We once again have sprung for a pricey Mario Bava import — this time to finally be able to hear this Italian show with its original Italian-language audio. That’s basically what’s covered in this abbreviated review of an all-time CineSavant favorite. Can you hear Alessandro Alessandroni’s sitar yet? “Adesso è il momento giusto — Di stare pìu vicino a me!”  It’s in 4K, has a treasure trove of video extras and good text essays by Roberto Curti, Troy Howarth and others.

Danger: Diabolik
4K Ultra HD + Region B Blu-ray
Eureka Entertainment  (UK)
1968 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 100 min. / Street Date April 20, 2026 / Available from Eureka Video / £34.99
Starring: John Phillip Law, Marisa Mell, Michel Piccoli, Adolfo Celi, Terry-Thomas, Claudio Gora, Mario Donen, Caterina Boratto, Annie Gorassini.
Cinematography: Antonio Rinaldi
Film Editor: Romana Fortini
Art Director: Flavio Mogherini
Original Music: Ennio Morricone
Vocalists: Christy (Maria Cristina Brancucci), Edda Dell’Orso
Written by Adriano Baracco, Mario Bava, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates, Dino Maiuri
Story by Angela & Luciana Giussani
Produced by Dino De Laurentiis
Directed by Mario Bava

We couldn’t resist the Eureka! UK release of a 4K  Danger: Diabolik, even though a good US disc arrived from  Kino Lorber less than a year ago. I’ve reviewed the title several times, going back to a 1998  MGM Video Savant discussion that got the attention of Tim Lucas.

I wanted the experience of Eureka’s original Italian audio track. Having written about most of the show’s home video releases — a  Paramount DVD 2005, a  Shout! Factory Blu-ray 2020, an  Imprint Blu-ray 2020, a  Kino Lorber 4K 2025 — there’s not a lot more to be said despite our inexhaustible enthusiasm for the picture. If you want more depth on the Danger: Diabolik step back to an earlier review. Believe it or not, the Wikipedia entry for this show is very nicely annotated. If you just want the quality lowdown, skip to further in the review, because …

In 1970 Danger: Diabolik was a hard film to learn anything about. The movie hadn’t been shown in San Bernardino. Eighty miles west in Los Angeles, it played second feature to a Dean Martin western. John Baxter’s book Science Fiction in the Cinema was the first we heard of it, until we caught a Harriet Diamond midnight show in 1971. Paramount’s perfect Technicolor studio print utterly knocked us out. I then rented it from Films Incorporated twice to show at UCLA, where student audiences loved it. I acquired a poster from National Screen Services, in a courtesy call that ended up a major raid.  That’s a good story for another time.

At that time our idea of ‘comics translated to film’ was the Batman TV show, which seemingly thought that tilting the camera was a style. When writing, I repeated the bad information that Dino de Laurentiis had produced Diabolik and  Barbarella as a direct reaction to the popularity of Batman. Good research by Roberto Curti and Troy Howarth nixes that idea; two aborted Diabolik projects were in the works before the TV show came about.

I was never in a position to collect 16mm films, but Gregory Jein found me some collector catalog listings that I couldn’t pass up. I bought two 16mm prints and kept the best one. My 16mm holdings stayed small — Diabolik joined a damaged B&W copy of The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, a very good print of It’s a Wonderful Life, and a flat, faded but partly uncut print of Major Dundee. I persuaded friends and associates that Diabolik was a must-see because it was the only movie that captured the dynamism of comic book graphics. This was before  Superman: The Movie. The cameramen at Doug Trumbull’s effects unit hadn’t heard of Mario Bava but liked Diabolik.  Dependably dour animation genius Robert Swarthe simply said, “Art direction does not a movie make.”

Having the 16mm print led to one fun story, that gives the false impression that I attended parties with celebs and notables. Sue Turner was friends with Jim Wynorski. His friend Harlan Ellison wanted to see Diabolik so I brought it to Jim’s one Saturday night. Ellison was a real character. The most he had to say about the movie was that it was ‘interesting,’ but he waxed enthusiastic about it on Mike Hodel’s influential KPFK radio show  Hour 25.

In 1983 or so I had considerable input into the FILMEX festival’s fantasy film marathon. James Ursini and I talked the organizer into showing Diabolik, only to discover that it could not be screened: Paramount had junked its only 35mm print. We had to wait until 1995, for the release of a VHS and laserdisc, both of which featured an alternate, messed-up audio track. It took another ten years to see a decent home video release, a 2005 DVD remaster produced at Zoetrope in San Francisco. Kim Aubry restored the correct English language audio mix, with all the original voice talent. He also remixed the unique Ennio Morricone music score back to its full original volume.

That music was always stunning. We were pretty bummed out when Tim Lucas told us that all the original session masters for the Diabolik soundtrack were lost in a warehouse fire. Jim Wynorski had by coincidence produced a semi-bootleg album of science fiction music themes, which included the Italian language vocal 45 rpm version of the Diabolik main theme, sung by ‘Christy’ aka Maria Cristina Brancucci. The  Italian lyrics are really passionate.

