Grimossfer
Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%
Skyler
Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
Delight
Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.
Sam Panico
We went to see Blood and Black Lace in the theater a few weeks ago and there was a speaker before it. Maybe he's bad at speaking in public, but the guy gave short shift to the film, mumbling out about how it influenced Friday the 13th (I'd say Bay of Blood did more than this movie) and how it had a different title. And that was it. I was incensed. I wanted to get up out of my seat and scream that Mario Bava is the reason why lighting is the way it is and his use of color and how I can site hundreds of films that he influenced. But I sat in my seat and boiled while the movie unspooled, because I'm really passionate about Mario Bava and don't need to make a scene and miss seeing one of his films on the big screen.That said — Shock is Bava's last film. It's called Beyond the Door II here in the U.S., but I like the original title better. It's an ecomonical film — there are only three characters (well, three living characters). Dora (Daria Nicolodi, who should be canonized for giving birth to both Suspiria and Asia Argento, as well as roles in Deep Red, Inferno, Opera and so much more) and Bruno (Yor, Hunter from the Future's Overlord) are a newly married couple who have just moved back into her old home — the home where her drug addicted husband killed himself — with her son, Marco.Dora's had some real issues dealing with her husband's death. And Bruno is never home, as he's a pilot for a major airline. Either she's going crazy again or her son is evil or he's possessed or ever single one of those things at once. You have not seen a kid this creepy perhaps ever — he watched his mother and stepfather make love, declaring them pigs. He tells his mom he wants to kill her. He makes his stepfather's plane nearly crash just by putting an image of the man's face on a swing.While Mario was sick throughout the filming (and his son Lambarto would fill in), you can definitely see his style shine through the simple story. There's one scene of Dora's face and her dead hsubands's and then her face that repeats vertically that will blow your mind up.Read more at https://bandsaboutmovies.com/2017/10/17/shock-1977/
MartinHafer
This movie is dubbed, not subtitled. Some of the problems I saw in it might have been due to bad dubbing--I am really not sure, as the DVD ONLY offered the dubbed version."Shock" (aka "Beyond the Door II") is a film that has a neat story--though you have no idea WHAT it is until the movie is almost over! In the interim, you mostly see an actress Daria Nicolodi writhe about--moaning and panting! If you've ever seen "A Very Potter Musical", Draco Malfoy also does this...but is intended as a comedy! "Shock", on the other hand, is NOT a comedy! The film begins with a lady marrying some guy and moving with him and her son to the same house she used to live in with her first husband. Much later you learn more about this first marriage--and this is pretty neat information. But you really don't know WHAT is going on for much of the film. You do know that the boy is behaving very weirdly (like he's having a really, really bad Oedipal complex), some voodoo-like stuff is occurring and the woman keeps dreaming about zombie sex. None of it was very entertaining since the context was missing for much of the film and because Nicolodi overacted so badly--and you've got to blame at least some of this on the director, Mario Bava (his last film).
udar55
Dora (Daria Nicolodi) returns to the country house where her first husband committed suicide. Coming with her are new husband Bruno (John Steiner) and her son Marco (David Colin Jr.). Since she is a female protagonist in an Italian horror movie, you know Dora has some past mental problems and they surface right away as she has crazy dreams and her son begins acting very peculiar ("I have to kill you mommy" being the greeting that really unnerves Dora). Mario Bava's last theatrical feature continues the fine tradition of Italians finding really creepy looking kids. Colin's only other feature was the earlier BEYOND THE DOOR (1974), which you can see Bava is trying to reference. The isolated location is nice and there are a few creepy sequences here. The unusually named I. Libra provides a Goblin- esque score.
Polaris_DiB
Italian horror cinema, especially it's more exploitative stylings such as giallo, is so hit-and-miss. Some directors are great, others are terrible, even when they're contemporaries. Within oeuvres, some director's movies are quite effective, others are nearly useless (I'm glaring at you, Dario Argento). And, in some cases, even a single movie has its amazing parts and its terrible parts--yes, like Shock, Maestro Mario Bava's final directorial effort.The concept itself is very good. A mix of Shining and Amityville Horror style haunted house narrative, a woman and her family move into the house of her youth, only to be beset by spectres. Dora, the mother, is first beset by apprehension, then anxiety, then horror, and finally insanity as the house slowly destroys her mind. Young Marco, her child, almost immediately gets possessed -- by what is not so clear, but that's actually a good way to go about it. Bruno, Dora's second husband and Marco's step-father is ostensibly the voice of reason, but first his absence's sink the security of Dora's psyche, and then his sordid past comes back to destroy all vestiges of hope for the family. If you're looking for skeletons in the closet, that's basically the best way to describe this movie.However, it's execution is spotty at best. There's the aforementioned possessions, ghostly happenings, psychoses; there's also voodoo, token objects, endless dream sequences, and a trippy montage in the middle of the movie that comes out of absolutely nowhere. There are some sequences that are superbly executed (one shot near the end of the movie involving a hallway and Bruno suddenly changing into someone else has to be one of the most terrifying moments in cinema I've ever witnessed), and then there are others that do more than drag down the narrative (Dora slowly going hysterical while Bruno just sits there watching goes on too long while little reaction from Bruno makes it entirely unbelievable). In classic Italian cinema means, the imagery is mostly beautiful but their penchant for dubbed post-production sound is very disconcerting, making the movie a little harder to get into.I'd really only recommend this one to fans of Bava, the other Italian giallo filmmakers, and those who really do love really flamboyant horror movies of all sub-types. It's a shame, too, because some sequences are deserving of recognition for their skill and execution, but the whole does not support the parts, and vice versa.--PolarisDiB
