The Whip and the Body

There’d never been a Gothic tragedy as bleak and murky as “The Whip and the Body”, one of the most disturbing pinnacles of the great Mario Bava (under the alias “John M. Old”), and a film that successfully infuses a morbid ambience into a plot filled with tension, lasciviousness, and misery.

A nocturnal work where even the cold, unnatural sun seems a pale caricature of itself, the film makes sound one of its strong suits – the incessant roar of the wind, the menacing echo of a returned Kurt’s footsteps, the foreboding silences prior to tragedy – and proceeds with measured languor towards an inevitably tragic epilogue. In fact, a constant sensation of grim destiny weighs on the decadent Menliff family – a noble bloodline marked by the stench of rancor and decay – for which the return of the iniquitous Kurt is simply a prelude to ruin. And so, the outcast son’s arrival provokes an inexorable and definitive collapse in the family’s delicate equilibrium.

Stunning cinematography by Ubaldo Terzano and Bava himself, with a truly memorable use of light and color that closely resembles the earlier “Kill, Baby… Kill!” (the scene where Kurt’s cadaverous face changes from green to blue and then red as he gradually closes in on his prey is extraordinary).

As for the cast, an obligatory nod goes to a superb Christopher Lee. The film had several issues with censors at the time due to its excessive physical violence and the taboo sadomasochism theme.