When it comes to Italian horror cinema, Mario Bava is often considered the godfather of gore. A generation ahead of such esteemed Italian horror maestros as Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento, Umberto Lenzi, and others, Bava is directly responsible for creating the colorful visual aesthetic and mysterious plot structure of Italian horror films across multiple subgenres.
With Halloween on the brink, horror fans of every stripe would be wise to indulge in the genre's best and most influential directors of all time by checking out Mario Bava's most terrifying cinematic experiences of all time.
The Evil Eye (1963) - Stream On AMC+
A terrifying and hugely influential film to the formation of the Giallo subgenre of Italian horror, The Evil Eye is a slasher film in which an American tourist witnesses a grisly murder while on vacation before being systematically stalked by the mysterious killer. With staggering onscreen violence for its time, the film combines fear, paranoia, and a genuinely creepy setting.
The final black-and-white film of BaStva's horror resume not only paved the way for an entire subgenre of Italian horror to follow for generations, but it also combines a Hitchcockian level of tension and suspense that shatters the nerves and tingles the spine at once.
The Whip And The Body (1963) - Stream On Shudder
Directed under the alias John M. Old, Bava explored the erotically charged tale of sexy-scary sadomasochistic kinkiness in The Whip and the Body, a horror film far ahead of its time. The film mixes old-school Gothic romance with harrowing body horror and torturous violence in a story about a ghostly nobleman (horror legend Christopher Lee) returning to liberate his former lover from his brother.
The haunting visual aesthetic of the film is matched by the shocking baroque BDSM subject matter punctuated by vicious whips, chains, stabbings, and other wicked death modes new to the Bava experience.
Kill, Baby...Kill (1966) - Stream On Kanopy
Following a two-year respite from the horror realm, Bava returned with the merciless murders of Kill, Baby...Kill, a stylishly sinister ghost story about the vengeful spirit of a little girl who returns to wreak havoc on her Carpathian village. In one of the greatest opening scenes of any Gothic horror film, the story grips tightly around the neck and never lets one breathe for a moment.
As the villagers set out to unmask the murders, a fascinating clash of science and superstition comes into play that adds to the drama and makes the moldering castles, skin-crawling spiderwebs, creepy dolls, black cats, dusty hallways, and shadowy corridors even more upsetting.
Shock (1977) - Stream On Tubi
The final shot of Bava's aptly-titled final film, Shock, is as memorably spine-tingling as any cinematic moment of the horror legend's career. A brilliant way to go out, Shock concerns a couple who moves into a haunted house, where they are terrorized by the ghost of the woman's former lover possess her young son as a means of payback.
Co-directed by Mario's son, Lamberto Bava, Shock is minimal horror executed to a T with an indelible musical score, pulse-pounding suspense and atmospheric dread that continues to mount, and an emotionally resonant story that conjures genuine sympathy for the possessed little boy.
Lisa And The Devil (1973) - Stream On AMC+
In a spookily bizarre change of pace for Bava, the hypnotic horror film Lisa and the Devil appears to be a cheap Exorcist knockoff at first glance. However, the hair-raising atmospherics and macabre moodiness offer so much more. Set in Toledo, Spain, the story traces a tourist who encounters a devilish butler (Telly Savalas) at a rundown villa.
With a surreal tone and eerily elegant production design, the supernatural horror movie entrances viewers like a fever dream through its depiction of pure evil, deceptively leading fans down a primrose path of piercing pain.
Hatchet For The Honeymoon (1970) - Stream On Kanopy
Fusing the neon-dipped Giallo-style slasher tenets with psychological horror tropes to get inside the mind of a murderous man, Hatchet for the Honeymoon is one of Bava's best, bloodiest, and most alarming big screen terrors. An unhappily married man who designs bridal gowns begins to massacre his wedding new brides-t0-be with a cleaver as a means of overcoming childhood trauma.
Bava rivetingly reinvents the slasher movie conventions he also helped create a half-decade prior, crafting a deeply disturbing glimpse into the fractious mental state of an Italian Psycho in ways even Christian Bale (American Psycho) would appreciate.
A Bay Of Blood (1972) - Stream On Shudder
Bava's bold, brazen, and ultra-brutal slasher film A Bay of Blood was so influential that the iconic double-impalement fatality was ripped off shot-for-shot a decade later by Steve Miner in goriest Italian horror films ever made.
In a gruesome gestalt of sinister sight and sound, A Bay of Blood is another sumptuous example of Bava's vividly colorful style, proving to be one of his most seminal and oft-imitated horror titles whose terror derives from its relentlessly visceral body count alone.
Blood And Black Lace (1964) - Stream On The Criterion Channel
If Bava introduced the tropes and tenets of Giallo horror in The Evil Eye, then he mastered the form in his follow-up horror t Blood and Black Lace. Also as an American slasher film progenitor, the story tracks a el of female Roman models who are gorily slaughtered by an unknown assailant dressed in a black fedora, long trench coat, and eerie mask.
The vivid neon color pallet of the film is one of the visually arresting of Bava's resume, but it's the unremitting amount of gory violence for a film released in 1964 that made it so scary then and still trailblazing today. Sexy, sinister, and sadistic, Blood and Black Lace is just as frightening as it is influential.
Black Sunday (1960) - Stream On Shudder
Bava's first accredited horror film still ranks as one of the scariest and most influential of all time. Black Sunday is an unnervingly atmospheric tale of witchcraft that follows Princess Asa Vajda (Barbara Steele in an iconic turn), a woman burned at the stake who rises from the grave and vows revenge 200 years later.
With striking imagery, macabre set pieces that featured shocking onscreen carnage for its time, gorgeous black-and-white photography that retains an ageless quality, and a truly mortifying performance by Steele, Black Sunday is one of the most stylistically influential horror movies ever made that continues to get under the skin of its viewers.
Black Sabbath (1963) - Stream On AMC+
Three years after Black Sunday, Bava turned in a petrifying horror anthology entitled Black Sabbath. Horror screen legend Boris Karloff stars in the film as the narrator of a trio of ghoulish and grisly horror vignettes, including a stalked and slashed prostitute, a vampiric beast feasting on its family, and a nurse terrorized by her the undead owner of a ring she stole.
While the middle chapter has been panned as unremarkable, the baleful bookends of the horror omnibus have drawn praise for Bava's vivid use of neon colors (a hallmark of his career moving forward), masterfully crafted suspense, and deeply unsettling atmosphere.
