Mario Bava's Danger: Diabolik - or as I like to call it, Design For Living

When I was little, I used to borrow Goldfinger from the video store every other week, to the point where the shop owner pirated me a copy of it for free so he could rent the tape to other people. It wasn’t just that I liked watching it. I wanted to go and live in it. Life, I figured, should be filled with sharp suits, Aston-Martins, mute Korean manservants with lethal hats and loose-tongued ladies who wound up painted gold. Of course, my life wasn't, but surely that was because I was ten. All I had to do was grow up.

But then I did, and discovered that, in real grown-up life the “optional extras” on cars are more likely to be additional cupholders than ejector seats. Also, painting people gold does not kill them, it just makes them very angry when they wake up. And that rarely if ever did one get called upon to save the US gold supply by stopping a nuclear bomb with three/seven seconds left to go while clutching a martini in one hand and suggestively-named woman in the other.

And not only was real life boring, it didn't look nearly as cool as 1964 either. It didn't even look as cool as 1974. Clearly, I had been gypped by society - a society that needed to be railed against for its betrayal. But in a cool way. That was when I decided I wanted to go and live in Danger: Diabolik instead.

Danger: Diabolik original release US one-sheet

Danger: Diabolik is pretty much the cultest of cult films. At least two of the blogs I have linked on the right use images from it in their title panes and another one is entirely dedicated to its leading lady. If you’re here reading this post because you want to be and not because you stumbled across this blog while searching for information about French nail varnish, you probably know the plot inside out, but because it’s so much fun to recap, I’m going to do that anyway.

Somewhere in Europe in 1968, masked uber-thief Diabolik (John Philip Law) and his equally larcenous girlfriend Eva Kant (Marisa Mell) live happily in their underground pop-art lair, emerging only to steal stuff and dabble in inciting anarchy through the destruction of state apparatuses.

Easily seeing through a subterfuge by his nemesis Inspector Ginko (Michel Piccoli), Diabolik filches a few million dollars in cash from the Rolls-Royce that Ginko figured would be a less-obvious way of transporting the money than a security truck. Escaping via speedboat and E-Type Jaguar(s), Diabolik and Eva head home to their hideout, where they demonstrate how they keep the spark alive in their reationship by having sex on their huge revolving bed under a giant pile of their newly-stolen money.

Diabolik & Eva put their stolen money to good use. If you look at John Phillip Law's leg, you can see he's wearing the red trousers he has on when Diabolik presents Eva with her emeralds later in the film, indicating that the "money orgy" scene was probably shot on the same day. Few have noticed this since his leg is the last thing people are looking at in this scene.  

Elswhere, Ginko is having much less fun at a press conference where, alongside the Minister of Finance (Terry-Thomas), he gets to inform the media of Diabolik’s latest heist. Diabolik and Eva cheer things up, however, by sneaking in unnoticed among the journalists (thanks to the miraculous disguising power of giant Courreges-style sunglasses and hair dye) and letting off laughing-gas filled camera flashbulbs which send everyone there into hysterics, except for themselves as they’ve already swallowed appropriately-labelled “Anti-Exhilarating Gas Capsules". 

Increasingly fed up with his role as Wile E. Coyote to Diabolik’s Road Runner, Ginko decides it might take a thief to catch one and hones in on gangster Valmont (Adolfo Celi), raiding his hip, happening nightclub/drug den before cornering him on his yacht. Presumably the yacht couldn't move fast enough to escape due to being overloaded with Ginko's 50 or so bikini-clad molls. Not having much choice, Valmont agrees to use his underworld muscle to ensnare Diabolik in return for Ginko not locking him up.

Diabolik and Eva strike a pose with Eva's Jaguar

Back at the lair, attentive boyfriend Diabolik reminds Eva that her birthday’s coming up, and she’d better start thinking about what sort of present she wants. Eva settles on a necklace. The Aksand Emerald necklace to be exact, property of one Lady Clark (Caterina Boratto). Lady Clark isn’t selling, but that's not really a problem because Diabolik wasn’t thinking of buying it.

