Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966)

Interesting facts

• Filmed in: Italy

Kill, Baby, Kill is a 1966 Italian Gothic supernatural horror film directed and co-written by Mario Bava and starring Giacomo Rossi Stuart and Erika Blanc. Written by Bava, Romano Migliorini, and Roberto Natale, the film focuses on a small European village in the early 1900s that is being terrorized by the ghost of a murderous young girl.

Production

Kill, Baby, Kill marked Mario Bava's return to gothic horror, having previously directed Black Sabbath and The Whip and the Body in 1963. In later years, he claimed to have made the film as a result of a bet with "some Americans"; in contrast to his earlier horror films, it was neither made with American or British leads, nor did it experience creative interference from a major distributor like American International Pictures (AIP).

The film was funded by a small Italian company, F.U.L. Film. The film's credited producers were Nando Pisano and Luciano Catenacci; this was the only film they produced. Pisano was a production manager who had worked on films ranging from Roberto Rossellini's Where Is Freedom? to Giorgio Bianchi's The Orderly, while Catenacci worked primarily as an actor under the stage names "Max Lawrence" and "Luciano Lorcas".

The screenplay is credited to the writing team of Romano Migliorini and Roberto Natale, who had previously written two horror films for Massimo Pupillo, Francesco Merli and Ralph Zucker: Bloody Pit of Horror and Terror-Creatures from the Grave.

Bava claimed in an interview that the film was improvised on the spot from a script of only 30 pages; Lucas has suggested that the screenplay for the film may have been based on an early screenplay for Lady Morgan's Vengeance by Natale and Migliorini. Film historian Roberto Curti has refuted this, noting that Kill Baby Kill's shooting script, titled Le macabre ore della paura (lit.

Kill, Baby, Kill marked Bava's fourth and final collaboration with actor Giacomo Rossi Stuart, following The Day the Sky Exploded, Caltiki – The Immortal Monster, and Knives of the Avenger. Actress Erika Blanc was cast as Monica Schuftan in the film, and claimed the film was only the second feature she made, despite filmographies suggesting otherwise.

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