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| The Mario Bava Collection, Volume 1 (Black Sunday / Black Sabbath / The Girl Who Knew Too Much / Kill Baby Kill / Knives of the Avenger) | 
 enlarge | Directors: Mario Bava, Salvatore Billitteri
Actors: Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Andrea Checchi, Ivo Garrani, Arturo Dominici
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Category: DVD
List Price: $49.97
Buy New: $18.17
You Save: $31.80 (64%)
New (46) Used (10) from $18.17
Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 17550
Format: Box Set, Color, Dvd-video, Ntsc
Languages: Italian (Original Language), English (Published)
Rating: Unrated
Number Of Items: 5
Running Time: 430
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.6 x 1.7
MPN: DV14854
UPC: 013131485493
EAN: 0013131485493
ASIN: B000MV8ABI
Theatrical Release Date: May 20, 1964
Release Date: April 3, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
Five of Mario Bava's best films are included in this box set, minus his forays into eroticism, like Blood and Black Lace. Still, the lines between sexual pathos and violence blur in these selections that influenced not only other famed directors of Giallo, such as Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, but also spawned the American golden age in horror, led by directors such as John Carpenter. Three black and white films here exemplify Bava's trademark use of chiaroscuro mixed with suspense-building cinematography first developed in early horror classics like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. In the Hitchcock-inspired Evil Eye (1963), tourist Nora Davis (Leticia Roman) witnesses a murder but can't convince police of the crime. Kill Baby Kill! (1966) is the prototype for all little girl-ghost films. Dr. Paul Eswai (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) is recruited to solve the mystery of Villa Graps, where Baroness Graps (Giana Vivaldi) reanimates her dead daughter, Melissa, by killing innocent villagers. In Black Sunday (1960), the witch Princess Asa Vajda comes back from the dead to inhabit her look-alike, Katia, both played by Barbara Steele, the original femme fatale to which all brunette vamps, like Soledad Miranda (Vampyros Lesbos) and Elvira, are indebted. In Technicolor, Bava's fantastically rainbow-lit films underpin the director's fascination with connections between our world and those imagined. Black Sabbath (1963) is a trilogy hosted by Boris Karloff, who also stars as a Russian vampire in its segment, "The Wurdalak." "The Telephone," and "The Drop of Water," in which a nurse, Helen Correy (Jacqueline Pierreux), steals a ring then fears that her dead medium patient seeks revenge, are acute studies of guilt and paranoia. The Viking saga, Knives of the Avenger (1966), like Bava's Hercules in the Haunted World, spawned several sword and sorcery films, while protagonist Rurik's (Cameron Mitchell's) knife-throwing is indeed entertaining. Screened back to back, these films provide evidence of Bava's influence in the horror genre. Moreover, they reveal Bava's deep understanding of horror's many facets, whether sexually, psychologically, or physically based. —Trinie Dalton
Product Description
Black SundayA vengeful witch and her fiendish servant return from the grave and begin a bloody campaign to possess the body of the witch's beautiful look-alike descendant. Only the girl's brother and a handsome doctor stand in her way.Black SabbathA trio of atmospheric horror tales about: A woman terrorized in her apartment by phone calls from an escaped prisoner from her past; a Russian count in the early 1800s who stumbles upon a family in the countryside trying to destroy a particularly vicious line of vampires; and a 1900-era nurse who makes a fateful decision while preparing the corpse of one of her patients - an elderly medium who died during a seance.Coltelli del vendicatore I After the apparent death of her husband King Arald a viking peasant woman named Karin takes her son Moki into hiding from Aghen King Arald's enemy. But a mysterous stranger named Rurik begins acting as Karin's guardian which evetually leads to a brutal showdown between Rurik and Aghen.Kill Baby KillDr. Eswai is called by Inspector Kruger to a small village to perform an autopsy on a woman who has died under suspicious circumstances. Despite help from Ruth the village witch Kruger is killed and it is revealed that the dead woman as well as other villagers have been killed by the ghost of Melissa a young girl who fed by the hatred of her grieving mother Baroness Graps exacts her revenge on them. Dr. Eswai along with Monica a local nurse are lured into a fateful confrontation at the Villa Graps.The Evil EyeNora is a young tourist traveling through Rome which takes a sudden turn when she witnesses a murder by a serial killer that the police have sought for years for the so-called Alphabet Killings and Nora soon finds herself in way-over-her-head trouble when the police want her cooperation to catch the killer while the mystery killer soon targets her for his next victim.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR UPC: 013131485493 Manufacturer No: DV14854
