Mario Bava, Master of Terror

A virtuoso of fetishism, color, and cinematic thrills, Mario Bava was, in the 50s and 60s a pioneer of popular genre cinema, offering seminal titles to apocalyptic science fiction, gothic horror, and—perhaps most notably—giallo, the Italian thriller genre he is credited with inventing. Bava’s work blends suspense, eroticism, and humor, all shaped by a formalism that is both fabulous and poisonous.