Review
KILL BABY ... KILL
aka
CURSE OF THE DEAD; CURSE OF THE LIVING DEAD; OPERATION FEAR
(Operazione Paura)
Rating: 
Italy. 1966.
Director – Mario Bava, Screenplay – Mario Bava, Romano Migliorini & Roberto Natale, Story – Romano Migliorini & Roberto Natale, Dialogue – John Hart, Producers – Luciano Catenacci, Fabienne Dali’ & Nando Pisani, Photography – Antonio Rinaldi, Music – Carlo Rustichelli, Optical Effects – S.P.E.S (Supervisor – E. Catalucci). Production Company – FUL Films.
Cast:
Giacomo Rossi-Stuart (Dr Paul Eswai), Erika Blanc (Monica Shuftan), Max Lawrence (Burgomaster Karl), Fabienne Dali (Ruth), Piero Lulli (Inspector Kruger), Gianna Vivaldi (Baroness Graps)
Plot: Dr Paul Eswai travels to a small village to conduct an autopsy at the request of the local police. But there he finds that the villagers live in fear of a murderous ghost child.
Italian director Mario Bava made considerable distinction with his Black Sunday/The Revenge of the Vampire Woman/The Mask of the Demon (1960), a film that essentially created the continental Gothic horror film. Black Sunday inspired others directors like Riccardo Freda and Antonio Margheriti, and Bava himself revisited Gothic horror several times with Black Sabbath (1963), Night is the Phantom/The Body and the Whip/What! (La Frustra e il Corpo) (1965), this and Baron Blood (1972).
This is an interesting effort. It has only the barest whisper of a plot, nevertheless Bava accumulates a wonderfully haunted atmosphere. The film is filled with striking images such as the child’s face looking in through the window, her ball eerily bouncing along corridors and swings emptily swinging. There is one nifty scene where the hero is caught in a loop running into a room and out a door on the other side that keeps bringing him back to the first door he entered through and where he then starts to run so fast that there are two of them running in and out at once until he catches up to his other self. The film is ravishingly shot in gold hues. Last updated: Tuesday, 07 April 2009
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