Some Musings on Mario

As you know, I love Italian horror, especially the work of Mario Bava.
Now, my favorite films of his are the pop-art craziness of Danger - Diabolik (1968), produced by Dino De Laurentiis, based on an Italian comic about a masked thief, and stars John Philip Law, fresh from its Vadim-directed/DDL-produced companion piece Barbarella (1968), has a Terry-Thomas cameo, Michel Piccoli as the dogged Ginko, an Italian Melvyn Hayes-lookalike truck driver dubbed into a Cockney accent, a castle-climb, a cool car, funky music and a script by British writers Tudor "Hammer lesbian vampires" Gates and Brian Degas, giving it the feel of a pilot of the Return of the Saint, made at the time of the original ITC series.
Baron Blood (1972) is a House of Wax-esque AIP co-production with Joseph Cotten playing the titular beast, disguised as a wheelchair-bound millionaire, a catatonic Elke Sommer (looking as if she walked off the set of Carry On Behind (1975)) and the poor man's Oliver Tobias, Antonio "Michael Coby" Cantafora, Joan Collins' lover in The Bitch. There's some absurdity, a nice monster design (a disfigured Puritan) and some lovely Austrian cinematography.
Bay of Blood (1971) is just bloody grand guignol as its finest, with unconvincing thirty-year-old teens thrown into this proto-slasher.
Lamberto, Mario's son made the terrific Demons (1985) with satanic beasties escaping from a cinema. The end is nuts if only to see angelic blond US Dennis The Menace-type Giovanni "Bob in Lucio Fulci's House by The Cemetery" dressed a la Rambo and fighting demons.