Disguised as one of the local hookers, Eva stakes out St. Just Castle, home of Lady Clark, and Diabolik swaps out his usual black bodysuit for a white one that allows him to suction-cup his way up the castle walls unseen. Once he’s made it into Lady Clark’s boudoir, he fools her security camera with a handy Polaroid, knocks up a quick dummy of himself to catapult off the castle roof to divert the gaggle of footmen and guards and makes off with the necklace.

Pursued by a police car, Diabolik and Eva pause to make use of one of their Jaguar’s gadgets - a fold-out mirror wrapped round one of the exhaust pipes - which they stretch out across the road to trick the pursuing police into thinking their own headlights are those of an oncoming car. The cops drive off a cliff. Unfortunately, while helping Diabolik unroll the exhaust-pipe-mirror, Eva hurts her arm, so she heads off for some heat treatment at a clinic which seemingly caters exclusively to a clientele of villains and their sexy significant others.

Back to the lair - Diabolik & Eva arrive home after a hard day's thieving

Valmont, however, has had one of the working girls who spotted Eva casing the castle give him a description of her and has issued a photofit (which looks amazingly like a drawing of cartoon Eva from the Diabolik comic books). Spotted at a garage by one of Valmont’s men, Eva finds herself snatched from the clinic and held prisoner by Valmont,. Valmont informs Diabolik that to get her back, he’s going to require the $11 million cash they stole and the emerald necklace, to be handed over at a location of Valmont’s choosing.

Meeting Valmont and his heavies at a private airfield, Diabolik gets airborne with them on Valmont’s private plane, hands over a suitcase full of cash and shows Valmont the emeralds. Being somewhat familiar with how the criminal mind works, he refuses to give the gangster the necklace until he sees Eva alive. Handing him a parachute, Valmont hits the switch that opens a trapdoor in the floor of the plane, telling Diabolik that Eva’s being held in a cabin below. Diabolik straps on the parachute, grabs Valmont and jumps. As the two of them plunge towards the earth, the plane explodes above them because, let’s face it, it would be more of a surprise if Diabolik hadn’t put a bomb in the suitcase.

Retrieving Eva from Valmont’s men, Diabolik sends her off to safety only to find himself surrounded by Ginko’s cops. Realising Valmont has set him up, Diabolik pumps a few shots into him, then swallows a capsule. The police find both of them dead. And no necklace.

Some time later, on an autopsy table at the morgue, Diabolik is about to get sliced into when his eyes pop open. Yes, that’s Eva in the nurse’s outfit and she’s just administered the antidote to the substance Diabolik borrowed (or more likely stole) from some Tibetan Lamas that allows you to feign death for 24 hours before it becomes permanent – with five minutes to spare, wouldn’t you know.

Having been wheeled out of the morgue hidden under a sheet, Diabolik pays a visit to the crematorium where Valmont has just been incinerated and collects his ashes, among which are nestled the eleven emeralds from the necklace. Seems emeralds make great bullets - all the better to shoot you with, Mr. Valmont. Later, as Eva finishes her daily swim in their in-lair lagoon, Diabolik presents her with her birthday gift. She’s thrilled. “Darling,” she purrs, in the film’s most ironic line, “you shouldn’t have!”

Diabolik about to present Eva with her emeralds

Ginko offers his resignation, is turned down since nobody else wants the thankless job of being made to look an idiot by a man in a black rubber suit and announces that there’s now a million-dollar reward for Diabolik, dead, alive or anything in between. Coming over all civic-minded, Diabolik is grossly offended by this action, which he considers to be a massive waste of taxpayers’ cash. Opting for a slightly stronger protest than writing an angry letter to his representative, he instead blows up the tax offices, destroying all the country’s tax records.

Now unable to send out tax demands to people, the Finance Minister invites the citizenry to come forward and pay what taxes they think they owe. Unsurprisingly, nobody does. This forces the government to sell off 20 tons of gold to avoid bankruptcy. Desperate to prevent Diabolik from trying to steal the gold in transit, Ginko melts it into one giant ingot, to be transported by train. This proves to be no deterrent, as Diabolik blocks the tracks, forcing the train onto a bridge over a river, then blows the bridge up, retrieving the giant ingot from the bottom of the river with the aid of a mini submarine and inflatable balloons.