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
AAAAAAAAAGH! THE HORROR! NO US VERSIONS!!! April 2, 2007
38 out of 45 found this review helpful
Well...........in case you didn't hear, don't have frequent Net access, or whatever. This new Bava set, cool as it is, is now no longer going to have the AIP/US cut of BLACK SABBATH. All the Net reviews of pre-release copies I have seen as of this date (4/2/07) confirm the prints on both the BLACK SABBATH & BLACK SUNDAY are cleaner prints, but essentially the same as the Image releases. I don't want to knock Anchor's restoration, but it's the same ol' same ol'....what was gonna make this set pop was the release of both versions of the films. I know there is an audio distinction to BLACK SUNDAY, but it escapes me at this second. So buyers who were looking for the OTHER variants to these specific titles like I was (I already own the original Image releases and am a semi-CASUAL Bava fan I suppose...these two films being my favorites of his), make sure you do your homework to see if the upgrade is worth it to you. Luckily, the price is somewhat cheap enough depending on where you get it (cheapest here, so far). But I was expecting to run out and get this the day of release, then saw the reviews and that basically put the fire out of my little shopping purchase. This can wait.
And before anyone screams at me for not having this in hand and 'reviewing': Hey. a lot of people were expecting BOTH versions to these films to be included, and now they're not, so this might be helpful and save some disappointment. I sure was going to be ticked off.
And the film companies wonder why the bootleg market flourishes....lol
 Bava, Bava, Bava February 6, 2007
26 out of 31 found this review helpful
Mario Bava was one of the most underrated filmmakers of the 20th century -- not to mention the most versatile, turning out giallo thrillers, gothic horror, Viking action, Hercules, a Western, and even a Swinging Sixties crime caper. Five of these brilliant movies are brought together in the "Mario Bava Collection Volume 1," including one of his most famous horror movies ever.
The poorly-named "Kill Baby Kill" opens when a young woman leaps onto an iron fence. Dr. Eswai (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) is called in to do an autopsy, with the help of beautiful Monica (Erica Blanc). He finds a coin in the girl's heart, and none of the townspeople will tell him -- because if they do, they will suffer a similar fate.
He's even more annoyed when local sorceress Ruth (Fabienne Dali) begins using her powers to protect a young girl from a childlike specter -- little dead aristocrat Melissa Graps. But as the bodies pile up, and Monica is plagued by bizarre nightmares, Eswai must accept Ruth's help to save Monica from the ghost, and an evil baroness.
"Black Sunday (The Mask of Satan)" is a bizarre tale of vampirism -- evil princess Asa (Barbare Steele) and her servant were executed centuries ago, for serving the devil and all-around nastiness. As usual, she places an evil curse on the Vadja family, and vows to return one day to get revenge on them, just before being impaled by the "devil's mask," a spiked mask that kills the wearer.
But in the modern day, two doctors on their way to a convention accidentally reopen her grave, and awaken her with a drop of blood. Turns out that Asa isn't QUITE dead -- and now gaining new power, as she discovers that her distant descendent Katia Vadja is a dead ringer for her. Now she's trying to possess Katia's body -- can one of the doctors save her?
"Black Sabbath" is actually three stories -- "The Telephone," a Hitchcockian giallo thriller about a woman haunted by phone calls from an ex-lover. "The Wurdalak" is a twist on typical vampire stories, with Boris Karloff turned into a wurdalak, a vampire who only drinks the blood of loved ones. And in "A Drop of Water," a nurse steals a ring from the corpse of a medium, and is unsurprisingly haunted by her.
"Knives of the Avenger" is one of Bava's lesser movies, but shows he could handle unusual genre films. A mystery man (Cameron Mitchell) who calls himself Helmut saves young widow Karin (Elissa Pichelli) and her son from some thugs, sent by a local regent who wants to marry the woman (whether she likes it or not), because she is the widow of the late king.
