Mario
Bava’s final full-length film as director Shock (AKA Beyond the Door
II) is like The Amityville Horror (1979), Repulsion (1965), and The Shining (1980) combined into a
progressive-rock tinged haunted-house Italian horror/mystery thriller that does
manage to be scary. Bava again
employs the vengeful ghost story, as in his child-themed Kill Baby Kill (1966), but keeps it in the family, creating a ghost
story about marital vengeance, which was based on a true story that Bava weaved in to an already existing
script, about a living house, he had co-written with Dardano Sacchetti several years prior. The end product is a slow-paced
but ultimately exhilarating experience that succeeds at being one of the
creepier Italian horrors. Bava’s son Lamberto Bava, who also contributed to
the script, said they were influenced a little more by Stephen King and were attempting to make a modern horror film.
The
film also has a possession angle that takes a few cues from The Exorcist (1973), which might have
been in response to the success of The
House of Exorcism (1975): producer Alfredo
Leone’s revamping of Bava’s Lisa and the Devil (1973), with newly
filmed possession scenes spliced in.
