Film Review
The most sexually provocative of all Mario Bava's films is also his
most visually stunning, a sensual Gothic horror masterpiece in which
the director's fascination with psychological aberration and the
supernatural attains its most powerful cinematic expression.
Badly mutilated by the censors on its initial release and subsequently
mauled by prudish critics, the film has since gained a new lease of
life through its painstaking restoration and release on DVD. The
film is a classic of the horror genre, offering not only the
incomparable pairing of horror icon Christopher Lee with Israeli beauty
Daliah Lavi as the willing participants in the raunchiest of
master-slave relationships, but also some superbly atmospheric
cinematography, which includes Bava's trademark use of coloured gels
and inspired lighting effects. If this film were a painting,
it would probably be hanging in the Louvre, so stunning is
its visual composition.
Whilst few are likely to be shocked by the film's sexual content today,
The Whip and the Body still
works extremely well as a horror film. Bava builds the tension
masterfully through some remarkable art design and camera work, which
effectively blur the boundary between reality and fantasy. We may
lament the fact that Christopher Lee is dubbed by another actor (in
both the English and Italian versions of the film), but his mere
presence is enough to chill the blood and he gives one of his creepiest
horror performances. Lee's extreme close-up shots are genuinely
blood curdling, revealing a fiend consumed with hungry intent, and are
far more viscerally thrilling than anything we may find in his frequent
horror outings with Hammer. Cadaverous claw-like hands reaching
out towards the spectator and ominous leering faces at windows are just
two of the familiar Bava motifs that serve to make this one of the
director's most terrifying of horror fantasies.
What perhaps most makes the film so deeply unsettling is Bava's use of
sound. The wind screaming through the old house, the leaden
footsteps of the approaching night phantom and the demonic cry of the
whiplash slicing the air like a wild beast all conjure up a vision of
Hell, a torrid nightmare that promises only suffering and no prospect
of escape. But what these sounds really represent is something
much darker, the anticipatory delight of the slave-victim longing for
the sensual catharsis that only complete submission to the master can
yield.
The Whip and the
Body is far more than an erotic horror film. It is an
indescribably dark and complex study in desire, Bava's most
sophisticated, most disturbing and most visually arresting film.
Many other filmmaker have attempted to marry sex and horror, the two
facets of human experience that most fascinate and repulse us, but only
Mario Bava can be said to have consummated the union, in this stylishly
lurid Gothic chiller.
© James Travers 2011
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Film Synopsis
It has been many years since Kurt Menliff has been disowned by his
father, Count Vladimir, after driving a servant girl to suicide.
Now, he has returned to the old family home, uninvited and unwelcome,
ostensibly to attend his brother's wedding to the beautiful
Nevenka. But, as his father suspects, Kurt has a darker
motive. Nevenka was originally intended to be his bride and he
wastes no time in re-establishing his sadomasochistic relationship with
her. Not long after he whips Nevenka into a frenzy of ecstasy on
a deserted beach, Kurt is stabbed to death by a mysterious
assailant. After Kurt's burial, Nevenka is visited by the spectre
of her former lover, who appears determined to continue their sordid
love affair from beyond the grave...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.