Kill Baby... Kill! (1966)
Somehow a film Mario Bava made in eleven days for a bet ends up the director's masterpiece is a mystery but in my opinion it is. Understandably the film doesn't have much plot but it is compensated for by some exquisite atmospherics. Bava's innovative visuals have always been a strength of his films but here he produces his greatest work especially given the time constraints.
Bava gives us tombs with cobwebs so large they hang like curtains, wonderful fog shrouded streets, a brilliant spiral staircase sequence so disorientating that it could have come from Hitchcock himself. Then there's the heroic Giacomo Rossi Stuart pursuing an unidentified figure through identical rooms only to catch up with himself, and best and most iconic of all, the ghostly Melissa's ball bouncing through corridors and down streets sending all who see her to terrifying deaths.
Kill Baby... Kill is hard to better for subtle, malevolent, supernatural menacing atmosphere. Every shot has been lovingly orchestrated by Bava to achieve maximum impact from his lighting and colours to wonderful dramatic effect and endows the film with a majestic beauty.
Crap title, mind you.
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