Danger: Diabolik (Italy, 1968)

Danger: Diabolik may be a minor masterpiece of late-sixties pop-art camp, but when watching the movie it also becomes very easy to understand why it was riffed on by Mystery Science Theater 3000 (in the final episode of the series' initial run, on 8 Aug 1999). It is as easy to argue that the movie is terrible as it is to argue that it is good — but what cannot be denied is that bad or good, the uneven but fabulously over-the-top slab of hip-sixties psychedelic Italo-trash is mesmerizingly fun and entertaining. 

From the movie —

Christy singing Deep Down:

Based on one of the most popular Italian fumetti — that's Italian for comics — characters,* the movie pretty much assumes that the viewer has at least general knowledge of the title character, the anti-hero Diabolik, who was created in 1962 by the Milan sisters Angela Giussani and Luciana Giussani. To date, he has appeared in over 900 volumes, and, aside from this live-action adaptation from 1968, has had a kid-friendly 40-episode run (1997-2000, credit sequence) as an animated TV series and, within less than the last decade, a trilogy of relatively not serious live-action films, Diabolik (2021 / trailer), Diabolik – Ginko Attacks! (2022 / trailer) and Diabolik – Who Are You? (2023 / trailer). But as far as we are concerned here at a wasted life, Bava's film adaptation here remains the best one. 

* Our personal favourite fumetti characters have always been Isabella, which Bruno Corbucci (23 Oct 1931 – 7 Sept 1996) toned down and adapted as a film, Isabella, Duchess of the Devils (full movie), a year after Diabolik; Satanik, which the underappreciated Piero Vivarelli (26 Feb 1927 – 7 Sept 2010) toned down and adapted as a film, Satanik ("what a trailer"), the same year as Diabolik; Maghella, which got adapted into a still-unreleased (now possibly lost) film, starring the American Playboy Playmate of May 1970, Jennifer Liano (24 Feb 1948 – 8 Oct 2024), in 1974 by Francis Leroi (5 Sept 1942 – 21 Mar 2002); and Lucifera and Jucula, neither of whom will probably ever have a mainstream film adaptation, as "serious" porn films went out of fashion with the advent of video.

Inspired by Diabolik —

the video to Tiromancino's Amore Impossibile:

The movie was originally set to be directed by the English director Seth Holt (21 Jul 1923 – 14 Feb 1971), a man best remembered here at a wasted life for his two Jimmy Sangster-scripted horrors, Taste of Fear (1961 / trailer) and The Nanny (1965 / trailer), but producer Dino De Laurentiis (8 Aug 1919 – 10 Nov 2010) soon replaced him with Mario Bava (31 Jul 1914 – 27 Apr 1980), reportedly choosing Bava because his recently released Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966 / trailer) — generally considered Bava's worst directorial project, alongside his bland western Road to Fort Alamo (1964 / trailer) — was a hit in the cinemas at the time Diabolik was in preproduction.* 

* Perhaps the story is apocryphal; by the time he was hired for Diabolik, Bava already had a track record in special effects (e.g., Riccardo Freda's I Vampiri [1957 / trailer]) and visually masterful genre pieces, such as Black Sunday (1960), Black Sabbath (1963 / trailer), Blood and Black Lace (1964 / trailer), Planet of the Vampires (1965 / trailer) and Kill, Baby, Kill (1966 / trailer). Not exactly comedies, maybe, but substantial proof that he was a good visualist.

Instead of the trailer —

Deep Down again:

Diabolik is a marvelously visual slab of big-screen, dated, once-hip cinematic eye candy; a pop-art explosion of color and tacky rear projection and fab outfits. The narrative is barely there — an anti-hero and the love of his life steal and are pursued by an obsessed, driven inspector — and the acting, particularly of John Phillip Law, is mostly wooden or tinged with burlesque, much like the TV show that most influenced it, the highpoint of 60s' camp that is the original live-action Batman series (1966-68 / credit sequence) and, to a lesser extent, Batman: The Movie (1966 / trailer). Next to the Batman series, the other most obvious influence are the James Bond films — or, to be more exact, the multitude of campier super-spy movies that were hitting the screen at the time, ranging from the Flint films (i.e., Our Man Flint [1966 / trailer], In Like Flint [1967 / trailer]) to the somewhat more hip (?) and mod (?) Eurotrash product like Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die (1966 / trailer), the last of which shares an actor found (and, arguably, inserted) in Diabolik, Terry-Thomas (10 Jul 1911 – 8 Jan 1990). 

