reasonable person might consider that watching a man you saw murder someone get roughed up by a couple of hoods a situation of relatively urgent police need. At least a reasonable American would. And here I give the movie the benefit of the doubt, for it’s possibly just as strange an omission in Italy as it is in America. I may never know. Nonetheless, I liked this movie. Grade B.

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-.