Shock

Mario Bava's "Shock" is a strange film. It deals with a woman named Dora (Daria Nicolodi, who does an awesome job), her new husband Bruno, and their son Marco moving into a creepy new house that has a mysterious past, involving Dora and her druggie husband, who committed suicide. Soon weird things start happening and Dora suspects that sweet little Marco is possessed by her dead husbands. Soon she begins to hallucinate and weird things happen. This is kind of a mish-mash of elements from "Repulsion", "The Exorcist", and "The Amityville Horror". Daria Nicolodi is first-rate and she is a superb actress, but the film is too slow and the "shocks" are a long time coming. There are some great jump scenes, an eerie mood, good photography, and wow---I loved that Goblin music. Of course it isn't anything like the music in Dario Argento's "Suspiria", but it is still quite good. Check this film out if you get a chance, just don't expect a classic.

A woman on the brink of insanity , Daria Nicolodi , his child : David Colin Jr and her new husband, John Steiner , move back to her old house , after the gruesome death of her previous hubby . Then things go wrong when the couple on the edge of breakdown is terrorized by a cycle of evil that is about to occur again at the old memory-ridden mansion . As an avengeful spectre possesses the young son with fateful consequences . A new look at the face of Evil !.

Nice Mario Bava film including chills , thrills , nail-biting suspense , twisted plot , gory effects, and ghastly happenings about ordinary poltergeister phenomenon with plenty of preternatural evil forces . Terror expert Bava provides his ordinary tricks maintaining interest and intrigue enough. In spite of a few scenarious and its low budget, Bava develops stunning photography, making great use of lighting, set design, and camera positioning to compliment mise-en-scenes bathed in deep primaries . This film was titled Schock, though in some countries pretended to be a sequel titled : ¨Beyond the door II¨ , revolving around the known plot about a haunted house , this time with a revenger ghost who roams here and there, while possessing a little boy, David Colin , who gives a really terrifying acting , despite his short age . Along with the beautiful Daria Nicolodi as the unsettling and at the edge of insanity wife , a plane pilot played by John Steiner as the new husband and brief appearance by Ivan Rassimov as the doctor advising Daria Nicolodi who at the time married Dario Argento , another director especialized in Terror and Giallo.

It displays atmospheric and sinister cinematography from Alberto Spagnoli and Mario Bava himself . As well as eerie synthesizer musical score in Goblin style composed by Libra . Well directed by Mario Bava who is considered to be one of the best Terror filmmakers . His first horror film was ¨Il vampiri¨ (1957) , also known as "The Devil's Commandment" , co-directed by another great filmmaker, Riccardo Freda .While working with Freda in this film , the director left the project after an argument with the producers and the film mostly unfinished . After a similar incident occurred on ¨Freda's Caltiki¨ (1959), and Bava's having been credited with "saving" Tourneur's ¨Battle of Marathon¨ (1959). The following film that emerged, ¨The mask of the demon¨ (1960), is one his most well known as well as one of his best and it inspired a wave of gothic Italian horror films . This widely influential movie also started the horror career of a beautiful but then unknown British actress named Barbara Steele , subsequently become a horror myth . While ¨Black Sunday¨ is a black and white film , it was in the color milieu that the director excelled , as Bava's films took on the look of works of art with the projects which he went on making . Later on , he directed ¨Black Sabbath¨ with the great Boris Karloff and others as ¨Baron Blood¨ with Joseph Cotten , and ¨The whip and the boy¨with Chistopher Lee . Bava along with Riccardo Freda and Dario Argento created Giallo subgenre including films as ¨The girl who knew too much¨ , ¨Five dolls for an August moon¨, ¨A hatchet for honeymoon¨ and ¨Six women for a killer¨ . As Bava created the style and substance of the giallo, a genre which would be perfected in the later films of Dario Argento . But Bava also made other genres as Peplum : ¨Hercules and the haunted world¨ , Western : ¨Roy Colt and Winchester Jack¨ , Viking movie : ¨Knives of the avenger¨, Sci-Fi : ¨Planet of vampires¨, Sex comedy : ¨Four times that night¨, Oriental fantasy : ¨The wonders of Aladdin¨, and the first Slasher movie : ¨Bay of blood¨, among others . Rating : 6.5/10 . Decent terror movie .

The other night, an excellent documentary was on tv about Mario Bava. I had never seen a film of his before, but I had heard of him. After the doco, they played 'Shock'. The guy who introduced the film said that it wasn't Bava's best film but that it was a film that gets better every year.

Bava's films are hard to get in Australia so I watched this one without any expectation.

I wasn't more than pleasantly surprised. I felt that it was probably the best haunted house flick that I had seen. I enjoyed the twists and the turns of the plot, and the economy of the size of the cast,(3 principals). The whole film left me with a very creepy feeling and for that I feel that the film worked completely.

I could see the influence on other films such as 'The Sixth Sense', 'Stir Of Echoes', and 'What Lies Beneath', and I can safely say that I enjoyed 'Shock' more than all these others. I suppose it's because Mario Bava's direction was not flashy and concentrated more on telling his story and keeping us guessing.

Finally, my enjoyment of this film has encouraged me to seek out Bava's other films and that can only be a good thing.

When a family moves into a home with a shocking secret, their lives become a nightmare of homicidal hallucinations as their young son begins to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Remodeled in madness and painted in blood, they soon discover that domestic bliss can be murder... when home is where the horror is.

Daria Nicolodi stars in a role where she doesn't just get killed off violently, and with her are John Steiner, David Colin Jr. and Ivan Rassimov. This is director Mario Bava's final film.

I really enjoyed the boy grunting out "Pigs! Pigs! Pigs!" and his weird fetish for shredded underwear. And there is a really cool shot in bed with hair flying every which way.

Howard Maxford calls it "unwatchable", "childish" and "unfortunate", completely in contrast to Luca Palmerini, who thinks it is a "splendid artistic testament" that anticipates "A Nightmare on Elm Street", full of "high tension". I, personally, enjoyed it.

The script was written by Lamberto Bava along with Sacchetti, Lamberto's first script. Lamberto has said the film is more his than his father's, and stylistically that is quite true. Critics comparing this to Mario Bava's other work may be surprised, but I found it was in many ways in the same vein as "Macabre".

The final film from Italian horror director Mario Bava was this chilling tale.

Upon returning to the home where her former husband died, a woman begins to believe that her young son is possessed and is attempting to kill her.

Plot-wise Schock is slim on sense, but those of us that love the films of Bava (or most any Italian horror period) know that the entertainment is all in the style and Bava's direction flourishes with style in this film as well. Schock carries a strong atmosphere of darkness and an increasing feeling of dread that drives it to nightmarish proportions at times. The film's scenic locations, creepy music score, and its female star add all the more to the elegance that is this twisted spooker.

The cast is good over all, but it is Daria Nicolodi that really shines as a wife/mother who begins to question her sanity.

Granted, Schock may not be the greatest of Bava's films, but it certainly was a great last work. Worth seeking out.

*** out of ****