Inspired by the movie —

the music video to the Beastie Boys' Body Movin' (1998):

Both Diabolik (John Phillip Law [7 Sept 1937 – 31 May 2008] of Space Mutiny [1988, with Cisse Cameron], Night Train to Terror [1985], Death Rides a Horse [1967] and so much more) and his love and hench-babe Eva Kant* (Marissa Mell of The Puzzle of the Red Orchid [1962 / trailer], Umberto Lenzi's Seven Blood-Stained Orchids [1972 / trailer] and so much more) are relative ciphers, two unnaturally stiff people existing basically only to interchangeably love each other, break the law, and wallow in luxury — the last of which they can never get enough of. (The famous scene of them making love covered with money on their orgy-size bed, and Diabolik's obvious arousal while messily spraying — massively spurting? — the melted gold into a brick-shaped molds, are less entertaining today than oddly repulsive: regardless of the handsome couple's pop hipsterness, the two are less anti-social anti-heroes than the epitome of yuppie entitlement. Diabolik's American first cousin must surely be Patrick Bateman of American Psycho [2000 / trailer].) As a duo, Eva and Diabolik may be dynamic, but as people, once you get past their visual attractiveness — and Eva/Mell, with her fabulous wardrobe, is truly attractive — they are hardly the most likeable couple, all the less so because of their unnatural stiffness (and Diabolik/Law truly makes a wooden board look lively).

* Unbelievably enough, at one point Catherine Deneuve was set to play the part and even shot a week's worth of scenes. Luckily, she was replaced by the far more appropriate Austrian actress Marlies Theres Moitzi, a.k.a. Marissa Mell (24 Feb 1939 – 16 May 1992), a unique beauty who very much embodied the time. Starting out in secondary roles like the one in the early Edgar Wallace krimi Puzzle of the Red Orchid, her first lead role was in bad boy Ken Russell's feature film directorial debut, French Dressing (1963 / scene). A terribly car accident that very year almost derailed her future, but she came back to become a busy and in-demand Eurobabe in films of all kind, but none made-in-America. (In her only "American" film, Mahogany [1975 / trailer], she appears only in the Rome-shot scenes.) In private, "she settled in Italy, where her high-profile love life and long association with Pier Luigi Torri, a playboy who later became one of the world's most-wanted fugitives, made her familiar to readers of tabloid press stories about the European jet set and elite Roman nightclubs. [...] Despite her typically resilient onscreen persona, Mell was privately a vulnerable figure who suffered from bad luck, ill-judged personal choices, and drug use. By the late 1980s, these factors had eroded the qualities that had earned her initial stardom, and she was forced to spend the remainder of her life in Austria, where she subsisted in straitened circumstances. [Wonder Club]" One of her last films is Joe D'Amato's hilariously terrible Ator III: The Hobgoblin (scene); a year later, she died of (throat) cancer. 

Much like Diabolik and Eva are fun to look at, the movie itself remains far more a delightful visual smorgasbord than a satisfying narrative. It meanders, and includes off-the-wall scenes — like the one where they release laughing gas at a press conference — which seem oddly tacked on, if not purloined from some rejected Batman TV series script. (The scene of Diabolik climbing the tower is also oddly reminiscent of the batrope climbing scenes from that series, which substantially reduces any "thrill" Diabolik's dangerous misstep is meant to engender.) Greed and entitlement are such core aspects of Diabolik's id that his almost anti-authoritarian (and hilariously cheap-looking) destruction of the government's tax system comes across less as an act of commendable anti-authoritarian terrorism than a simple hissy fit — and, on the part of the filmmakers, a further excuse to work another Terry-Thomas scene into the narrative. (The actor was reportedly on set for only one day.) In general, if the viewer identifies with Diabolik and Eva at all, it is primarily because we're supposed to, and not because there is anything to identify with. 

As for their nemesis, Inspector Ginko (Michel Piccoli [27 Dec 1925 – 12 May 2020] of Themroc [1973 / trailer] and more), it is amazing that a man who sets so many ineffectual and almost idiotic traps that continually fail, as they are obviously doomed to do, ever truly gets his man. Like Diabolik and Eva, he is an unwritten book, but for that Piccoli has enough thespian skill to make his character come across as a living person — but, at the same time, he is obviously not the man the movie wants the viewer to root for. A bit more comic-book-like is the fourth main character of the narrative, crime boss Ralf Valmont (Adolfo Celi [27 July 1922 – 19 Feb 1986] of Who Saw Her Die? [1972], And Then There Were None [1974, with Herbert Lom and Maria Rohm), Holocaust 2000 [1977 / trailer] and the movie that probably got him this film, Thunderball [1965 / trailer]), a blustering and choleric persiflage of the Big Boss Bad Guy who, in an attempt to appease Ginko, kidnaps Eva and, ultimately, pays the price for doing so... 

In short, Danger: Diabolik is an entertainingly, artificial-looking exercise in late-60s Italo-pop filmmaking that is fun to look at and to watch but is weak (if not empty) in both the narrative and thespian department. Amoral, meandering, and hardly thrilling, it entertains by its almost garish but definitely fabulous aesthetic and consistent absurdity — all of which is nicely underscored by one of Ennio Morricone's odder, almost chaotic scores. Far from a good movie, Danger: Diabolik is a fun movie — fun enough that it manages to make its many, glaring flaws almost immaterial, if not simply easy to overlook. 

Note: although we supply the Trailer from Hell to the movie below, we suggest not watching it. The trailer is one of those stupid ones that gives away the entire movie, including its resolution. 

Trailer from Hell:

And now, 

a public service announcement from a wasted life: