Danger Man... Danger: Diabolik (1968), Eureka Masters of Cinema 4K UHD + Blu-ray Out 20th April!!

The explosive opening to Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik that tells you everything you need to know about the film's mission statement. Our eponymous anti-hero - played with arched-eyebrow cool by John Phillip Law* - returns to his subterranean lair, and speeds through numerous hi-tech corridors in his sleak E-Type Jaguar revealing a secret base – oh how I love a secret base! – far bigger than even that underneath Wayne Manor. Welcome to the underworld of a supervillain with a heart of... who knows, maybe gold but certainly a sense of fun for this man is a likeable rogue as much in the tradition of Dr Mabuse and Goldfinger as Batman or James Bond. Welcome to super psychedelic spy adventures, Italian style!

The origins of the character actually predate all of the above in the form of Fantômas a super criminal created by French writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre in 1911 before appearing in Louis Feuillade’s ground-breaking film serial from 1913-14. This was followed by Les Vampires, Judex and other science-driven criminals and detectives which were undergoing a revival in the early 1960s including three Fantômas (1964) films directed by André Hunebelle and featuring with Jean Marais.

John Philip Law and Marisa Mell

In his excellent video extra, Leon Hunt, author of the Cultographies volume on Danger: Diabolik, explains that co-creator Angela Giussani was inspired after finding a Fantômas novel on a train. Adapting the format – a booklet slightly smaller than A5 – she and her sister Luciana began producing Diabolik stories, known as the fumetti neri (“black comics”). Initially derivative of their source these soon developed a style of their own and became very successful.

Hunt then explains the development of the film and its divergence from the comic… there was very little notion of “fan service” back in the pre “Extended Universe” days, and the filmmakers took the concept and made the character the mix we see between a dark version of Batman and James Bond. Diabolik is an amoral adventurer, willing to casually kill anyone getting in the way of his thrills and whilst the film has a pop-psychedelic sheen, he’s counter cultural in the most anarchic way.

As the action explodes, Diabolik has just got the better of some very determined men trying to prevent his latest heist – just the $10,000,000 - and once he parks up next to the unfeasibly mod living quarters, he still has the energy for some play with his partner in crime, the stunning Eva Kant (Marisa Mell). Both shower in glass cubicles that just about hide their dignity before rolling together on a bed covered with their ill-gotten gains – money is sex and their crime is a statement of style and ego. It’s a sequence that is as much substance as style; 1960s Euro-decadence that feels like it comes from an alternative future passed. How could we miss that? 

I have dug through more than a few "dusty video boxes" of Italian genre cinema and Bava was a master of many – absolutely a Master of Cinema as the Eureka badge confirms. Whether he was inventing giallo with Blood and Black Lace, scaring us in new ways with Black Sunday, or producing stylish space gothic opera in Planet of the Vampires he always delivers atmospherics and a high-content style, especially on a limited budget. With Danger: Diabolik, he was reasonably well funded (courtesy of Dino De Laurentiis), and the result is a psychedelic explosion that makes the contemporary James Bond films look staid in comparison.

Eureka’s Masters of Cinema stunning new 4K UHD and Blu-ray edition gives this influential film the UK home media release it deserves. Bava’s comic-book colours pop out of the screen and the clarity of the psychedelic mise-en-scene beats your old import DVD. Diabolik’s Jaguar E-Type has an intense black glean and everything looks as fresh as a Mediterranean spring morning.

Bava strips away the more murderous edges of the comic character and creates a more playful "anti-establishment" rogue, albeit one who still kills. Diabolik doesn't just steal; he makes a show of the forces of order even a they try and entrap him – no trap is too tight for him to evade it, or is it? He makes a mockery of the police led by Inspector Ginko (Michel Piccoli) and the government, here represented by Terry Thomas – boy could we use a leader like him right now – by targeting the tax system leaving the Minister to ask tax payers to tell him what they owe. There’s also knockabout fun with a Government press conference brought laughing to a close by "Exhilaration Gas" that could have come straight out of  Batman’s utility belt (the Adam West TV series started in January 1966, a pop-cultural classic).

Terry Thomas

There are also actual baddies in the form of Ralph Valmont (the great Adolfo Celi), who forces the gang bosses to work together with the police in trying to capture Diabolik. Can the master criminal out-wit them all and save Eva? The beauty of the film is in seeing our anti-hero face every challenge with a swagger and an arched-eyebrowed smirk… like all super-heroes, he is the embodiment of our need for fantasy and some kind of justice. His power is his intelligence and his ability to get ahead of every situation. We can only dream (or read comics).

Underpinning this all is Ennio Morricone’s psychedelic score which features a swooning main theme that reflects the relationship between Diabolik and Eva – it stresses their love and concern as we are all wrapped up in their battle against the forces of law and disorder. There are all the trimmings you’d expect from this period of music – sometimes saccharine sweet whilst hyper dramatic when it needs to be. Like the characters themselves you can’t quite put your finger on it but it serves the whole to pleasing affect.

Special Features:

Limited Edition: The first 2,000 copies are housed in a hardbound slipcase with package design by Nick Wrigley and include a Limited Edition 60-page book featuring new essays on Danger: Diabolik by Italian film historian Roberto Curti and comic book scholar Jochen Ecke, a new introduction to fumetti neri by crime genre expert Sergio Angelini and new writing on the film’s director by Troy Howarth, author of The Haunted World of Mario Bava

Both a 4K UHD and a Blu-ray.

Three audio commentaries:

-          with film historians Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson,

-          Tim Lucas, author of Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark

-          actor John Phillip Law and Bava authority Tim Lucas

Features:

Criminal Intent – new discussion of the origins and evolution of Diabolik from page to screen with Leon Hunt, author of the Cultographies volume on Danger: Diabolik

Radical Behaviour – new video essay on Danger: Diabolik as anti-establishment pop culture by Italian genre cinema expert Rachael Nisbet

From Fumetti to Film – archival featurette

Body Movin’ – music video by Beastie Boys, which samples Morricone’s score, with optional commentary by Adam “MCA” Yauch

Dusty Verdict:

Danger: Diabolik is a film of its time and it has never looked or felt fresher to modern eyes after this restoration. As a prime example of a cult film of the mid-60s it has been influential both in terms of the likes of sundry spoofs such as Austin Powers but also in the way action movies and super-heroic films are presented. If there’s any deeper meanings you can find them but it was and remains a lot of fun. It is a comic book movie and pulp distraction just as Louis Feuillade knew Fantômas was in 1913.

The set is available from 20 April 2026 but you can pre-order it now before it vanishes into the night in a shiny e-Type Jaguar…

 

*Barbarella was produced by Dino De Laurentiis at almost the same time so, a busy year in Europe for John Phillip Law

Shakes on a plane… Murder on Flight 502 (1975) Take 2

 

Apparently this was the tenth most highly-rated screening on American TVs from November 17–23 in 1975 and you can well understand why it failed to fly higher although neither did it really dive-bomb… Nowadays it’s almost impossible to watch this film without thinking about other films with Robert Stack in them, as the pilot of a 747 passenger jet and – I swear – playing the role in exactly the same way as he does in Airplane! (1980). People talk about Leslie Nielsen’s way with comedy but Mr Stack had the chops too… or should that be “chocks”? 

This ABC TV Movie of the Week was a Spelling-Goldberg Production and, like so many from that era, I probably experienced it at the time as a young teen watching with my family. It has that familiarity not just because of the sequence of now cliched events and dialogue but also because the pattern of the narrative is perhaps dimly remembered or at least predictable for those of us who lived through the seventies. 

If the venue of choice for classic murder mysteries was the old dark house or English country house then by this stage the giant planes that represented the perfecting of the global travel boom were now the ideal setting: people already nervous of long haul flying could find that extra frisson of fear from the prospect of deadly dealings in First Class… I mean, what could be more disturbing to have the people you had to trust the most be potentially your killer?

So much drama in such a confined space...

