Interview with Mario Bava (1970-1971)

This is the English translation of an interview with director Mario Bava conducted by Luigi Cozzi. Luigi Cozzi’s questions are omitted in the original text, so Mario Bava seems to speak freely, stream-of-consciousness-like. The interview was originally published in Italian, in the Italian monthly magazine Horror, in December 1970 – January 1971. You can find more info about Italian horror movies in the monograph Vampires in Italian Cinema, 1956-1975 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). If you are interested in buying the book, feel free to use the launch discount code EVENT30 for 30% off.

Mario Bava: Barbara Steele used to spend her days sitting around at Caffè Rosati [in Piazza del Popolo in Rome], with a pair of eyeglasses and a highbrow book, in the company of [Alberto] Moravia. I really don’t understand her. She had a career in front of her: she wasn’t a great actress, but she was allright. Then, she made a brief appearance in that movie by [Federico] Fellini and that was the end of it all… From that moment on, she began to reject all the job offers she received: she only wanted to be in movies of high intellectual value, but who would offer this kind of movies to her? So, basically, her acting career was over…

I am telling you about Barbara Steele because I launched her career (if I can say so) with my directorial debut La maschera del demonio / Black Sunday (1960). Do you know that I am going to shoot a remake of La maschera del demonio? I will discuss the project with some American producers tomorrow. They bought the rights of my old screenplay and they updated it a little bit. Now they want me to direct the remake of my own film. Why not? With all the overdue taxes I have to pay, I can’t afford to be picky with the projects I am offered. I accept any project, as long as the producers pay me straight away.

Of course, I sometimes get swindled, or I end up shooting movies that are not up to my usual standards. The case of [my film] 5 bambole per la luna d’agosto / Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970) is a good example, it went like this. The producers give me a screenplay, I read it and I say that I don’t like it, it is identical to [Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel] Ten Little Niggers / And Then There Were None. But the producers insist and, in the end, I accept to direct the film. I tell them that we will discuss the project in detail when they will pay me. So I start working on other things and I forget about 5 bambole per la luna d’agosto, until one Saturday morning the producers call me in their office, they give me my cheque and my contract, and they tell me that the shooting begins on Monday, in two days’ time. I take the money and I sign the contract, but I tell the producers that the screenplay isn’t good, that I need at least ten days to fix the story and make preparations… but, no, the shooting begins on Monday. So, in the end, what do I care? The film is done. It is a terrible movie, it certainly is the worst movie among those I directed. I couldn’t do anything about it, we were working under disastrous conditions, it was October, it was very cold, and most of the film took place at the seaside as if it was summer. I could only make two changes in the story. First, putting the corpses in the fridge was my idea (in the screenplay the corpses were buried and there were little crosses on the graves, just like in western movies!). Second, I changed the ending […] a little bit, but I don’t think that I managed to save the film. My daughter watched the movie in Padova, and she asked me if I had gone mad.

You see, my mistake is that I accept any job they offer me. Moreover, I am unable to take things seriously, I always feel like joking, and for the producers a director who makes jokes is unconceivable, incompatible [with the job’s duties]. But I have been in the film business for too many years now, just like my father [Eugenio Bava], who directed the mythological films of the silent era; I know everything and everybody [in the profession], so how can I take seriously this gigantic, absurd circus [baraccone]? But I have taxes to pay and I work with my own personal crew, my regulars – the camera operator, my son, the electrician… They have been loyally following me for the past twenty years… If I stop making movies, how will they make a living? So, let’s get on with the next movie!

With [my film] La ragazza che sapeva troppo / The Evil Eye (1963) I tried to make an experiment, a romantic giallo [giallo rosa]. I have been told that L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo / The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento, 1970) plagiarizes La ragazza che sapeva troppo… I can’t say if this is true, because I haven’t seen L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo yet. In any case, La ragazza che sapeva troppo is a romantic giallo: at that time I was recovering from a six-month nervous breakdown and I didn’t feel like shooting the film, but I needed money and I did the job. The only problem was that I found the film absurd as a romantic giallo. Maybe it could have worked with stars like Kim Novak and James Stewart, but my actors were… well, I forgot their names! So I started shooting the film in a very serious way, as if it was an actual tale of the macabre. When La ragazza che sapeva troppo was released, it even had a certain success.

