“Any magazine-cover hack can spread paint around wildly and call it a nightmare or a Witches Sabbath or a portrait of the devil, but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true.” —H. P. Lovecraft, “Pickman’s Model”
PROLOGUE
N HIS LATER years, Italian film di- rector Mario Bava was fond of recount- ing an episode from his childhood which, he speculated, had played a critical role in determining his later approach to life and career. Bava was what the Italians call a “figlio
I
d’arte”: a child of the Arts. His father—whose real name was Francesco (though he was called Eugenio)—was an accomplished sculp- tor, renowned throughout his hometown of Sanremo for carving beautiful, life-like stat- ues of the Saints from a fleshy resin. Eugenio was equally involved with science and tech- nology at the dawn of the 20th century, using his knowledge of sculpture to develop new and innovative ways of lighting still photo- graphy; he later adapted these same meth- ods to the fledgling art of cinematography. Eugenio must have seemed like a magician to his young son—tall and mysterious, crafting
MARIO BAVA consults his shooting script on the set of LA RAGAZZA CHE SAPEVA TROPPO in 1962.
human bodies out of shapeless materials, rec- reating entire vistas of nature in miniature on table tops, gifted with the ability to find the miraculous in the mundane. Naturally, there came a time when the child
determined to create something that would impress his father, as his father’s creations had so often impressed him. One day, when Mario (then called Nino) was about 3 or 4 years old, presumably after many secret at- tempts, he drew a picture that he considered good enough to present to his father. Proudly, he signed the drawing “MARIO BAVA” in large printed letters and took it down the hall to his father’s workshop. When the child placed his creation on his father’s desk, Eugenio Bava looked at the pa- per, frowned . . . and smacked the boy’s face. “Papà!” Mario cried. “Why did you do that?” “Who do you think you are—Michelangelo?”
his father shouted. “Only Michelangelo cre- ated art worthy of a signature! And you, who created this—who are you? You are nobody!”
