Danger: Diabolik

Three cheers for the bad guy! Crime certainly seems to pay for the suave European arch-criminal Diabolik. The guy has a fully decked out underground lair, a fleet of Jaguars, gadgets that would make James Bond and Batman jealous, and a drop-dead gorgeous girlfriend named Eva. As played by John Philip Law and Marisa Mell, respectively, Diabolik and Eva seem to look at the world as a big playset on which to stage one elaborate caper after another. If you've ever wondered what might happen if Batman decided to use his considerable resources and powers for evil instead of justice, this movie provides the answer.

Director Mario Bava, the most stylish director of horror and fantasy films to come out of the 1960s, pulls out all the stops to bring the fumetti (Italian comic strip) adventures of the superfiend Diabolik to the screen, creating a sweet bit of eye candy that Paramount Home Video presents in an amazing anamorphic (1.78:1) transfer that really lives up to the idea of "special edition." The disc, delayed many times before, finally arrives in stores this month and, judging from the depth of extras, the folks at Paramount spent that time looking to satisfy Bava's considerable cult following.

First off, there's the movie. It's a wild, technicolor ride through a series of psychedelic set pieces: the robbery of a line of Rolls Royces, a 360-degree trip through a swinging, dope-addled nightclub, a nighttime climb up the walls of a castle to steal a rare emerald necklace, in which our two criminals -- to paraphrase Bonnie and Clyde's tagline, they're young, they're in love, and they rob people -- manage to stay one step ahead of Diabolik's nemesis, inspector Ginko (played by Michel Piccoli, a regular performer in Luis Bunuel's movies). And that's just the first forty minutes!

The plot is fairly episodic, but gosh darnit, the movie looks every bit as gorgeous as the supremely yummy Miss Marisa Mell in her go-go outfits with nearly nonexistent hemlines. And things even take a little bit of a political turn in the last act when Diabolik graduates from thief to terrorist, with a plan to bring down the government that...well, I'm giving a way a bit much here and I'll leave it up to you to see where it goes from there.

Also of note is the considerable contribution of musical genius Ennio Morricone whose score is every bit as amazing as the work he did on Sergio Leone's westerns from the same period. The sound mix on the disc does this bit justice and, if I have one complaint, it's that the disc doesn't have an isolated music track. But the extras are so meaty I can't really complain about that too loudly.

The extras start off with a commentary by actor John Philip Law, who is joined by Bava's biographer Tim Lucas for an easygoing chat that covers the movie and offers up some juicy bits of gossip as well. Hell, you can't blame the guy for having a little fling on the side with Ms. Mell. Tim Lucas keeps things going in slow patches with his considerable knowledge of this film and the rest of Bava's body of work. His career as a director and cameraman spanned some fifty movies over thirty years.

Then comes a well-thought out documentary, "From Fumetti to Film," in which cartoonist Steven Bissette (the man behind Swamp Thing and countless horror comics) leads a discussion of the design elements of the film, the origins of Italian comics, and the preference the Europeans have for arch super-criminals over the superheroes that dominate American comics.

Rounding out the extras is a little something that examines a curious part of the film's legacy. The Beastie Boys used the film as the basis for their video "Body Movin" and the video is included, along with optional commentary by Beastie Boy Adam Yauch. If you're a fan of the Beastie Boys, you probably already have the excellent Criterion Collection anthology of their videos (in which this is already included) but, if you don't have that disc, this is a nice little bonus.

The theatrical and teaser trailers for the film are also included and they seem to sell the campy aspect of the movie more than the visual wonders (not to mention the fact that they give away the ending), which is kind of a shame. Mario Bava was dismissed and misunderstood in his time but, with DVDs like this, people can come to the work of this humble genius and appreciate it for themselves.
-- Christopher Hyatt