Bava Bio Book of the Year?

It's too soon to say -- since it's just off to the printer this past week -- but I daresay I've not been this eager to hold a book in my hands since the announcement of Joe Kubert returning to Tor (via the Epic series), or Ray Harryhausen's first book coming out back in the 1970s.

The image Tim and Donna built this cover around is burned into my braincells, searing seven-year-old Bissette's young Catholic mind as no other movie image had or would for years.

It's hard to communicate today how potent a film like Black Sunday was in the early '60s, just after the modern horror film was born (via Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Michael Powell's Peeping Tom) but before it had become the mirror of that decade that the genre became (via George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Michael Reeves's The Witchfinder General aka The Conqueror Worm). Mario Bava's black-and-white phantasmagoria spoke louder and clearer to me of matters of the soul, good and evil, and the power of light over darkness than any of the "religious" films I'd been subjected to at that tender age (at that time, Charlton Heston epics like Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments were required viewing, even at age five and six).

More on Bava, and Tim's new book, in coming posts...

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I've just completed two new interviews with Bryan Talbot -- another for PaneltoPanel.net, and one for this blog -- which will be online soon. More info, and the Myrant interview, soon!

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Gotta run, be back later today...

Bravo Tim!
Bravo Donna!
Bravo Bava!

This past week,

Tim and Donna Lucas finished work at last on Tim's Mario Bava biography, and shipped it off to the printer.

A hearty congrats to Tim and Donna! Tim and I first met via our mutual love for Mario Bava -- via a fan letter I addressed to him courtesy of Fangoria, enthusiastically responding to Tim's Bava article in that zine -- and I instantly turned over all my Bava files (such as they were) to him, grateful to know someone shared my obsession and was working on a book-length study of Bava.

Tim's a much better writer than I was or will ever be, so it was a treat. I've been a long-distance cheerleader for Tim's book ever since, though he's had much heavier-hitter cheerleaders and much more vital collections turned over to him.

It's taken Tim well over two decades to see through his dream project, and he and Donna have poured enormous amounts of blood, sweat, tears, energy and dollars into this venture.

See, dreams do come true...

More -- on this and more -- later this morning.

A Birthday Ghost

Precursor to Fellini and Del Toro's specters: Mario Bava's Melissa Graps (played by boy Valerio Valeri, and no doubt the inspiration for a key element in Mario's son Lamberto Bava's later giallo A Blade in the Dark) from Kill, Baby... Kill!, now on DVD from Dark Sky.

Not much to write today, due to a very busy Thursday ahead, including guest artist visit from Rick Veitch to enrich the CCS experience. I'll post properly tomorrow, AM.

Big thank you to Tim and Donna Lucas for the early birthday gift of Dark Sky's DVD release of Kill, Baby... Kill!, original title Operazione Paura (1966), which I steeped myself in the past couple of days. It's a terrific disc, stem to stern, and by far the best this Bava gem has looked since its original theatrical showing. In fact, it looks a whole lot better than the theatrical venues I caught it in (twice, on the big drive-in screen, under its Curse of the Living Dead incarnation in the Orgy of the Living Dead triple-bill that unreeled across the US in the early '70s), and it sounds better, too, via digital sound restoration which puts the tinny ol' drive-in speakers in the dirt they often ended up in.

I know this particular Bava film isn't for all tastes -- I've loaned it to friends who love ghost movies, but hated this film ("too slow") -- but it's among my favorite films of all time. Bava's cinematic creation of an ethereal, haunted netherworld defined certain corners of my own visual imagination in ways that render it critic-proof, as many formative experiences remain -- and seeing such a primal experience in such a splendid restoration of color, light and movement is intoxicating in and of itself.

So, take my recommendation with a grain of salt, if you must, but that's beside the point: Thank you, Tim and Donna!

BTW, Tim's far more eloquent discussions of Kill, Baby... Kill! and all things Bava -- and much, much more -- await you

at Tim's Video Watchblog, always worth a read.

A special thanks, too, to Phil for the birthday bash package that arrived yesterday at CCS -- I am already deep into reading the excellent Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction: A Thematic Survey by Allen A. Debus, for which I particularly thank you! Extraordinary book. Back in 1996, I was working on a Tyrant Media Guide, given the dirth of literature on dinosaurian media; well, that's all changed in the ensuing decade, hasn't it? McFarland alone has issued at least three books covering various aspects of the genre, though Debus's book is by far the best of the McFarland brood to date. I appreciate everything else in the package, too, Phil, but this is a real sweet treat I didn't even know existed. Thank you!

OK, off to work -- have a great Thursday --