One of the worst experiences in my life was the making of Diabolik / Danger: Diabolik (1968). I was shooting this film for Dino De Laurentiis, it was an important project and the distributors had paid 1.5 billion lire in advance [for the distributions rights]. But you know De Laurentiis, he is worse than the Ministry of Economy and Finance: the production company made me work for months and months (I, who shot Operazione paura / Kill, Baby… Kill! (1966) in twelve days!), and I wasn’t being paid for working overtime… Moreover, I had very little resources at my disposal, the final cost of Diabolik was 200 million lire. I had to come up with all sorts of cheap tricks because the production company didn’t give me anything to work with. Did you see Diabolik’s hut in the countryside, his hideout, his laboratory, the garage? I swear: they were all scale models, photographs that I cut out and pasted on a glass in front of the camera – an improvised solution that allowed me to make up for the misery of the whole scenery. And then, after exhausting myself with this kind of work, I also had to direct John Phillip Law, who wasn’t able to play the bad guy for more than thirty seconds… Finally, I told De Laurentiis: “How can we make a film about Diabolik without the bloody murders?”. But De Laurentiis didn’t want any violence in this movie because at that time there were trials against crime-themed comics [pubblicazioni nere] in Italy, and he was afraid [of censorship and legal repercussions]… Recently, De Laurentiis called me and asked me to direct a sequel of Diabolik. I sent him a message saying that I am ill, permanently confined to bed.

I wish that the audience and the critics knew the conditions under which I am forced to make movies. For [my film] Terrore nello spazio / Planet of the Vampires (1965) I didn’t have anything to work with. There was only a studio, completely empty and squalid, because there was no money: I had to turn that into a [mysterious, alien] planet. So what did I do? In the studio next door there were two big plastic rocks, a leftover prop from a sword-and-sandal movie or something. I took these two rocks and I put them in the middle of my studio, then I covered the floor with smoke and I darkened the white wall in the background. I shot the whole movie by moving the two rocks around the studio. Can you believe it? And, while I was shooting, there was this American screenwriter who kept rewriting the script, changing scenes and dialogues… After a while, I stopped listening to him. Do you remember that, at the end of Terrore nello spazio, the astronauts land on planet Earth at the beginning of its existence? Well, the screenwriter wanted the astronauts to get off the spaceship and meet Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, which was located in Missouri, USA. Naturally, I refused to shoot this kind of stuff.

Not to mention [my film] Ercole al centro della Terra / Hercules in the Haunted World (1961). I made a bet that I could make a feature film only by using a modular wall with a door and a window, and four mobile columns, without any other scenery. Therefore, I shot Ercole al centro della Terra by continuously moving these few elements around [the studio], in an endless series of shot-countershot. No spectator ever noticed. But my best film is Operazione paura… In Fellini’s episode Toby Dammit from the omnibus Tre passi nel delirio / Spirits of the Dead (Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, Federico Fellini, 1968) there is a ghost-child playing with a ball, just like in Operazione paura. I mentioned this similarity to [Fellini’s wife] Giulietta Masina, and she shrugged with a smile: “You know how Federico is…”, she told me.

A new film of mine, Il rosso segno della follia / Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970), has recently been released. I shot it in Spain, in a villa owned by [dictator] Francisco Franco. The police didn’t want me to get the stairs dirty with [fake] blood, and the Spanish technicians drove me crazy… I will never go back there, I swear. But Il rosso segno della follia is a good film, I am quite satisfied with it. It is the usual story of a madman, but I could work on this project with calm and I prepared everything with meticulousness. You see, a long time ago, before starting my career in filmmaking, I was a painter, so now [that I am a director] I usually draw storyboards for my films. That is to say, I draw the whole film on paper, all the shots, all the cuts. This really helps me, but if the producers don’t give me time to prepare, I work almost blindly.

I have just finished another film, a comic western [titled Roy Colt & Winchester Jack (1970)]. It is a funny movie. Well, you won’t believe me, but the screenplay they gave me was very serious, very dramatic. I read it and I found it so grotesque and ludicrous that I decided to improvise stuff and make a comic film. Therefore, there was a lot of improvisation during the shooting. I wonder what the audience will think.