Written by David P. Harmon possibly after a sweaty and very brief elevator pitch with Aaron Spelling the film is efficiently directed by George McCowan who had recently finished the third and final iteration of the Magnificent Seven Extended Universe. It’s a moderately tense affair that, in the manner of these things, creates a lot of room for the impressive array of stellar talent to interact and create characters in whom we are invested even if the idea of Sonny Bono chatting up your 15-year-old daughter is a bit “of its time”. 

If you are going to watch this film, and it is in fairly good condition on YouTube, I would recommend watching it with friends or family as it is the kind of artefact that will spark debate amongst young and old…

It begins on a flight from Newark Airport to London – back in the days of the Special Relationship – with a prank from lovable former Partridge Family irritant, Danny Bonaduce as spoilt brat Millard Kensington, who leaves a suspicious package back in the passenger lounge which causes alarm but soon he is chided for his larking by Captain Larkin (Robert Stack) who all but ruffles his hair and =asks him if he’s ever seen wrestling… But, this false alarm is soon followed by genuine concern after Safety official Robert Davenport (George Maharis) receives a letter saying that there is to be a series of murders on the plane.

Walter Pidgeon,Theodore Bikel, Molly Picon and Danny Bonaduce

Whilst Davenport immediately begins a forensic examination of the backgrounds of his passengers, telling his assistant to put their names in alphabetical order – not mean task in the days before Excel and booking software, and a signal that they will be taking every possible measure to find the oddball with a reason to kill. Oddly, for a plane capable of holding 350 passengers, we are limited to the relatively small first class area and the 747’s legendary upstairs bar which seems sadly unoccupied. 

Over the next hour or so a series of nailed on possibles present themselves: the frankly foreign Otto Gruenwaldt (Theodore Bikel) who holds an unfair grudge against Dr. Kenyon Walker (the legendary Ralph Bellamy who worked with both Jean Harlow and Julia Roberts – that is quite some career!) who he blames for his wife’s death. Otto has a cardiac arrest and Captain Larkin must trust him to not kill his potential murderer… 

Then there is the aforementioned pop star Jack Marshall (Sonny Bono) who is being blamed by a couple Ray (Dane Clark) and Claire Garwood (Laraine Day) for the drug death of their daughter. Ray looks fit to burst but is this another high-altitude red herring? Then there’s the shifty Paul Barons (Fernando Lamas) who is engaged in a discussion with his neighbour, Dorothy Saunders (Polly Bergen) a rather tipsy but observant crime novelist who is either trying to woo him or investigate him.

Hugh O'Brian and Farrah Fawcett

There’s more Hollywood royalty as Walter Pidgeon’s Charlie Parkins befriends his seat-mate Molly Picon as Ida Goldman whose career goes even further back than Bellamy’s, her first film being in the silent era in the Austrian film, Lock up Your Daughters (1922) with future Hitchcock blond Anny Ondra (star of Blackmail, the first British talkie). I genuinely love watching them work and they bring out the darker edges and wisdom required for this context.

Thank goodness there’s a policeman on board, as soon the murders do begin and Detective Myerson (Hugh O'Brian, as typecast as Stack…) has to begin the investigation as a false priest is found life-less in the dumb waiter. There’s more to follow and the tension builds as even an air stewardess, Vera Franklin (Brooke Adams) is murdered? What and who is connecting this all together and will anyone make it alive to Heathrow??

Sonny Bono and Elizabeth Stack

Dusty Verdict: Of course Murder on Flight 502 is absolutely worth watching if you’re in the mood. My daughter enjoyed its serious silliness and she wasn’t born until the Jumbo Jets were all but retired from service. But it’s still a fun family experience with a storied cast and a plot that could easily work in a country house, a remote island or even a quiet village in Midsomer.

We also have a Stack family outing with his wife Rosemarie and daughter Elizabeth as Marilyn Stonehurst the teenager being chatted up by Sonny Bono’s musical letch. Then there’s an early Farrah Fawcett as Karen White, a resourceful stewardess who gives an eye-catching performance with the teeth and hair that would establish her as one of the Seventies’ sexual super-powers. She could act and went on to show it more after the Angel years with Emmys to prove it!

Not an essential film but a warm hug of nostalgia from a time when shakes on a plane were less frequent… and not just in Boeing’s case.