 Thanks for checking out this movie review video. This is for the 1966 Italian horror film Kill Baby Kill, and it is a Mario Bava film considered to be his best film and actually a lot of people consider this film to be In like the top 100 best horror films ever made, which is interesting. I do think it's quite good I don't know if I would go that far. I'd have to see even more films than I've already seen to kind of make that determination, but One of Bava's best. Yes, I would say that's probably true I've seen now five Bava films when I'm review doing this review and by the way, I watch it on the shutter streaming service So should still be there when I'm posting this the other thing to know is that This will be spoilers since it is an old film The other thing to know is if you're interested in more Mario Bava reviews by me I have a whole playlist. I've created of all my Bava film reviews So you can check that out on my channel. Anyway, Bava's done other films such as Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, Bay of Blood, Blood and Black Lace Planet of the Vampires, Shock, Five Dolls for an August Moon, Hatchet for the Honeymoon, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, and the Whip and the Body It was written by Bava partially, but also by a few others including Roberto Natale, who wrote scripts for The Seven Revenges, Terror, Creatures from the Grave, Bloody Pit of Horror, I Live for Your Death, and Lisa and the Devil, which Lisa and the Devil is another Bava film So they collaborated there as well. And also Romano Migliarini, who also worked on the scripts for Terror, Creatures from the Grave, Bloody Pit of Horror, Double Face, Night of the Devils, and Lisa and the Devil. Once again another Bava film. The producers of this film ended up running out of money two weeks into shooting. So they kind of came to this impasse of what do we do? Bava and the cast and crew decided to continue the film without getting paid. And the crazy thing is that Bava never got paid at all. At least the cast and crew got paid initially for their first two weeks of filming, but Bava got no money, period. That is dedication. And it's weird that this ends up being considered his best film, and in my opinion would be one of his best films, and yet he got no money for it. That's both weird, but it's also terrible. It's an awful thing. But it also speaks to his professionalism and the fact that he has a dedication or had a dedication to film. So good on him, I guess. Bad on the producers. Portions of the score for this were actually used from the film Blood and Black Lace, as well as a few other films. Obviously that was because there was no money. Like they ran out of money, so they just grabbed music from other films. Which honestly, I didn't really notice that so much. They were able to kind of cobble together a score out of those other films' music. That was effective, in my opinion. It worked well with the film. So they did a good job. Like I said, considered to be Bava's best, and to some, one of the best horror films ever. Bava claimed that actually most of this film was improvised on the spot as they were actually filming it. Because he says that the script was only 30 pages long. Which if people don't have a frame of reference for that, they kind of say in film that it should be like one page per minute of film. So basically the script writers produced him 30 minutes of a film in script form, and then he made up the other hour. That's nuts to me, if that's true. I mean, that's what Bava said, and from all accounts what I've read about him, from other people, he's not a liar. He seems like a pretty reputable individual. Okay, so the beginning of this film. The woman running the intro to this film is a good attention grabber. It sets things up as being dark and being mysterious. Because it's a woman running outside, yelling, and then it eventually leads to her death as she's on this precipice. And she falls to her death onto a fence, a metal spiked fence. Now I also like the touch of the fact that they show when she hits it, and then the spikes come through her body. And then they freeze frame on that for the opening credits, which is a good statement. It's a pretty awesome statement to be like, here's intense, here's gory, here's horror. And we're going to freeze frame on this while we tell you who's in the film. I do like that touch. Now the interesting thing about that is that with that beginning you do wonder as an audience member, or at least I did initially, what happened there with the woman, obviously? When she fell, did she fall? Like was she pushed and she fell? Or was she compelled or possessed by something to do it to herself? Now later on in the film, obviously we realize that she was controlled by Melissa, who was being controlled by Baroness Gropp's to kill. So that answers that question. But early on there is that question of what is really going on here? And I think the film in general does a really good job of kind of keeping that air of mystery of not really knowing what's going on. Like you get pretty early on that there's some sort of supernatural thing happening, but you don't know to what degree or what exactly is happening. Then you get the introduction of Melissa, the ghost girl, then you start to piece together, oh okay, well she has something to do with it. Her coming to people or people seeing her kind of choosing people is what dictates they're going to die. And then you get that extra little bit of, oh well now she's making people kill themselves. So it's done at a very nice pace in my opinion where they just kind of reveal these bits here and there. Now that said it is also kind of a slow film in general in my opinion. It is only an hour and a half, but it feels longer because it is very leisurely. And I'm not just saying like story wise it's kind of leisurely, the characters are leisurely. You know when they're going from place to place they film a good amount of them kind of walking, which would be a huge problem usually except for the fact that there's a lot of visually stunning stuff going on with the film, which I'll talk about a little bit later as I get on with things here. Definitely seems like a cursed town when you first get introduced to you know more of the actual town when Dr. Esway shows up. Esway, he's referred to as Paul as well by Monica and others, but I'm just going to say Esway. When he first shows up you see that it looks like a cursed town because a lot of it is in shambles. And there's even a comment made by the coach driver or by the coachman. Would that be the right term? I don't know. The guy who's his taxi driver basically driving the horse and buggy, he kind of comments about it being a bit of a cursed town and everything's in shambles. So it goes along with that. Then you add into it the fact that the locals are immediately very standoffish with Kruger who's supposed to be in the investigator and Esway who's supposed to be the coroner. It sets up this very contentious situation of these folks from the city not being welcome within this village and they're being all secretive. You immediately find out because they're very much like, don't do this, don't do that, go away, let us do our own thing, you don't know what's going on here. There's a lot of that type of stuff going on. So it's a good kind of tension that's really set up. The child laughing and swinging in the graveyard is really creepy and really well shot. I think all the stuff with Melissa, the ghost child in general is really good. Fun fact, it was supposed to be an actual girl playing that role but it ended up being a boy because they acting wise and looks wise they couldn't get exactly what they wanted when they were doing casting. So they went with a boy and I think they did a good thing. They made a really good choice because the acting was really good, the look was great. Very creepy looking, very well done. Every time you see Melissa, creepy, creepy, creepy, effective and scary. I love it, very good. But that part of Melissa as a child laughing and swinging in the graveyard is extremely creepy and I like that kind of touch of starting it by having the camera kind of move and mimicking the swing like the POV of Melissa on the swing in the graveyard. But the overall visual, especially when they pan back and you see her actually moving on it, pretty awesome. Monica showing up the day the woman gets impaled on the fence seems very suspicious. Now obviously that ends up coming into play much later, well at the end when you find out that actually Monica is Melissa's sister and she was kind of sent away because the Baroness was concerned about her being killed. Yeah, basically. So it does end up being important. They do try to explain it away when Dr. Esway actually asks her about that. It's kind of like, you know, why did you come back? Why are you here? So they kind of give a very vague answer and she's like, oh, you know, I come back to see, you know, the grave of my parents, blah, blah, blah. And that is a bit of enough for the audience to kind of put that aside and just be like, oh, well, I guess maybe she's not that suspicious. But to me, she seemed very suspicious. I was like, it's not a coincidence that she shows up that exact day. Bava and his use of lighting and shadows always makes for great visuals. That's one of those things I was talking about with the visuals being awesome. The use of light and shadows in all of Bava's films. Excellent, excellent, excellent. When it's just normal lighting with the shadows or when it's colored lighting with the shadows, which you see a little bit of that in this film, not a ton, but a little bit of that. There are a lot of shots set up further back on the set to create a lot of space for the characters, I noticed. And that gives a lot of, give them a lot of room to move around and really like feel the environment. But I think it's also really good because it creates a more immersive experience for the audience members, kind of making them feel like they can see more of the set. Like they're kind of more there, like your range of vision is a little more normal. The other thing is with having it set back so far on the sets, it creates more freedom from the camera to kind of move with the characters more freely as they go from place to place on the set. And I really like the aspect of that's how Bava shoots things a lot. I really like that. It's just kind of creating more space and it's very, very cool. The ghostly kid at the window, Melissa is very effective shot. They did that a few times with like the hand on the window and just looking creepy, very well done. Ruth is a great character. I love how she seems like this kind of brooding dark witch, even though, I mean, in the end you basically, well, not even in the end, like part of the way through you find out that she basically is a witch and she's trying to kind of help things a little bit, even though I have a question about that that I'll bring up at the end of my review. But anyway, I like her whole persona. I like the way they pulled the character together and the way the acting is done for her. The shooting locations and sets look great and are very well decorated. That's another aspect of the visuals being so good and why it's fine that it's kind of a slow film because there's a lot to look at and it's beautiful. And I think I would just rewatch this film for nothing other than the fact of just relaxing and just taking in the visuals because it's kind of relaxing, in my opinion. The pacing is quite slow. Yep, I just said, but let me put it more succinct as how I put it. The pacing is quite slow, but with such great visuals from lighting, camera work, directing, and set, you don't really mind. There's so much to look at and the mystery of what's really going on keeps you engaged. That's another aspect of it. You don't want to miss things because, like I said, they do at a very nice pace just kind of littering a few things in there just like, here's a little piece of it. Here's another little piece of it. It's good. Quote, poverty and ignorance combined with superstition, which is something that Esway said about the people there, about the locals, that shows that he kind of views himself as being better than and smarter than these people, which kind of helps set that us versus them mentality that's clearly going on in this film since, you know, from the get-go. As soon as Kruger wasn't seen for a while and they kept bringing him up, I immediately thought to myself, this guy is going to show up dead, and sure enough, he shows up dead. Makes sense. It's just one of those things where you're just like, yep, he seemed to be an important character, kind of, and then we haven't seen him for a long time, but he keeps being talked about. They're going to find that body. Pretty intense scene when Melissa makes the young woman kill herself, when she kind