Besides remaking my own film La maschera del demonio, I have another project. It is titled Once upon a time there was a leaf… [C’era una foglia…], it is the story of a group of ghosts haunting a castle. The ghosts try to turn the perverted and evil lord of the castle (who is the last living member of an aristocratic family) into a good guy. It is yet another comic movie, full of humor. I wrote it myself and the shooting should begin soon. I have another story in mind, but for now it is just an idea: some crooks buy a destroyer from the World-War-Two years and sail around the world attacking ships like pirates. It would be fun, wouldn’t it? Meanwhile, I got another job. I made a series of sci-fi-style TV ads [Caroselli] for a big Italian oil company. I accepted this job because they pay really well. How could I refuse? […]

Interview with Roger Vadim (1971)

This is the English translation of an interview with screenwriter and director Roger Vadim conducted by Ornella Volta. The interview was originally published in Italian, in the Italian monthly magazine Horror, in November 1971. You can find more info about Italian horror movies in the monograph Vampires in Italian Cinema, 1956-1975 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). If you are interested in buying the book, feel free to use the launch discount code EVENT30 for 30% off.

Together with Valerio Riva, Ornella Volta edited the Italian-language, vampire-themed anthology I vampiri tra noi: 37 storie vampiriche, published by Feltrinelli in 1960. The foreword of this anthology was written by Roger Vadim (available here in Italian and here in English) as a tie-in for the Italian release of his feature film Il sangue e la rosa / Blood and Roses (1960).

Ornella Volta: Roger Vadim, so far you have made two movies that belong to the fantastic genre, Il sangue e la rosa (based on a Sheridan Le Fanu novella) and Metzengerstein (based on an Edgar Allan Poe short story [and part of the omnibus Tre passi nel delirio / Spirits of the Dead (Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, Federico Fellini, 1968)]), and one science-fiction film, Barbarella (1968). Do you prefer the fantastic or the sci-fi genre?

Roger Vadim: I know that it is rare that a person is interested in both the sci-fi and the fantastic, because an abyss separates the two genres. However, I like them both, even if I am perhaps more partial to sci-fi. For me, the fantastic has the fault of being based on a psychology that is connected too much to the everyday. When we enter the realm of the “fantastic”, there is always someone (the protagonist of the story, the spectator or the reader) who is afraid of something. And fear – nobody can deny it – is a feeling that by now has become too ordinary, too commonplace.

Ornella: In any case, you don’t consider the fantastic as a lesser genre?

Vadim: A lesser genre? For me the fantastic is the future of cinema. If you consider that cinema is the only medium that allows you to “see” ghosts, apparitions and marvels in action, how can you underestimate the extraordinary potential of the fantastic genre? Only a minimal fraction of this potential has been explored so far, due to the lack of resources and to the filmmakers’ lack of courage. I myself haven’t gone as far as I wanted and want to. Maybe because I felt that the audience wasn’t prepared enough to welcome my ideas.

Ornella: Do you think that sci-fi is more ductile?

Vadim: Sure. Sci-fi gives us more freedom. We are free to imagine all sorts of planets without any relation to our world – planets full of individuals with feelings and behaviors completely different from the ones we know. Indeed, my greatest ambition is to bring to the screen human relationships that have never been seen before. Just think of how conventional was female psychology before [my film] Et Dieu… créa la femme / …And God Created Woman (1956). One can easily say that Brigitte Bardot entered the history of cinema like a Martian… And even the realist authors I adapted for the screen managed to strike me only when they clashed against reality.

Ornella: You dislike reality, then? Are you a fan of escapism?

Vadim: Not at all! I like reality very much. But I don’t believe that only what man does is real. I believe that what man would like to do is real too. In sum, I believe that it is a big mistake to underestimate the part of reality that is commonly called “imagination”. Imagined and factual things have the same influence on events. And, in any case, imagination is more enjoyable. I like and I am interested in everything that increases the possibilities of man’s life. Even God can interest me, as long as God is seen as an incommensurable entity. That is to say an entity that can’t be measured and that doesn’t measure other beings. On the contrary, I lose all interest when God is conceived of as a sort of tailor who wants people to wear clothes that are too tight. I lose all interest when God becomes a pretext to make human life more miserable.

Ornella: Did you ever have the temptation to bring to the screen the so-called “parallel universe”?

Vadim: Yes, of course. But I certainly don’t want to do so in order to demonstrate the existence of such “parallel universe”: when ghosts will be decoded, I will lose interest in them.

Ornella: Did you ever deal with occultism and spiritism?

Vadim: I sure did. I even conducted a long research in those milieus. All those occultists and spiritists were lying in the most pathetic way. And yet their lies, their clumsy efforts to demonstrate the indemonstrable, showed that they really did believe. For them, lying was the only way to communicate to a non-initiate something that even they couldn’t quite grasp. The bottom line is that they did believe just like I believe, even if I don’t feel like analyzing this belief of mine in depth. I believe because I myself am an ultra-sensitive medium. When I was a kid, I could make a table shake without touching it, just by keeping my hand at a certain distance from it. I also have prophetic dreams all the time. And I have already met my doppelgänger twice over the course of my life.

