Dident the scene where the little girl was getting "protected" and is hit with the thorns look real? was it? I cant imagine they had make up that good back then.
shareThey probably did, I mean it'd be pretty stupid to do it for real just for a movie. Creepy scene though lol.
shareIf you believe the young woman in that scene was a "little girl," then perhaps you've suspended your belief during the barbed wire scene as well.
Bava was the master of illusions-on-the-cheap. Just look at the artificial cobwebs everywhere in his flicks. Some of the most convincing backgrounds in Diabolik and The Whip and the Body, which suggest expensive staging and picturesque locations, were merely photographs pasted onto glass.
It would be interesting to hear Tim Lucas's take on how the scene was done. The blood is clearly fake, and I doubt the wire was tightly tied, if in fact it was made of real metal at all.
1: Apply fake blood to branches.
2: Whip.
Come on, you really couldn't figure that out?
If you're talking to the OP: No, he couldn't (but at least he was honest). No need to rub it in.
If you're talking to me: Yes, I could. I was referring to the cilice used in the same scene, not the branches.
Also: "How the scene was done" would include Bava's little tricks for making an obvious fake scene more real. It wouldn't simply be, "tie fake cilice loosely, add fake blood."
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jneedleman: "Also: "How the scene was done" would include Bava's little tricks for making an obvious fake scene more real. It wouldn't simply be, "tie fake cilice loosely, add fake blood."
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Actually it would. That's exactly what he did except they were fake so they weren't tied loosely. This is done in numerous films and usually always look real as long as the actor is told how to position their body and the correct camera angles are used. Bava knew many tricks (often learned from his father Eugenio) but they're all known to us now and most of them are as easily done as the one here. He certainly wasn't some kind of magician.
One should judge a man mainly from his depravities.Virtues can be faked.Depravities are real.Kinski
While I appreciate the clarity and thought in your response, I think you've misunderstood me and perhaps the original poster. The *ultimate* trick isn't in the special effects recipe (which is almost always mundane) but in Bava's ability to photograph such recipes so well they seem not only real but suffused with nastiness and atmosphere.
Take "The Whip and the Body" and "Danger: Diabolik." Both employ tricks as menial as pasting magazine photographs to pieces of glass and positioning them before the lens (creating Christopher Lee's castle above the shore), or having a car drive down a hill slowly as a grassed lid lifts, suggesting a secret underground driveway. "How the scene was done" involves far more than a single device when it comes to Bava, just as a Dianne Arbus portrait isn't a matter of simply having the subject wear a mask for contrast: execution is everything. Other directors tried these tricks and created scenes that looked cheap. Others went the expensive route and made films that looked far less artistic than Bava's.
If you can list a few directors who used simple formulas as evocatively and often as Bava, then please do -- you sound like a literate and seasoned appreciator of Gialli, so I don't doubt you might think of others. But in my view, no one ever lent simple means a fine art luster as well as Bava. There is always more to it than fake blood and fake blades. There is lighting, dye application, positioning, pacing, framing, the rebus of the set and the fluidity of the editing. Bava is to horror what Sirk is to alienation.
If execution, camerawork and monetary reasons are the main criterion I would have to agree with you. Like you said I mostly covered the effects part of the equation. However I think his father was the real genius, he learnt a lot of that from him.
One should judge a man mainly from his depravities.Virtues can be faked.Depravities are real.Kinski
What's 'stupid' is thinking there was no good 'make-up back then'.
http://www.cgonzales.net & http://www.drxcreatures.com
Not to mention...what happens if you don't get it right on the first take? And how much money would you have to pay an actress to go through something like that? You'd probably run into some child labor/endangerment laws as well, because no matter how developed she may have been, she was apparently still underage.
That's just another kid who thinks his generation invented everything.
http://www.dementia13.net/film/film.php