delysid d
this is the original goth classic by mario bava that set the tone for later giallo movies, its dark slow and evil
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
12/30/18
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Audience Member
Christopher Lee stars as the black sheep of a noble family who returns home after his former lover Daliah Lavi has married his brother Tony Kendall. He makes it clear that he really has no intention of abandoning their relationship, and she seems unable to back out of their sadomasochistic relationship, submitting to his whippings. After Lee turns up dead, Lavi still sees him and soon not even death can cool off their sexual tension. This makes the film seem like racy trash, but boy is it not. While it's racier than you'd expect for the early 60's (and it was not released uncut in North America), it's really an incredibly atmospheric and chilly film. It's among Bava's best looking films, which is really saying a lot. The mystery is pretty obvious, and I doubt anybody would be surprised by the ending, but that's really beside the point. You really just need to bathe in the dark purply blue atmosphere and revel in Carlo Rustichelli's lush score.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/01/23
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Audience Member
All the other typical Bava trademarks are clearly present as well, namely an authentically creepy score, a minimum of stylish gore (burning, rotting corpses!!) and - last but not least - a stunning use of color shades. Mario plays with colors like he invented them and this emphasizes the spook-effect even more. The Whip and the Body is more than just a shocking horror film. It's an offbeat love-story, a Gothic poem and an unsettling horror tale all in one! If you love beautiful cinema, don't miss it!
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/10/23
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Audience Member
Like most of the films residing in Mario Bava's extensive body of work, 1963's "The Whip and the Body" is the type of movie we strictly sensorily respond to. When colors are this soaring and when the atmosphere's this Gentileschi meets neon, no point in trying to search for the emotional connections that ultimately might help move us into caring about the characters and storyline traveling around the premises.
But unlike most of the films residing in Bava's extensive body of work, the movie isn't riddled with a conclusively unbalanced relationship between style and substance. As the man's a visual stylist better at expressing his optical fetishes and leanings, much of his work looks splendid. But as a result of written and performative mediocrity struggling to match the ecstasy of his photographic innovations, many of his features are something like a jungle cat who would rather lounge than pounce. A real reaction is hard to rise out of us.
But akin to "Kill, Baby, Kill!" (1966), Bava's note-perfect foray into nightmarish horror, "The Whip and the Body" doesn't make the mistake of over plotting in the ways that damned the still artistically interesting "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" (1963) and "Blood and Black Lace" (1964) did. Here, the union of aesthetic value and plot is a symbiotic one. Bava's ocular designs are violent and macabre - a harmonious display of Technicolor pigmentation threatened to be overtaken by shadows and masochism - and the story smartly stays simplistic to better highlight its maker's stylistic strengths. In effect are we provided with one of his best films. We're reminded just how great of a moviemaker Bava is when everything circling around his optic achievements complements the swank rather than drag it down.
Finding its setting in a creaking, isolated castle on the East European coast sometime after the the Age of Discovery, "The Whip and the Body" stars Christopher Lee as Kurt Menliff, the sadomasochistic son of a count (Gustavo De Nardo) who, before the events focused upon in the movie, had been disowned by his family due to his having an affair with a maid and ruining his prospects of marriage with alluring relative Nevenka (Daliah Lavi).
The Menliff clan doesn't want anything to do with him, but tensions begin to run high once again when the man reappears after years away, especially since his former mistress killed herself in the face of potential scandal. Though met with piercing gazes by everyone in the castle, Kurt insists that he hasn't returned to stir up old drama. He merely wants to help celebrate the recent marriage of Nevenka and Cristiano (Tony Kendall), his younger brother.
But it's clear that these claims do not, in fact, contain even a fragment of truth - Kurt has, in actuality, come back to the Menliff palace to reclaim his title, fortune, and Nevenka. And the latter unexpectedly finds herself still in love with the man, too, particularly after they resume their flog heavy, S&M defined sexual relationship.
But on the same night that Kurt and Nevenka rekindle their romance, the former is found murdered, offed with the same dagger that took the life of the woman who disrupted his monogamy way back when. In most cases would this ensure that the Menliff tribe grieve periodically only to recover and return to their mundane routines. But, because this is a Bava film, Kurt's ghost continues to haunt the property - and continues to whip Nevenka long into the wee hours of the night.
And in a film that keeps violence and beauty so carefully aligned, you can bet that love and hate are synonymous and that none of these characters live to do anything besides serve the machinations of the story. Yet that isn't a problem - we're so transfixed by "The Whip and the Body's" external beauty that we couldn't care less about the intricacies lying beneath these tortured characters. It is, plain and simply, a visual masterpiece, and Bava's jaw-dropping constructing of it all is so intoxicating that the movie proves to be among the few within the cinematic spectrum of Italian horror able to astound purely with its sensuous surface.
Bava, then, is one of film's most optically talented - and most underrated - filmmakers. His proclivities and iconographic details are so remarkably his that they sometimes ring as predictable. But his inclinations never tire because we're so baffled as to how he's able to create such electrifying images; there was not, and there never will be, a director like him. "The Whip and the Body" is a summation of Bava's legacy, and it's not to be missed.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/03/23
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Audience Member
A ghost drama with a little S&M thrown in. Chris was sexy, I almost didnt recognize Daliah and the music made me swoon. Some how I thought Daliah Lavi would be the one with the whip lol. Will I watch another Mario Bava? prob not.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/27/23
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Audience Member
Beautiful film. Only negative, Christopher Lee being dubbed, the film was shot in english, no excuse for that. The picture is gorgeous and the score is excellent. A great piece of Gothic horror.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/24/23
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