Helmut stays in the house to protect Karin from the regent, and becomes a sort of mentor to the boy. But Karin doesn't realize that Helmut (not his real name) has a nasty past that he's keeping hidden -- he may be the man who raped her many years ago. When Karin's husband returns, the mystery man saddles up to save the mother and child.
No, "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" was not a sequel to Hitchcock's movies, but a stylish Hitchcockian giallo. Nora Davis (Leticia Roman) arrives in Rome to care for an ill friend, only to have her expire that evening of a heart attack. As she tries to get help, she is mugged, and blearily sees a man pulling a knife out of a woman's corpse -- but of course, nobody believes her.
Nora moves in near her friend's house, and does some detecting on her own -- it seems that this murder follows the pattern of a serial killer who has haunted the area for years. They thought they caught the man who did it, but they captured the wrong man -- and now the killer is coming after Nora next.
Mario Bava didn't need massive budgets or special effects to create his brilliant movies -- just some solid actors and a haunting backdrop. Crumbling castles, the streets of Rome, sword-and-sandal countryside and misty mountains are all used in these movies, with performances that range from brilliant (Steele) to merely solid (Mitchell).
In fact, Bava was such a brilliant director that he was able to elevate anything with his cinematic touches -- colourful lighting, eerie camerawork, exquisite use of light and shadow, gory executions, and even a touch of comedy here and there. Even when the scripts are subpar ("Knives of the Avenger"), he manages to include some nice touches.
"Mario Bava Collection Volume 1" is a collection of five excellent movies, ranging from amazing to solidly enjoyable. And it's a good demonstration of Bava's talents, and the kinds of movies he could undertake. Definitely worth getting, especially for horror buffs.
 Bittersweet Box Set April 9, 2007
19 out of 22 found this review helpful
It's great to have all of these Mario Bava titles in one set. The transfers are really beautiful, and a revelation to those of us with memories of grainy 16mm TV prints. "Black Sunday's" monochrome atmosphere looks particularly lush in this set. "Kill Baby Kill" is a major upgrade to the crummy, desaturated DVD I have from Image.
But they really SHOULD have included BOTH US and Italian versions of the star attraction, "Black Sabbbath". Or at least cut in Karloff's actual voice to the Italian version! Why not re-edit the way it should be? I still rushed out to buy this set, but cannot give it five stars due to the pre-release publicity which stated BOTH Black Sabbath versions would be in the box set. Anchor Bay owes all of us an apology or a free DVD of the English version.
 Pointless reissue hyped by deliberate misinformation April 5, 2007
17 out of 25 found this review helpful
I just got this set and was very angry to see that this set does not include the API versions of Black Sunday and Black Sabbath as promised in widespread press releases. (In fact, Movies Unlimited STILL describes the set as having both the US & International versions of these firms in it's product listing, which I'm pretty sure they didn't just make up.) The AIP version of Black Sunday has the classic dialog, which is quite different than the rather flat International English version (which, by the way, wasn't called Black Sunday), plus a completely different score, by Lex Baxter. And at least the AIP version of Black Sabbath was in English. This version has only an Italian soundtrack with English subtitles. The prints are somewhat cleaned up from the Image releases, and there is one rare title, but the AIP prints of Black Sunday and Black Sabbath, which have never been on DVD, caused all the excitement over this set, and, I'm sure, drove a large portion of the sales from people like me who already had these same prints on earlier releases. Anchor Bay had to have known for some time that their publicity was wrong, but did very little to correct their mistatements. They even show the AIP posters on the cover of the box. What a shoddy deal.
The Godfather of Horror January 31, 2007
11 out of 15 found this review helpful
Already gave it 5 stars since I know what will be in it:
BLACK SUNDAY (old Image Tim Lucas commentary)
BLACK SABBATH (new Tim Lucas commentary)
THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (new Tim Lucas commentary)
KNIVES OF THE AVENGER
KILL BABY KILL (different release as the Dark Sky DVD,no commentary by Tim Lucas!)
These will all be remastered and anamorphically enhanced.
No talk of seperate releases yet but at this price it's a no brainer for us Euro Horror aficionadoes.
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