Interview with Riccardo Freda (1971)

This is the English translation of an interview with director Riccardo Freda conducted by Luigi Cozzi. The interview was originally published in Italian, in the Italian monthly magazine Horror, in April 1971. You can find more info about Italian horror movies in the monograph Vampires in Italian Cinema, 1956-1975 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). If you are interested in buying the book, feel free to use the launch discount code EVENT30 for 30% off.

Riccardo Freda: I don’t love cinema too much. The world of cinema is too improvised, too ephemeral to be worthy of consideration. It is impossible to make a logic, consequential discourse from one film to the next one: cinema is ruled by trends, genres and filoni… In order to make a living, I adapted to this situation. I made a lot of movies, especially adventure movies, and I am not ashamed of it. My old collaborator and friend Mario Bava, instead, feels ashamed: he made 5 bambole per la luna d’agosto / Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970) and tried to excuse himself by saying that he did it only for the money. It is obvious that we make these films for the money. But if we accept to make a movie, then we must do our best to make the best movie possible, in spite of all the difficulties.

Luigi Cozzi: Do you often go to the movies?

RF: I go to the movies all the time. I watch any kind of movie even if, when I get out of the theatre, I have to tear the film apart. But I am interested in cinema as a medium and I try to keep myself up to date. Moreover, I am working for a state censorship commission these days, so I have to review the films before they are released. I granted 5 bambole per la luna d’agosto the permission to be screened in Italy and I rejected Bava’s Quante volte… quella notte / Four Times That Night (1971), a lesbian-erotic film. Quante volte… quella notte is a horrible movie, to the point that Bava never mentions it as part of his filmography, even if he did direct it. By not granting the film the permission to be screened in Italy I think that I did my friend Bava a big favour.

LC: In your recent erotic giallo A doppia faccia / Double Face (1969), there is a full-frontal-nudity scene. How do you reconcile your activity as a film director with your activity as a film censor?

RF: I reconcile it very well. To make a film is one thing, to watch and judge a film is another thing. And after all, in A doppia faccia you can see “the bush” [il pelo] only in the foreign version [the version edited for foreign markets]. In the Italian version the girl wears her underwear, you can only see her breasts: that’s quite normal, isn’t it? What matters, to me, is the value of the film. The eroticism, or the “audacity”, of the single scene doesn’t matter. I explain myself. In La caduta degli dei / The Damned (1969), Luchino Visconti included an incest and nobody [in the state censorship commission] complained. We approved the film for public screening because it is such a beautiful and intelligent film. But we had to reject Candy (1968), made by an incompetent director called Christian Marquand. I would have greenlighted Candy : Ewa Aulin’s naked breasts and an anal intercourse briefly suggested and seen through the curtains are not that scandalous anymore, nowadays… But then there was the incest theme and the film was so dull and boring that I couldn’t really oppose my colleagues’ decision, so Candy was rejected. After one year, the movie was eventually released in Italy in a heavily cut version and very few people went to see it. It wasn’t a good business for the producers…

LC: How did you start making horror movies?

RF: I started making horror movies because of a bet. I was talking with two producers one day, [Ermanno] Donati and [Luigi] Carpentieri. I said that a film could be made in two weeks, and they replied that it was impossible. I insisted, so they phoned [Goffredo] Lombardo [owner of production and distribution company Titanus]: they explained to Lombardo my proposal and asked if he wanted to distribute the film once it was finished. He accepted without much enthusiasm and I very quickly wrote a screenplay for I vampiri / Lust of the Vampire (1957), which was shot in twelve days. Then I quit the job because I had an argument with the producers, and they completed the rest of the picture in two days. The movie was set in Paris but, thanks to the miniatures and tricks I created with cinematographer Mario Bava, we shot it in the courtyard of Titanus studio, in Rome. I believe in a subtle, psychological kind of horror. No vampires, no monsters, please: they are just vulgar, ridiculous tricks. My theory is that horror – the authentic terror – can be achieved with the simplest, most common means. The most terrifying monster is our neighbour cutting his wife’s throat, am I right? The theory behind my film L’orribile segreto del dr. Hichcock / The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) is this: anybody can marry a lunatic, a raving mad person, a monster… It was a shame that L’orribile segreto del dr. Hichcock had censorship problems.

