T C (MalumMosIncrebresco)

I'm afraid I'm gonna have to disagree with Tarantino on this one. I could never regard Batoru rowaiaru, with the amount of flaws it has, as the best movie of the last 27 years. It's not even the best movie of 2000, for that matter. If we were talking about mere concepts, then it would be a completely different story. But great concepts don't make great movies. And a movie that screws things up this much in its second part should never deserve the high amount of respect it clearly enjoys among the movie community. As I stated before in several of my comments, I simply cannot understand nor accept that people may be willing to neglect every other aspect of a movie just because it was so original to begin with. What could have been a positively dramatic jaw clenching experience turned into a pile of overused cliches for the sake of an incredibly overrated peace of mind post-feeling.

This said, it is unquestionable that BR brings with it one of the most interesting and unusual concepts of modern cinema. One I have the utmost sympathy for. What better way for us to educate our current teenage offspring? I don't think there is any. Additionally, for a while, the movie was able to grasp an unnerving sense of realism. It definitely looked quite promising.

And then, it got rid of most of that.
Very poor plot development, ridiculously far fetched moments (NOT the usual and appropriate symbolic far fetched moments one tends to find in Asian cinema), a handful of cliches and a pitiful ending were enough to make me feel ill with disappointment. A fight for survival as insane as this one was supposed to be would clearly be incompatible with most of this.

Now we're in control of everything.

*puff*

Now we're not.

Sad.

But because of its fantastically uncanny opening 30 minutes, and because I still can't believe how bad it became all of the sudden, BR is one of the very few movies I'm willing to give the benefit of a second viewing after having been left with such a bad first impression, to see if I'm the one missing something here.

For now, an average rating and this






is the best I can come up with.

On the bright side, this time, the American remake (which, for BR, is due in 2011) won't even have to go far to fuck this one up.

Mario Bava is considered by many the Godfather of several genres and filming techniques. His extensive work is regarded as highly influential for, among others, the gothic horror, giallo, atmospheric suspense, J-Horror (yes, J-Horror) and slasher styles. Popular directors such as Scorsese, Tarantino, Dario Argento, Joe Dante, Tim Burton, Coppola and Guillermo del Toro paid Bava an artistic tribute by adopting some of his techniques and sense of style (sometimes even an exact reproduction of a particular scene) in several of their works.

I tre volti della paura - Black Sabbath - is part of his Unholy Trinity, if you will, along with La Maschera del demonio - Black Sunday - and Reazione a catena - A Bay of Blood (although some may argue that movies like Operazione paura - Kill Baby, Kill - or Sei donne per l'assassino - Blood and Black Lace - also deserve a place in the podium. It's not as visually gothic as the first nor as gory as the latter, but it wasn't intended to be. And whilst the three stories comprised in it are quite simple and not incredibly original (with the exception, perhaps, of the twist in the first segment "Il telefono"), and I'm considering 1960's standards, the way they are presented is more than enough to lock one's attention throughout the entire film. The disturbing display of colours and picture stylization, which is one of the most distinguishable traits in Bava's cinematography, is particularly well worked and balanced in I tre volte della paura, especially in the middle segment, "I Wurdalak". Although it's not the best story of the three, the gloomy and darkened landscapes are able to drag one's mind right into it.

This movie benefits from an extended contribution from the horror icon Boris Karloff himself, who opens the festivities with an introduction, plays a role in "I Wurdalak" and ends the movie with a message to the viewers. And while he lives up to his acting standards in the tale he stars in, and his introduction is more than welcome, his final commentary (note that he is obviously not the one to blame for this) is completely unnecessary and a painful mood killer, particularly after such a macabre tale as "La goccia d'acqua". This happened simply because Bava ended up giving in to the pressure of his American distribution company, who feared the last segment was too strong and visually nightmarish to end the movie with, making him add a comic final comment and ultimately a visual joke, personified in Karloff. This moment alone makes it very difficult for me to consider the film as a top notch achievement, or as Bava's finest hour. It's just that bad, and unnervingly out of context. Such a movie should not have any humurous moment, otherwise it risks ruining everything it built before. And with this particular scene, it nearly did.
Yet, luckily, it didn't.

So all things considered, I tre volti della paura stands, by its own right, as one of the most influential horror movies of its decade, along with titles like Hitchcock's Psycho or The Birds, Peeping Tom, Polanski's Repulsion or Rosemary's Baby, The Haunting, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, The Innocents, the Hammer horror productions, Night of the Living Dead or Bava's very own La Maschera del Demonio.
And for that reason alone, it should be considered compulsory viewing for any self-proclaimed true horror aficionado.

"Overlook/ Inner sense of Pain/ Eyes of the Insane/ Bleeding Evil's might./ Shades of Black and Grey/ Lock the human Prey/ In Dark, Demented Fright./ Through Psychosis dwells/ Death's Defying Spells/ That shine the Ancient Rite./ Lontano/ Reaps Tormented souls/ With sounds of rising Ghouls/ And Morbid Howls of night./ Fear seeking the past/ Screams that everlast/ And Whispers in delight./ Noises from the Deep/ Embrace the Cold, Dead Sleep/ And Overshadow light./ Madness/ Prowls in hollow flesh/ Born of Flaming Ash/ Bleeding Evil's might./ Final Anguished Maze/ Leads the wanderer's gaze/ In Dark, Demented Fright./ Man's Scavenging Mind/ Facing Shadows Blind/ That shine the Ancient Rite./ RedruM/ Feeding Darkened skies/ Polymorphic eyes/ And Morbid Howls of Night./ Fear becoming Freedom/ Breeds the Inner Kingdom/ And Whispers in delight./ Through the Ripping Blade/ Ghostly orbs Invade/ And Overshadow light./ Only Death is true/ "Midnight,/ With the Stars and You.""

Dr. Hannibal Lecter is my favorite movie character ever! Brilliant movie and completely out of its time when it was made.