Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966)

4 Stars (out of 4)

The Devil is a Girl

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

In Mario Bava's masterpiece Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966), Giacomo Rossi-Stuart stars as a doctor summoned to perform an autopsy in a remote village, but he discovers that the superstitious natives are frightened over the ghost of a little girl.

The beautiful Fabienne Dali stars as a local sorceress who places coins in the hearts of the dead, and Erika Blanc plays the hero's love interest.

As with all his other films, the plot takes a back seat to the mood, and Bava has never presented his moods so vividly and with such effervescence. If a character walks down a hallway, they walk through pools of shadow and through multicolored patches of light arranged in such a way as to suggest danger, fear or curiosity. One sequence, in which the hero runs through a series of rooms, is a perfect example of spine-tingling dream-logic.

With their DVD release Anchor Bay has righted a great wrong by presenting the film letterboxed, remastered and available in both Italian and English instead of the original release, a terrible pan-and-scan, dubbed-only transfer.

In 2017, Kino Lorber has at last released a Blu-ray edition of this amazing film. Perhaps due to questionable source material, the picture is a bit on the soft side from time to time, and the audio is not as sharp and clear as it might be, but otherwise, this is a complete package. The disc offers both the English and Italian-language tracks with optional subtitles, and a Tim Lucas commentary track. There is a featurette with the director's son Lamberto, an interview with actress Blanc, and various trailers.