DVD...

Skin...

1963
Directed by: Mario Bava
Written by: Mario Bava, Alberto Bevilacqua, Ivan Chekhov (The Drop of Water), F.G. Snyder (The Telephone), V.I. Tolstoy (The Wurdalak)
Produced by: Paolo Mercuri
Studio: American International Pictures [US], Emmepi Cinematografica [italy]

Starring:
Michèle Mercier .... Rosy (segment "The Telephone")
Lidia Alfonsi .... Mary (segment "The Telephone")
Boris Karloff .... Gorca (segment "The Wurdalak")
Mark Damon .... Vladimire d'Urfe (segment "The Wurdalak")
Susy Andersen .... Sdenka (segment "The Wurdalak")
Massimo Righi .... Pietro (segment "The Wurdalak")
Glauco Onorato .... Giorgio (segment "The Wurdalak")
Rika Dialina .... Maria (segment "The Drop of Water")
Jacqueline Pierreux .... Helen Chester (segment "The Drop of Water")
Gustavo De Nardo .... Police Inspector (segment "The Drop of Water")
Harriet Medin .... Helen Chester's neighbor (segment "The Drop of Water")

I don't remember having seen this movie before, but what a nice surprise it was! The great Mario Bava directed the equally great Boris Karloff and a cast of mostly Italians in this eerie trilogy of horror tales. Karloff had recently been in the series Thriller in the U.S. and the producers decided to have him do something similar. So he comes out at the beginning to do a little monologue basically warning the audience about the stories they are about to watch. This was an Italian movie with a mostly Italian cast and crew and was shot in their native language, Italian. There are English subtitles for the entire movie but the monologue with Karloff is kind of funny because you can see him speaking English and his lips matching the words printing on the screen in the subtitles, but the voice you hear is, which is definitely not Karloff, is coming across in italian.

As I said this is a trilogy, and after the opening monologue sequence begins the first story, The Telephone, starring the beautiful and sultry Michèle Mercier. This was a few years after Bava had cast Barbara Steele in the lead role of Black Sunday, but I could not help but notice how similar she and Michèle Mercier looked.

The story is about a woman named Rosy (Mercier) who one stormy evening starts receiving strange and disturbing telephone calls. After several calls the mysterious voice on the other end starts telling Rosy that she is going to be killed. After a managing to get the person to talk a little Rosy figures out that t is an escaped convict who she had helped put away years earlier. She calls a friend to come over and comfort her and that is when the fun begins.

You can see the beginnings of the Giallo genre right here, as this film pre-dates Blood and Black Lace by over a year, which makes this the earliest Giallo that I know of.

The next tale is entitled "The Wurdulak", and stars Karloff in a very sinister role, as the patriarchal head of a family in eastern Europe who has been on the hunt for a vicious killer. A traveler riding through the countryside stops at a house to hopefully rest for the evening. He is met by a family who is terrified of going out at night and tell the stranger that about their father, Gorca (Karloff), who had set out 5 days earlier to go after a terrible killer who had been stalking the countryside for months. The traveler, Vladimire d'Urfe (Mark Damon), tells them about a body he had seen on the ride in. They go to investigate but the body is missing it's head so they cannot determine the identity of the victim. Vladimire and the daughter of Gorca, Sdenka (Susy Andersen), start chatting it up and of course fall in love with one another.

Gorca returns to the home and despite a warning from him before he left, if he returns one minute past five days, to not let him in and kill him, making sure to pierce his heart. He makes it back just after the clock tells them that he is just over the five day limit, but he gruffly tells them he is wounded and starts barking orders so they let him into the home. He acts strangely so the family and Vladimire try to keep on their toes, but after Gorca takes his young grandson away from the house, things start to go go bad all at once.

This is a great role for Karloff. He doesn't get a lot of screen time, but his character is quite menacing and you would not want to meet him in a dark alley, light alley, or anywhere else. This tale is basically a vampire story, but does not follow many of the usual and traditional film vampire legends.

The third tale is called "The Drop of Water" and was the one I found to be the scariest. There is a woman, Helen Chester (excellently portrayed by Jacqueline Pierreux), who receives a phone call at night during a raging storm. She is asked to come to a house to help someone and she finally reluctantly agrees. When she arrives we find that a elderly woman she helped look after had died. No one wants to touch the body because everyone is afraid of her and believes she died with the help of spirits. So Helen goes in the room and looks at the terrifying face and starts changing the cloths on the body attached to it. She notices a nice looking ring on a finger of the body and quickly decides what to do with it. You can see the moral dilemma in the face of Helen as she tries to decide whether to take the ring or not. After a losing battle with her conscience, she takes the ring off the finger of the body, puts it down in her cleavage and finished the job she came to do.

After arriving home, a sort of Edgar Allen Poe Tell Tale Heart episode starts up. We get to watch as Helen admires her new possession and then as she begins to realize that maybe she made a mistake. This story is creepy both in atmosphere and the image of the old woman who died. Bava got the best of Jacqueline Pierreux's talents in this story and also all of the other actors and actresses in this film, especially the villains.

I bought this dvd when I saw it on sale at a Suncoast while on vacation in Phoenix last month. It had been retailing in the $25 range, but I got it for $15 and I see that amazon.com now has it for $13.49. It is such a good movie that I heartily recommend buying it. My affection and liking for Mario Bava was pretty high already, but after seeing I Vampiri and Black Sabbath over the course of a few days my respect has grown even higher. The dvd was released by Image Entertainment a few years ago and they have released a bunch of Bava titles over the last few years. The video is in 1.78:1 enhanced mode and the sound is Dolby Digital mono. The image looks great but the sound is a bit uneven and quiet in parts. But I suppose this is the best this movie will ever look and sound so go out and get it quick, before it goes out of print.

There are theatrical trailers and the usual biographies and filmographies, but no documentary or commentary. Tim Lucas, the noted film historian and editor of Video Watchdog magazine and author of "Mario Bava: All of the Colors of the Dark", does write up a good deal of information about the movie for the liner notes on the snap case. Fortunately Image decided against snap cases shortly after the release of this dvd and switched over to keep cases.

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