Back at the lair, Diabolik dons what he tells Eva is his centre-of-the-sun-proof suit and helmet, drills into the casing round the gold and starts melting it, spraying it out into ingots through a hose. But as it transpires, Ginko must have been something of a Goldfinger fan too because he’s irradiated part of the gold, allowing his men to track it via Geiger counter. The cops surround Diabolik’s HQ, triggering his howler-monkey-sounding alarm. Ordering Eva to flee, Diabolik heads off to activate his lethal anti-intruder system, but is prevented from doing so by police gunmen. Understandably distracted by the men trying to machine gun him, he fails to notice that the gold is overheating until it explodes, neatly gold-plating him.

Boyfriends this good are worth their weight in gold - Eva returns to mourn Diabolik

Later, awed reporters swarm all over the hideout snapping endless photos of Diabolik’s avant-garde walkways, safe, bathroom – and the late, newly-gilded villain himself. Coming over all “my noble adversary should be treated respectfully in defeat,” Ginko kicks them all out and orders the place cordoned off. As all goes quiet, a distraught, veiled Eva returns to weep over Diabolik. She’s caught by Ginko who compassionately gives her a few moments alone to pay her respects.

After the Tibetan lama thing, he really should know better.

As Eva gazes up adoringly at the bit of Diabolk’s face that’s visible through his visor, he winks at her because, centre-of-the-sun-proof suit, remember? Then, as Ginko returns, Diabolik’s face freezes back into its “dead” position, Ginko leads Eva away and Diabolik breaks the fourth wall, winking at us, while his trademark laugh reverberates around the cavern…

Diabolik and Eva as they appear in the comics

From his creation as a comic-book anti-hero in 1962 by Italian model-turned-writer Angela Giussani (assisted with the story duties by her sister Luciana from issue #13 onwards), it took Diabolik six years to make it to the screen, although this wasn’t the first attempt at getting him there. After Andre Hunebelle successfully revived similar French bad guy Fantomas in 1964, producer Tonino Cervi thought Diabolik would be the perfect property for him to replicate Hunebelle’s success with in Italy. Buying the rights from the Giussani sisters’ publishing house Astorina, he teamed up with British director Seth Holt for what was planned as an Italian-French-Spanish co-production, to be shot in Spain, apparently in black and white, with French actor Jean Sorel as Diabolik and Italian Elsa Martinelli as Eva Kant.

Diaboliks and potential
Diaboliks.  Jean Sorel,
Alain Delon, John Phillip

Law and Mark Dacascos

The duo shot one week of footage in Spain before the project ground to a halt, apparently due to the perennial problem faced by all producers: the money ran out. Some accounts say that what filming was completed was just done to create publicity photos and buzz about the project with the intention of attracting further financing. Whatever the case, the surviving images from this short shoot show that had the film gotten any further, it would have been a very different – and probably much darker – movie, with far more of a noirish feel to it.

Weirdly, they also show that while Marisa Mell’s sensuous Eva Kant drifted away visually from Eva’s icier comic book look, Holt & co. took things even further in a much bizarre way. Not only did they ditch Eva’s trademark updo hair, they gave her a black wig with a widow’s peak that mirrored Diabolik’s. Which makes her look more like his sister than his girlfriend. (Six degrees of Eva Kant: two years after Danger: Diablik, Marisa Mell, Elsa Martinelli and Jean Sorel appeared together in the 1970 suspense thriller Unna Sul’Altra.)

Two years after the Holt project collapsed, every cult movie fanatic’s favourite titan of Euro-cinema, Dino DiLaurentiis, acquired the rights and promptly junked the Spanish footage. Dino saw Diabolik as a character who he could take beyond the comic’s popularity in mainland Europe, turning him into a jet-set Raffles for the 20^th century. One who could capture a global market and make a fortune in the process.

