Danger: Diabolik!

Saturdays are traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day...

Danger: Diabolik! (Mario Bava, 1968) Mario Bava's psychedelic adaptation of the Italian comic about a master-thief, who preys on the pompous and the puerile, owes an awful lot to the 1966 "Batman" TV-show (though the panel of "experts" in the DVD Features documentaries say "Oh, no, no, nothing could be further from the truth!" Holy Denial's-not-just-a-river-in-Egypt!*). At the time, the Batman-camp style of doing things was spreading throughout many tried-and-true properties that had previously only skirted the edges of parody and satire. The popularity of the TV "Batman" sent them right over the edge into mock-serious comedy and "camp".

  

And, so, too does Danger: Diabolik, with its dutch-angles (though "Bava'd" with more extremity), shadowed wide-screen compositions, chromed model-work that looks like it might have come out of a Super-marionation series and dodgy blue-screen work, which looks like it could have been done for episodic television.

Plus, folks, c'mon...it's based on a comic-book property...with comic book sensibilities. The beginning even rings like a "Batman" episode with a dastardly crime as a masked man (our "hero" played by John Phillip Law) runs rings around the local constabulary and the Treasury, stealing $10 million, foiling the law's diversionary tactics, and hiding his tracks with multi-colored smoke generators (you may well ask "why does he need multi-color smoke when regular smoke will do?" but then that would be logical), stealing their riches and making them appear like fools.

Then, mission accomplished, he drives his souped-up Ferrari to his high-tech underground lair with his mini-skirted girl-friend (name of Eva Kant and played by model Marisa Mell) in tow to indulge in some high-tech something-or-other, and then some nude frolicking in all the money. It makes as much sense as anything else in the movie.

Inspector Ginko (Michel Piccoli, playing it fairly straight) of the local Constabulary is embarrassed, flummoxed and at a loss of how to deal with such a nefarious threat, and things reach a crisis point when the Minister of the Interior (Terry-Thomas), who has just reinstated the death penalty especially for the crisis, is forced to resign after a humiliating experience orchestrated by Diabolik at a public press conference. Ginko is given special powers to deal with this menace. So, when a local Mafioso named Valmont (Adolfo Celi) calls him to offer his own under-handed services to capture the super-criminal, Ginko is only too happy to agree.

They bait a trap for Diabolik involving a priceless emerald necklace with both the police and mafia waiting to apprehend him and the master-thief has to climb a sheer tower (using his "Diabolik-Super-Suction-Handholds!") to get to the one room where he thinks the necklace might be. Diverting all the security-cams (using a polaroid!), he manages to snatch the necklace, as well as double-cross Valmont—who has kidnapped Eva!—and gets him killed in the process, as well.

But, the ultimate Diabolik coup happens when he arranges for several ministerial buildings to blow up, resulting in the loss of every citizen's tax records, which the government fully expects won't deter people from dutifully paying their taxes. 

They're wrong, of course, and so, to forestall economic catastrophe,  a big-whopping share of their gold supply is made into a big, whopping ingot to be sold to try and keep the government solvent. Diabolik, naturally, plans to steal it. I mean, a several-ton gold block that will be impossible to move? How tough can it be?

And, of course, he's figured out a way to spend it...

Over-the-top, bombastic...and mind-numbingly absurd, Danger: Diabolik is true to its comic roots, but the tone is puerile and is devoid of the gravitas Bava brought to his Italian horror films.

Apparently, it was a troubled production from the start. It started out in 1965 as a production of Italian producer Tonino Cervi to be directed by Seth Holt and distributed by Dino De Laurentiis. But after some filming was done with leads Jean Sorel and Elsa Martinelli, De Laurentiis pulled the plug on the film, ordered a new script and hired Bava to make a quick, cheap production that he would produce in tandem with another film based on a European comic property, "Barbarella." Bava borrowed Barbarella's upcoming actor John Phillip Law to be paired with Catherine Deneuve as Eva, but the two had no chemistry on-screen and Deneuve and Bava frequently clashed on-set. Bava replaced her with model Marissa Mell. Bava had made a name for himself with his well-regarded horror films done on the cheap, and he managed to pull off a miracle given the frenetic circumstances, only spending $400,000 of the film's proposed $3 million budget, money De Laurentiis was able to spend on his next production, Barbarella.

It didn't help the lead performances much, though. Law does all of his acting with one eye-brow (although one can hardly blame him, as when he's masked that's all of him you can see!), which is one muscle more than Ms. Mell is willing to use. Adolfo Celi is the mafioso willing to deal with the police to get the master-thief out of his hair. The tone is a malevolent light-heartedness, combining James Bond with comic book hi-jinks. Nothing is meant to be taken too seriously, which might explain why Terry-Thomas is inexplicably in the cast! 

