ByHank Reineke
Mario Bava’s TheWhip and the Body would enjoy a very brief run – under a new title - onU.S. theatre screens in late summer of 1965. By spring of ‘66 the film wasalready popping up as a late-night programmer on U.S. television. I was belatedly introduced to the filmvia a Chiller Theatre telecast on NewYork’s WPIX-TV, circa 1971/72. I can nolonger recall if I was impressed by this atmospheric, mostly monster-less mysteryon that first viewing. I was only ten oreleven years of age. My hazy memoriesare further obscured by it having been broadcast under its U.S. theatrical re-titleas What.
The name of now-legendary director Mario Bava wouldn’t havemeant very much to me either at young age. Even if I had been familiar with Bava’s oeuvre – which I most certainly wasn’t at age ten – the directorialcredit of What had been anglicized, ascribedto one “John M. Old.” The directorialfake wouldn’t have mattered much to me, really. All I knew was Christopher Lee was one of the film’s star players, and Iwas already a big fan of the actor’s horror pictures.
Regardless of the film title in which you accustomed - The Whip and the Body/ Night is thePhantom/What/The Whip and the Flesh/La frusta e il Corpo etc. etc. - thiswas the second of two Bava films to feature Christopher Lee. The first was Ercole al centro della terra(1961, aka Hercules in theHaunted World), an Italian peplum. That film pitted the heroic Hercules (Reg Park) against Lee’s villainousLichas (or Lyco or Lico, depending on the release). Lichas is variously described as “Lord of theHades Underworld” or “King of the Dead.”
The actor’s typecasting madesense, all things considered. Lee had onceenjoyed playing a diverse number of character roles since his 1947 entry intothe film business. But following therunaway success of Hammer’s Horror of Dracula (1958), the actor somewhatfrustratingly found himself mostly employed as a heavy in an on-going string ofhorror films, fog-shrouded mysteries, and psychological-thrillers.
Lee would later generously deemBava as “one of Italy’s greatest cameramen” and, true to form, both Herculesin the Haunted World and The Whip and the Body, are awash in the eerilybrilliant and fluorescent colors for which the director is acclaimed. Technically, the cinematographer for thelatter film is Ubaldo Terzano, but much of the photography is accepted as Bava’sown, albeit uncredited. Bava’s greatnesspartly lies in his painter’s eye for style: he combines color, shadows andshadings to create atmosphere and great imagery.
As director, Bava also employsinnovative lighting and lots of blue-tinting to create his striking,imaginative visuals. On his wonderfulcommentary track, author Tim Lucas describes such eerie colorization as Bava’s moonlit“Blue of Night.” Throughout The Whipand the Body, Bava’s visual stylings perfectly reflect the film’s moody andatmospheric aura. His use of purposefulslow tracking shots and pan photography – abetted by composer CarloRustichelli’s evocative, mysterious score – masterfully evokes a sense of tangible,shadowy foreboding: who (or what?) lurks behind that candle-lit curtain ordoor?
The Whip and the Body concerns the unwelcome return of Kurt Menliff(Lee) to his ancestral home, a castle nestled on lonesome cliff side overlookingthe sea. His own father, Count Vladimir(Jacques Herlin) is not pleased to see him nor is Giorgia (Harriet White), theCount’s servant. Years earlier, we learn,Kurt had seduced Giorgia’s daughter. Hissubsequent cruel rejection of the girl is believed to be the cause of hersuicide. Although Kurt’s botherChristian (Tony Kendall) is welcoming of his brother’s return, he too will cometo regret such forgiveness. His own wifeNevenka (Israeli actress Daliah Lavi) falls prey to Kurt’s Svengali-likeattraction – who, true to form, abuses and degrades her with a fetishistic,sadomasochistic whipping. I can’t saymuch more than that plot-wise without risking spoilers. So I’ll just say that following Kurt’s attackon Nevenka, the film moves from straight-on melodrama to a mostly satisfying scenariocombining elements of ghost story and mystery whodunit.
Budgeted at approx. $66, 500, TheWhip and the Body began production in July of 1960. The film was slated for a seven-week schedule. Principal photography wrapped in six-weeks,the seventh to begin post-production work. The film was an Italian/French collaboration, a production of CosmopolisFilms and Les Films Marbeuf. Bothcompanies had been involved in the exploitation of the then very-much-in-vogue“sword and sandal” pictures: strongman adventures loosely tethered to tales sourcedfrom Greek and Roman mythologies. On hiscommentary track, Lucas describes the scenario of The Whip and the Bodyas essentially akin to “a Greek Tragedy” in its construction.
The film’s screenplay iscredited to Ernesto Gastaldi, Ugo Guerra and Luciano Martino, with the filmproduced (without credit) to Federico Magnaghi. Upon the film’s release in English-speaking markets the writing creditsfor the original Italian trio were anglicized as “Julian Berry, Robert Hugo andMartin Hardy.” Bava too did not escapesuch name-change ignominy, his directorial credit ascribed to “John M. Old,” apseudonym used on several of his films. The time-period and country in which this Gothic mystery is set isindeterminate. This was, according toscenarist Gastaldi, entirely intentional. Though the seaside locations were filmed in Italy near Anzio, the maincharacters are given Eastern European-sounding names and the set dressing peculiarlymixes period styles and time-dates.