To this end, he hired writer Adriano Baracco, who had recently scripted the hit Eurospy adventure Spy in Your Eye (1965), to write a new treatment for the project. In the meantime, he capitalised on his investment by putting Diabolik on screen for the first time ever in the portmanteau film Le Steghe/The Witches (1967), where the supervillian was one of the comic book characters come to life that put-upon husband Clint Eastwood (yes, really) has to battle for wife Silvana Mangano’s affections. Spaghetti western star Gianni Garko played the part, making him the first actor to actually be seen by the public filling out the black bodysuit.

The Eva Kants.  Elsa 

Martinelli, Catherine 

Deneuve, Marilu Tolo,

Marisa Mell, Monica

Belluci & Carolina 

Crescentini 

Dino decided that Mario Bava, who had already made waves in cineaste circles with films like The Whip and The Body (1963) and who was in the process of inventing Giallo horror, would be the perfect director to bring his vision of Diabolik to life. This was allegedly on the recommendation of comic book writer Corrado Farina, who had written a couple of the early Diabolik comics.

Bava signed on for the project and hired writers Tudor Gates and Brian Degas to rework Baracco’s treatment. They put together several drafts, largely based on three early entries in the comic book series; Sepolto Vivo!/Buried Alive (#8, August 10^th 1963), Lotta Disperata/Hopeless Battle (#15, March 10 1964) and L’Ombra Nella Notte/The Shadows of Night (#45, May 31, 1965). They impressed Dino so much in the process that he hired them to work on his other comic book adaptation, Barbarella.

Having found writers and a director, the next step was to find a Diabolik. First on the list was Alain Delon, who proved to be too expensive. The Giussanis had based Diabolik’s appearance on Robert Taylor, but he too was ruled out quickly, due to being 56 and a bit past the point where he could get away with appearing on screen in a skintight black outfit. With prep for Barbarella underway, however, Jane Fonda had relocated to Italy and had American actor John Phillip Law, her co-star in 1967’s Hurry Sundown, staying with her. She recommended him to Dino, Law practiced his eyebrow acting in the bathroom mirror for a couple of hours, then met with the producer, wowed him and got the part.

If casting Diabolik was relatively straightforward, finding the right Eva was anything but. The part initially went to a French model, apparently a girlfriend of Charles Bludhorn, then-head of Paramount. Her name seems to have been lost in the mists of time, but in his commentary on the Diabolik DVD, John Phillip Law does recall that she was apparently very concerned about how her teeth looked on screen. And that she didn’t last very long. To replace her, Bava and Dino scored quite a coup – Catherine Deneuve, one of France’s fastest-rising young actresses. Deneuve, however, stayed in the role barely longer than her unknown predecessor, clashing repeatedly with Bava. Things came to a head when she refused point blank to do the famous money-sex scene and she was packed off back to Paris. It should probably be said that out of all the Evas and potential Evas, Deneuve probably looks the most like the character does in the comics. But that as a multiple Cesar, Oscar and BAFTA nominee and winner, she’s probably too much of a proper actress in the Meryl Streepian sense to work in a movie like this.

With Deneuve gone, Bava decided he wanted Italian actress Marilu Tolo for the part. Dino didn’t, even though she had a contract with him, apparently having had some sort of issue with her on a previous movie. But with production underway and no leading lady, there was little time to argue, so they compromised on Marisa Mell, whose “cartoon beauty” as Bava put it, made her the perfect Eva. Her chemistry with John Phillip Law (which spilled off screen too, as the duo had an affair) helped as well.

Jean Sorel Diabolik & Elsa Martinelli Eva show off their weird
his'n'hers hairdos in this rare publicity pic from the stillborn 1965 Diabolik.

Early drafts of the script throw up a few interesting changes that were made in transition to the screen. Originally, all Eva’s outfits and accessories were to be white (and all Diabolik’s black), but that was ditched in favour of the psychedelic mod wardrobe Marisa’s Eva sports throughout. As in some of the comics, however, she does have a white Jaguar as a counterpoint to Diabolik’s black one and she wears a black and white mini-dress in the scene where she stops at a garage to gas up on her way to the clinic. More surprisingly, the iconic sex scene that proved to be Catherine Deneuve’s breaking point is nowhere to be found in the original script, Diabolik steals the money from a security van rather than the Rolls-Royce in the pre-title sequence, Eva reminds Diabolik that it’s her birthday, not the other way around and Diabolik snatches the necklace directly from Lady Clark’s neck instead of grabbing it from her bedroom. Eva hurts herself on her exercise bike, rather than while helping Diabolik block the road and the finale is set in a ministerial hall where the gold-plated Diabolik has been put on public display. There's also more nudity from Eva and the bizarre addition of a robotic houseboy for the couple...

