Review
DANGER: DIABOLIK
aka
DIABOLIKRating: 
Italy. 1967.
Director – Mario Bava, Screenplay – Mario Bava & Dino Maiuri, Story – Dino Maiuri, Adriano Baracio & Angela E. & Luciano Giussari, Producer – Dino de Laurentiis, Photography – Antonio Rinaldi, Music – Ennio Morricone, Art Direction – Flavio Morgherini. Production Company – Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica/Marianne Productions.
Cast:
John Phillip Law (Diabolik), Marisa Mell (Eva Kant), Michel Piccoli (Inspector Ginko), Adolfo Celi (Ralph Valmont), Terry-Thomas (Minister of Finance)
Plot: The masked super-criminal Diabolik makes a fool of the incompetent Italian authorities, stealing from under their noses as well as blowing up the entire country’s tax records. In desperation Inspector Ginko cracks down on organized crime to force them to help stop Diabolik.
This is a wonderful comic-book of a film. It is in fact the next best thing the celebrated Italian horror director Mario Bava made, other than his debut feature Black Sunday (1960). Indeed producer Dino de Laurentiis appears to have been so caught up in its teasing tongue-in-cheek stylishness he returned to it with Barbarella (1968) and to a lesser extent with his remake of Flash Gordon (1980).
The film with its parade of fast cars, its heroine’s amazingly revealing series of costumes, its incredibly handsome hero in skintight black leather all have a stylish sophistication that is wonderfully sexy. Some images like those of John Phillip Law and Marisa Mell making love in a bed covered with stolen banknotes have a decadence that is quite joyous. Indeed the film’s celebration of anarchic anti-authoritarianism makes it possibly one of the most entertainingly subversive films ever foisted on the public – the scene where Terry-Thomas’s pompous minister is forced to go on tv after Diabolik has blown up the country’s tax records and appeal to the public to come forward and pay the taxes they think they owe is absolutely hilarious.
The sets are amazing, especially Diabolik’s hideout, which manages to fill what looks like an entire soundstage with tube tunnels, latticeworks of girders, rock pools, tiered circular beds and wonderful ultra-modern showers that have hanging perspex circles to hide the naughty bits as Law and Mell shower together. Last updated: Tuesday, 02 September 2008
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