A Night At The Drive-In Mario Bava Fest! KILL BABY, KILL & BLACK SABBATH!
Without rain, mosquitos or kids spilling drinks on the seats- a night at the drive-in! Now, let's get our friends out of the trunk!
It seemed like there were drive-ins everywhere and in a way there were. By the late 1950’s and early 1960’s there were 4000 drive-in theaters, often not only showing second run major films, but also movies created for the drive-in market.
Auto parts salesman Richard Hollingshead opened the world's first patented Drive-in Theatre in Camden, New Jersey on June 6th, 1933 after noticing more and more people were buying cars, and this was during the depression. As car ownership grew so did drive-ins. He charged 25 cents a car plus 25 cents per person to see the British comedy WIVES BEWARE and the entire nation took notice:
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He first conceived the drive-in as the answer to a problem. "His mother was—how shall I say it?—rather large for indoor theater seats," said Jim Kopp of the United Drive-in Theatre Owners Association. "So he stuck her in a car and put a 1928 projector on the hood of the car, and tied two sheets to trees in his yard." (1)
The concept was slow to catch on until the early 1940’s when each car could get their own individual speaker. Indoor theaters could show a movie many times a day but a drive-in could only do once. Drive-ins would get a movie after it had played theaters but independents were quick to realize they could create films the studios wouldn’t touch. They began 4 walling, bringing films to drive-ins aimed at teens and early 20’s audiences in towns and then taking their prints to the next town.
For families drive-ins were a cheap way to entertain the entire family. They didn’t have to get dressed up, they could smoke, didn’t have to hire a babysitter and if the second film was for mature audiences parents could have the kids lay down and go to sleep. The kids who lay awake probably imagined more going on from the dialog than was actually shown.
Sneaking people in became a rite of passage. The trunk was the preferred hiding place. Sneaking in beer was second. I don’t think I ever had a corn dog outside of a drive-in, but at the drive-in it just seemed right. Today there are about 400 drive-ins left.
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Black Sabbath (Italian: I tre volti della paura, lit. 'The Three Faces of Fear') is a 1963 horror anthology film directed by Mario Bava. The film consists of three separate tales that are introduced by Boris Karloff.
Reviewing the English-language version of the film, Time Out praised the film stating that "pictorially it's amazing, and even the script and dubbing are way above average." Time Out compared the film to anthology horror films made by the British production company Amicus noting that "If only Amicus...had taken heed they might have got some ideas as to what can be done with the format." Entertainment Weekly awarded the film an A− rating referring to it as "excellent" and that the stories were "composed of three tales of expertly building suspense" Kim Newman wrote in a retrospective review of the English dub, that "The Drop of Water" is the best of the three stories, and was described as "Bava's most simply frightening work." - Wikipedia
Kill, Baby, Kill (Italian: Operazione paura, lit. 'Operation Fear') is a 1966 Italian gothic horror film directed by Mario Bava and starring Giacomo Rossi Stuart and Erika Blanc. Written by Bava, Romano Migliorini, and Roberto Natale, the film focuses on a small Carpathian village in the early 1900s that is being terrorized by the ghost of a murderous young girl.
From contemporaneous reviews, Tom Milne of the Monthly Film Bulletin noted that though "narrative has never been Bava's strong point, but with Operazione Paura he has happily found a story in which atmosphere is everything, and the result is even more splendid visually than Sei Donne per l'Assasino". The review also compared the film to that of Beauty and the Beast and The Turn of the Screw and the work of Georges Franju. Stuart Byron ("Byro") of Variety commented that "every element of light and color has been carefully orchestrated by Bava to achieve a tantalizing and dramatic effect" and "plot details are juggled expertly to achieve needed scare effects" while "there's no attempt to the especial original here - it's just the same old Gothic elements, but handled so skillfully as to revitalize the genre." The review concluded that "perhaps his pix will remain in the province of buffs, but Bava - whose sole international success was with Black Sabbath - deserves a small but firm niche in film history." According to Blanc, the film received a standing ovation from director Luchino Visconti upon its opening in Rome.
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(1) the Drive-In Smithsonian Magazine
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Mario Bava’s HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD
When his beloved Princess Deianira goes mad, strong man Hercules turns to the oracle Medea for advice. Medea tells him to travel to the underworld and find the Stone of Forgetfulness, a mysterious crystal that will cure Deianira's ills. Along with his friend Theseus, Hercules ventures into the dark and foggy depths of Hades to find the stone. Meanwhile, Deianira's power-hungry uncle, Lico, plots to steal the throne that is her birthright. Director: Mario Bava, Franco Prosperi Starring: Leonora Ruffo, Reg Park, Christopher Lee
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