Review of Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966) by Chris S — 21 Jan 2008

On the face of it, Operazione Paura (AKA Kill, Baby...Kill!) is a creepy little diversion that tonally echoes The Wurdalak segment from Bava's earlier Black Sabbath. But what you may not appreciate - unless you are a sad anorak like me with a penchant for obscure Italian cinema - is that this is really a film about illusion, made by a master illusionist.

For example, the ghost of the dead girl is actually played by a boy; one of the main characters is named after Eugen Shuftan, who developed the cheap and effective visual effects process that Bava exploits here (and in most of his movies) to compensate for the lack of a meaningful budget, and the fact that this looks as good as any Hammer production of the time yet was only shot over a fortnight with a cast and crew that stopped getting paid after two days! I doubt even the mighty Paul Daniels could conjure that out of thin air as Bava does here.

They don't make them like this any more, and it's probably a bit staid for the Saw generation, but Operazione Paura is definitely worth 83 minutes of any serious film student's time.