27 Days of Bava!

In 2004, I was in the six grade and one October night I had an experience that would forever shape my future love of film. I can distinctly remember sitting on my bed, flipping though the television stations when I landed on the Bravo Network. I do not remeber what film I saw first, but I instantly knew I was seeing something that my parents would not approve of so I did two things. First, I ran to the T.V., turning the volume down to a whisper. Then I ran upstairs, grabbed a blank VHS tape, hurried back down the stairs, pushed it into my VCR, and hit record. The program I was secretly recording was Bravos's "100 Scariest Movie Moments" and it would eventually fuel my love of horror movies for the rest of my life and ignite my unquenchable thirst for film. For the next four nights, I would sit in front of the T.V. mesmerized by the acts of violence and terror that erupted from the screen. As the show counted down the scariest moments in cinema history, I watched, with paper in hand, ready to jot down the name of each film. By the end of that five night period, I had five hours of tape recorded and a notebook full of films. I then grabbed a TV Guide and meticulously  searched for the films on my list. When I found a film, I would write down when it would air and then record it on a VHS tape. In this manner, I amassed a collection of hundreds of horror films that I would label under fake names (to keep my parents questions at bay) and watch once my parents went to sleep. While I did this for years, there were still several films that I never found and Mario Bava's "Black Sunday" was at the top of my list of unaccounted films.

The clip that played that drew me to Bava's masterpiece was the iconic image of a large metal mask being hammered onto the beautiful Barbara Steele's face and the blood dripping down in spectacular black and white photography. Even though I have never seen the actual film, I can still remeber the fog that seems to float throughout the scene and the horrific image of the executioner's blank expression. I can distinctly remeber sitting up and turning my face away from the screen when the large wooden mallet plows into the mask. These images have haunted my memory for the past ten years, and I am sad to say that not only have I never seen "Black Sunday", but I have never seen a single Bava film. Thus for the first month of my film blog, I will briskly make my way through all 27 of  Mario Bava's directorial features. Every day I will watch one film beginning with 1957's "I Vampiri" and ending with 1977's "Beyond the Door II". If you would like to follow along with my exploration into the cinema of Italy's master of suspense at home, here is a calendar of the films I will be viewing during this retrospective:

10/27 - I Vampiri (1957)
10/28 - Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959)
10/29 - The Giant of Marathon (1959)
10/30 - Black Sunday (1960)
10/31 - The Wonders of Aladdin (1961)
11/1 - Hercules in the Haunted World (1961)
11/2 - Erik the Conqueror (1961)
11/3 - The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963)
11/4 - Black Sabbath (1963)
11/5 - The Whip and the Body (1963)
11/6 - Blood and Black Lace (1964)
11/7 - The Road to Fort Alamo (1964)
11/8 - Planet of the Vampires (1965)
11/9 - Knives of the Avenger (1966)
11/10 - Kill Baby, Kill (1966)
11/11 - Dr. Goldfood and the Girl Bombs (1966)
11/12 - Danger: Diabolik (1968)
11/13 - Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970)
11/14 - Blood Brides (1970)
11/15 - Roy Colt and Winchester Jack (1970)
11/16 - A Bay of Blood (1971)
11/17 - Baron Blood (1972)
11/18 - Four Times that Night (1972)
11/19 - Lisa and the Devil (1973)
11/20 - Rabid Dogs (1973)
11/21 - The House of the Exorcism (1975)
11/22 - Beyond the Door II (1977)