Dir. Mario Bava, Italy/France, 1968, 100 mins, English and Italian audio options with subtitles
Cast: John Phillip Law, Marisa Mell, Michel Piccoli, Adolfo Celi, Terry-Thomas
Review by Colin Dibben
Gorgeous, masked super-thief Diabolik (Law) stages heist after heist with his equally moreish lover Eva (Mell). When they are not pulling capers or indulging in car chases in their ‘his and hers’ Jaguar E-types, they are ‘making the sweet love’ in Diabolik’s lavishly surreal underground lair. The duo are chased by both the cops – led by Inspector Ginko (Piccoli) – and by crime boss Valmont (Celi).
Director Bava was famous for making iconic genre movies on a shoestring budget. He does something very cool here, with a slightly larger budget. The highly successful Diabolik crime comics – still going strong in Italy – had been running for 5 years when the film came out. The comics are more serious than the film, which embraces a very swinging sixties’ humour: it is played straight but is so exaggerated that you giggle anyway.
Law’s twitchy, hyperactive Diabolik is as representative of this straight humour as the over-the-top set designs by Flavio Mogherini and Carlo Rambaldi, the clean, glossy colours and dynamic shot compositions by cinematographer Antonio Rinaldi – as well as the classic Bava special effects (he designed most of the matte backgrounds). The recent 4K restoration highlights the pop-art colours, look and feel. Then there is the Ennio Morricone theme tune, Deep Down, which is still earworming me weeks after watching the discs.
Even if they moved away from the tone of the source material, Bava and Rinaldi obviously considered how best to reflect the comic book storytelling format on film: editing of course, but also, especially in the lair sequences, architectural elements are used to mimic the ‘frame-within-a-frame’ form that is signature to comics.
Danger: Diabolik is so completely what you think of when you think ‘Swinging Sixties crime caper’ – and to such a delirious degree – that it is hard to know what else to say. You just need to see it and enjoy. I wanted it to go on for another 3 hours.
Extras include:
- Limited Edition 60-page book featuring new essays on Danger: Diabolik by Italian film historian Roberto Curti and comic book scholar Jochen Ecke, a new introduction to fumetti neri by crime genre expert Sergio Angelini and new writing on the film’s director by Troy Howarth, author of The Haunted World of Mario Bava
- Audio commentary with film historians Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson
- Audio commentary with Tim Lucas, author of Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark
- Audio commentary with actor John Phillip Law and Bava authority Tim Lucas
- Criminal Intent – new discussion of the origins and evolution of Diabolik from page to screen with Leon Hunt, author of the Cultographies volume on Danger: Diabolik
- Radical Behaviour – new video essay on Danger: Diabolik as anti-establishment pop culture by Italian genre cinema expert Rachael Nisbet
Danger: Diabolik is out as a limited edition dual format 4K UHD and Blu-ray on 20 April 2026.
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