castle, where they encounter the slashed, web-strewn portrait of Otto von Kleist. Only the penetrating, ice- blue eyes of the Baron remain intact, and seem to gaze balefully at them across a gulf of centuries; Bava ac- centuates this sense of communica- tion with reverse shots of the couple, standing on the other side of the web, with only their eyes visible in the dark- ness. Viewers of the film will notice that the painting shown in close-up differs from the one shown in a long shot. According to Leone, the latter— which is shown hanging on the wall of the castle—was executed prior to film- ing by someone on the film’s art crew, according to Bava’s instructions. This painting did not lend itself to the ef- fect Bava had envisioned for the close- ups, so after the production wrapped, he painted and photographed his own version in Rome and included these pick-up shots in the editing room. Bava’s lucid, classical rendering of the Baron’s cold eyes peering from a face- less darkness provides the film with its most poetically unsettling moment. Equally effective, especially in the Les Baxter-scored AIP cut, is the second incantation scene, which conveys a palpable sense of dread and panic. The power of the scene is badly deflated in the Euro cut, which presents it with- out music and reduced to the ambi- ent sounds of wind, rattling windows and the creaking of the turning, rusty door handle.
The other highlight is Rada Ras- simov’s appearance as Christine Hoffmann, the last in a long line of supernaturally inclined women who figure in Bava’s films, beginning with Lidia Alfonsi’s red-cloaked sybil in Le fatiche di Ercole in 1958. These char- acters appear so forcefully, and with such frequency, in Bava’s films that we must assume they had great per- sonal significance for him, but it is difficult to tell whether his feelings about them were positive or negative. In the context of his historical and mythological films, Bava’s oracles are helpful guides with the power to ver- balize for mere mortals the dictates of Destiny; however, in his horror films, these women are mostly depicted as lonely, isolated creatures who have embraced the supernatural as a sub- stitute for sexual fulfillment or out of a thirst for revenge. As Uncle Karl
ITALIAN due-foglia, art by Piero Ermanno Iaia. 891
