HORROR-THON 2026 • NO EXIT
8.5/10
DIRECTOR: Mario Bava
STARRING: Giacomo Rossi Stuart, Erika Blanc, Fabienne Dali
RELEASED: 1966
RUNTIME: 1 hr, 23 minutes
WATCH ON: Shudder, AMC+, Amazon, Tubi, YouTube TV
SCARE LEVEL: Medium
PLAYING CATCH WITH STRANGE CHILDREN: You get what you get.
A woman runs through the woods, screaming. She humps through a fence and lands on a spike. Somewhere nearby, a little girl giggles, and a white ball bounces down the stairs. That’s the welcome to this village.
In the early 1900s, a doctor named Paul Eswai arrives at a remote mountain village to perform an autopsy on a woman who died under strange circumstances. Nobody in town will talk to him.
The villagers are terrified of the empty villa on the hill. There’s a local witch who keeps protecting people with strange charms. And more people are dying, all of them after they see the ghost of a little girl named Melissa.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
This is Mario Bava giving us something different. The Evil Eye and Blood and Black Lace were iconic giallo films. Kill, Baby…Kill is a gothic ghost story instead.
It has a spooky atmosphere and fog-drenched settings, but there is still incredible cinematography that brings the most vivid colors to life - green fog, blue shadows, and deep, deep reds. It’s actually a really interesting use of visual storytelling over outright violence.
There’s a scene where a man chases someone through the same room again and again, and he keeps catching up to himself. It’s dizzying, and it’s probably one of the best things in the movie. There is a lot that has been said about the writing, but I can see why many horror fans call it essential viewing. The imagery and classic scares are pretty influential.
But I have to say it: another creepy child. Last year, Deep Red got me with the lullaby. This year it’s Melissa, with her white dress and her bouncing ball. Fellini liked the ghost girl so much he borrowed her for one of his own films.
A FUN FACT FOR YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY:
Two weeks into filming, they ran out of money, and Mario Bava and the cast agreed to finish the movie without being paid. The film also used portions of the score used in Blood and Black Lace.