DANGER: DIABOLIK

Better known for his excursions in the horror genre, director Mario Bava’s excursion into the crime caper—and his lone trip to Hollywood—produced this eye-popping pop art curio, an adaptation of an Italian comic book series underwritten by producer Dino De Laurentiis, fresh off the success of BARBARELLA, and featuring one of Ennio Morricone’s most exuberantly experimental scores. Arch-criminal Diabolik (John Phillip Law) and his girlfriend Eva (Marisa Mell) stay one step ahead of Michel Piccoli’s Inspector Ginko in this garishly colored, kinetic masterwork of cinematic artifice and amoral indulgence.

"A visually intoxicating candy colored magic trick—slick, absurd in the most poetic way, and easily the greatest comic book movie. Bava going full Bava... a psychotronic freakout of absolute imagination loaded with everything I’d ever want from a comic strip turned kinetic energy film reel." - Ian West