Quotes

Movies are a magician's forge, they allow you to build a story with your hands--at least, that's what it means to me. What attracts me in movies is to be presented with a problem and be able to solve it. Nothing else; just to create an illusion, an effect, with almost nothing.

I didn't want to be a director because, in my opinion, a director must be a true genius.

The House of Exorcism (1975) is not my film, even though it bears my name. It is like a situation whereby a cuckolded man is found to have a son that is not his but has his name, but there is nothing he can do about it.

I'm not a marketing agency, so I have no idea what the audience wants. Even marketing agencies make mistakes sometimes.

[on why his films were more popular with Americans and the French than Italians] Because they are more stupid than us!

In my entire career, I made only big bullshits, no doubt about that.

People, and critics too, should know about the circumstances under which I had to shoot my films. On Planet of the Vampires (1965), I had nothing, literally. There was only an empty soundstage, really squalid, because we had no money. And this had to look like an alien planet! What did I do then? I took a couple of papier-mâché rocks from the nearby studio, probably leftovers from some sword and sandal flick, then I put them in the middle of the set and covered the ground with smoke and dry ice, and darkened the background. Then I shifted those two rocks here and there and this way I shot the whole film.

My fantasies are always horrible. For example, I love my young granddaughter more than anything else in the world, but when I dream of her, it's always frightening. Do you want to know what character is haunting my subconscious? A violinist who serenades the woman he loves by playing on the tendons of his arms. Everyday life works on my imagination. Just this morning I found a letter, still sealed, from a friend who has since died, written to me ten years ago. It was like receiving a letter from a dead person. What would you do in my place? I burned it.

I watched Black Sunday (1960) again, five years ago, because an American production company asked me to shoot a color remake of it. I refused because my son (Lamberto Bava) and I split our sides with laughter while watching it.

I think of myself as one who manages to get along. I don't care about being successful, I just want to go on and on. My father (Eugenio Bava) used to tell me this, and he was in the movies since 1906. I'll never be another (Michelangelo Antonioni); I love to improvise, to solve problems, to create new scenes out of emergency . . . in my opinion a good director shouldn't do this: he should stick to the original script and schedule.

The guys of the "Cahiers du Cinéma" came to me. They wanted to analyze the connection between the plate swinging at the beginning of Blood and Black Lace (1964) and the telephone falling to the ground when Eva Bartok dies. I didn't even remember how the movie ended.

[describing where he would ideally be laid to rest] A coffin filled with blood where I can rest in peace, but where I can leave at night to bite the necks of the films I've made.

[on the actors he worked with] I recall only with affection Boris Karloff. A sweet man--mild, educated, modest and brilliant, brilliant to the last.

In a horror film, lighting is 70% of the effectiveness. It's essential in creating the atmosphere.

Now we are going to make a movie . . . and when we finish, we'll all have much to be ashamed of!