DANGER: DIABOLIK (1968: Dir. Mario Bava)
When the American counterculture came into full-bloom during the late Sixties, there were very few cinematic heroes for disaffected youth to embrace. Most were government agents or other guardians of the status quo. This was an era before anti-heroes dominated the mainstream, with the closest Hollywood approximation being Harper, an irreverent gum-chewing private eye played by Paul Newman ( Hud, Hombre) in the hippest of his Sixties "H" roles. By 1967, the seeds of cultural and political revolution were also being sown in France and Italy, where a generation of teenagers grew up with comic book "heroes" whose behavior and mores represented an enviable anarchistic hedonism that fulfilled their now adult yearnings for a new world order. Many of these lawless protagonists were loosely based on the fictional template of the seminal French super-thief Arsene Lupin, created in 1902 and later the inspiration for such nefarious continental characters as Fantomas and Diabolik. Parisian arch villain Fantomas, having been around since 1911, was adapted for the screen many times, including a trio of films starting in 1964 that softened the dark psychopathy of its titular master of disguise, in favor of a more farcical approach. The knife-wielding Diabolik was the Italian anti-hero equivalent, eschewing Fantomas' ruthless power-hungry killing of innocent civilians. Instead, Diabolik confined his thieving ways to a greedy pursuit of personal wealth, aided by his gorgeous paramour Eva Kant. Created in 1962 by the Guisanni sisters, he first appeared in digest-sized monthlies or fumetti, printed in a black and white format well-suited to the noir atmosphere of his adventures. After an aborted attempt at bringing these characters to the screen in the mid-Sixties starring French actor Jean Sorel and Italian actress Elsa Martinelli, the rights were subsequently acquired by flamboyant producer Dino De Laurentiis who immediately hired ace genre director Mario Bava, an acknowledged maestro of in-camera special effects. De Laurentiis chose as his leads, lanky American actor John Philip Law and petite French superstar Catherine Deneuve, but personalities clashed early on, so Deneuve was quickly replaced by statuesque Austrian cult actress Marisa Mell. With the characters' chemistry now rightfully restored, the resultant evidence was immediately apparent from their very first lovingly erotic embrace, when Law, breathtaking as Diabolik emerges from his flash sports car clad in a black head-to-toe skin tight rubber suit, to greet Mell, ultra sexy in her go-go boots and diaphanous orange mini dress. Glowing from their simultaneous off-screen affair, these two striking stars effortlessly draw focus in every scene, leaving Bava alone to dazzle the audience with his astonishingly substantive foreground miniatures and deceptive glass matte backgrounds. Having been one of Italy's premier cinematographers, he also took pains to suggest the visual two dimensionality of the original fumetti by dynamically employing wide angle lenses and the dreamlike layering of rear projection. Of course the comic book's original muted tones had no place in a Sixties romp, so Bava fully embraced the film's vivid colour scheme, particularly emphasizing a gold motif to symbolize the avarice of his doomed hero. Given its dazzling production design, one would imagine that Danger: Diabolik must have cost a comparative fortune. It was after all budgeted at the large sum of nearly 3 million dollars, however Bava, accustomed to achieving miracles on low budgets, shockingly completed the entire film for a measly $400 000 dollars. A sequel was proposed using the remaining funds, but Bava declined, having felt that the scrutiny he had endured as a director on such a high profile project was ultimately not worth the extra luxuries of production that were afforded to him. The film's resulting success both financially and artistically was further underscored when producer De Laurentiis followed up Danger: Diabolik with the 9 million dollar comic book adaptation Barbarella, once again starring John Philip Law. A bloated, static, and sometimes cheap looking fantasy, it has little of the joie de vivre of Bava's film and today is mostly remembered as an ambitious gamble by provocative filmmaker Roger Vadim (Blood and Roses), featuring his then-wife Jane Fonda in an unseemly salacious role. Signalling the end of a cycle, it would be ten more years before Richard Donner's Superman finally gave dramatic credibility to comic book heroes, initiating a blockbuster legacy that has irrevocably altered the entire Hollywood filmmaking model, seemingly forever. DVD REGION 1 & 2