LC: Which problems?

RF: The film was cut. You see, back in those days they used to cut a film for a half-seen thigh or for a low-cut neckline, and L’orribile segreto del dr. Hichcock dared to deal with the theme of necrophilia, as the protagonist was a doctor who is in love with corpses. So the censors cut the most explicit things like the doctor kissing the corpses. As a result, the film ended up being a bit obscure, because it wasn’t clear that the doctor was a necrophile. That’s why I wanted an opening scene showing the murder in the cemetery: it’s not a film about grave-robbing, it’s a film about necrophilia. But with all the cuts that were made, the logic behind the film was a bit lost.

LC: And what about your film Lo spettro / The Ghost (1963)?

RF: Lo spettro was born to exploit the success of L’orribile segreto del dr. Hichcock. I wrote the screenplay in one day, all in one go. I shot Lo spettro in twelve days and I am happy about it. Barbara Steele was great with me: a real lamb.

LC: And your film Caltiki il mostro immorale / Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959)?

RF: I don’t consider it a film of mine. There are monsters and space jellyfish in it: it is Bava’s stuff, honestly. It is his thing. Caltiki il mostro immorale was born by chance, I made it in order to help Bava. You see, back then he was working as a cinematographer for a director called Pietro Francisci. On set, Francisci was always sleeping, it was Bava who did all the work: setting the camera, creating the tricks, directing the actors, and so on. Basically, Bava was directing the films and bringing them to success. There is nothing wrong with this. But, one day, I discovered that Francisci was always saying bad, humiliating things about Bava. Therefore, since Bava was my friend, I told him to break up with Francisci. Bava agreed with me but his dog was ill, his wife was pregnant and he had to pay his taxes… In one word, he had to make a living… So we met up at his father’s house and we came up with a film: Caltiki il mostro immorale. Then I proposed the film to a production company and it was accepted. I quit the job when the shooting was almost complete, with two days of work left. I directed the film, but Caltiki il mostro immorale is the typical film by Bava. I don’t want to take credit for it. The only thing I remember with pleasure are the statues that we used in the film: I sculpted them myself. As for the horror genre, I am now trying to make this film provisionally titled Il ragno. It is a sinister story, but it is the kind of brivido [thrill] that I like: something real, something possible. No monsters, no bogeymen like the ones that even Roger Corman is forced to use. No, in my film there are real anguish and fears, things that really exist, hidden inside all of us. Anybody can hide a monster inside the depths of his self, right?

LC: What about your film Maciste all’Inferno / The Witch’s Curse (1962)?

RF: Nobody wanted to make the film, because there were too many tricks and special effects to do. But I love tricks and special effects, so I accepted the project. Maciste all’Inferno starts as a witch story, but then it becomes the usual adventure film with Maciste. I would also like to mention my film Romeo e Giulietta (1964), which got great reviews all over the world, and Trappola per l’assassino (1966) (which I made in France, where I lived from 1965 to 1967, after becoming a French citizen). And then I would like to let you know that I made a film with Michelangelo Antonioni.

LC: Really?

RF: Yes, the title was Nel segno di Roma / Sign of the Gladiator (1959) and the credited director is Guido Brignone. Actually, I shot the spectacular scenes (the battle scenes), while the rest of the film was directed by Antonioni. Of course, both Antonioni and I did it for the money…

Intervista a Roger Vadim (1971)

La seguente intervista allo sceneggiatore e regista francese Roger Vadim, realizzata da Ornella Volta, è stata originariamente pubblicata nel numero 22 della rivista Horror, nel novembre del 1971, alle pagine 30-31. Insieme a Valerio Riva, Ornella Volta ha curato l’antologia I vampiri tra noi: 37 storie vampiriche, pubblicata dall’editore Feltrinelli nel 1960. Questa antologia si apre con una prefazione scritta da Roger Vadim, di prossima pubblicazione su queste pagine in italiano e in inglese.

Per ulteriori informazioni su molti dei film citati, si veda il libro Vampires in Italian Cinema, 1956-1975 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), acquistabile con sconto del 30% inserendo il codice EVENT30.

Interview with Ernesto Gastaldi (1970)

This is the English translation of an interview with screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi conducted by Luigi Cozzi. The interview was originally published in Italian, in the Italian monthly magazine Horror, in April 1970. You can find more info about Italian horror movies in the monograph Vampires in Italian Cinema, 1956-1975 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). If you are interested in buying the book, feel free to use the launch discount code EVENT30 for 30% off.

