Staff pick

Euro-gothic for the giallo graduate

8 films · August 2026

The graduate course after the giallo: cobwebbed castles and a dead woman who will not stay buried, lit by Bava like nobody since.

Black Sunday
1960 · Italy · 87m
Obscurity: known
Bava's debut as director. Barbara Steele and a mask full of spikes.
Black Sabbath
1963 · Italy/France · 92m
Obscurity: known
Three stories, one Karloff. The Wurdulak segment is the best thing Bava shot.
Kill, Baby... Kill!
1966 · Italy · 85m
Obscurity: cult
A ghost child with a white ball. Fellini and Scorsese both stole from it.
The Whip and the Body
1963 · Italy/France · 85m
Obscurity: known
Bava and Christopher Lee doing sadomasochism the censors did not catch.
Castle of Blood
1964 · France/Italy · 87m
Obscurity: cult
Barbara Steele in a haunted house on a bet. Better than it sounds.
The Horrible Dr. Hichcock
1962 · Italy · 88m
Obscurity: cult
Barbara Steele married to a necrophile surgeon, and Freda smuggling it past the 1962 censors on innuendo alone.
Lisa and the Devil
1973 · West Germany/Italy · 95m
Obscurity: cult
Bava's most personal film, and his strangest. Telly Savalas as the devil, holding a lollipop.
Daughters of Darkness
1971 · France/West Germany · 100m
Obscurity: cult
Delphine Seyrig as Bathory in an empty Ostend hotel. Genuinely elegant.

Black Sunday