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

Lost in space... Planet of the Vampires (1965)

There’s more to this than it first appears or rather doesn’t and, in the tradition of Invasion of the Body Snatchers this is a tale seeped in paranoia and cold-war angst. Or maybe it’s just aping the concerns of the many American sci-fi shockers that inspired this Italian effort. The star may be American – the aging but still dynamic, Barry Sullivan - but pretty much everyone else is Italian with American voices dubbed in post-production.

It only adds to the, by then slightly-dated, atmosphere… but the design and overall mise-en-scène places this as slightly-superior genre – Planet of the Vampires has style, from space-ships to the space-suits of the crew this is a visually-cohesive thrill from take-off to landing. It’s also not obsessed with the gory violence or detailed monstrosities often found in inter-stellar space in the mid-sixties.
This is a narrative focused on procedure and monstrous character and when the final twist hits you realise the monsters are closer to home than we might have thought.

The film’s atmospherics and scale – massive spaceships with endless interiors, has been seen as an influence on Alien and others that came later (although Ridley Scott  claimed not to have seen it at the time) and it does feel like a step up and outwards on the claustrophobia of most contemporary science fiction.

By focusing on style and atmospherics and refraining from revealing too much detail of the alien enemy, the film avoids the pitfalls of so much of its genre: you’re kept waiting and the “monsters” are very believable…

The Bridge

Barry Sullivan is Captain Mark Markary, an experienced, travel-weary, commander of a spaceship called Argos who is out exploring the outer reaches with sister ship, The Galliot. They are investigating a mysterious signal from a mist-enveloped planet – is it from intelligent life? Suddenly they lose contact with the second ship and both get drawn onto the mysterious planet almost crushed by a gravitational force they cannot resist. The effects are more stylistic than realistic – in the way that period sci-fi can only ever attempt to be – but there’s a consistency of style that works well.

Down onto this misty, volcanic world they go landing in a swoosh of steam and graveyard fog… Contact has been lost with The Galliot and Mark’s brother is on board.

Landing in the graveyard gloom

The planet's surface

Almost immediately they land strange starts to happen as some of the crew become deranged and attack for no reason: there is something on this world that is unsettling their psyches. And so it goes…

They find The Galliot with three dead crew all mysteriously marked as if they’d been attacked by wild animals and bury them under metal lids with strange posts as markers – a space funeral. The crew is spooked and it’s not long before those three metal coffins are opened by the supposedly-dead men – not so much planet of vampires as of zombies.

The crew attack the captain

The crew keep watch in the dark and begin to see multi-coloured flashes in the air: there’s something strange… and the narrative builds slowly maintaining an off-kilter suspense.

Another crew member is found dead – again covered in signs of a bloody fight – he is examined in the ship and the attacks Tiona (Evi Marandi) one of the female crew. She survives leaving Mark to go off with communications officer – and proto-Uhura – Sanya (Norma Bengell), to investigate another ship.

Norma Bengell and Evi Marandi

They find the skeletons of huge aliens and a ship that dwarfs even their own – as Mark and Sanya travel further into the leviathan, they find evidence of electromagnetic  life… the suspicion grows that whatever killed these aliens remains and is threatening them too.

Upon returning to their ship, two of The Galliot crew come staggering through the mist Captain Sallis (Massimo Righi) and Mark’s brother included… but they don’t look very well to me and it’s not long before they begin attacking the ship and crew.

The Captain and Sanya investigate

Alien bodies, long dead

Mark and Sanya establish that an alien intelligence is taking over the crew’s minds and bodies whenever they are unconscious or dead… they must find a way to stop these possessions and soon before the entire ship is taken over and the psychic vampires can escape to other worlds…

Dusty verdict: Planet of the Vampires may be dubbed from Italian into English but its message is quite clear: the enemy is within body-snatching in the same fashion as the classic fifties film.

It has a nervy energy all of its own though and that makes for absorbing, stylish viewing that has more than a few twist and turns along the way.

There’s a very impressive electronic score from Gino Marinuzzi, Jr which helps maintain the mood of unsettling mystery and suspense. Director Mario Bava makes the very most of his limited budget with some lovely set-pieces as the crew scramble over the lava flows of the erupting plant, run along sleek corridors and attack themselves from all angles.

Barry Sullivan and Norma Bengell

Planet of the Vampires is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Amazon – it goes boldly were no Italians had gone before.

Planet of Vampires issues 1 and 2 art by Pat Broderick and the great Neal Adams!

PS There was a short-lived but well-drawn comic book version loosely based on the film from Atlas Comics in 1975 which I bought at the time: very little in common with the film but cool costumes and a relentless foe!