Tonight broadcast a tragic story re- vealing the beloved comedian to be living in nearly destitute conditions, his disease advanced to a completely debilitating stage that required round- the-clock care. He died on January 8, 1990, in Godalming, Surrey. The bank manager seen in conver-
sation with Ginco in the opening scene is played by Yugoslavian actor Andrea Bosic, who had worked a number of times in Italian films for Riccardo Freda: Maciste all’inferno/ Maciste in Hell (1962), Il magnifico avventuriero/The Magnificent Adven- turer (1963), Giulietta e Romeo (1964) and Genoveffa di Brabante (1965). Bosic’s casting in Diabolik may have been intended as a wink, as one of his most visible recent roles at the time was as Inspector Milton, the Scotland Yard adversary of the eponymous anti- hero of Umberto Lenzi’s Kriminal (1966) and Il marchio di Kriminal (1967), which were based on another popular Milanese comic book series by the Giussanis’ own arch-rival, Max Bunker (a.k.a. Luciano Secchi). Bava’s good friend, stuntman
Goffredo “Freddy” Unger, doubled for John Phillip Law in some masked long-shots that didn’t require Law to be on-set, and also in some physi- cally challenging shots, such as the drop from the back of the moving truck and the high dive that preceds the main titles. Unger can also be seen, sans mask, in the opening scene of the undercover policemen disguising themselves as diplomats in the $10,000,000 autocade; he’s the third policeman, the one shown straightening his unmatched socks, and is given a top-to-bottom lookover by the camera as Ginco inspects him. All casting hung on the approval of Dino De Laurentiis, which shows that he and Bava had sympathetic tastes, as Bava was able to hire some of his favorite supporting players. A bouquet of familiar faces can be found in Diabolik, some of them un- credited. Gaunt, scarecrow-like Federico Boido, who played an undead astronaut in Terrore nello spazio, appears as one of Valmont’s henchmen (he nonchalantly plugs a
DIABOLIK and Eva are in the money, in the film’s most celebrated sequence.
