Foreign for Fun Plus Art

 

Bava Best Served Raw

I’m lately into Mario Bava au naturel and minus subtitles, never to return with minor exceptions. We know the Italian director for admired, cultish Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, Planet of the Vampires, these conceded best from his kit. American-International distributed the trio following surgeries minor or more so. Domestic versions ran years before fan-ship demanded “true” editions in native language and faithful to Bava intent. My goal was to get along without subtitles and enjoy visuals minus reading that for me spoil art on otherwise display. So how trustworthy have translations ever been (let alone dubbing)? Look at forwards written for fresh deliver of classic offshore literature and they’ll all claim finally-got-fixed wording, for instance debate over Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina with lines drawn among scholars and barriers they build. Speech thing re Bava is the more complex for there appearing to be no legitimate language as spoke or intended for his films, players gone multilingual ways during respective shoots and everyone knowing it would all be post-dubbed for varied consumer countries using versions customized to commercial fit, banquet set round the world with each territory wanting meal served their particular way. Features were prepared a la carte as are any that talk, Bava in AIP hands being altered re spoken word, sound-effects, music scoring, editing, color rendition, everything in terms of what we saw and heard. Anyone seeking pure Bava experience could fold right off, no such dream fulfilled. Let eyes instead enjoy what there was of visuals, relish in Planet of the Vampires to see how deep Bava goes into his frame, players down seeming tunnels into some or other infinity, Planet design, and presumed forced perspective, to make of studio interiors a distant world we could prefer to our own, this on strained budget the bane for Bava in this and other projects engaged during sixties peak. Nearest route to rapture is a same applied to any foreign favorite, Bava bliss a matter of juggling what varied region discs have so far surfaced.

We were having a spinal meningitis scare when Planet of the Vampires played the Liberty in January 1966. For that reason I didn’t go. Don’t recall being forbade to go, just didn’t go. Was it more lack of enthusiasm for the concept of vampires dwelling a distant planet rather than our preferred own? Planet of the Vampires was retitled for TV syndication and seemed the more obscure for it. Either way, I passed. Finally saw a video and liked Planet of the Vampires more than expected, estimate going up with each revisit. It now ranks for me favorite of all sixties sci-fi. For throne so set, you want near as possible to the white light, thus plod through DVD, Blu-Ray, then another Blu-Ray, each the US version monkeyed with by Jim-Sam, who for financing Bava’s venture were entitled to monkey. After reading Glenn Erickson’s review of a Region Two Euro release edition, which he cited for best quality so far, I went for the now out-of-print disc, OOP in no time it seemed (lesson: if you want limited editions, don’t wait --- good ones go fast). Once I knew Planet's story enough to no longer need subtitles, off came training wheels.  As said, subs get on my nerves and distract from what I'm there to see, which is 100%, or near as I can come to that, of the Bava experience, Planet of the Vampires akin to a silent feature with me looking rather than eye-bouncing to read. This imported disc beats American releases to a standstill. I’ll not ever go back so why keep domestic Blu-Rays? --- Barry Sullivan’s English-speaking voice not so essential as, say, Boris Karloff’s in Black Sabbath. I’m told Planet cast members uttered their own (differing) languages while filming, so never mind an “authentic” version, same with the Leone westerns done around a same time. International filmmaking: quilts of many colors.

AIP advertised Planet of the Vampires as in “Colorscope” when really it was 1.85 and never anamorphic. Worse was “color” meaning Pathecolor, which was the lab Jim and Sam were wedded to. We can’t know what Pathecolor looked like when AIP pics were new for prints turning eventual red  (Mike Cline early-seventies played Premature Burial at his drive-in and the 35mm looked like a fire hydrant). Take my word that 16mm prints, at least the scope ones, were gone as to varied hues, Pit and the Pendulum and The Haunted Palace late seventies acquired on take-or-leave basis (I took), neither to be had with decent color unless you were blessed with a British IB Tech 35mm print, of which there were precious few (only aware of a single collector who has any). Why care what with Planet of the Vampires better even than what Euros saw sixty years back. What winding paths we take to arrive at ultimate-place, horizon as in just-over because how we do we know what really is a best when bars keep upping? Where seeing Bava new is memory distinct, like mine with Black Sabbath from August 1964, there is authority as in Yes, this is how it looked then, and never mind being ten-year old and hardly in a position to properly evaluate prints or presentation. AIP found Black Sabbath a little too scary in parts, at least as monitors if not the PCA might find it. Children after all were watching. So Karloff brandishes a dismembered head? Not in our version. Bava bumps were also US-augmented with sound screeching and music as aggressive, cues for where we should jump. Region Two subdues the din and scores subtly, us left to react as we will to what Bava serves, that plenty enough w/o AIP over-frilling.

Relaxing and not worrying over what players say permits me to watch expressions closer, again like with silents, and having served time previous with dubs or subtitles, I know words, at least intent, even though same words tended to differ between what titles said in Euro prints and what AIP put in actors’ mouths for stateside consumption, so never mind dialogue, let alone language, spoken while the film was in production. We as result get the Black Sabbath we want, interpretation of actions our own, these to amend each time we watch depending on maturity developed to the moment. Will Black Sabbath I see today be a same Black Sabbath I’ll revisit in ten years? Hope not. All films are sort of this way, perceptions changing as we change. Those in native tongue are fixed more firmly it's true, which is why for me at least, watching foreign films minus familiar talk, subtitles, let alone dubbing, has a liberating effect, interpretation all my own and not theirs to impose. Never mind freedom of speech ... for offshore viewing purpose, give me freedom from speech. It's said by plenty that watchers become creatives as much so as creators, which I believe the more for rewatching, and in a sense, discovering as if for first time, Planet of the Vampires and Black Sabbath. I don’t go on a limb to call these art films … any passive or even indifferent viewer can see they are something special, which of course makes them art. Bava had impressed Nicholson and Arkoff from a first time they saw Black Sunday in 1960, nothing like it having crossed their way before. Jim/Sam called Sunday and its director “different” at the time, and though neither would classify Black Sunday, or follow-ups, as art releases, fact is Mario Bava fits the category, and while it’s a shame he didn’t get enough recognition, we’re blessed that his best were mainlined to matinees, drive-ins, whatever place masses met, our kind of art films served on our kind of terms.

More of Black Sabbath at Greenbriar HERE and HERE.