A prolific screenwriter ofhorror, pirate and peplum films, Ernesto Gastaldi had already written scriptsfor such Italian melodramas as The Vampire and the Ballerina (1960), Werewolfin a Girls’ Dormitory (1961), and The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962). Following production on The Whip and the Body, producer Magnaghi would team with writers Guerraand Martino (in addition to writer-director Brunello Rondi) to bring DaliahLavi back in the obscure but sultry exorcism flick II Demonio (1963).
(Photo: Cinema Retro Archive)
The Whip and the Body was not a huge success. Lucas describes the film as Bava’s “biggestbox-office flop,” the picture’s final tally generating back only half of its investment. Upon the film’s release, critics gave anynumber of reasons why the film’s box-office was disappointing. Variety was mildly impressed,describing the film as genuinely suspenseful if best suited for “sophisticatedaudiences.” But the trade also thought the film flawed in execution: “TheGothic-novel atmosphere and trappings of secret passages, muddy footprints fromthe crypt and ghost lover, probably will draw more laughs than gasps.”
London’s Monthly FilmBulletin was far more withering in its assessment of Night is thePhantom (the film’s British re-title). Their critic described it as “Another of Italy’s prankish simulations ofa British horror movie, the film is slow, repetitive, verging on parody. Censor or distributor cuts have rendered muchof the plot incomprehensible, though one doubts if it ever made senseentirely.” In fairness, the same critic concededthe film’s “weird and doom-laden claustrophobia” was, in retrospect,“unfailingly compulsive, mainly because of the redolent Freudianassociations.”
The more uncomfortable Freudianmoments of Menliff’s fetishistic abuse of Nevenka were cut from the film’s continentalversion. Christopher Lee only reminiscedthat he and Lavi shared “some very torrid love scenes” in the making of thefilm, but left it at that. Most of thosescenes would not be made privy to either continental or western cinemagoers. Upon the film’s initial release in Italy, thatcountry’s censors would come down hard on it, deeming several sequences obscenedue to “degenerations and anomalies of sexual life.” There were demands that thesemoments be cut from the film. Though thefilmmakers complied in making such trims, producer Magnaghi still found himselfstanding before a Rome court. He wassubsequently acquitted of obscenity charges in January of 1964.
Though Lucas does bring up thecensorship issues surrounding The Whip and the Body, he does not makethe issue a centerpiece of his commentary. He does points out in his very informative analysis that the film wasvery much influenced by the earliest of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poeproductions for American-International. Which, in turn, had been very much styled after such continentalproductions as Bava’s Black Sunday (1960).
Though A.I.P. had distributed earlierworks of Bava’s in the U.S., they balked on The Whip and the Body –likely due to the film’s sadomasochistic salaciousness. Though mild by today’s standards, the film wasthought unsuitable for young and impressionable theatergoers. The film was eventually picked up for U.S.distribution in 1965 by Richard G. Yates’ Futuramic Releasing. The film, now curiously re-titled as What,was doomed to play the U.S. drive-in circuit in the summer of 1965. Accompanied by a rather gray and cheapish exploitationcampaign, What was top-bill to a second Futuramic import from thecontinent, Isidore M. Ferry’s Face of Terror (Spain, 1964) (originaltitle La cara del terror).
One needn’t be a particularlyavid fan of Christopher Lee (or any of the others on screen) to notice that alldialogue is dubbed throughout. As withmany of Bava’s films, his work was intended for wide international release. To that end, many of his films were shot sanssync-sound, with foreign-language market dubbing scheduled long after the originalcast had moved on. Upon viewing TheWhip and the Body, Lee was left aghast by his character’s misplacedAmerican-affected voice-over dub. He wouldinsist afterward that all of his foreign-language film contracts included theproviso he handle any necessary dubbing himself.
This Kino Lorber StudioClassics Blu-ray issue of The Whip and the Body is the company’s secondissue of this title, the first being released in 2013. The set features a 2023 4K scan and a 2Krestoration by 88 Films from an HD master from an original 35mm print. The set includes both the original Italianand English dubs as audio options as well as optional English subtitles and thefilm’s theatrical trailer as well as trailers from other Bava films. As referenced above, Tim Lucas of VideoWatchdog fame and author of the exhaustive one-thousand plus page tome MarioBava: All the Colors of the Dark delivers a masterful commentary – thoughone familiar as it has been ported over from Kino’s 2013 Blu-ray release viaVCI’s DVD issue of 2007. The new releaseis also fitted with the now inevitable cardboard sleeve protector, whichapparently are prized by some collectors.. Without question, essential viewing for fans of Bava and ChristopherLee.
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