So, I finally got myself watching Mario Bava's final film "Shock". As soon as the credits started rolling I realized this was going to be way different from Bava's other works, and not in a good way. Ironically though, the film itself is not bad, but if it had been made by any other director in any other country, I doubt the film would've turned out any different. It's basically another one of those haunted house films such as "Poltergeist" and "The Amityville Horror", even if slightly superior. It's not as if these two are bad, but the whole thing is way too 'routine' by Bava standards. Even if the great camera-work is still there and it does manage to produce some genuine chills, but it pales in comparison "Kill Baby, Kill", "Black Sunday", "Blood and Black Lace", among others, who did it so much better. Scriptwise, it does a good job at being a 'regular ghost story' with an Oedipal twist, but overall, it is anything but original and, as a matter of fact, Bava already used a strikingly similar premise in the obviously superior "The Whip and the Body", and the endings of both films are almost exactly the same. On the bright side, the film does manage to create some subtle, yet extremely effective scares. The final 20 minutes or so are quite suspenseful and frightening, and Daria Nicolodi does her best at conveying fear and despair her role requires. David Collin Jr as the child who may-or-may-not-be-possessed is indeed very creepy, and an excellent counterpart to Melissa Grapps from "Kill Baby Kill". Also, it was quite refreshing to see Ivan Rassimov playing a good guy this time. Last but not least, the Goblin-esquire score by Italian band Libra helps giving the film a sense of total dread and terror. In the end, it's certainly not bad, but rather mediocre for a director like Mario Bava. Yet a mediocre Bava is still a hundred times better than the god-awful so-called 'horrors' that are coming out of Hollywood nowadays. 6/10.
Review of Shock
