Mario Bava Collection: Vol. 2!!!!

It's here: The long-awaited Mario Bava Collection Volume 2, and in stores this weeks from Anchor Bay Entertainment/ and it's astonishing. Eight films from the Italian maestro of the macabre Mario Bava (Black Sunday, Black Sabbath) and included are several masterpieces: Lisa and the Devil, a film close to Bava's heart; a surreal, Alice in Wonderland nightmare starring Elke Sommer as a woman vacationing in Europe who stumbles down a lonely street and encounters the devil (a lollipop-sucking Telly Savalas) and later is stranded at a gloomy mansion with a blind matriarch (Alida Valli) and her loony son. Atmospheric and dream-like in its intensity, it was recut and mangled into House of Exorcism to cash in on The Exorcist (that version is included here) which has a possessed Elke puking green frogs in front of a priest (Robert Alda) while flashbacks reveal the story of Lisa and the Devil).

Bay of Blood (aka Twitch of ohe Death Nerve) features many murders that take place around a coveted lake property and plays out in a series of gory deaths which predates body count movies like Friday the 13th by many years. The print quality is staggeringly good. Others in the set Five Dolls for an August Moon, a ripoff of 10 Little Indians with eye-popping '60s visuals and the gorgeous, sexy, frugging Edwige Fenech as one of the doomed guests at a remote island mansion. Baron Blood stars Elke Sommer and Joseph Cotton and it's a horror classic about the resurrected sadistic scarred Baron returning to terrorize again. Four Times That Nights is a rare foray into sex comedy. Kidnapped is a tense thriller from Bava that mostly takes place in a car with ruthless bank robbers and hostages. Roy Colt and Winchester Jack is a whacked-out spaghetti western. Get this box set now or I'll have to come to your house and kill you!