The early drafts of the script also specified that a cottage hides the entrance to Diabolik’s lair, which is closer to the comics' depiction of his hideouts. The film does depart from these in several ways, in addition to sexing-up Eva’s appearance. Comic-book Diabolik may have an unlimited supply of Jaguars and gadgets like his onscreen counterpart, but he and Eva generally hole up in one of many safe-houses, all of which look like regular country houses or cottages; they don’t have anything like the eye-popping underground HQ in the movie. The film also drops Diabolik’s frequent reliance on Mission: Impossible style lifelike rubber masks. He and Eva use these at least once in almost every comic to avoid detection while doing everything from casing potential targets to going out to dinner. Diabolik’s more violent tendencies are downplayed in the film as well. These are particularly notable in the earlier comics and most famously include his frequent lethal knife-throwing. He does this only once in the film, as a nod to the fans. And while the comics are set in the fictional town of Clerville (the first few books were set in Marseilles, but it was felt that it would get too difficult to keep realistically depicting an actual place), in the film, no place name is ever mentioned. Also, unfortunately for movie Ginko, the writers’ dropped his comic-book girlfriend, the Duchess Altea, making his life suck even more.

The best-known piece of trivia about the movie, however, is probably the story of its budget. Bava was used to working magic with tiny amounts of money, and brought the film in for a fraction of the $3 million Dino had made available to him, spending just $400,000. Dino offered to let him keep the rest to make a sequel but Bava, used to more creative control and fed up with having to wait for Dino to make decisions on things, turned him down.

Released in most European territories in 1968, Danger: Diabolik (or just plain Diabolik in Europe) was less financially successful than Dino had hoped, especially in the US. Gates and Degas had actually suggested calling the film Goldstrike outside of Europe to make it less reliant on audience recognition of the title character, but whether its lack of initial box office business was due to nobody having heard of him or to distributors’ qualms over his anti-heroic antics is debatable. In the US, it was relegated mostly to the drive-in circuit where it played briefly before disappearing, and British censors certainly weren’t impressed - when the film finally came out in the UK in 1969, it was cut by 15 minutes.

It would take another twenty-odd years for Danger: Diabolik's cult status to be cemented. After repeated mentions in film magazines and surprise appearances on numerous highly-regarded lists as one of the best comic-to-film adaptations ever made, a letter-writing campaign persuaded Paramount to release it on VHS and then laserdisc. Finally, the film’s rapidly-risen profile in cult circles lead to the release of the all-singing, all-dancing DVD a couple of years ago, complete with commentary from John Philip Law, the Diabolik: Fumetti to Film documentary short and the Beastie Boys’ Body Movin’ video, which borrowed bits of the film and strung them together with a rather different storyline… And of course, it also had the “honour” of being the last film ever lampooned on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

As of 2011, Diabolik has out-lived his creators (Angela Giussani died in 1987 and Luciana in 2001) as well as Dino DiLaurentiis, Mario Bava and, sadly, both John Phillip Law and Marisa Mell. New comics continue to come out alongside reprints of earlier issues (originals of which can now be worth hundreds of Euros) and special editions, like re-imaginings of the very first books. Diabolik comics have been translated into languages other than Italian, including Greek and English, but the latter only in small numbers.

