Shock
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Synopsis
In a career spanning four decades and encompassing virtually every genre under the sun, Mario Bava inspired multiple generations of filmmakers, from Dario Argento to Martin Scorsese and Tim Burton. Best remembered for his gothic horror movies, for his final feature, Shock, he eschewed the grand guignol excesses of Black Sabbath or Blood and Black Lace for a more intimate portrait of mental breakdown in which true horror comes from within.
Dora (Daria Nicolodi, Deep Red) moves back into her old family home with her husband, Bruno (John Steiner, Tenebrae), and Marco (David Colin Jr., Beyond the Door), her young son from her previous marriage. But domestic bliss proves elusive as numerous strange and disturbing occurrences transpire, while Dora is haunted by a series of nightmares and hallucinations, many of them involving her dead former husband. Is the house itself possessed? Or does Dora’s increasingly fragile grip on reality originate from somewhere far closer to home?
Released in the United States as a sequel to Ovidio G. Assonitis’s Beyond the Door, Shock more than lives up to its name, proving that, even at this late stage in his career, Bava hadn’t lost his touch for terror. Now restored in high definition for the first time, the Maestro of the Macabre’s chilling swansong disturbs like never before in this feature-laden release from Arrow Video.
Picture 9/10
Mario Bava’s final feature film, Shock (aka Beyond the Door II), receives a new Blu-ray edition courtesy of Arrow Video. Sourced from a new 2K restoration performed by L’Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna, the film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on a dual-layer disc with a 1080p/24hz high-definition encode. The scan comes from the 35mm original camera negative.
As with most of Ritrovata’s scans and general restorations this one comes out looking incredibly crisp and clean. Finer details still pop and close-ups look exceptional. Film grain is there and Arrow’s usual top-notch encode renders it beautifully. No other artifacts appear to be present.
I suspect Arrow has adjusted the colours a bit. The film still leans warm but not to the extreme manner that most Ritrovata restorations do, where things will start to look notably yellow or green; whites still look white, and blues are present. Thankfully this also doesn’t appear to have impacted the black levels, which look exceptional, the darker sequences still managing to show notable range in the shadows without crushing out details.
A few minor blemishes remain, and a handful of shots take on a dupey look (particularly some iffy optical shots) but the picture overall is clean and the film almost looks brand new.
Shock - Screen Captures
Audio 6/10
Arrow includes the Italian and English soundtracks, both presented in DTS-HD MA 1.0 mono. I watched the film in English and sampled the Italian. It looks as though most of the dialogue in the film may have been spoken in English as the lip movements mostly match the English dialogue, but it still has that detached, flat dubbed sound. The Italian may be a bit worse in this regard, but ultimately fine. Range and fidelity are both a bit flat, I Libra’s score even sounding a bit weak. Past that, the audio is clean with no significant damage.
Extras 8/10
Arrow throws in a nice batch of supplementary features, starting things off with a new audio commentary by author Tim Lucas. Though he’ll veer in and out of topics as the track goes on Lucas provides a worthwhile track, going over how the project came to be in Bava’s hands after a string of disappointing features, with his son, Lamberto, being one of the writers of the script. This also allows Lucas to touch on how the film reflects where horror was going at the time. He notes its American release as Beyond the Door II, which came about only because the same child actor just happened to be in the film (the two films are unrelated otherwise). Moreover, he takes the time to look at how the film’s visuals capture the psychological states of the film’s characters and how things will tie into the eventual reveal, admiring and noting Bava’s visual flourishes along the way. I can't say there are any staggering revelations, other than maybe what scenes were probably directed by Lamberto Bava, and compared to another recent track by him for Mill of the Stone Women (which he references here as well) it's lacking a real center, but he covers a number of topics around the film without fully resorting to just listing IMDB credits.
Next, Arrow includes two new interviews, one featuring co-director/co-writer Lamberto Bava and the other co-writer Dardanno Sacchetti, running 30-minutes and 34-minutes respectively. The two actually do manage to cover most of the same ground, getting into specific story points, casting (each loved working with Nicolodi), and both even mentioning how the 2014 film Annabelle references this film (which also gets mentioned in other features). Bava gets a little more into his father’s work that immediately preceded Shock and then talks about his own work, while Sacchetti talks a little more about some of the effects in the film and shares his thoughts on how he feels Bava is underappreciated in the film world.
Following those are a couple of academic features. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas first offers up a 21-minute video essay around the film’s visuals and staging, with a concentration on the use of objects throughout, like that hand sculpture that keeps popping up. This leads to presenting possession as a form of puppetry. Stephen Thrower also pops up for a staggering 52-minute interview around Bava and the film. Thrower divides Bava’s work into a couple of periods, each of which had a different focus. He contributes the success of films like Night of the Living Dead and Rosemary’s Baby that led to a change in Bava’s later horror films, Shock also showing signs of influence from early Stephen King. He even offers a nice little breakdown and examination around how Bava uses familiar everyday experiences to frighten or shock his audience.
The disc then sports the Italian trailer and four American TV spots, all of which sell the film as Beyond the Door II (the last spot advertises the film as a double bill with The Dark), along with a small gallery featuring posters, Italian lobby cards and scans from the Japanese press book. There’s also a charming 4-minute audio interview featuring critic Alberto Farina recalling an interview he conducted with actor Daria Nicolodi, who showed him a drawing around her character that Bava made for her. The drawing is shown here, though sections appear to be missing based on what Farina assumes to be tape residue. The booklet (exclusive to first printings, along with an o-sleeve) then features a short essay by Troy Howarth on the film in relation to some of Bava’s other later work.
To my surprise it appears the film hasn’t received any real special edition prior to this one, but Arrow makes sure to correct that, providing a loving appreciation of Bava’s overlooked final film through all of the features here.
Closing
Up to Arrow’s usual standards, the disc is packed with insightful features and a sharp looking new restoration and final presentation. An easy recommendation for Bava fans.
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