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 …
… what follows is mostly a Personal Tangent.
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”