of impales herself on that metal spike, the way they set it up, kind of going up to it, and then you're seeing that she basically is mind-controlled by Melissa to a degree or possessed by her, and then she kills herself. You know, it actually happens off-screen, but the alluding to it is pretty tense. Burgermeister Carl, which Burgermeister's funny, is very nonchalant about the fact that he has information about Monica when he's talking to Monica in an S-Way, and the fact that he happens to have a letter that he's supposed to give her. That's one of the things I was just like, why would he be this nonchalant about this? And it's kind of like this afterthought thing where he's just like, oh yeah, and you know, if you ever came by, I was supposed to give you this letter. It's kind of like, okay, well then why don't you give me the letter? Well then he does go to try to give her the letter, and that's when he gets killed. Maybe that's what he was putting off. He knew that Melissa would intervene and kill him, and that gives the audience members at that moment this clear idea that whatever information was in that letter, she doesn't want to get out, or Baroness Grops in the end really, because we find out that Baroness Grops is controlling Melissa to kill people basically, or kind of asking her to in a way. So Melissa died because drunks in the village trampled her with their horses, and then laughed as she asked for help. It doesn't really seem like a believable premise to me, honestly. I think they could have come up with something more believable where it was like an accidental death, but you would believe that the Baroness could really still feel like she blames the villagers for this death. Just the way it was done, what they laid out doesn't really seem that believable. Not so good. I like the scene of S-Way chasing himself through that room on loop. That was really cool. I'm sure the way they did it is that they had someone else who kind of looked like him from behind, dressed the same, and that's why, you know, they could get so close to each other as they were running through the door. But it was a cool kind of supernatural moment where you were like, oh, Melissa's causing this so he can't get out of this room when he's going to try and help Monica. I liked it, and especially when he caught up with the guy, turns around, and it's himself. It's cool. Really good visual. The shots of the spiral staircase, another awesome visual. And I like just shooting down, but then they also shoot up, and then they have the part where they're rotating the camera, so it's making you a little bit dizzy. And then also the shots from above, how they have different segments of the staircase being different color lighting. I like the visual of that. It's good. I would have liked more screen time for Monica, especially because she seems to be kind of an important piece of the overall story for this. So I feel like she's kind of barely there, and I just think you needed to know more about her. I think if you knew a little bit more about her personality and who she was, and just having her more involved in the story leading up to when she is more involved in the story, it would have helped you kind of care about her a little bit more and get more of a feel for who she is. So I would have liked that. If Ruth knew exactly what was going on this whole time, which she basically indicates at the end, why didn't she act sooner? I understand that the catalyst for her finally acting was the fact that Carl died and that she had this agreement with the Baroness that as long as she kept Melissa away from Carl, that she would help the Baroness keep Melissa away from her. But I don't know, that seems very, very selfish because they kind of paint her at the end as this hero, this kind of good witch, because it ends up being this good witch versus bad witch since the Baroness is controlling Melissa to do bad things and Ruth is kind of helping things. But I would argue that Ruth isn't helping enough. She's not clearly a good witch or a good person or a hero for that matter because she let a lot of people die and didn't do anything about it. She kind of sat back and was like, well, I have this agreement and I'm not going to violate that. Oh, but now Carl's dead. Okay, fine. Now I'll take this person out. Now I'll do the right thing. So, you know, just my feeling on it. And the last thing I have to sum this up, the main theme in this is bitter vengeance and how out of control it can get. Always a good theme to put in films, especially horror films in my opinion. Baroness Grops has blind rage and blames everyone for the death of her child. And with the story they laid out, you can understand why she blames a lot of people. But it's also one of those things where a person can be so grief-stricken and then become so hell-bent on vengeance that they just will lash out everywhere. And if you're not in their corner clearly or they don't even know you, you could be at the end of their vengeance basically. And that's what happens with Baroness Grops, obviously. She's become so secluded and so hateful and so vengeance-driven that she's willing to take out anyone or really have Melissa take out anyone. And that's what happens. It just gets out of control. But then that's what ends up leading her to her demise in the end, obviously. But anyway, overall, I don't think this is the most amazing film ever. I don't think it's perfect, but I've said I quite like it. I think it is a good film. So out of five stars with half-stars in play, I'm going to give it a very solid four-star rating. It is a good film. I am going to recommend it to some people, especially since it's on Shutter at this point. So Good Flick, one of my favorite BABA films, probably with a Bay of Blood and Blood and Black Lace. Love those ones as well, which I have reviews for those on my channel. You can check them out. But put some comments down here. How do you feel about Kill Baby Kill? Do you love it? Do you not love it? Love to hear what you think. Do me a quick favor, though. Hit that subscribe button if you like this video or any video I've ever done, because that is your best way to repay me. And I do greatly appreciate that. Literally whenever someone new subscribes, I take a look at their profile. I look at them and I say, that is awesome, awesome person right there. And I greatly appreciate it. So thank you. 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