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The surprising keynote is from Rossellini's shooting of cars in Viaggio in Italia, here the desperate Nordic captive is nicknamed "Greta Garbo." The elasticity of modern evil is surveyed in the opening robbery, centered on the jagged, low-angle shot of a window shattered by maniacs in masks à la The Killing. The leader (Maurice Poli), the hulking psycho (George Eastman) and the switchblade artist (Don Backy) grab a hostage (Lea Lander), hijack a Fiat driven by a middle-aged stranger (Riccardo Cucciolla) with a comatose child, and kick off their reign of terror. "Are you sorry to be spending some time with us?" The woman is poked and prodded for the enjoyment of the criminals, the unlucky chatterbox picked up at the gas station (Marisa Fabbri) is silenced with a knife in the throat, the twitchy killer elaborates on the effect a razor can have on human skin ("I wanted to try it on a corpse, but I'm not crazy"). A pure nightmare under the blistering sun, this sustained trauma calls for unvarnished mastery and gets it from Mario Bava. The windshield fits the widescreen with a grain of distortion at the center of the image, steering wheel and front and back seats are compositional elements in a symphony of distressed close-ups. The thug bawls at the bloodied spot where his accomplice once sat, the mustached pillar of paternalism is debunked, morality is mocked to the camera's face ("things fall apart..."). The alliance with Craven's Last House on the Left has been observed, Lupino's The Hitch-Hiker and Stone's The Night Holds Terror figure just as prominently. A stunning work of "imaginary gardens with real toads," as the poet would have it, where the trancelike perfection achieved in Lisa and the Devil is cracked to expose raw nerves.
--- Fernando F. Croce |