Promo artwork for Saban's blah reimagined cartoon series

Diabolik has yet to make it back to the big-screen, though not for want of trying. He has popped up in other media, however. In 1972, RAI2 Radio broadcast a 20-episode audio series made by Radio Monte Carlo, with actor and dubbing artiste Luca Ward (the Italian voice of Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond, Russell Crowe, Keanu Reeves and Samuel L. Jackson) in the lead, and Roberta Greganti as Eva Kant. A new TV series was announced by RAI in 1991 which never came to pass, although concept artwork for it was produced and shown, and in 2009, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera announced that a new six-part Diabolik TV series would be made as a European co-production, with an as-yet uncast French actor in the lead and Italian Carolina Crescentini as Eva. No word of this has been heard since. An animated series was made in 1999 by Saban International in the US, working with France’s M6, Italy’s Mediaset and Japan’s Toho/Ashi. It aired in some European territories and rather re-invented the character as more of a Robin Hood figure. Billy Zane, supposedly a huge Diabolik fan, apparently tried to get a feature project off the ground at around the same time, as did director Christophe Gans, who wanted to go serious with it and cast Mark Dacascos (currently Wo Fat 2.0 in the new Hawaii Five-O) as Diabolik, Monica Belluci as Eva and Billy Crudup as Ginko. The Diabolik film and TV rights currently rest with Canal+.

Much cooler Euro-release poster, without the "Danger" in the title

I’m a huge Eurocult fan, and will lap up pretty much anything made between about 1964 and 1977 that qualifies, but I’ll be the first to say that Danger:Diabolik is a serious cut above almost every other Eurocult film I’ve ever seen. The trouble with a lot of these movies is that they never quite live up to the idea of them – Ypotron is pretty much downhill from the end of the title sequence, Satanik is at least 30 minutes too long and The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl is just, well, a bit dull. Danger: Diabolik, however, can be watched repeatedly without ever getting boring, and it can also be successfully shown to non-Eurocult fanatics (ie anyone for whom “It was made in Spain in 1967 and stars Maria Pia Conte/Helga Line/Daliah Lavi” is not a siren call that makes a film a must-see) without having to resort to blackmail.

This is almost entirely thanks to Mario Bava, who achieves things with matte paintings, back projection, bits of broken desk fan and stuff pilfered from the Barbarella set that 2011’s top flight CGI studios could spend millions trying to replicate and never equal. He’s helped, of course, by his stars’ sizzling chemistry, but none of this really explains why the film’s become such an x-ray of my subconscious, or anyone else's.

When Saban made their Diabolik cartoon, they went to great pains to make Diabolik more of a reformed version of himself, going after other bad guys. Even the modern Diabolik comics usually pit him against characters who are explicitly shown to be villainous. And undoubtedly, if there ever is another movie or TV series made about him, there’ll be a Batman-style backstory grafted on to explain why he is who he is. All of which may conform to the generic conventions we’ve come to expect, but it completely misses out the element that sets this film apart. Not for one single second of its runtime does Danger: Diabolik ever even hint at trying to explain why Diabolik is Diabolik or apologise for him. There are no dead parents/girlfriend/dog to avenge, no childhood traumas, nothing. For 105 minutes, Diabolik and Eva positively revel in their lawbreaking. They have sex in their giant pile of stolen money; Eva blows a kiss to the owner of a truck they steal and crash onto a railway line as they blast past him in their E-Type Jag; Diabolik roars with laughter and Eva bites her lip with delight as he fires molten gold out of his hose into the ingot moulds (make of that symbolism what you will…) In short, Diabolik lives in an awesome-looking underground lair with an insanely hot woman, steals whatever he likes whenever he likes, kills anyone who gets in his way and defies and destroys authority because it’s fun and he can. 

Tellingly, one of the other elements excised from the script before filming were scenes showing Diabolik being lauded as a folk hero after blowing up the tax offices. These were likely cut for either runtime or to keep the world of the movie more consistent (as in The Avengers, there aren’t a huge amount of extras in Danger: Diabolik, it’s a pretty self-contained little world and adding the existence of the public might have pierced the bubble). Indeed, the politicians in the film are pretty incompetent, but given the depths to which the global standing of most of their real-life counterparts have plunged at present, it makes the idea of being able to embrace a Diabolik-esque lifestyle of super-stylish anarchy even more attractive. Assuming, as MST3K pointed out, you can find a contractor who’ll build you a really good underground lair. And that you can pull off the skintight black bodysuit.