Audiobooks & Video Training Danger: Diabolik (1968) (096337561X)

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Danger: Diabolik (1968)

Label: Paramount Home Video | Length: 100 min | Release Date: 24 January 1968 | Genre: Action, Crime, Comic

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Diabolik (John Phillip Law), a criminal mastermind, steals and kills with the help of his luscious lover, Eva (Marisa Mell)...

Based on the popular fumetti, Danger: Diabolik (or just plain old Diabolik, as it's known in Italy) is Mario Bava's most lavish directorial outing. Accustomed to working on a shoestring with a minimum of interference from production, the director found himself under more pressure than usual and, in one of the few interviews he ever gave, spoke of the film as being a nightmare from a production standpoint. Whatever Bava's feelings were on the film, his efforts certainly delighted producer Dino De Laurentiis, who put three million dollars at the director's disposal — a huge sum for just about any director in 1967 but certainly untold of for somebody like Bava, who preferred to rely on his imagination and succeeded in bringing the film in for a measly $400,000!

In many respects one of the most successful comic book adaptations ever filmed, Diabolik shows Bava at the top of his game. A painter with a tremendous interest in graphic design, he clearly understood the comic book medium exceptionally well. Compared to other films of its ilk — including the better known Barbarella, shot at the same time with some of the same cast and crew — it never comes across as condescending to its subject matter or stiff in its attempts to translate the art form to the cinematic medium. Bava allows the story to take whimsical turns and his use of artificial, terrifically stylized mise-en-scene helps to put the proceedings in the proper context. With its eye busting production design by Piero Gherardi (8?) and Flavio Mogherini and irresistably catchy soundtrack by the great Ennio Morricone, Diabolik not only does a commendable job of translating the comic book to the big screen, but works as an invaluable time capsule of 1960s pop culture.

The cast is perfection. John Phillip Law looks as if he were literally born to play the arch super criminal, Diabolik. With his cocked eyebrow and sardonic laugh, he totally fulfills the central function of being a badass, but he's also able to invest the role with a depth of feeling that goes beyond other such screen characters. True, Diabolik is a thief and a bad guy — on the commentary track for the DVD, Law and Bava biographer Tim Lucas aptly refer to him as being a "terrorist" — but he shows genuine warmth and humanity in his relationship with Eva, played with statuesque perfection by Austrian born Marisa Mell. Mell, a last minute substitute for Catherine Deneuve, who balked at doing some of the saucier scenes and showed zero chemistry with Law, is not only a stunningly beautiful performer but a slyly amusing one as well. Like Law, she walks the tightrope between camp overplaying and genuine acting with grace and style; together, the two make for the sexiest pair of criminals imaginable and they generate no small amount of heat in their numerous love scenes. The supporting cast includes standout performances from Michele Piccoli (Belle du Jour), as Diabolik's nemesis Inspector Ginko, Adolfo Celi (Thunderball), as slimy gangster Ralph Valmont, and British comedian Terry-Thomas (It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World) as the comically pompous Minister of Finance.

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