Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966)

The Devil is a Girl

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Kill, Baby... Kill! on DVD

In Mario Bava's masterpiece Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966), Giacomo Rossi-Stuart stars as a doctor summoned to perform an autopsy in a remote village, but he discovers that the superstitious natives are frightened over the ghost of a little girl. As with all his other films, the plot takes a back seat to the mood, and Bava has never presented his moods so vividly and with such effervescence. If a character walks down a hallway, they walk through pools of shadow and through multicolored patches of light arranged in such a way as to suggest danger, fear or curiosity. The beautiful Fabienne Dali stars as a local sorceress who places coins in the hearts of the dead, and Erika Blanc plays the hero's love interest. One sequence, in which the hero runs through a series of rooms, is a perfect example of spine-tingling dream-logic. Anchor Bay has righted a great wrong here, by presenting the film letterboxed, remastered and available in both Italian and English instead of the original release, a terrible pan-and-scan, dubbed-only transfer.

Starring: Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, Erika Blanc, Fabienne Dali, Piero Lulli, "Max Lawrence" (Luciano Catenacci), Micaela Esdra, Franca Dominici, Giuseppe Addobbati, Mirella Pamphili, Valeria Valeri, Giana Vivaldi
Written by: Mario Bava, Romano Migliorini, Roberto Natale
Directed by: Mario Bava
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Language: English, Italian, with English subtitles
Running Time: 85 minutes
Date: April 10, 2007