Kill, Baby... Kill!

A film set in a central European village at the end of the nineteenth century. A woman is found dead. There is a coin in her heart. Doctor Eswai is called to perform an autopsy. He arrives in the village and nobody helps him. The town is afraid. People stay off the street, do not answer questions, and close their doors at night. There is a witch as well. A woman called Ruth tends the villagers' injuries and tells them how to protect themselves. From there the film becomes an investigation. A manor, a graveyard, a staircase and a child. Before each death everyone sees the same thing. A little girl in a white dress, holding a white ball, laughing. The girl is Melissa. She died years ago through the villagers' neglect and her mother has lived in the manor since. What the narrative is interested in is not a ghost but guilt: the town is paying for something it did, and the deaths are built not as revenge but as a reminder. The image is the film's real work. Bava lights with coloured filters; the same corridor is washed purple, green and red, and the set is layered with mist. One passage has been much cited in the history of cinema. The doctor enters a room, comes out of the same room again, enters again, and the space repeats itself; the scene has been pointed to repeatedly by later directors. The image of the child in white is the same. That figure returned again and again in later horror cinema. The production was shot on a very low budget. The money ran out during filming and the crew worked several weeks unpaid. Giacomo Rossi Stuart, Erika Blanc and Fabienne Dali are in the cast. Mario Bava directed and co-wrote. Who it is for: anyone who likes Italian gothic horror and design in coloured light. Who it is not for: anyone expecting fast horror; the narrative is slow, the plot is weak, and the effect is entirely in the image.