 

The movie did inspire Roman Coppola's CQ, a few years back, and since 2021 there have been three more "Diabolik" films recently produced, directed by the Manetti Brothers.

* You want a definitive proof? During Terry-Thomas' short scene at The Minister's press conference, Diabolik and his moll, Eva Kant, crash it posing as reporter and photographer. Diabolik's camera-flash emits something plainly labeled as "Exhilarating Gas" (basically laughing gas to disrupt the press conference). And to ensure that they aren't affected by it they take out a little pill bottle clearly labeled "Anti-Exhilarating Gas Capsules" because, gosh, international criminals don't want to get their capsules mixed up. Everything was labeled in the "Batman" TV show from the Bat-computer to the Bat-Anti-Shark Repellant (although that was from the movie).

Skidoo

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day...and they don't get much more trashy than this one...

Skidoo (Otto Preminger, 1968) Legendarily off-kilter comedy by that "master" of comedy, Otto Preminger, who, in his effort to make a movie that was "with it" perpetrated a film so far without "it," that one wonders why nobody told him it might be a bad idea...for any director. 

 

It might have been because there wasn't anybody at Paramount Pictures who had the power or the industry knowledge to be credible to a movie veteran like Preminger. Paramount had been "acquired" by Gulf and Western in 1966 and its chairman Charles Bluhdorn had made his mark in auto parts, zinc mines and manufacturing and was furthering his mint-making by buying up properties and tinkering or selling them off. Preminger was making films for Paramount and was a "studio property" who'd had a history of making edgy films that would challenge taboo's, but whose recent films were considered both artistic and financial failures.

This did nothing for the fortunes of Paramount, which, if you look at the films being released in that period (before bringing on Robert Evans as head of production) betrays of a long line of losers with the odd hit—usually a foreign acquisition, like Alfie and films that might be interesting (Seconds) but didn't attract an audience. The industry itself was seeing a downturn in receipts with more color TV's in homes and a calcified audience that wasn't getting any younger. Preminger thought he had a solution—make a movie that would appeal to "the kids."

Retired hitman Tony Banks (Jackie Gleason) has his evening of television interrupted by a pair of mobsters, Hechy (Caesar Romero) and son Angie (Frankie Avalon), who have orders from their boss "God" (this will be revealed as Groucho Marx, his first film appearance in eleven years) to knock off "Blue Chips" Packard (Mickey Rooney) who is due to testify before a Senate committee on organized crime. Banks begs retirement, but when a buddy (Arnold Stang) is found dead, he goes along with the plot for the safety of his wife Flo (Carol Channing) and his daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay).

The idea is to have Banks smuggled into the same prison as Packard and then whack him—or "kiss him" in the mob parlance used in the film. He is incarcerated with Leech (Michael Constantine) a psychopath and "The Professor" (Austin Pendleton) a technical wizard arrested for draft-dodging. Meanwhile, Darlene's new boyfriend Stash (John Phillip Law) and his gang of "hippies" are being hassled by the police for their anti-establishment ways and Flo, being a bit of a free spirit herself, helps them from being arrested for living in the streets and invites them into her home.

Tony already has guilt feelings about whacking "Blue Chips" but when he mistakenly takes a tab of acid provided by The Professor, he gives up on the idea and instead tries to find a way of breaking out—involving lacing all of the food in the prison with LSD and escaping by makeshift balloon when everybody is high as kites.

The movie's heart might be in the right place, but it's mind is utterly lost. Maybe they were thinking they were making an all-out all-star comedy like It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World—a favorite of writer Mark Evanier, and who takes the opportunity to trash Skidoo every time it comes out of hiding. Sure, there are grudging pleasures: it features performances by the Big Three Batman TV villains with Romero, Frank Gorshin and Burgess Meredith, all acting, as does everyone in the film,in a manner that would charitably called "broad." Small parts with Richard Kiel and Slim Pickens. The notion that they filmed part of it on John Wayne's yacht. The score by Nilsson is harmless—he sings the End Credits—but it's not exactly good, either.

Nor is the film by any stretch of the imagination, even stretched pharmaceutically. There are sequences—a musical number with dancing garbage cans for instance—that are so badly thought out and executed that it is doppler-shifted into inscrutability in post. There is a cold-sweat chill of desperation over the whole enterprise. Sometimes even that can be cruelly funny. But not here. Even the casting of grizzled—if professional—veterans can't remove the stink of mercenary pandering and witless and dull-edged stabs at satire.

It's a mess. And not a funny one. Not even the knowledge of incompetence—as with the films of Ed Wood—can save it. One can only look at it with the hope that the bottom of the barrel has been reached. But even that hope gives no comfort. 

 

Bad trip, dude.