MARCO appears to be genuinely possessed by the restless spirit of his dead father, interred behind a brick wall in the cellar.
porcelain hand (both operated by invisible strings) and the rat Dora encounters in the cellar (a rubber prop was animated by a two-string system which, when the two threads were pulled apart, caused it to dart forward). Most memorable of all the trick shots is also the simplest: Marco runs down a hallway toward his mother, disappears below frame, and is replaced by the suddenly uprising apparition of Carlo.
“Lamberto actually filmed this shot,” Michele Soavi confided to me in 1983, “but he takes no credit for it, because he was simply following his father’s storyboard. It was entirely Mario’s conception.” 20
However, by the
year 2000, Lamberto Bava was taking credit for directing the shot—and its conception. “I remember my father used to tell me that the best trick shots are the ones executed most simply. This was a great revelation to me. I learned how to make trick shots, like the scene where the child runs toward the mother . . . I rehearsed this shot
THIS objective shot shows that the cutting blade wielded by Carlo’s ghost is, in fact, wielded by Dora herself.