“Deep Deep Down
Ora sì, guardami, vieni qui
Qui vicino a me
Adesso è il momento giusto
Adesso è il momento vero
Adesso sì ti posso chiedere
Di stare pìu vicino a me : Deep Deep Down”

Eureka Entertainment’s 4K Ultra HD + Region B Blu-ray of Danger: Diabolik appears to be the same excellent master as seen on Kino Lorber’s 4K disc from 2025. The 4K disc is of course Region-free, but the Blu-ray is Region B. American fan interest will likely be from collectors like us that zero in on a specific extra. The video extras are on the 4K disc as well as the Blu-ray, so U.S. viewers without Region-Free equipment will be able to access more than just the commentaries and alternate audio track.

We had forgotten about the revisions that Paramount had applied to last year’s Kino Lorber 4K Ultra HD disc, to ‘fix’ things that didn’t need fixing. Some Day for Night Scenes were unnecessarily darkened and various blue-screen shots of iffy quality were cleaned up — the ragged phone booth shots of Diabolik, the Jaguar with the see-through roof, etc. The meddling didn’t stop there. Deciding that the ending music cue was badly chosen, somebody swapped it out for a repeat of the title vocal. We added our protest to the changes, and Eureka apparently felt the same way, for all the video revisions are gone.

The music revision at the finish remains on Eureka’s English audio track. Although the film proper ends at 100 minutes, the track continues for three more minutes with a repeat of the title vocal. The original Italian track matches the original English finish, with no disruptive Christy vocal over the creepy shot of lights being turned off in Diabolik’s cave. To not leave three minutes of silence, the title song has been tacked on as Exit Music, after the fade-out. We’ll just switch to the Italian track after Eva’s line, “You don’t know how grateful I am.”

The general extras include most everything that’s accumulated on discs from Paramount, Shout! and Kino in the last 20 years — all three audio commentaries, the Beastie Boys video, etc.. The commentaries’ descriptions of the film’s two (or three?) false starts are fascinating — with alternate actors Jean Sorel, Elsa Martinelli, Gilbert Roland, George Raft (!) and Catherine Deneuve. The first filming attempt had a different director, Seth Holt. The IMDB photo section gives us some B&W images of these stars in costume. Imagine, somebody thought that Diabolik would be a great movie for the new star Catherine Deneuve.

We especially appreciate the new booklet with writing by Roberto Curti, Jochen Ecke, Sergio Angelini and Troy Howarth. I’ve devoured the opening Curti piece, and will want to take in the essays addressing comic strip adaptations and other fumetti neri comics and movies.

But our main reason to plunge into a purchase was to hear the original Italian audio. We’re like any other fan trying to make smart buys — the normal practice would be to wait for a review, but a European 4K of Black Sunday with an Italian track sold out while we waited. The official language for Diabolik is likely English, as John Phillip Law and especially Terry-Thomas want to be heard in their own tongue. But this is an exceptional movie that raised our curiosity.

The Italian track is of excellent quality. It plays over an American print, unlike the old laserdisc, which had a main title reading only ‘Diabolik.’ Alas, the title theme is sung in English, not Italian … but this makes perfect sense knowing that Italian producers assumed that Italian audiences preferred American and English pictures.

The surprise is the excellent audio mix for the Italian dub. We were shocked 30 years ago to find that the Italian mixes for the Sergio Leone films were much more polished than United Artists’ re-dubs. The sound mix alters tracks for perspective and context, unlike cheap American dubs where all dialogue is on-mike, as in a radio show.

The voice talent interpreting John Phillip Law and Terry-Thomas are decent matches for pitch and timbre. On our one listen, the Italian for Terry-Thomas in the laughing gas scene seemed a perfect match. The Italian dub segues directly to Terry-Thomas’s own voice at the end, finishing with the same laughter heard in the English track. We stop looking for synch that doesn’t match actors’ lip movements.

My Italian is rudimentary, but knowing the English dialogue so well gives me the fun illusion of understanding everything. Eureka’s English subtitles for the Italian track follow the Italian words and phrasing, not that that of the English dub. This allows Bava fanatics to get really analytical … is that choice of words to better synch with the lips, or is the Italian dialogue saying something different?

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Danger: Diabolik
4K Ultra HD + Region B Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent Dolby Vision HDR (HDR10 compatible)
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
60-page illustrated color booklet with essays by Roberto Curti, Jochen Ecke, Sergio Angelini and Troy Howarth
Original English and original Italian audio options
Awful English audio track from the VHS and laserdisc release
Audio commentaries:
with Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson
with Tim Lucas
with John Phillip Law interviewed by Tim Lucas
Video essays:
Criminal Intent with Leon Hunt on the evolution of Diabolik from page to screen
Radical Behaviour with Rachael Nisbet
Featurette Fumetti to Film
Beastie Boys music video Body Movin’ with optional commentary by Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch
Teaser trailer, Theatrical trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English, and newly translated subtitles for the Italian audio
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD + one Region B Blu-ray in Keep case with book in hard card box
Reviewed: April 20, 2026
(7504diab)

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