Ernesto Gastaldi: I have a real passion for science fiction. My interest in sci-fi began when I read Edmond Hamilton’s The Star Kings (1949), a novel published almost twenty years ago. Unfortunately, for filmmakers, there aren’t many chances in the sci-fi genre. However, I hope to make a sci-fi film myself very soon. It is an old idea of mine, I have been thinking about it for many years now. I want to make an omnibus film consisting of four episodes. Each episode deals with the theme of the fantastic and features a famous actor. Jean-Louis Trintignant has already accepted [to star in one of the episodes]. Tomorrow I am going to meet Giuliano Gemma to tell him about this project of mine. I wrote Giuliano’s latest western movie, so I hope that he will act in my sci-fi movie for an acceptable [small] fee.

Luigi Cozzi: You will produce and direct this sci-fi film of yours, then. It is not the first time that you are producing and directing a feature, right?

EG: No, it is not the first time, as you very well know. I have already produced and directed two films: a muder-mystery-cum-love-story [giallo-rosa] called Cin cin… cianuro (1968) and a horror called Libido (1965).

LC: You have been dealing with horror cinema for almost ten years now…

EG: I started my career by directing a 16mm film and a producer decided to trust me. After a training period, I wrote L’amante del vampiro / The Vampire and the Ballerina (1960), a terrible film that almost makes me feel ashamed. But L’amante del vampiro was a useful experience and it made good money at the box office.

LC: If I am not mistaken, you have also worked on a small, little-known adaptation of Le Fanu’s 1872 classic Carmilla, the famous short story that inspired both Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr, ou l’étrange aventure d’Allan Gray / Vampyr (1932) and Roger Vadim’s … Et mourir de plaisir / Blood and Roses (1960).

EG: Yes, Tonino Valerii and I wrote La cripta e l’incubo / Crypt of the Vampire (1964) for Camillo Mastrocinque. The story of La cripta e l’incubo is based on Le Fanu’s Carmilla, even if the short story is not mentioned in the credits.

LC: I remember La cripta e l’incubo well. Christopher Lee was the protagonist, and the film was quite morbid. I wonder why the Italian censorship didn’t hinder the film… Maybe because La cripta e l’incubo was considered a typical product for the summer season [when nobody goes to the cinema anyway]… It was the same for Antonio Margheriti’s incredible orgy Danza macabra / Castle of Blood (1963) …

EG: Ah, there was a period in which I collaborated with Nini [Antonio Margheriti] a lot. I wrote several films for him… I remember I lunghi capelli della morte / The Long Hair of Death (1964) with Barbara Steele, and a sci-fi film that we started right before the success of the James Bond saga. For Mario Bava I wrote La frusta e il corpo / The Whip and the Body (1963) and I must confess that I was quite disappointed with the finished film. I wrote a Clouzot-style psychological nightmare, but what Bava saw in the story was a baroque, decadent drama, and he exasperated the tones until he reached total implausibility. I am very sorry about it, because Bava is good at his job, he is a great magician. Even more than Margheriti, Bava is excellent at creating tricks and optic effects. Indeed, his father [Eugenio Bava] was one of the most respected special effects creators in Italian cinema. I remember a scene of La frusta e il corpo that was shot on a beach. Bava wanted a castle in the background, so he prepared a glass matte and he put it on the camera to shoot the scene. Bava is crazy about these things, and he is one of the very few who know how to do them.

LC: You have also worked as a screenwriter for Riccardo Freda, the other Italian specialist of the horror-thriller genre [brivido]…

EG: Exactly. Freda is first and foremost an art expert, he has a great figurative taste [gusto figurativo]. I wrote two films for him: Lo spettro / The Ghost (1963) and L’orribile segreto del Dr. Hichcock / The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962).

LC: Please, explain L’orribile segreto del Dr. Hichcock to me. I saw the film but I didn’t understand anything. It was a series of unexplained events and it was difficult to understand the narrative thread… You wrote the screenplay, right?

EG: You see, my screenplay was very clear and precise, with all the details logically connected. But Freda decided that a horror film doesn’t need any explanation. According to Freda, the spectators of a horror film are content with witnessing a series of absurd and terrifying events: the audience doesn’t really need to know why all these things are happening. Therefore, Freda ignored all the explanations, all the logical links and all the psychological motivations that I had put in the screenplay. He simply strung together a series of scary scenes.