Danger Diabolik 1968

Purchasing the dvd for Danger Diabolik as a high school freshman introduced me to a lot of different worlds: the psychedelic director Mario Bava, the flamboyant producer Dino De Laurentiis, a subgenre of 60s pop-art genre films and all of the weirdness in between.

This film has aged better than expected. Hadn't watched in 10 years and since then the movie world has adopted so many of Bava's techniques - by way of Nicolas Winding Refn (by way of Dario Argento) - and the world market is saturated with kinetic comic book action thrillers. Certainly films of this type are better written today and certainly given bigger budgets, but they aren't produced as lavishly or directed as creatively. And I don't even think any recent Marvel successes have castings the caliber of Marissa Mell or John Phillip Law. And a score by Ennio Morricone?! The components all fit tightly and raise the source material, which wasn't a bad place to begin with. And, in that rare instance where being dated actually benefits the work, the social politics of a swingin' '60s Italian culture gives the film so much flavor. It has a genuine criminal antihero, a straight up terrorist as the protagonist and it revels in the colors, sounds, fashions and sexual expressions of a newly liberated generation and country. This is a very unique film that is truly lightning in the bottle.

Its hard to expand on why this film is good without delving into the academics of Bava's directing or the funky wonder of what Dino assembled, so lets focus on the bizarre collaboration of these two pillars of world cinema, who would go on to influence most of what Hollywood does today. Isn't it poetic that their brief partnership spawned a film that is everything 2017 Hollywood tries to produce? This was a transitional period for both men as Bava was leaving Horror and Dino was trying desperately to break into the world of Hollywood Epics. Mario said that the pressures of big budget international filmmaking was too much for him while Dino forged ahead into more outrageous successes, with Barbarella being the first after Diabolik (using much of the same crew and aesthetic). I like to think they both learned a lot from each other and I know the tiny taste of this magical meshing influenced a lot of people within movies AND comics. The images of half-naked Marisa Mell rolling around in space age sets juxtaposed with cartoonish characters and stylized action violence directly inspired the James Bond series (Tim Lucas points out a scene that Diamonds Are Forever flat-out duplicated). I wouldn't be surprised if Jess Franco, Menahem Golan and maybe Renny Harlin were big fans of Diabolik.

So this a huge recommendation. Its dated but I think there's plenty for young audiences to enjoy and it stands as a mammoth achievement as a low budget film (by today's standards) and as a commercial foreign film. As much ingenuity as it took to make this movie equals the high ecstasy it gives when you watch it.