La Venere D'Ille (1978) aka The Venus of Ille

Directed by Mario and Lamberto Bava

Starring Daria Nicolodi, Marc Porel, Mario Maranzana, Fausto di Bella

This 60-minute TV film starts with the discovery on the land of the De Perolade family of a bronze Greek statue, a naked woman covered only by a veil dating back to the first century BC. The statue gives an omen of things to come as it is being pulled out of the ground when it accidentally falls on and breaks the leg of one of the men pulling it out. The discovery coincides with the marriage of the family's son, Alfonso, to Clara (Nicolodi), a woman living nearby who has become rich after the recent death of an aunt. The discovery also coincides with the arrival of Mathieu (Porel), a researcher from Paris who has come to learn more about the rich antique findings in the province of Ille.

Upon first seeing the statue Mathieu says the sculptor seems to have wanted to capture an evil expression on its face. He also sees that the pedestal reads "Beware of the one who loves you". On the day of the marriage, Alfonso wants to play a game of tennis. He takes off the ring he will give to Clara and puts it on the finger of the statue but forgets about it on the way to the church. When Mathieu meets Clara after the marriage she asks him if he will paint a portrait of her, but he says he can't paint her because she is two persons. She does indeed bear a striking resemblance to the statue. During dinner after the marriage, Alfonso tells Mathieu he was unable to get the ring off the statue's finger because it clasped its hand. Mathieu goes into the garden to check.

He is approached by Clara who tries to seduce him. It is at this moment that the gothic element is first revealed to the audience as we realise that this is not Clara but the statue, which has taken Clara's form. Although Mathieu is not aware of it, the audience realises this when she puts her arms around Mathieu and we see the ring Alfonso forgot on the statue. She tells him he is like all other men, unwilling to sacrifice for love. During that night, as Clara awaits her husband in her room, someone enters. It is however not Alfonso but the statue. Terrified, Clara gets out of the bed and cowers on the floor. Alfonso enters and gets into the bed, thinking it is Clara awaiting him there. It is however the statue which crushes him to death in an embrace (to loud crunching sounds on the soundtrack!). Clara, shocked at having seen this, will lose her mind, Alfonso's mother will die of sorrow at his death, while the statue will be melted.

For his last directorial work, co-directed with his son Lamberto, the father of Italian horror cinema, Mario Bava, chose a 19th century gothic story by Prospero Merimee which was filmed for Italian national television as part of a series of TV versions of fantastical stories taking place in the 1880s. This was his second film with Dario Argento's then companion, Daria Nicolodi, whom Bava directed in 'Shock' the year before. The horror elements in Bava's last work are virtually non-existent until the very end. Bava takes most of the time presenting the characters and their relationships, the preparations for and the actual marriage day, building atmosphere with gorgeous period detail and, typically for him, rich colour schemes and moody lighting.

The horror takes centre stage at the end when someone enters the house. With point-of-view shots, the audience is engaged in a creepy climb up the stairs and into Clara's room, when the suspense reaches its peak as Clara, and the audience, sees through a crack in her bed curtains that it is the statue and not her husband that has entered the room. This scene of Clara behind the bed curtains waiting for her husband is very similar, virtually identical, to a scene in Riccardo Freda's 1962 horror classic 'The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock', in which the heroine, Barbara Steele, is lying on a bed, her husband comes behind the curtains and, to her horror, she realises his true nature. The similarity of the colours and the camera angles in both scenes is uncanny. After more than a decade of films with contemporary settings, Bava returns to the beginning of his career and films like 'Black Sunday' and 'The Whip and the Body', although the results are nowhere nearly as hypnotic. 'La Venere D'Ille' is slow-moving and concentrates perhaps too much on leisurely building atmosphere and on comic elements at the expense of action and thrills. It's in effect a gothic love story rather than a horror film. Never really engaging, it's nevertheless not a bad way to spend an hour of one's time, and it's interesting to hear Porel deliver all of his lines with the same deadpan expression.

Hari Alfeo

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