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This weekend my sweetie-wife and I enjoyed a couple of Italian movies on Blu-ray disc that she had checked out of the library. Remember, your local library can be more than just great books to read.

First up is Mario Bava’s 1966 horror movie Kill Baby, Kill.

A doctor is summoned to a remote Carpathian to assist a detective investigating a series of bizarre deaths that the locals believe to be the result of a murderous ghost. With the aid of a local woman who has just return from college the doctor quickly find himself in a world of ghosts, mediums, and witchcraft, all swirling around a young girl’s mysterious death years earlier.

Bava, a director with flair even when his budgets are slashed, is in full form and glory with Kill Baby, Kill. His characteristic use of colored lighting that has no diegetic source adds depth to the frames and mood the scenes. Available on Blu-ray disc with its original Italian dialog track, this movie speeds along quickly wasting hardly a frame of its brief running time. I was most pleased that the resolution was not some hand-waving Scooby Doo gimmick but that this was rather an actual supernatural propelled piece of horror. While sedate and decidedly not explicit compared to modern movies Kill Baby, Kill remains an effective, atmospheric film worth seeking out.

We followed that up with a giallo. Gialli are Italian crime films of the 70s that feature particularly lurid sensationalized convoluted plots with often a saturated color pallet.

The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail is about a woman who collects on a million-dollar life insurance policy after her estranged husband dies in a mysterious air disaster. Suspicious of events the insurance firm dispatches an investigator to ferret out if the woman is responsible for the crash. When people associated with the incident are viciously murdered the press, the police, and even Interpol become involved. As with many classic giallo this story has lots of twits and reveals, both in plot and in female skin, until the resolution of the mystery with the final and largest twist. Some movies of this genre try too hard and create final solutions to the mystery that do not follow logically but The Case of The Scorpion’s Tail works out quite logical even if some of the information is withheld from the audience. After all, with giallo it is not about solving the mystery but experiencing it. Along with Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace this film would make an excellent introduction to giallo.